Spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — composed into a melody we’ve sung at University Lutheran over a season or two, the lyrics to this song are simple to sing, to some degree. It is much harder to trust those words. Harder still to practice them.

But that is how being Christian can work. We do not wait until we perfectly understand love before we bodily practice. We practice love (and keep practicing it) until it begins to reshape us. We sing the truth before we can completely live the truth. We return to it when we have failed. We must keep repeating the work, in our bodies, allowing it to become the way we move through the world.
Last week, I mentioned the idea that maybe, just maybe, Jesus was and is looking for us to recognize how ridiculously powerful we humans at large are. This week, I think Jesus (and Paul, in our Romans excerpt) are looking to get us to notice that it is our bodies wherein the power, and the real understanding, are alive and bring us to fullness of life.

Christianity is not meant to be primarily an intellectual pursuit of beliefs affirmed. We cannot think our way into being the Body of Christ. We cannot study love enough that we become love. We cannot agree with Jesus enough that we become followers of Jesus’ Way. We learn to be Christian by practicing Christianity: with our bodies, our voices, our money, our time, our courage, our habits, and our relationships. We learn love by loving.

Anyone familiar with the Rocky Horror Picture Show? "Don't dream it, be it" — written by Richard O'Brien, sung iconically by Tim Curry — those words land so close to the Gospel today we could almost ask whether the Holy Spirit is playing a solid drag-inspired joke on us. Not because our faith is about individual self-invention, but because living in the way of Jesus is not an intellectual dream we conjure and admire from a distance. We can’t just dream it… we need to go and BE it.

Jesus calls it taking up the cross. Paul calls it overcoming evil with good. Neither are theories. Both are faithful living practices that require us to put our bodies into the effort.
And every time we choose not to return cruelty for cruelty, we're practicing with our bodies. Every time we speak hard truths with honesty, without seeking to humiliate someone, we're practicing with our bodies. Every time we stand beside a vulnerable person so that they might be given more room to speak up and determine what they need, or when we set a healthy boundary, or actively correct a lie that's been socialized into us, or opt to share what we have, or go out of our way to make room for the stranger whose needs don't align with ours, or begin again after failure — every one of these — we are doing Christianity. We are not dreaming it, but being it.

We will not do it perfectly. But we practice anyway, because violence only leads to violence, hatred only leads to hate, and only love leads to love.

Permission to Be Too Much
This week is a week of grief for many. Dolly Parton has died. Tim Curry has died. Yayoi Kusama has died. Three iconic artists. And it feels, perhaps, like the world has become a little less bright, a little less strange, maybe a little less willing to sing loudly in public.

They were each very different people. They had resources many people do not have, and though I would argue that their sheer tenacity made each of them a saint, we needn't make them out like they were naught but perfection. Each, in their God-given way, offered people a living example (perhaps even permission, in some cases) to choose and actively be love over the violent and hatred-filled options of the world.

Dolly Parton had a way of making generosity visible. She made joy visible. She built a public life full of sparkle, humor, tenderness, willingness to acknowledge harm done and change course with honesety and integrity. And she did it in a culture that is so often suspicious of all of those things, and so willing to hyper focus on her appearance over literally everything else she physically did with her body. She did not pretend that life was easy. Her songs knew about longing and poverty and difficult love. And she kept insisting that tenderness was not foolishness, and that compassion was never weakness, and that trying was better than doing nothing. She held herself to high standards of not just dreaming love, but being love, while also finding pathways for others to be able to love more, too.

And Tim Curry, icon in so many places, especially the famed cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show, helped create a space where being overtly strange, overtly queer, loud, generally socially seen as too much was simply more space for delight instead of shame. For generations of people, Rocky Horror has been a doorway to community, care, and love. While some may find this ridiculous, like I said earlier—- I genuinely think the Holy Spirit hid some core Gospel truth in Richard O'Brien's lyrics sung so iconnically by Curry: "Don't dream it, be it."

It’s not, of course, a formal Christian creed. But it may be more Christian than some of our Christian creeds. We just can't try to brain our way through these Christian things. We need to actually live it. A Luther parallel might be: sin boldly. And Jesus's way of drawing us to the same reality: "Take up your cross and follow me."
And, I think like Curry and Parton and Kusama illustrated in their own lives- “take up your cross and follow me” is not an invitation to chase suffering. It is not an instruction to let people hurt us. It is not a command for people who are already oppressed to make themselves more available to abuse. It is an invitation to not dream about what's possible, but to be people who shape their lives via love, rather than fear. To live that love even when it is inconvenient, even when it costs us something, even when the world tells us there are in fact easier ways.

And there may be joy in that work. There may be laughter, friendship, music, costume, celebration, and the relief of being fully seen. There may also be grief, conflict, exhaustion, uncertainty, and fear. Often, there is all of it mixed together. That is what it is to carry a cross: not a single mood, not a permanent misery, but a commitment. A way of moving through the world. A refusal to let fear make the decisions.

Get Behind Me
A hefty dose of the world we live in goes with the “dont dream it, be it” carrying of our crosses… in today's Gospel, Jesus begins to tell his disciples what lies ahead: rejection, suffering, death. And Peter reacts as many of us would. Peter says, in effect, "Absolutely not. This cannot happen to you." Peter loves Jesus. Peter is not trying to be cruel. He wants to protect his friend. He wants to prevent pain. Just like any one of us would want to do.

But Jesus turns and says, "Get behind me, accuser." (or, “Get behind me, Satan” as many translations go)
It is a startling response. Why so sharp? Especially since Jesus just told his guy Peter last week that he's the cornerstone of the church! He gets the keys, according to Jesus.

The challenge is, Peter is trying to pull Jesus away from the path of love and into the logic of control and domination. Peter is still imagining safety on the terms of hatred and violence as brought to us via Rome: avoid any avoidable suffering; preserve the powerful person in our midst; find a way to win more control and overturn those who are actively harming us. Peter does not see that the systems capable of crucifying Jesus are not going to be changed by Jesus or anyone else making themselves fit into those systems — by being as big, as strong, and seeking to overturn them via their own mechanisms of violence brought back at them.

And here is the hardest part: Peter probably has no clue that he is inadvertently supporting those systems with his "oh no, not you, Jesus!" That is how domination works. It does not walk into the room with a clear label and say “Hi! I’m here to mainpulate and control you, to confuse your values and do harm.” It announces itself as logical, or even common sense, most efficient, or sometimes even cleverness. It tells us that this is simply how the world works. It tells us that our bodies are dangerous and not to be trusted (brains somehow being not part of our body- we’re told to separate those out in some way and, after that separating practice, consider them more trustworthy than the intelligence of our complete bodies?). It tells us that racism is average, so complex it’s impossible to dismantle or engage in repair, misogyny is inevitable, poverty is a personal failure, queer and trans people are a threat to families, disabled bodies are a burden, immigrants are a problem, and that we must accept and return the violence and hatred of the world in order to protect ourselves.

It trains us to become what philosopher Michel Foucault called docile bodies. Bodies that obey, bodies that intuitively avoid certain questions, bodies that do not resist for fear of suffering, bodies that are always on edge about what kinds of space we can or can’t occupy for fear of some seemingly unnameable “them” who are watching and threatening. (Foucault's concept comes from his 1975 work Discipline and Punish, his analysis of how power doesn't just repress bodies but actually produces them: making them useful, compliant, self-regulating. Worth a read, honestly.)

And sometimes, these powerful mechanisms that exert control and dominance even use religion to do their work. They’ll takes Jesus' words about losing one's life and twist them into an instruction to become lass than who and what our holy bodies are. We’re pushed to opt to be quieter, less visible, less honest, less alive. To encourage certain people (like women, especially women of color) to pour themselves out, and other people to simply endure what God does not actually ask them to endure. It asks the harmed to remain available to harm for the comfort of those who are doing the harm.

But … that is not what these words are about. Jesus does not become a docile body in a world that wants him to adhere to the norms and be that controlled, compliant body. He does not cooperate with the powers that demand his obedience. He does not become less loving in order to become more acceptable. He does not abandon the people at the edges of society to gain more power and "change things from the inside." He does not make peace with violence in exchange for a theoretically easier life for himself or others.
Jesus refuses all of it, and forges a lived-example different way, bringing his besties the Disciples along with him so they can live it, too. And that refusal is costly. A world built on violence has trouble tolerating someone who simply and persistently loves. A world built on hatred finds someone who insists on love to be downright threatening. That person is someone who cannot be bought, frightened, diminished, or recruited into cruelty.

Overcoming Evil with Good
So Jesus refuses to fight violence with violence. He knows that violence only leads to violence. Hatred only leads to hate.

This is what Paul means when he says, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Which was written, by the way, before the Gospel of Matthew was written — Paul's letters predate the Gospels, something worth sitting with when we read them side by side like this.)

Paul is not asking us to be passive, either. He is also saying, in his own way, "Don't dream it, be it." Keep going, keep resisting the injustice, minimize the harm, get out of situations where you and others are being abused. Because Love Incarnate showed us clearly (that’s Jesus, by the way): Love tells the truth. Love sets boundaries. Love stands with the vulnerable. Love interrupts violence. Love sometimes walks away. Love says no. But love does not become what it hates.

And that is the hard, holy work of the way of Jesus, it’s the hard holy work of “Dont dream it, be it." Resisting evil without allowing evil to make a home in us. Facing violence without reproducing violence. Insisting on freedom without becoming another person's jailer. And recognizing that we won't do this by just thinking about it. We'll do this because we quite literally throw our bodies into practicing these very things. We elect to take up our various crosses because we’re not just dreaming it, we’re choosing to BE it.

Exactly as We Are
Jesus calls us to let go of the small, frightened selves that have been coaxed into believing that control is safety and dancing with domination is strength. Thus, “get behind me, Accuser” being his response to Peter.
We are asked not to be smaller, but to be exactly as we are in our holy, made in the image of God bodies, in all of our holy, beautiful, God-given differences.

