Art Show

Most of the "incredible" things I have done in life has been exceptional by virtue of circumstance alone.  Going to college?  Not a big deal - except when you're the equivalent of a first generation college student without any social or family support in the process.  Getting into an Ivy League school for your graduate studies?  Not exactly unusual; but doing so when you've barely survived the initial two years of undergrad because a history of trauma makes transitions hard (okay, basically impossible) - that's something different.  Finally finishing a unit of CPE?  People do it all the time; and yet it seemed like a HUGE accomplishment for me given my history with the program.

And then, I cracked a joke.  And it turned into a real thing.  Like a really, really real thing!  I cracked a joke and three years later, I turned it into an art show that explores the things we lose and find in the course of a lifetime; a testament to trying again in the context of loss, of pursuing a goal until all options are exhausted and then trying again anyway, to resiliency even when it doesn't look pretty or a whole lot like resiliency.  It's kind of a photographic memoir celebrating the terribly beauty of hope and the power of imagination to create new things.

This art show is the thing in my life, to date, of which I am most proud.

And, since I had more than a couple people (who live too far away to have attended the opening) request pictures, I'm presenting my art show here.  Let me preface this with, the title is in French for reasons explained in "An Idea" and since I do not speak French, I used google translate, and I'm ever hopeful that it is accurate.

Le Musée des Objets Perdus et Trouvé:

A Journey through Life in 27 Exhibits

“Theology is the search for meaning…meaning in the midst of tragedy.” ~ The Reverend Dr. James Hal Cone

An Idea, 2015

Three years ago, a friend from Chicago visited us for Thanksgiving. After we had sent him home again, I was tidying our guest space, stripping the sheets, collecting the towels. In the guest bathroom I found an electric toothbrush which our guest had left behind. It was well used and battery operated, easily replaced for $15.00 and a trip to Walgreens. Like a flash, I saw myself entering a gallery in the Louvre, making my way through the exhibits, beginning with this toothbrush, each object telling a story of the owner who forgot it.

The Prelude, as the pictures were arranged on the wall

Introduction, 2015
When my husband's friend came to visit us that fateful Thanksgiving, it was my first time meeting him.  He and my husband had been friends since high school.  This was his first time voting my husband in over a decade.  It was the first time my husband had the freedom to see his friend since his friend's own marriage - a lost friendship rediscovered, a toothbrush lost in the process.

A Regular Visit, 2016
A pair of formerly white socks, well-worn and discolored, folded neatly and sitting in the middle of the messy  Murphy bed in my office.  My  mother lost them from her suitcase when repacking after she visited me one weekend.  We ate burgers and fries, went to a vitamin shop, she rad while I hemmed our new shower curtain liners with my new sewing machine, and we went to church on Sunday morning  This was enough activity for her in the course of a weekend.

Friends from Ph.D., 2016
A pair of black running socks, rolled and tucked under my office desk awaiting discovery, having been peeled off the tired and heavy feet of one mountain biker or another.  I have no idea whether they were lost by my husband's former colleague or her sister - both having spent the night in our guest room as they returned to Indiana from an academic conference in North Dakota.  We were happy to host them in the midst of their travels.

Electricity on the Go, 2017
When a friend came to the area to see an aging and ailing family member, he spent the night with us.  The next morning, amongst rumpled sheets and rental car agreements, I discovered a car adapter power station - designed to draw its own power from the cigarette lighter of years gone by, it provides two USB ports and two standard outlets.

Coinage, c. 2016-1018
Perhaps the most interesting, a collection of spare change - a conglomeration of coinage courtesy of an array of individuals, mixed together in no small amount, totaling more than $5.00; a denomination of the power of scraps and refuse, little notices and often deemed unworthy of accounting, when joined together.  Or, you know, the cost of a basket of tots at the local greasy spoon.

Photos representing childhood as they were arranged on the wall

Violation, 1986
I was five years old when I lost my internal sense of self.  A strange fracturing can happen when a child is abused.  I felt as though some essential part of me had been knocked over and broken apart.  There was no one in my life to help me make sense of what had happened, to help me fit the pieces back together.  Instead, the fracturing was ignored and I felt invisible in my brokenness.  My deepest need was for recognition, validation, mirroring of the brokenness.  In the absence of such care, I became enraged and violent, seeking to create brokenness outside of myself to reflect the fracturing with, to no avail.