Exactly as we are enough to make room for people unlike us. As we are enough to hold grief without turning it into bitterness. Exactly as we are enough to recognize when we are being pulled into the shitty domineering patterns of fear and control. As we are enough to resist violence and hatred without becoming violence and hatred incarnate, ourselves.

Though I’d love it if things worked out this way, there likely won't be a day when we leave church checking a box, definitively proving that we did it—we found the way to love and only love (though if we do, wouldn't that be terrific?! Please tell Bishop Jeff, for me!). But what I hope, for all of us, is that we come here and go back out into the world each week reminded, and renewed for the cross-bearing, don’t dream it be it days ahead:

A Failed Experiment 
Here's what I tried: I asked everyone to find a partner, face each other, touch hands. Person 1, step toward Person 2. Now, Person 2, step toward Person 1.

It went nowhere. The people who were supposed to step, stepped. The people on the other side...stayed put. People laughed. I laughed. I genuinely expected that, as has happened in most other places where I've done this little drill, people would intuitively move when someone stepped toward them in a close space. Ballroom dancers would recognize this right away and likely make the move immediately (though not always).

Well, what had happened elsewhere didn't happen at all, in this case, and I had to call it what it was, a failed experiment.

The theological point I was reaching for isn't actually about choreography, of course. It's more about how we're bigger than just our physical bodies, and we pretty intuitively will "dance" around and with one another. Like we do when we're moving fast down a busy sidewalk. Or, you know that thing, when you're walking through a busy space, a train station, a full hallway, and your body is constantly and automatically adjusting? Shifting to make room, stepping left because someone stepped right, the whole crowd moving like a single breathing thing? We could claim it's entirely due to literally seeing things, but it's more than that. Many of us quickly and easily sense movement around us without seeing a thing. Nobody calls it out. Nobody directs it. Nobody's thinking about it. And yet somehow it happens, automatic, unrehearsed, all different, and still together. A whole body of being and intuitive movement that is bigger than our individual selves.

That is the sermon, kind of.  Hold that. Both of those things at once: the automatic response, and the variety of it.

Borrowed Choreography

The disciples are with him in Caesarea Philippi. And he asks them something.
"Who do people say the Son of Man is?"

They reach, immediately, for borrowed choreography. The stuff they've been told or heard, categories they already know. John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah. Familiar names. Familiar categories. Moves that already exist, steps they've seen before. And, crucially, Jesus doesn't tell them they're wrong. He doesn't correct a single one of them. All of those answers are, in their own way, reaching toward something real, pointing in the general direction he seems to be trying to orient them.

Then he turns and asks them directly: "But who do you say that I am?"

And Peter (who has literally said almost the exact same thing just a few chapters back, mid-storm, mid-miracle) just. dives right in and says you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

He doesn't know any special theological dance moves here, as far as I can tell. He's just present. Something comes at him, the full weight of the question, the full reality of the person in front of him, and his body answers. No choreography. Just response.

And I suppose we could stop there. We could say Peter stumbled onto Truth with a capital T, thank you God, let's go home happily knowing that Jesus came here to save us.

But that's not actually good news for us today. Not unless we want to remove our own responsibilities from the full picture. Which, honestly, is a very popular move for people who have co-opted Christianity for things like nationalistic purposes. Handing everything to a divine figure so that you personally never have to account for anything is a very convenient theology...if avoiding accountability is what you're going for.

So let's sit with what else might be happening here.

Bar Enasha: What Are Humans Actually Capable Of?

What if Jesus isn't, initially, asking about himself at all?
He does already know who he is, after all. And, ego stroking doesn't really strike me as his kinda jam.

The Aramaic phrase he uses in that first question, bar enasha, is a tricky one. It's got the potential to be used as an idiom, not just a title. It could mean something like "a human being like this." It's the kind of phrase you could use when you want to point at yourself while also opening the question wider than just you.

So what he could literally be asking is something like: "Who do people say a human being like this is? What do people think someone like this, like me, like us, is actually capable of?"

Now, some scholars will argue he's referencing the Book of Daniel, where a "son of man" like figure appears as something almost beyond human, coming on clouds to receive divine power. That's a real reading. And well supported in plenty of places.

But here's another possibility, especially given that Daniel's own text says "one like a son of man," using that word like to signal something resembling but not quite an ordinary human being: what if Jesus is asking his closest friends what they think your average, ordinary, humble human being is capable of? Based on what people say. Based on what society tells us.

Notice that he's also asking these question in Caesarea Philippi, in Caesar's city. A city built to honor the Roman emperor. A place where the official answer to "what is a human being capable of?" if you were not Roman, was: not much. You've been conquered. You are a barbarian. And we'll remind you of that, lots.

The disciples (who grew up with that messaging in their bones) don't go where Jesus seems to be potentially pointing. They hear "son of man" and go straight for the external, the elevated, the exceptional. The book of Daniel version. Surely he must mean someone especially holy? Someone like the Daniel figure? Because we need someone to take on Rome, and we need someone who's exceptional to do that, right?

I get it. Genuinely. When you've been told your whole life that ordinary people like you are worth very little and capable of even less, when someone uses a phrase that could mean either "ordinary human being" or "exceptional divine figure," you reach for the exceptional interpretation. Because the more ordinary one carries too much weight and gets into how people are actually feeling... It asks too much of you.

But what if Jesus is trying, gently, to pry that story open to get them to consider another possibility?

Tiny Gods in Caesar's City

Think about the other readings that showed up for this particular Sunday (at least, the ones suggested for us in the Revised Common Lectionary). 

Isaiah: Look to the rock from which you were hewn. Not "look to a messiah coming to save you." Look to your origin, the same stuff God created within creation...Which, by the way, is divine.

We are imago Dei. Made in the image of God. Each of us tiny gods, created and becoming alongside the God who is always becoming with us. That is not a metaphor. That is a theological claim about what you actually are.

Paul in Romans: We are many parts, many gifts, but we make up one divine body, a body whose sum is so much greater than its individual parts. All different. All distinct. Still together. Still creating something between us that is larger than any of us alone.

Go back to those answers the disciples gave. John the Baptist. Elijah. Jeremiah. What if they're not wrong, just partial? Each one names someone extraordinary. Someone known for recognizing the divine moving through ordinary human life. Each one is a thread of genuine recognition, a different move toward the same I-AM-ness, the same divine reality. 

And now Jesus is pushing them further. He wants them to think beyond those socialized limits of who's holy and who's ordinary. Beyond who gets to matter and who doesn't. And goofy, often-misunderstood Peter (who by himself certainly does not have the full picture) gets told he gets a key. Whatever he looses or binds on earth is loosed or bound in heaven.

Note: Jesus doesn't just say this to Peter. A little later, he says it to everyone. The key gets distributed. The power does not stay in one place.

That is not a small thing. That is Jesus saying: the capacity to participate in the reign of God is not located in one exceptional person. It lives in multiplicity among all of us. It moves through the whole body- individual, and larger mystical body.

So maybe, just maybe, we're being asked  here not to fixate on Jesus's separate and individual power. Instead, maybe we're being asked to hold up some mirrors. To notice how, like those bodies in crowded spaces, we move separately and yet collectively. And to recognize, in a more intimate way, our own being made in the image of God, and just how powerful that actually makes us. Contrary to everything the current power machine would have us believe.

Take that one in. Really sit with it for a second- because I think we too often don't or avoid thinking about this.

You are made in the image of God. Not egoic, fear-driven, small you. Your fullest, whole-self you.
You are, inherently, as God made you, extraordinarily powerful. Not because you did something special. But because you simply have been made this way.

Despite all the messaging designed to make you keep yourself smaller and manageable and believing that if you just have this one other thing you might be enough.

And we, together, reflect that powerful made-in-the-image-of-God divinity.

The Turning We Can Do

Paul in Romans pushes us to recognize this through words about different gifts, different moves, one body. We are not required to have the complete picture. We are required to bring what we actually have, which is already so much more than we think, and often far more native to us than we've been taught to believe.

Because what we loose, joyfully, lovingly, energetically, even here, even in the shadow of highly controlling forces, is loosed in heaven. Bit by bit. One turn and move and collective response after another. One thread at a time, loosing the reign of God, right here and right now.

There's a song, Canticle of the Turning, whose refrain begins: My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
I am betting that most of us tend to hear that "you" in there as the day God brings. And yes. Absolutely. That's part of it.

But I want you to hear something else in that "you," too. What if the "you" is not only God? What if, when we gather like this (this specific room, this particular collection of imago Dei) we are the "you" who helps bring the day? What if that "you" you're singing is as much the person across the room from you, as it is God? What if the turning comes just as much through us as God, when we show up with our fullest imago Dei selves?

The next part of the refrain goes "Wipe away all tears for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn."

Not only because God wills that turn from above. But because you, all of us, this world full of tiny gods becoming, loosed it. Moved it. Brought it. (Note: the "tiny gods becoming is a direct quote from Franciscan nun Sr. Ilia Delio- look her up if you're not familiar. It's a fansatic and important point she makes about our relationship with God, and one another).

The world turned, and turns yet again, in part because we moved.
 
That's the good news. Bring what you have.
We aren’t left to rely on any ol' persons claims about who they say Jesus is.
WE are part of that body, WE are a reflection of who Jesus is. The turning comes through you, me—- us with God.

That's the good news. Bring what you have. We aren't left to rely on anyone else's claim about who Jesus is. We are part of that body. We area reflection of who Jesus is. The turning comes through you, me, us, too.

Go look up and sing Canticle of the Turning, and each time you encounter the word "you"-- think about specific people in your life. See if it illuminates the lyrics in a new way for you.

with joy,
Rev Sam

The reading of bar enasha as idiom rather than title draws on downright contested scholarship by Geza Vermes and Maurice Casey.  I chose to go there via theological imagination, and that's valid, even if it's not historical critical real. We all get to use our theological imaginations, it's a great means to getting to know God better. Also, as I noted above, the phrase about us being tiny gods becoming alongside God is indebted to Sr. Ilia Delio's work on evolutionary theology and imago Dei. 

In the beginning of Matthew 15, just before our passage today, Jesus challenges the prevailing norms around purity among community leaders. What defiles, he says, isn't what enters our bodies and then heads into the sewer, it's what comes from our hearts, through our lips.
Hold that thought.


Because if I asked you right now to fill in this blank:
"Jesus' initial response to the woman in this story is ___" what word would you choose? Mine is offensive.
His behavior is offensive. He ignores her. And then he calls her a dog.

Those are some significant revelations from someone who literally just told people that what comes through the lips is coming straight from the heart — and is, in fact, what defiles.


When Even God DisappointsThis is a story that, among many possibilities, forces us to confront the fact that even revered figures (even God incarnate) can sometimes disappoint us. Can sometimes fail to be who we need them to be.
And I hate that. I hate it when someone I love disappoints me. I hate it when someone I look to for guidance turns out to be just as human as I am, just as imperfect, just as impossibly full of contradictions. Being human is complex, and painful. And even now, looking around at the complexities of being human especially at our current social and political moment I find myself fully ready to say:


Hi. Help. Are there any adults who can help us with (waves hand at entirety of the globe)... all of this?
No? No adults in the house? Well. I guess we're all going to have to put our big kid pants on, then.


You know what else bugs me about this story? How often people remain focused on Jesus (I know how odd that sounds coming from a pastor, but hear me out). Specifically, focus on Jesus to justify his behavior. It's such a classic move to center the identified male presence in the story, making their behavior completely okay one way or another, and in so doing, reify a whole set of dynamics we could all stand to live without. Rather than just saying he did a crappy thing to another person.


On to This WomanThis sermon isn't necessarily going to center the identified male presence known as Jesus. So — on to this woman who won’t quit. She gives us a remarkable display of humility and persistence. She shouts. She shouts more. She eventually places her body physically in Jesus' path, AND she gets her sass on and talks right back to him when he insults her.


Her behavior brings to mind something from Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited. Thurman was reflecting on how in Jesus' time, Rome and the Romans were the ruling class. Israelites were very much in the mix of things. But they were no majority, and had lost their own national independence. Thurman wrote:
"Jesus had to resent deeply the loss of Jewish national independence and the aggression of Rome... resentment, anger, humiliation would all be natural feelings. Humiliation was hurting and burning, every single day. The balm for that burning humiliation was — humility. For humility cannot be humiliated."


This woman is that balm. Through a combination of persistence and a humility that cannot and will not be humiliated. Not that she wasn't wounded by oppression, mind you. Clearly she was. These things are not mutually exclusive. And yet she doesn't turn humility into a self-improvement exercise. Instead, she exposes prejudice and insists it not be allowed to become limitation, which is precisely what you'd miss if you kept centering Jesus.
And I’ve got to admit that right about here is where all my own wounds begin to fester. I am mad on her behalf when I read this text, because I am so tired of the ways women are treated and understood in society at large. And I am so tired of excuses being made for Jesus' poor behavior. Because those excuses aren't just excuses for Jesus. They're excuses for all kinds of people who are identified as male, and behave as though the world revolves around them. They're building blocks for the manosphere, and I dare say, this is precisely not what Jesus nor our author Matthew hoped we'd get from this story.


What I do think Jesus and Matthew hoped we might notice is this:
she — the Canaanite woman no one suspects — is the most Jesus-like person in this story

Through her, we encounter another one of those great surprises God always seems to have up God's sleeve: the one on the outside, who physically plants herself in Jesus' path with so much humility that both prostrate herself and she'll keep shouting until she is heard and seen exactly as she is, is also the one showing up, insisting that the reign of God is more accessible than even Jesus seemed to have initially thought.


The Woman Crying Out NowAnd I can see why it's easier to focus on Jesus and make excuses for his behavior. Because by doing so, we also make it easier to miss the very same woman crying out to us now.

You know who I’m referring to, right?

The women who are talking about the inherent racism that needs continuous unpacking and repair. The ones who are shouting about how entire communities are losing their land and the natural resources they need to live, due to the climate crisis. The ones who, while crying out, pack their few belongings and take huge chances trying to cross oceans and land masses on whatever vehicle might have a chance of getting them to the other side, a chance at life less violent for their children. The numerous trans women of color who have told churches, legislators, doctors, and journalists what makes their lives dangerous and what they need to live equally with everyone else, only to be discussed as an issue rather than recognized as neighbors whose voice and presence we need in our lives.

There are so, so many women who, with dignity and humility, are crying out just like this woman does in this story. And, much like Jesus' own behavior, it is so easy for many of us (especially us fair-skinned types) to sigh, acknowledge, and then shrug it off with a "not my monkeys, not my circus."
It's bizarrely easy to shirk our own body-of-Christ role while thinking we're doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing. And we need someone to hold the mirror up so we can see what it is we're actually doing.

The Violence of Looking AwayI worked for San Francisco Night Ministry for some time. Night Ministry provides community chaplaincy to folks who are struggling and need support on the streets of San Francisco during the nighttime hours. When we talk to people about what we do on the streets, we often use Lisa Gray-Garcia's term to describe one of the major problems experienced by many we encounter: the Violence of Looking Away. People will act as though the folks on the street are not there. They'll walk by like the unhoused or underserved person doesn't even exist, no eye contact, nothing. It's hugely dehumanizing. It brutally damages people's sense of self and being when they are treated this way.


And I wonder whether Jesus knew he was committing the Violence of Looking Away? We've got no way to know for sure. But we can know that this woman was not going to allow the looking away to determine what happens next.
Jesus, despite his initial attempt to ignore and avoid this woman, eventually cannot look away any longer. Because he is met with her physically placing her body in his path, forcing him to, at minimum, slow down while his companions suggest sending her away.


What the Text Actually SaysAnd while many a commentator likes to say it was her extraordinary faith in Jesus that healed her daughter, I keep coming back to what the text actually says:
"Woman! You have great faith!"
"As you desire, so let it happen to you."
I do wonder, in that moment, whether Jesus also thought to himself: ooops.


In the end, we don't know. What he said, after finally acknowledging her, was simply: "As you desire, so let it happen to you." Which is strikingly resonant when, in chapter 18, he goes on to say "whatever you loose on earth, you loose in heaven; whatever you bind on earth, you bind in heaven."
It seems there is more agency here among us, and within us than we are typically inclined to acknowledge. And today, we get some clarity on that from one Canaanite woman who is way more Jesus-like than anyone else in the story.


The Good NewsSo where's the good news? Now that we've turned this whole thing upside down?
The reign of God is already pressing against the boundaries erected around it. That is the nature of the reign of God.
The Reign of God arrives not intellectually, but in body, voice, desire, and persistence of the person we have been taught to overlook or deem an exception. The Reign of God, based on this story, even pushes God Incarnate to reckon with that constant presence and demand, pressing us to draw the circle wider.
Meanwhile, we are caught up in encounters where divine and human agency meet, interrupt, resist, and reshape one another.


Our call and responsibility is not merely to receive grace and then hopefully behave better. Jesus said it outright: as you desire, so let it happen to you. Our call is to recognize where the reign of God is already insisting upon itself in each of us and to join it, and move it outward, so that the whole of creation might benefit.
So I pray that what our hearts desire brings us faithfully to the humility Thurman speaks of — humility that can't be humiliated — where actions and intentions and impacts reflect the divine love that walks beside us in joys and sorrows. I pray that the incarnation of God we find thriving in the Canaanite woman today helps us to embody the divine presence that continually widens the circle, and co-creates the reign of God right now, with less human-imposed limitation.
Amen.


with joy,
Rev Sam


A few thinkers whose work shaped this sermon: Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited is essential reading. If you haven't picked it up, now is the time. The framing of "the Violence of Looking Away" comes from Lisa Gray-Garcia, whose writing about unhoused communities and the harm of erasure has stayed with me for years. And San Francisco Night Ministry — you can learn more about their work by going to their website.

Loaves and Fishes | David Whyte

This is not
the age of information.

This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

I read that to the adults in the room and let them chew on it, while I headed off to discuss the Gospel for the weekend with the kiddos.

Then I walked over to where the children were, sat down on the floor, and set a big round loaf of banana bread between us — no simple banana bread. I did a bit of a test, and tried baking it with homemade caramel at the bottom of the pan when I tossed it into the oven. I asked the littles if they would help me with the bread, if they many would help me eat it, or at least wanted to try some. I told them I needed help with this snack.

They agreed it looked pretty good. And then I floated an idea: maybe we don't need to worry about the other people in the room. There wasn't a lot, after all. So maybe just us should eat. The adults over there can go get something at coffee hour. They'll be fine. They have the ability to do that, afterall.

The kids paused.

You could feel a little moment of *yes, actually, that sounds fine*...and then the sense that I might be setting them up. Something pulling them back just a bit. (Perhaps, impressive energy reading of the adults in the room influenced this one.) But the eldest in the group came around, and she suggested that maybe, we needed to share.

Yes. Exactly that. Maybe we should share.

So I told them a story. About Jesus and his friends, who had snacks — not too different from this banana bread — and there were a lot of other people around, kind of like all the other people in the room with us. Jesus's friends were hungry, and they wanted their snacks! They also didn't feel like they had enough for everyone. And if we're being honest, they didn't particularly feel like sharing what they had. But Jesus saw things differently, and he told his friends that they had to help feed all those people anyway.