Out of/in the Cold, 1986
When I was five years old, I lost my wonderment for learning and friendship; joy at snowstorms and snowbanks and winter coats, snow pants, hats, mittens, and boots.  I remember playing in the snow as a child, making snow angels and snowmen.  I remember climbing snowballs created by the plows at the grain elevator, scooping tunnels and burrowing deep inside where pockets of blue could be found.  But the burden of making my outsides match my insides stole away the possibility of free play.

A Place to Call Home, 1991
I was ten when my three siblings and I were taken into foster care.  Though widely believed to be a system in which people who care deeply rescue children and place them in the care of still other people who care, this was not my experience.  Three different homes in three months' time when the stipend that paid for my foster parents' alcohol was deemed insufficient compared to the trouble of housing traumatized children.  I loss the sense of safety which comes with the certainty that while life may be terrible, at least I knew each morning where I would lay my head that night.

Reunited with Hopelessness, 1992
When I was eleven, I lost the delights of adventure, when the future was unknown but held so much potential and glorious opportunity.  I was living under the same roof with one of my abusers again.  I knew the road to something different, a new kind of life, a hope for a different future, was a road I would never be permitted to tread.

Photos representing my adolescence as they are arranged

A Silent Red Scream, 1995
When I was fourteen, I found my own voice - a silent scream as I zippered open my arms with a double-edged razor blade.  I could no longer try to make my outside world match my inside world by destroying the things and hurting the people around me.  Instead, I found the relief that came when I made my physical body as broken as my sense of self.  I watched the blood pool like a poppy blooming against the backdrop of white skin and knew my pain was real.

A Silent Red Scream Revisited, 2002
When I was twenty-one, I lost the voice of self-mutilation, sutures, scars, and third-degree burns.  Gone was the easy relief and gratification in the form of instant validation; replaced by the elusive and evanescent sense of self-worth, hinging on hope - the size of a grain of sand - that the ethereal voice of the divine had truly spoken, "This is not who I created you to be."

Photos representing post-secondary education as arranged

Jesus was a Raccoon, 2005
When I was twenty-four, I lost the Christological paradigm of Jesus I had carried since earliest childhood.  My childhood conception of Jesus was wrapped up, almost exclusively, in the "person" of a plush toy raccoon, whose I named (some fourteen years later) Ricky.  Ever-present and always willing to listen, affirm, and appropriately challenge, this raccoon taught me about presence, compassion, empathy, and emotional regulation.  The loss of my understanding of Jesus (the person as opposed to the Christ-form) was a significant challenge to my entire theology and required a systematic dismantling of that theology, examine every piece of it.  Over the next five years, I continued to search for some workable sliver of my lost theology.  I never found one.

A New Hope (Not the George Lucas Kind), 2006
When I was twenty-five, I found the ability to love myself and others.  It came to me through the perpetual examination and reworking of my theology, through the constant challenge to better understand what I believed, why I believed what I believed, and whether or not such belief connected authentically with my actual lived experience.  It was akin to seeing the first sunrise after years of knowing only sunsets - the same colors and lighting, but wholly different in orientation and texture.  (This is a photo of a glitter-painting rendition of a picture of a sunrise I experience in Hawaii many years ago).

The Pit of Despair, 2007
When I was twenty-six, I found The Pit of Despair.  It swallowed me whole.  ("Not to fifty!")  I was mostly dead for seven years.  Where were you, Miracle Max?

Resurrection, 2007
When I was twenty-six, I found the beginnings of a new theology.  Divorced from the magical thinking of an omnipresent and miracle-working Jesus, I was in need of something of my childhood tradition to anchor me in my faith.  Removing the language of "father" from the equation, for the first time, I began to think of "God" in positive terms and began to lean fully into the process of creating my own theology.  Having spent years studying other traditions, I remained connected to Christianity, though now by choice rather than default, because it is my theological mother tongue.

The images of moving forward in life as arranged

Meditation, 2014
When I was thirty-three, I found a very still, silent, insanely warm, black spot within my brain where it was okay to exist both within and outside of the world.  Through mediation, I was able, for the first time, to quiet the frantic spinning of the hamster-wheel that permanently resides in my brain an feel all of the pain and devastation of my history (an on-going process).  I discovered that such feelings would not, in fact, actually kills me - a long-held fear in the context of trauma-induced anxiety.  I learned to separate out my experience of an event from my emotional response to the event.

My Beloved, 2014
When I was thirty-three, I found my beloved.  Quite by accident.  And for whom I am every grateful.  I tripped over his online profile and initiated contact, clarifying that while I was impressed by his profile, it was evident that we were not compatible, and wishing him luck in finding the relationship for which he hoped.  (We married four years later).