I made sure to say to the eldest who thought we might need to share that Jesus seemed to have the same idea she did. That it wasn't okay to keep it all, that maybe more had to go around to all the other people. (Kids did let me know they were very interested in the gluten free blueberry muffins also on the plate, though...) :) 

Then, as I asked the kids if they'd help me (with mom's assistance, of course) pass out this bread so everyone could have some, I re-directed my commentary to the adults in the room:

Please reflect, as you receive this bread: when in your life have you received something freely at no cost, with no requirement, no strings? When has something just been given to you?

And as the kiddos started doing the work of sharing bread, with their mom's help, I brought myself over to the piano and started singing John Foley's Come to the Water. The words are practically straight out of Isaiah, and they floated around, just moving through the room while the kids shared some fresh baked banana bread on a Sunday morning.

When I saw the bread go back to the altar-- impressively, there were slices left over--I stopped playing.

I asked people to share what came up for them in their reflection time. And they did. Several reflections, honest ones, about moments of unexpected gift, about receiving grace they hadn't earned or asked for.

And then I said something I'd been sitting with all week:

I wonder if we focus on the miracle in this story partly as a way of not having to sit with what it's actually asking of us. Because the miracle is comfortable, in a strange way. The miracle keeps the story safely in the category of divine intervention, not in the category of choice. If Jesus fed five thousand people by multiplying bread, that's something that happens to people. Not something people choose.

But what if we read it differently?

The disciples' instinct was pragmatic: Send them away. They need food, we don't have it, let them go get what they need. That is a completely reasonable, sensible, economically coherent position. It's also exactly how we navigate most of the world. Assess your resources, assess the need, find the gap, make the responsible call.

Jesus says: No. They remain, and you feed them.

The disciples don't dissolve the crowd. They don't pass the responsibility to someone else. They do need Jesus' help. AND- they remain present to the need they're standing inside of. Something happens there in the staying, in the refusal to send people away, that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

I want to be clear that this isn't a critique of any particular community. But, one of the larger conversations happening around churches and church leadership right now is about exactly this choice: whether we cut a check and walk away, or whether we find ways to actually be and remain together with people. Charity has its place, and providing the resources for independent choice also is important. But there is something that happens when you stay—when you don't attempt to manage need from a distance but enter and remain there—that checks simply cannot do.

Afterall, like Whyte seems to point out in his work... information is not​ what feeds the thousand. No matter what we're being told via other mediums.

The Rule That Started It
A couple of years ago, I heard an interview with two women, one Muslim and one Jewish, both working for peace in Israel and Palestine, amid borders that are sites of grief, memory, danger, and a whole lot of contested questions about rightness and wrongness. At one point in the conversation, they turned to justice. And one of the women said something that really stuck with me:

Work toward goodness. But don't try to enact God's judgment. I think that isn't too far from what we received in today's parable.

The Efficient Solution Nobody Gets to Try
A field, planted with good seeds. Some enemy comes in the night and scatters weeds among the wheat. The plants begin to grow, the workers notice what's happened, and they want to do what seems like the entirely reasonable thing: fix it. Get the weeds out before they ruin the wheat. And there are layers on that impulse worth naming:

Protect what we've worked for. Make our work easier. Weeds slow everything down. Use resources only for the right plants, the deserving ones. Weeds will benefit from everything we're pouring into the wheat, and they haven't earned that.

{Smirk.}

This is logic that sounds a lot like market efficiency, doesn't it? The field owner has a different idea: let the weeds grow. Tend all of it.

Why? Because if you go ripping out weeds, you'll destroy the wheat too.

That's practically wise, yes. Protect the crop. But notice what the workers are actually being asked to do: continue tending a field where they no longer get to decide who receives the conditions for growth. They don't get to reserve nourishment only for what they've already deemed useful.

And let's be clear: this owner is not going for neutrality. "Let them grow" is not permission to abandon the vulnerable, ignore harm, or wait passively for someone else (read: God) to show up and handle it. There is still work to do in this field. The difference is between continuing to work toward good fruit and appointing ourselves the final judges of what is and isn't wheat.

Because here's the brutal part: we aren't always right about what we think we're seeing. Sometimes, we are very wrong. Sometimes, our weed is someone else's wheat.

The Plant That Looked Just Like the Other Plant Gets To Grow
Scholars believe the weeds Jesus is referring to in this parable were darnel, a plant that looks almost identical to wheat when it's young. And the challenge with darnel isn't just visual. Its roots can become entangled with whatever is growing around it. Pull one, you pull the other.

That desire to fix a problem the moment you spot it isn't unreasonable. In our modern world, we actually applaud it. Not wasting time on blame, quickly identifying paths to solutions. That's admirable. It keeps us productive. It keeps the market moving.

But this landowner says: no. Pulling up the weeds is not the way to handle this. Because you might pull up the wheat. You might destroy something that is still in the process of becoming.

You might look at a person in one moment of their life and decide that that moment tells you everything about them. You'd be wrong. The seemingly good may turn out not good at all. And the seemingly hopeless may turn out utterly beautiful.

That's what I find most remarkable about this parable. We are being told that rather than swinging down with swift judgment as fast as possible, we get to grow. We get to keep growing. We are not frozen into a singular moment or place in time.

God does not look at the worst we have done, the cruelest we have been, the moments when fear took the wheel, and declare that nothing new can ever grow here. We get to continue becoming. And in turn, we are expected to extend that same grace well beyond ourselves.

(And yes, I know. Exerting judgment all over ourselves is an excellent warm-up for doing the very same to others.)

What the Christian Church Has Done With Judgement
The Christian church has caused enormous harm every time it has ruled itself and the world with overly heavy judgment, imagining itself capable of sorting these fields. We've named some people wheat. Some people weeds.

We've tried to uproot queer folks and their bodies. So thoroughly. So violently, that now we find ourselves scrambling to say "actually, this is okay." Which is, when you sit with it, a deeply strange thing to have to say. If anything, the 180 we owe isn't "we've decided this is acceptable now." The 180 we owe is a simple, clear and plain: "We were wrong from the beginning. Very, very, very wrong."

We've tried to uproot Indigenous practices. Disabled bodies. Neurodivergent thinking patterns. A whole host of religious differences and theological disagreements. Again and again, laying down our judgments in clever costumes we call things like "justice," "communal wellbeing," "God's will." "fairness."

Claiming to defend God's field has resulted in the destruction of living wheat so many times. And so Jesus gives us a rule of thumb that echoes that interview I heard years ago: work for what is good. Protect people from harm. Tell the truth about injustice. But do not mistake your judgment for God's justice.

The Uncomfortable Question For All Of Us
​I could tie this up here. A gentle close: leave room for your neighbor's growth, even when you'd rather not count them as a neighbor. Because the field still belongs to God, and thank goodness, God is not finished growing anything just yet.

But, as scholar Amy-Jill Levine will gladly remind us, one of the hallmarks of a Jesus parable is that it's supposed to leave every single one of us a little uncomfortable. And in this case, here's one aspect of what we're being asked to sit with:

Look at how generous this field owner is. Resources are not being withheld from the weeds. Whatever their final status may turn out to be, the workers are not permitted to use their own judgment to decide who receives what's needed for growth. Both weeds and wheat will be allowed to grow. The field owner trusts that in the end, things will be sorted as necessary. As things stand now, all receive care.

That command to let the field grow is not permission to sit comfortably by while people suffer. It is, however, a reminder to pay very close attention to what it is we think we're doing, and what we might be camouflaging as we go about it.

So if that's the case:
Where are you and I prepared to uproot, or to refuse the conditions for growth, in the name of righteousness? In the name of judgment dressed up as justice? In the name of our more modern word, *fairness*?

Fairness by whose standards, when the field owner says: we all get to grow?

with joy,
Rev. Sam

I am so tired of waiting.
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two--
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.

The Artist Who Listened for Something More

There's a story my teacher John Flaherty used to tell about a large church event held in an arena.
It was a big event. More than 500 people.

A couple commissioners had ordered new custom communion ware for the event. They met with an artist and explained exactly what they wanted: cups, a chalice, everything needed for communion in this enormous arena setting. The artist listened to all of their requests. Listened. Nodded.

Then, as the date got closer, they kept contacting the artist. Are they ready yet? No. Not yet. Finally, in the eleventh hour, the artist said the pieces were ready, come and get them.

The commissioners went to pick them up and discovered that the cups and chalice were nothing like what they had requested.

Instead of a chalice, the artist had made a collection of small bowls. And when they used them for communion, they discovered that the bowls could not simply be passed from one person to another by the rim or handed over at a polite distance. Hands had to touch hands. People had to move closer to one another. The way those bowls were made transformed this huge arena into an intimate experience of Jesus at table, into hands remaining open for receiving (rather than grasping at the stem of a chalice, despite the enormity of the room.

The artist had listened to the commissioners. But apparently, the artist had also listened, and noticed the need for something more—like what mattered most for the greater field of people involved in this communion celebration. And those two things were not asking for the same thing. The artist noticed something the commissioners had missed. The commissioners knew what they wanted. The artist was paying attention to what was needed.

And the artist was willing to take on some disruption and conflict to do it. And the room was willing to be interrupted into a new experience. And in the end- well, people enjoyed being at table with Jesus.

So what did the artist notice that everyone else had missed?

What Forms Us
My area of study — Affect Theory — asks a deceptively simple question: *What forms us?* Not just ideas, but relationships, environments, habits, institutions, the spaces we inhabit and design, intentional or unintentional.

Everything is forming us in one way or another. And we are also forming all the things. This is not necessarily an equal playing field — but it *is* an ecological field, and we, and all of our systems and concepts and creation, are all players.

For example: I came across a thinker recently who said, "Capitalism turns autonomy into isolation, then tells us that consent is the only thing that matters."

And if we accept that as an accurate statement, that thinker is saying that capitalism is forming us. It does not just sell us things. It trains us to see our whole ecology, our entire relational field, as a market. It teaches us to ask: What works? What succeeds? What produces the best return? What can I choose? What can I control? What can I buy, once the relationships and support systems that might inhibit my autonomy have been stripped away?

This kind of affective setting, this market-shaped way of seeing and being, can take the story about the artist and turn it into a story of rugged individualism. *The artist heard the muse's call and responded!*

It can take Hughes' poem and turn it into the story of the bleeding-heart poet, continuously wounded by an inherently imperfect world full of pain, willing to wound the world further just to try to understand.
Poor chap.*

This kind of autonomous, isolated setting, where we prize individual choice and then purchase what markets tell us matters, forms us — making it nearly impossible to recognize the inner workings of stories like the one about the artist, or Hughes' poem, or Jesus' rather difficult parables.

Wrong Question, Wrong Gospel
So. This difficult, paradoxical story from Jesus in Matthew.

In a market-driven setting, we lean into the idea that obviously we just need to focus on what kind of soil we need to be, right? Because it's about optimal conditions. And that explanation is literally handed to us in scripture! (Gee thanks, Matthew—though many scholars think this explanation reflects Matthew's community more than Jesus' original telling.)

Or another take: what kind of soil we should cultivate, right? Another obvious recipe for a successful church. Again, optimal conditions.

Or-here's a creative take-skip the soil! What kind of gardener are we?! Again, recipe for a successful church or community. Lots of control and autonomy. Lots of concern about where our efforts will produce the greatest returns.

But here's the thing: Notice the concepts every one of those interpretations is quietly holding onto:
Who deserves?
Who is good?
Where will investment yield?
...They're all centering around an economy of scarcity.

There's not much participation in the ecological field of becoming together with the seemingly frivolous sower of seeds, when you're operating under a scarcity model where we quickly label things and try to predict outcomes. There isn't much attention given to sensing what that sower is actually up to in this economy. What we have, instead, is scarcity and pre-programmed labeling and categorizing as ways of living.

When was the last time you were in an environment where you were told there isn't enough to go around, and there was lots of labeling and categorizing of people, and it *really* helped everyone—you included— generously grow and explore?

...

Yeah. Same for me. That's about what I thought.
Not really productive for any of us. And since Jesus says he's here for abundant life for all, I say all those interpretations are (while historically very present, and apparently important at one point in time) keeping us in servitude to systems that won't set or keep us free, today.

We Are All of It
So then what is this about? Why the artist story and the Hughes poem and the Affect Theory concept on top of the Gospel text?

I think today, we're presented with a field of relationality situation.

Not relativism, mind you, but an issue of faithful, living discipleship that must be open to interruption. Or, in Hughes' words, curiously looking to "see what worms are eating at the rind" —and willingly opting to respond with unanticipated generous disruption, right along with that ridiculously generous Sower throwing seeds all over the place with no concern for potential returns.

Because if we're willing to be honest with ourselves:
We're all the different kinds of soils.
We're also all the birds and creatures picking away at those seeds sown.
And we're all the different seeds — even (maybe often) the ones who gave up when the going got rough.

None of these is a permanent identity. Yet, we have all played every role in this story, and all of it-- the roles we've been told about, the interpretations we carry, the ways we label ourselves-- this whole big interdependent relational field of us and everything else? All of it is forming us. All of it is shaping how we think and act and go about being in the world. We may not even be noticing. We may even be formed to not notice in more than a few cases.

In the face of that (overwhelming, honestly) reality, what is this environment doing to faithful discipleship? How might we be the faithful disciples we proclaim we intend to be?

It's a sticky situation. Just think again about that list of interpretations we looked at. Every one of them is rooted in an economy of scarcity. Winner/loser. Every one carries some variation of more life for some than others based on more correctness or less, more profitability, or less, more attractiveness, or less. All of which lines up beautifully with the logic of markets. But it does not line up with this wildly generous, even somewhat embarrassingly irresponsible seed-sower who disruptively, frankly, tosses their seeds all over the place and lets what happens happen.

The sower refuses to calculate who or what is deserving. The sower refuses to limit possibilities. The sower doesn't look for ideal market trends. The sower seems to know that simply scattering the seeds will have its effects on that relational field, and so the sower goes along, ridiculously tossing out plenty of seeds all over the place with abandon.

The point here isn't self-classification and a confirming pat on the back, or a needling until we can back-pat ourselves for following the ideal rules and achieving the ideal labels (like we could, anyway, in this context?).

The point is attention: "Let those who have ears hear"

Attention to what is actually happening in the relational field we're living in. Attention to what we are receiving. Attention to what we are choking out. Attention to what we are picking up and devouring before it even takes root. Attention to the wildly generous Sower's scattering, everywhere.

Everything is forming us. Faithfulness is choosing the kind of attention that allows us to join God's absurd, disruptive generosity—attention to what draws us out of isolation, attention to what deepens communion, attention until we notice all the little changes and interruptions and disruptions rippling throughout this relational field we live in, welcome and unwelcome. And then choosing to generously join in.

Generous Disruption, Rippling Outward
I think so often of that artist who defied all the requests made of them and changed a whole arena's worth of people's experience of Jesus in the process.

Attention to what was needed, what mattered, to the disruption the Sower was sowing resulted in generous disruption further down the line, right alongside the Holy Spirit, via simple bowls with (consecrated) liquid in them, passed between human hands.

That artist changed my teacher John (who was one of the commissioners, and told me the story), and me through John telling me the story. I can't even tell you how many more, considering how often John —and now I— have retold it.

The artist paid attention to the commissioners and the whole relational field they were situated in. They were attentive to the needs, and they noticed the opportunity for disruptive generosity, and were themselves willing to take on that chance of engaging in more generous disruption. And then that little generous disruption became an even more generous disruption, rippling outward—for the sake of deeper communion that changed people.

We need this. This world *needs* this.

I would say this world is even begging for this kind of faithful discipleship. Discipleship that is not only willingly interrupted by what matters, but then willingly responds with (admittedly costly) generous disruption right along with that ridiculously generous Sower who doesn't seem to give a damn about the rules of wisdom concerning where we will get the best returns, or where it would be most wise to plant the seeds. The sower who keeps tossing the seeds out there all over the place, refusing calculation because they seem to trust that generosity and relational fields are far more fertile than what a market can predict.

God is scattering possibilities throughout the whole entire field of relationality that we're living in. We can't even escape it if we want to.

So perhaps faithful discipleship begins with refusing to wait passively for the right soil and optimal conditions. And instead, faithful discipleship begins with embracing the disruptions God is already throwing our way — responding with generous disruption right along with that absurdly frivolous seed-Sower.

As for me? In the ever-wise, and truly inspired, words of Langston Hughes:

A Stranger Walks In
So, as those who were with us and using the worship aids noticed, we received our new printer this past Tuesday. This is huge. I am thrilled to be able to print better worship aids that allow everyone to see more clearly! 

The installation went pretty smoothly. I gave our old Ricoh a genuine goodbye gesture that made the folks doing the install awkwardly chuckle, and then I left them to their work as I handled some other things in the office.

Somewhere in there, someone came in—phone blaring some kind of talk radio—and headed straight for the bathroom. I didn't see the face. I assumed it must be someone who knows us somehow.

Eventually, this person came out of the restroom, and he asked whether the tech and I knew the story of Joseph. (Yes, Joseph as in, the amazing technicolor Dreamcoat Joseph.)  This person continued on, explaining to us how Joseph was "promoted" because he was a Strong Man who Refused Pharaoh's Wife's Advances (that evil whore, you know—God rewards manly strength, and punishes the wicked and all). I was nodding and listening.

Then, our new friend moves forward into talking about how Joseph is the ONLY person in the bible held captive, AND promoted. He continues on, making a connection between Joseph's dreams and the book of Daniel, and then makes some connections to the book of Revelation.

I was standing there listening. Nodding. He was regularly saying to me: "You know what I am talking about, right? I mean, this is very simple."

For a brief moment, as he was speaking, I wondered whether I should introduce myself and let him know I'm the pastor here. I had the sense that might bother him, so I just didn't do it. By this point, he was telling me about how he so wants the scrolls of Revelation to be broken open because he wants the world to be filled with good, righteous, Godly people. His desire was genuine. He clearly wanted to see the earth filled with goodness and was pained at the wickedness he's experienced all around him.

He asks me once again whether I'm getting what he's saying, and reminds me once again it's very simple, what he's saying. I take my opportunity here to interject: "You know — for many of us, Revelation isn't about predicting the end of the world. It's about helping us find strength in remaining faithful, even when the world feels like it's ending."

He responded, telling me that he knows what Revelation is about.

So I interjected one more time and said, "We may have some theological differences here. For many of us, the goal is not the end of the world — it's to help God's world flourish—"

He let me know that he could already tell by the "colored" flags outside that this is not a true house of worship, that we're clearly intentionally misleading people—we're part of the wicked problem, because you know what Jesus said about... And before he could finish, the anger in me finally bubbled over, and I spoke right over him, telling him we don't tolerate that kind of speech here, questions are okay, hateful statements are not, and I'm going to have to ask him to leave the property.

As I'm sure you can imagine, our friend did not appreciate what I had to say. He did however respect me enough to head out the door, doing so while telling me what "Jesus had to say about the gays." At that point I wasn't about to shut up, so I stubbornly said, "Uh, not according to anything we've currently got to look at, he didn't"—and then he told me I needed to read the book of Matthew.

I guess he doesn't know it's liturgical Year A, and Matthew is what we're reading almost every Sunday. :) 

Two Jobs At Once
You know, I have replayed that whole scenario over and over in my mind this week. It's been eating at me. Partially because I wanted to do two things at the same time. I wanted to love this guy, that's my job. And simultaneously, I wanted to love the other people in the room. That is ALSO my job.

The two don't play well together in this circumstance.