Images representing independence as arranged

Vocation, 2015
When I was thirty-four, I found clarity of vision and passion for the future.  Somedays it feels as though my long-hoped-for future is more a stick than a carrot.  Still, I carry on, moving forward one step at a time, never sure how things will work out - confident that ultimately they will.  It is a future built on hopes, dreams, much work, and in community with those who share similar passions and vision.

Adulting, 2016
I was thirty-five when I left Iowa; I lost track of a side table and the vacuum.  It was  a progressive move, done over the course of a few days - the heavy stuff on Saturday, return to Iowa.  The forgotten bits were gathered and moved on Tuesday after my beloved had cleaned and packed up the house and said good-bye to a building that was only over transitory for him, moving to the Twin Cities ahead of me, as I finished out my work contract from a small apartment in Illinois.  This house that I was leaving, which I had shared with beloved for nearly two years, was the first house that was ever a home for me.  I believe it was because my beloved's heart wit where I first found my home.

Photographs representing moving forward in life as arranged

Moving (On), 2016
When I left Illinois, I lost two dozen vanilla beans - grade B - and a pound of organic unsalted butter, forgotten in the he refrigerator of that one bedroom apartment in which I had spent six weeks.  I also lost sight of stagnant water and a sponge in the bathroom sink, having cleaned the floor by hand and shut the door to let it dry undisturbed.  In my hurry to close things up and return my key before the office closed, I forgot to open the bathroom door again when the floor was dry and drain and rinse out the sink.  The property manager still refunded my entire security deposit.

New Life, 2016
Somehow, over the course of time, I found so much joy, delight, wonder, and safety I was bursting at the seams with new hope and possibility every single day.  When I moved to Minnesota, I lost all of these things.  I wondered vaguely if they were packed in some box that fell off the moving truck at the Trails Travel Plaza in Albert Lea.  I was an idiot to think I could carry them within me so easily and transport them to a new place by simple virtue of my being there as well.

Out of the Tomb, 2016
When I was thirty-five, I found within myself a belief in my own resiliency.  And I lost it again.

Removing the Grave Clothes, 2018
And I found it again.  On the Isle of Skye, I explored the tide pools outside of a bed and breakfast where we stayed.  I delighted in the anemones, barnacles, and sea snails.  Yet more astounding to me were the flowers growing in the cracks and crevices of a lava field.  In a place one might deem inhospitable to flora, these beautiful plants grow, flourish, and bloom - a constant reminder of the hope that the human spirit, likewise, can blossom in the context of challenges and adversity.

Co-Creation, 2018
When I was thirty-seven, I did not find but rather created a new family.  I do not know what the future will hold - except brilliant possibilities, joy, light, love, and certainty that what challenges I may face, I am more than capable of overcoming.

"I'm really into the idea of 'happily ever after'," I told my beloved as were planning our wedding.  "'Happily ever after' is the end of the story.  I don't want to think of marriage as the end of the story.  It's just the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.  What do you think about 'to be continued...'?"  My beloved proposed "The road goes ever on" as a more lyrical play on the idea.

The final item in the art show is a picture frame with the words of the walking song sung by the hobbits at the end of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" as seen below:

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where near sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadow green
And trees and hills they long have known.

Spirit Face; Rocket Pants

One of things I struggle with most in life is the time I spent trying to live as an Evangelical.  I'm still working to integrate that part of my life into the larger whole of my personal history.  Even worse than discomfort I feel about this history, however, is the discomfort I feel when remembering how unkind I was toward the Evangelical church when I was working to extricate myself it.

I remember very clearly one Sunday morning, sitting in worship, and the preacher that morning was telling a story about his five year old daughter.  They had been out for a drive, she was strapped into her car seat in the back seat of the car.  It was early spring and as this little girl looked from the bright blue sky to the melting snow in the ditch she exclaimed, "The sun has power!"

After telling this story to the congregation, the pastor asked with passion, "Do you know this means!?"  From my seat four rows from the stage I shouted out, "That your daughter is developmentally normal for a five year old!?"

Whether he didn't hear me or chose to ignore my remark, I'll never know.  Instead, he went on to share about his daughter had spoken this deep, theological truth, that the "Son" has power, referring to Jesus.  While it's true that the person doing theology in the recalled exchange was this man, not his five year old daughter, it is equally true that my pointing this out mid-sermon was unkind and rude.