I was looking for a "third way" —one where this guy could be seen and heard while the other people in the room could still feel pretty secure, and maybe everyone could learn something or experience the Holy Spirit between us.

In the end, like Paul, I did what I do not want to do. I cut him off and asked him to leave.
Ever had that happen? 

That excerpt we heard from Romans today is an example of Paul noticing exactly this in his own experiences.

Paul at 2 am...
Paul has noticed something downright embarrassing. We don't always become the people we know we want to be, the people we're pretty sure we can be. Anyone who's ever replayed a conversation at two in the morning knows exactly what he's talking about.

The struggle, of course, as Paul points out (though brutally full of horrific mind-body dualism that is a product of his time and continues to do harm in some theological traditions to this day) is not that we are evil, nor is it that our bodies are evil, but at the core of things he's saying that we're unfinished. And thanks be to God that's the case, because it seems all of humanity has this significant problem between what we want to do and what actually happens.

Nobody Danced
Jesus, today, began with a critique not too far from what Paul's griping about: "We played the flute, no one danced. We sang the funeral song, no one mourned."

In other words, what he's saying in there is: John the Baptist arrives in his camel hair coat and locust-honey meals—everyone thinks that's gross. Ew. Then Jesus arrives, eating, drinking, chilling with all the people, polar opposite of John in behavior. Everyone thinks that's gross too. Ew. He eats and drinks with the bad people we don't like and don't support because they do bad things.

You see the pattern? John arrives at one end of the spectrum: rejected. Jesus arrives at another: also rejected. The children bring God into the scene —singing, flutes, dancing, mourning— also entirely rejected, no appropriate responses.

The issue at hand isn't that God is absent for us (oops — I mean, *them*). The issue is that many have already decided what God is "supposed" to sound like and act like and look like. Which means sometimes God could be singing right in front of us, and we wouldn't recognize the melody. Wouldn't even notice its effects.

Which brings me back to the scene during our printer installation.

What Songs Were Present
I didn't mention it super clearly earlier, but there were two other witnesses to the whole scene on Tuesday. I wasn't there by myself. Two techs were quietly watching and listening from the new printer. And while I was wondering how to love one person well, these two were probably wondering something totally different: would this church do what that line of progress pride flags outside seems to say it will do?

It wasn't until days later that I realized there were several melodies present in that situation: One tune was total certainty. Another was exclusion. One felt very secure in knowing exactly who and what God is and demands of us. And another insisted that vulnerable people—people historically ostracized by so many mainstream Christian groups—are also made in the image of God, entitled to safety and dignity, without question.

After I set the boundary, the atmosphere in the office changed. Two strangers who were just trying to do their jobs, while someone shows up with increasingly hateful rhetoric didn't experience theological brilliance, but they did experience brave space, and safety.

The room probably didn't need another argument or theological talking point. Maybe all that it needed was someone to amplify a particular melody. And that one went something like an assertive: No. Not here.

I did what I do not want to do, and in the aftermath I likely made us a bit of an enemy on Tuesday.* But two new friends were also made. Those techs exhaled audibly, and new camaraderie was found in the aftermath of the whole scene.

Not What They Mean by Freedom
Yesterday, the US celebrated 250 years of independence. And we've all heard the phrase: freedom isn't free. That's a true statement. Just, maybe not in the way we've sometimes been taught.

By the witness of our scripture, Jesus never once suggested that freedom can be purchased or claimed via armies and governments and empires. Rather, he seems clear: freedom costs. It costs us comfort. Freedom costs us certainty. Sometimes, freedom costs us relationships. I think Jesus and Paul were deeply aware of the pains of that cost and still committed their lives to freedom for all.

Which Song to Sing?
So real freedom, for us Christians—involves learning which song or melody shapes our lives, knowing it by heart, even when every other melody around us seems like it would be easier.

And this song can be a tricky thing to learn. It seems to skip beats and do all kinds of wild, unanticipated stuff. But at the core, we're asked to keep listening carefully for it in the midst of the noise, while we're simultaneously already singing, dancing, and playing along. Not an easy combination. And you know, that's the thing about "My yoke is easy, my burden is light" being placed right after Paul's "Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ the One Who Frees!"

Sometimes our voices fail and our dancing falls out of rhythm. Sometimes we find only silence where the flutes should be. Sometimes all we have is grief, and we miss the lament completely. Sometimes we realize, with a jolt, that we've been singing the wrong song all along. And sometimes, others are carrying the melody for us until we can find our way back in.

Maybe that's what Jesus means. His yoke isn't easy because discipleship is easy. A yoke is a burden of its own. Perhaps the way he might say this today would be: *my* yoke is easier, and *my* burden lighter — because we're yoked together, never carrying it alone, always doing the costly work of more freedom for all together.

Learning this freedom song also means learning how the song asks to be sung.

Sometimes quietly — a lullaby.
Sometimes through tears, a lament.
Sometimes with joy, full celebration.
Sometimes with righteous anger, a protest.
Sometimes with simple, assertive strength: boundary-setting.

And sometimes at the top of our lungs, because the world is so noisy and cruel that anything softer simply disappears into the machinery of fear, and we are called to throw up heartfelt cries for the sake of the restoration of all, no exclusions based on categories we humans make up.

And, thanks be to God—even when we're getting it wrong, the song never dies. The Spirit never stops singing. The invitation is always there for us to pick that freedom song back up, once again.

with joy,
Rev. Sam

*A note of genuine gratitude to the unexpected visitor who stopped by on Tuesday. I hope the road is kind to you, and that you find not only what you're looking for, but what you need—even if we'd likely disagree about what those things may be.

Family Values, According to Whom?
Have you ever noticed that Jesus and American culture have very different ideas about family values? About what families are even for? About what Jesus himself is doing here on earth at all? Sit with that one for a second before you answer it.

Now sit with this one too: why is Jesus (seemingly) picking this fight? Why families, of all things? Why is the nonviolent guy claiming that he's here for division, with a sword in hand?

Take a guess before I tell you what I think. What would need to break open inside a household, a family, for the realm of God to get any closer to happening?


My guess circles back to the same place: hoarding. Resources kept. Power concentrated. Worth assigned arbitrarily and unevenly, generation after generation. And, here's the thing: if Jesus is for nonviolence, and if Jesus is for equity outside of the domineering, controlling systems that treat people like objects and assign their value from the outside, then of course he ends up here, at family, with something that looks like a sword in his hand. Where else would he go? This is the easiest place to start, it's the place closest to each and every one of us, that we most easily would overlook.

The Household Is Never Neutral
Even though the text says "sword" and "family division": Jesus isn't attacking families so much as exposing a pattern that's been sitting in plain view, right under our noses. Ancient households were systems of hierarchy, inheritance, loyalty, property, power. Resources flowed inward and stayed there. Worth and value are assigned (unevenly, arbitrarily based on things like birth order, gender...etc), generation to generation. Nothing like today, right?

And in Jesus' world, the household wasn't some private, sealed-off unit. A family household mirrored the larger systems of domination and accumulation running the whole show socially. Again: nothing like today, right? (I'll let you sit with that one too.)


But Jesus is here for the realm of God, come near. And in his telling, that realm arrives with a sword. Not to start a war, but to dismantle the violent, hoarding architecture built into both the household and the empire architecture it was modeled on. So, he starts by leveling the field (telling us it is enough for students to be like teachers, for slaves to be like lords/masters). And then he shows us exactly how unlevel that field already is— starting with the one place we'd expect to be safest: family. I imagine he starts with family because a significant chunk of his whole point is that you have been taught to measure your worth by systems that were never built to assign it in the first place, and those systems are...creepily sneaky and tough to pick out. Evils masquerading as good, as Bonhoeffer might say. And I don't mean that family is evil- but I do mean that some of the things family might attempt to do in the name of family can be real evil, and I think Jesus was saying the very same thing. Keep reading, you'll get what I mean with examples.

Slave Like Lord, Student Like Teacher
When Jesus says it's enough for the student to become like the teacher, the slave like the lord, he is not handing out a consolation prize. He's making an announcement: the way of Jesus, the way that opens the realm of God, doesn't assign worth by status, productivity, usefulness, or output. Whoever currently gets ranked "below" simply gets brought level with whoever's been ranked "above." And that's it. That's enough. Parallel. Equal footing. Everyone standing on the same ground, equally valuable, in the way of Jesus.

In modern terms, I like to think Jesus might put it like this: it's not a problem that billionaires and trillionaires exist! In fact, EVERYONE gets to be a billionaire and trillionaire!

Lutherans of old in the room might recognize what I'm saying here as something close to Luther's critique, called incurvatus in se — or being "curved in on onself." The problem being, the self, and the systems we build, curving inward on themselves keeping resources, status, and worth contained, protecting the status quo in the process. That's exactly the orientation Jesus is trying to get us to notice, and then move away from.

So, Jesus opens the circle way, way wider. Everyone is inherently worthy. Everyone has dignity. Everyone is valuable and that value holds even in the middle of conflict. In fact, in Jesus' telling, conflict can be (though not always, and not automatically) a sign that you're walking deep in the way of Jesus.

To refuse to be defined by family, by bad theology, or by any other system of control and dominance  is to walk in the way of Jesus. Or, to put it even more plainly: to refuse any system that denies the God-given dignity of yourself or of someone else is to walk in the way of Jesus.

What Happens When You Stop Being Afraid
So — guess what happens once you fully realize your own worth? Once you actually believe that your dignity has existed, and always has existed, entirely outside of all the fancy and mundane hierarchies we've built for measurement?

You start refusing those systems and their violence. Because you finally realize you have nothing left to fear.
When you discover that your dignity and worth are inherent, not assigned by cultural norms nor handed down by whoever's in charge in a given moment, the systems built on unequal worth begin to crack. They crack because those systems govern you by getting you to locate your worth inside them: good kid, good employee, good student, good whatever-they-need-you-to-be.

Think of the kid who leaves home because their family can't accept their queerness. Or the person who walks out of an abusive relationship because they have realized in some way finally, that they were never meant to be treated that way, under any circumstances. These are people walking in the way of Jesus.

And families, institutions, economies, and cultures organized around possession and ranking experience that kind of leveling as a threat. Of course they do. And what comes with the experience of threat?

Conflict. Suddenly parents are against children, children against parents, exactly like the text says.
"Wait — we can't ALL be billionaires and trillionaires!" ...Well. That's true, according to any system that needs us to keep competing and vying for value and status. But it's only true inside those kinds of systems. Because a machine that depends on keeping us hungry, afraid, and constantly competing for more cannot keep running once we realize we don't have to define ourselves by any of it. Because, in reality, that machine never could define us in the first place. There is in fact plenty for ALL of creation. The only place there isn't is inside a system built on violence and a scarcity it manufactured on purpose to keep itself alive and keep everyone in that system under-resourced and hurting for more.

Difficult to Manage
And here's where the next issue comes in: once you really believe you are beloved, that you are inherently worthy, that you were never meant to endure the abuses of systems that had you chasing someone else's version of your own soul or your own life, you are no longer finding so many reasons to be afraid and you become difficult to control.

Because you've discovered the only kind of freedom that's actually available: the freedom that comes from knowing, believing, and living in the truth of your own belovedness, and everyone else's, across all of existence.


People who've discovered they're free are very hard to manage inside violent systems (all those pernicious systems that exert control by assigning your value and treating you like a tool, or a product, built for extraction). You can probably see, now, why there's so much invested in making sure you never get here. Because people who know their worth stop needing to prop up those systems, stop being afraid of losing those systems, stop even participating in them. And it gets worse for the systems than that: once you know your own worth, and the worth of everyone and everything else in creation, you do a full 180 and start insisting that there is plenty to go around, and that none of us need to live this way.
Uh-oh....

Taking Up the Cross
I imagine you can guess this generates some waves.

When Jesus says " unless you take up your cross," he's naming exactly how hard it is to live this kind of life— partly because we are already complicit in these systems, and partly because the world responds to this kind of nonviolent insistence on dignity the way it always has: badly. With anger. With every stunt available to pressure you back into the role you were assigned, back into chasing the value and worth that was never yours to chase in the first place. He is also naming that, if you're not doing this work, you can't expect to be of equal worth to Jesus and Jesus' way. It's a simple equation, really (and no, it's not works righteousness, it's just the basics of following through and being a Christian): following in the way of Jesus means a different values system and that is going to generate conflict...and that sure is carrying your own cross.


It is genuinely hard to be in the middle of this kind of conflict. People take it personally. People will tell you that you're the one generating chaos, making problems. And fair enough, you are making problems. You are breaking every problematic ideal those systems rely on. But it's good trouble, in Jesus' own telling. It's actually what he came here to do.

Still, even when it's good trouble, even when we're told we're worth more than the sparrows, it hurts to be in this kind of conflict. It's frustrating to want out and discover you can't fully extract yourself, because the harsh reality is that we still have to eat, house ourselves, get ourselves from place to place. We can't wipe our hands clean of all our complicity, no matter how much we want to.


It is painful to see inherent worth clearly (really know it, in yourself and in everyone) and then watch so much of the world keep devaluing it, harming it, refusing to let creation have what it actually needs.


And yet. Following in the way of Jesus, heading toward the realm of God, means stepping away from the systems that keep inducing us to do violence in order to maintain violent control over one another. So, to stay close to Jesus, to remain among those who walk his way, we take up our cross, and we keep going.

Losing Your Soul to Find It
And when Jesus says "lose your soul/life to find it, for my sake," he means letting go of a life organized around possession, hoarding, extraction, ranking, and control of other people.

He does not mean losing your soul to uphold the very norms and dogmas that harm you or harm someone else. Remember where this whole text started: Jesus levels the field. Slaves like lords. Disciples like teachers. Everyone brought up into a dignified, abundant life—not flattened back down into someone else's hierarchy.

The promise here, tangled up in all of Jesus' hard wisdom about the conflict that different values systems and change will inevitably bring, is not that freedom is easy, or that the way of Jesus is easy. (You'll hear in a couple of weeks about Jesus' yoke being easy and his burden being light — LOLZ. We'll get there.)

Instead, the promise—the actual good news—is that abundant life is what you find on the other side of freeing yourself from systems of dominance and control. Jesus came to give you abundant life. And abundant life begins the moment you receive what has been true about you, since before you were born: that you are worthy. That you are loved. That you are of infinite value.

So the work, now, is to stop trying to fit ourselves into, or assign, or even possess, whatever this backwards world is trying to convince us could or should belong to us alone.

with joy,
Pr Sam

Next Sunday I'll be out of town, seeing a seminary friend get married. Max Del Bosque will be in the pulpit at UniLu in my place. Can't wait to hear Max's (invariably thoughtful, most often downright brilliant) perspectives. 

based on Matthew 28:16-20 and Genesis 1:1-2 for Trinity Sunday, Year A


Before we go anywhere, watch this ridiculous video. It's three minutes, it's St. Patrick, and it's the best little summary of why we should all be nervous when Trinity Sunday rolls around: Lutheran Satire — St. Patrick's Bad Analogies.


Every year at least a few preachers (why, I genuinely do not know) attempt to blaze a brand-new trail and explain something Christians have spent two thousand years failing to explain. Father. Son. Holy Spirit. Three. One. One. Three. At some point, every Trinity sermon becomes a hostage negotiation with mystery. The preacher backs slowly toward the analogy that's going to set everybody free, and the analogy turns out to be a heresy. Foiled again!


So, I don't think explaining is the point of Trinity Sunday. Wondering is. Noticing is. Maybe even just plain ol' protesting, is. So this past week at church, I didn't preach at anyone. I asked the room to wonder and notice with me, and then tossed in the protest idea on top.


Here's what we did: People found a couple of buddies and everyone had a set of questions with about eight minutes to (quickly) move through the questions and share with one another. The invitation was to think about transformation. About the experiences that actually change us. And then to listen to each other for themes, for patterns, for the kinds of places and situations that seem to be generative. The kinds of places that teach us something. These were the questions:


1) Tell a (short) story about a time when you changed your mind about something important. What happened? What made that change possible?


2) Where have you learned the most important things in your life? What kinds of places seem to teach us things we could not have learned otherwise?


3) When have you encountered something that did not fit your expectations? Something that forced you to rethink what you thought you knew.


If you weren't in the room, sit with those questions yourself for a minute before you keep reading. What did you notice? What showed up over and over? Were there patterns in the kinds of experiences that changed people? Patterns in the kinds of places where that change tended to happen?


Here's what almost always surfaces when we do this:
Very few of us changed because someone handed us a perfectly correct formula. Most of us changed because experience interrupted our certainty. Because reality turned out to be larger than our categories. Because of some encounter (with creation, with another person, with a moment we didn't see coming) and not because we sat down and reasoned our way, ex nihilo, from nothing, into a new self.


And here's what's interesting: I'd argue that is exactly where scripture keeps trying to point us, too. Not toward certainty. Toward noticing that our growth and transformation comes through experiences that showed us our understandings are far more multi-faceted than we initially thought. Nothing in scripture is static. Everything is in a state of becoming, and comes with all kinds of fluctuations. And the becoming doesn't happen inside the safe house of certainty—it happens in the wilderness, in threshold spaces, in the places where co-creation is actually underway, in the encounters where entities are being made and remade together.


Start at the very beginning. Genesis begins with co-creation. It is not God alone, conjuring out of a void. We're told there are already waters, and there is already spirit—ruach—hovering over the face of those waters. Which is kind of wild, when you sit with it. There's no doctrine here. No neat categories. No proof of correctness offered up front. The very first thing this creation story hands us is mystery and movement: God, co-creating with elements—water, and mud, and words, and Spirit. God who, at one point in these stories, is even referred to as they. There is a multiplicity already inherent in the text. (And to be clear, I'm not reading that "they" as a tidy Trinitarian proof tucked into Genesis for us to find later. It's stranger and more interesting than that. It's the plurality that's just there, in the text, before we Christians showed up attempting to tame and colonize.)


And that multiplicity carries forward, too. God met in many experiences, many modalities, mostly in wild and in-between places. In fire (burning bush, anyone?), in wind, etc. The Israelites receive the commandments while wandering. Moses meets God in the wilderness, and then on a mountaintop. Hagar meets God in the face of death in a desert. Elijah meets God in the wilderness. Desert. In-between. Threshold. These spaces keep becoming revelation spaces—and maybe that's precisely because certainty and comfort let us build neat categories, and the neat categories become cages, and the cages let us... relax so much that we stop paying attention.


Then Matthew takes us to one more threshold, one more creation moment. A mountain top. (Nice parallel to Sinai, no?). The risen Christ (yet another form God is showing up) now turning to the disciples and saying, essentially: it's all you, folks!" And listen to the line that comes right before he says it: "they worshiped him; but some doubted." Uncertainty stays in the frame. Nobody graduates into perfect clarity. And yet Jesus (God- three in one, one in three) commissions these doubting, faltering, full of terrible ideas and ill-conceived notion people to go and do the work of co-creating the close-by realm of heaven anyway. With God. Just Aas they are.


So let me ask the real question:


What if Trinity Sunday is less about pinning God down, and more like a little tricky protest weekend that is in actuality asking us to show up with our little protest signs that say "free God." What I mean is, free God of the cages and the assumed constancy and the never-changing-ness and the doctrines we have built around God for centuries.


Because here is the thing: the cages we build for God become the cages we build for ourselves. Every time we decide in advance who God is and what God will and won't do, we are not only shrinking God, we are shrinking ourselves, and shrinking all of creation. We are shrinking the very possibilities, the potential, the hope for what we might yet come to be in more alignment with the realm of God.


The cages we build for God become the cages we build for ourselves. Let me say that twice, because it's the whole sermon. Trinity, Genesis, wilderness, the Great Commission-- all of them keep telling us the same thing: God exceeds our categories, and God keeps inviting unfinished people into the ongoing work of becoming, with God, in a world that is in an ongoing process of becoming.


So you see, I think maybe Trinity Sunday is not primarily a doctrine to explain, but a protest against every attempt to reduce God to a fixed category. Because God exceeds our categories, human beings and creation remain unfinished, invited into ongoing co-creation and transformation with God.


The disciples leave that mountain unfinished. Still wondering. Still becoming. Still uncertain. The text literally says they were doubting—faltering—and it does not seem to have been a problem for Christ. They don't leave only with their doubt. They leave with a responsibility: to keep walking with Jesus, with God, to keep becoming and to help others come along.


And the same is true for us. The future is still open. The kingdom of heaven that is so close at hand is not quite here yet. And God entrusts that unfinished future to this unfinished creation—that Genesis story does, after all say "in the beginning" -- not "in the end"... which means we are somewhere gloriously in the middle, for now.


So here's where I'll leave you, in the in-between, where the becoming is still happening: What might grow among us—if we just freed God, and let the collaboration really take off?


with joy,
Pr. Sam

This week's sermon is a direct result of the work of Sr. Ilia Delio, who came up with the idea "Free God." In her case, she said in an interview that if she were to show up at a protest, she would just have one little sign that would say "free God." Sr. Delio is a brilliant scientist and theologian, I cannot recommend her work highly enough.

based on Acts 2:1-21 and John 20:19-23 for Pentecost Sunday, Year A
On Pentecost Sunday, we return to that locked room in John 20 — where frightened people are hiding behind heavy doors — and to the wild scene in Acts where the Spirit lands on all flesh without asking permission first. This sermon sits with the particular kind of locked room that educated, thoughtful, progressive people tend to inhabit without realizing it: the one that looks like wisdom from the inside. Into that room, and into this specific political moment where the word "Christian" is being weaponized to decide whose body counts, Pentecost arrives with breath, fire, and the ancient insistence of the prophet Joel that the Spirit falls on all flesh — not approved flesh, not respectable flesh, not economically useful flesh. All of it. The question this sermon leaves you with is not theoretical: what locked room have you mistaken for wisdom, and what would happen if you finally opened the door and let yourself (or others) out?

​The doors were locked.
John tells us why: fear. These folks were afraid. Specifically, in John's words, of "the Jews" 

...but let me translate that into modern language for our ears today: what John is describing is fear of religious leadership in cahoots with government leadership, willing to kill a totally innocent guy. Judaism is not the problem, here.

So yes. They were afraid.
And for all my joking about these stooges known as Jesus' besties, at the core of things, their fear is completely reasonable. The disciples were not cowards. They were people who had watched someone they loved be murdered for the crime of… well, no actual crime.

So there they are behind their locked door. And there goes Jesus, walking right on in anyway.
Ironically enough, he says: "Peace be with you."

Right, man. Have you seen what is happening out there? Trouble has been brewing for a while, and you yourself were publicly executed quite recently. Peace my butt.

At any rate — then he breathes on them.
Not all that unlike Genesis 2, where God breathes life into the mud creature known as Adam. Or Ezekiel, standing in that valley of dry bones saying: I can tell the truth to these bones, but if they are going to live again, God, you are going to have to breathe. Jesus breathes onto these frightened people hiding behind locked doors  in this room that has kind of become a tomb.
Or maybe even a womb.
Something enclosed. Something waiting. Something probably not meant to stay sealed forever.

And I have been thinking about that locked room-tomb-womb. Not  the disciples' - though-- I've been thinking about ours.

There is a very specific kind of locked room that educated, thoughtful, progressive people tend to live in. And the thing is: it does not look like a locked room from the inside. From the inside it looks like being informed. Wise. Ethical. Up to date. It looks like reading the right (well researched!) things and having the appropriate (logical really) opinions and mostly talking to people who already agree with you because they are intelligent and see the issues at hand clearly. From the inside, this all feels a lot like being engaged and involved and thinking critically, with clarity.

You would never guess we're operating in a room with a locked door. Unless you happened to be someone were standing on the outside. Someone like Jesus. And the Holy Spirit, who don't care about our locked doors.

So anyway, here comes Jesus through locked doors, bringing breath and Spirit, and effectively shoving people out of the room.

And you notice the direction of the Spirit in both John and Acts is outward, right? Toward the city. Toward the street. Toward other bodies. Toward the messy world outside.

It seems like a lot of spiritual language treats all things Holy Spirit as internal. Private. Interior. Personal. But based on what the excerpts we got today say, the Holy Spirit in scripture is rarely private. The Spirit interrupts. The Spirit gathers. The Spirit sends. The Spirit moves people.
Pentecost is not a story about private spirituality. Pentecost is a story about bodies and fire. Lots of moving, interacting bodies and hot, breathy fire.

There's that line from the prophet Joel in Acts: I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your elders will dream dreams. Even upon those the world has pushed to the bottom — even upon them, I will pour out my Spirit.
All flesh.

We are living in a time where our government is actively using the word Christian to justify deciding whose body-- which flesh--counts. Whose body is legally recognizable. Whose family is valid. Whose gender will be acknowledged. Whose disability is inconvenient. Whose suffering is too expensive. Whose existence can be turned into a political talking point.

And directly into that reality, Pentecost. Mx. Holy Spirit (truly a kween if ever there was one) arrives boldly declaring: all flesh. Not some flesh. Not approved flesh. Not respectable flesh. Not economically useful flesh. Just simply: all flesh. Every body in this room. Every body outside this room. Every body the world has scapegoated, ignored, criminalized, abandoned, or deemed disposable.

The Spirit falls on all flesh. Not metaphorically. Actually.
And that really matters, because Christianity as espoused by people who want it to support governmental initiatives seems to keep trying to be selective about bodies, attempting to control and put limitations on our very human, fleshy, made-in-the-image-of-God bodies.

Meanwhile: the Holy Spirit remains profoundly uninterested in our designs, and keeps landing directly on all flesh, pouring over every single body, refusing to wait for institutional permission.

And then, there is the fire. Think about what fire actually does. Fire transforms what it touches. It does not leave things unchanged. Fire burns. Fire illuminates. Fire spreads. Fire changes the temperature of the air around it. We lean on fire for life. And though we work very hard to control fire, fire is most often not especially interested in our permission or our will.

The disciples did not ask for fire. They were up in their locked room trying to stay safe together. And into that room: Jesus' breath, Mx. Holy Spirit, and good old transformative-won't-leave-you-the-same-fire.

Pentecost is not comfort arriving, unfortunately. Pentecost is transformation beginning, and continuing. And maybe that is why some folks like to reduce fire to metaphor instead of seeing it for it's literal reality. Because metaphorical fire is easier to manage. We can say "What does it mean?" to a metaphor, and get right into an intellectual rabbit hole, justifying all our categorizations and in-groups and out-groups. But actual fire does things. Actual fire changes things. This isn't about wht does it mean, it's about what it does. And what "it" does ("it" being fire, and Mx. Holy Spirit, in this case) is generate the kind of change and transformation that pushes people out of their locked rooms, away from their comfortable echo chambers, and allows people to understand one another and love better. And that-- that changes what is possible.

But here is what I notice about us  (and when I say us, I mean us here and like, the United States US). Us people who are high achievers, who read and assess and strategize and try very hard to get everything exactly right. Us people who calculate carefully, tracking whether the timing is optimal, questioning whether we are prepared enough.

Mx. Holy Spirit is the kween, and she is profoundly uninterested in all of our achieving and optimal condition tracking. Following Mx. Holy Spirit will cost you something. That is not a flaw in Christianity. That is one of its central truths. The manna arrives after the wilderness begins, other side of our locked doors. 

Mx Holy Spirit does not run risk assessments before loving people. She goes right ahead and falls on all the fleshy people and creatures the world has already dismissed: disabled folks, homeless folks, trans folks, immigrating folks, people without status, people without credentials, people our culture has decided are disposable. And, she is moving and kicking up change before respectable institutions have even figured out whether they're even willing to acknowledge her.

So what about you?

What locked room have you mistaken for wisdom?

What fear have you decorated so thoroughly that it now feels responsible?

What echo chamber have you confused with correctness?

Maybe Mx. Spirit has already set something in your life on fire. Maybe that fire is uncomfortable. Maybe it is burning away something you desperately wanted to keep. Maybe you are standing there with your hand still on the lock, desperately (and ineffectively) trying to negotiate with transformation.

There is no negotiating with a flamer like Mx. Holy Spirit, I hope you know. Nothing stays the same. Not even Jesus stayed with the disciples in the same form forever. Everything that is the Gospel keeps moving toward transformation, toward resurrection, toward release, toward becoming. Mx. Spirit is not going to let our locked room-womb-tombs stay locked forever.

So maybe Mx. Holy Spirit is asking you to let something go.
Or maybe she is simply standing there insisting that you open the damn door already.
Christianity is not about theoretical intellectual discussions held safely behind locked doors and in comfortable echo chambers. Christianity is about becoming people who dance and sing right along with that holy flamer, Mx. Holy Spirit, into the world with our actual bodies — forgiving, releasing, refusing to retain what needs to be let go, so that everyone might be free. Jesus did say, afterall, whatever sins we forgive are forgiven...whatever sins we retain are retained.

The Spirit and fire are here, beckoning us to own our power and get to work.
So, make like the disciples and quit wasting time and effort on trying to keep yourself locked up in one of those womb-room-tombs, refusing to let yourself — or others — out.


with joy,
Pr. Sam