I was really angry with the Evangelical church at that time.  This does not excuse or justify my behavior in anyway.  I behaved awfully.  A lot.  For a really long time.  There was a lot of fringe in the Evangelical context in which I tried to make myself fit - and the fringe just didn't work for me.

I finished my last post by stating that all the fringe doesn't matter.

This still holds true for me, but it warrants a bit more exploration.  The material nature of the fringe doesn't matter so much, but the fringe itself serves a very important purpose.

One of my friends is a motorcycle rider, which provides me an entertaining mental image as I know this man pretty exclusively in a professional context - dress pants, button down shirt, sports jacket more often than not.  Really shiny leather shoes.  A 6'4" dutchman with a shock of white hair and blue eyes.  The idea of him riding a motorcycle just isn't something I would have imagined when I first met him.

One day, he came into the office talking about getting decked out in biking leather from head to toe and mentioned the fringe on his bike gear.  I honestly cannot imagine this man wearing that much leather, let alone fringed leather.  Until he explained the value of fringe - with much more significant than hailing the glories of terrible '80s fashion trends.

"It makes the rider more visible to other motorists," he said.  The fringe draws the eye and the attention of what are otherwise too many distracted-by-boredom-on-the-highway drivers.

This got me thinking about all the fringe we attach to our faith traditions and experiences.  The fringe is profoundly unimportant in its form.  The material nature of the fringe does not matter.  What the fringe does - catch the attention of those of distracted-by-boredom-on-the-highway-of-life as we go about our daily routines on auto-pilot - is pretty spectacular.  It catches our attention, sometimes only for a moment, and directs our attention to something more.

When my friend the philosopher died several weeks ago, I was visited by a deep and profound sadness.  I miss him and I miss our conversations.  I miss the moments of clarity that pointed me to something more in our dialogue.  I remember the last time I saw him, this philosopher friend of mine.  I said my good-bye, gave him a hug, a kiss on the temple, and then I stepped back and looked at him. He looked at me.  I wanted him to know that I saw him, that I saw him, and that I love and value who he is and everything our friendship is.  After several moments, he gave me a wink - he knew.  Nothing more was said.  I left and he died 9 days later.

A memorial service was held for my philosopher friend three weeks after he died.  There was a strange confluence of events in the course of the service; rather a lot of fringe, if you will.

The pastor of our church was asked to lead the service.  I was asked to offer the pastoral prayer and lead the Lord's Prayer.  There was no discussion of themes or topics, though in preparing the pastoral prayer, I did read the reflections that would be shared by family and friends.  The pastor opened the service with a eulogy, weaving Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day" through a review of the philosopher's life.  And then beautiful scriptures were read and stories were told.  We came to the end of the service, the pastoral prayer and Lord's prayer before the benediction and postlude.  I read Mary Oliver's "Messenger" as the prayer.  An interesting confluence.  Some fringe.

On the inside cover of the service bulletin, the philosopher's family had included a prayer offered by his three year old granddaughter and a picture of the philosopher created by his four year old grandson.  The picture included the grandson's description of the philosopher - "His face is blue like the sky because he has a Spirit Face now; and his pants are orange like a rocket to help him get to heaven."

Spirit Face; Rocket Pants.

Fringe.

It caught my attention.  It directed my attention to the Truth of things beyond, something more.

I still struggle at times with immediate discomfort in the context of Evangelicalism.  The form of their fringe is discomfiting.

And....  Their fringe does not point to something more, for me.  And it does for others.  What the fringe does is so much more important than what it looks like.  Because sometimes it looks like the drawing by a four year old who describes Spirit Face and Rocket Pants - a deeper Truth.

Doing Nothing Well

A dear friend of mine is dying.

I'm living life and planning a wedding and building a future; in the middle of all this building and planning and living, my friend is dying.

And I am heartbroken.

I have been creating space lately for meditation.  Only ten to fifteen minutes, three to four days a week.  I sit silently, focusing on my breath, scanning my body, noticing and welcoming any sensations and the feelings lurking within them.

I keep thinking about how meditation can be used in my work as a chaplain.  I keep thinking about writing about the practice of doing nothing well - how this is the foundation of all other practices and how it is the most difficult of all practices.

But what do I know about doing nothing well?  I only do nothing well for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, three or four days a week.  Oh sure, there is the one to two minutes sprinkled throughout my daily life; but, how much do I really know?

My friend is dying and I am heartbroken and I'm practicing how to do nothing well because it is the most important thing - so important that I want to share with my friends how important it is to learn to do nothing well.  I find that if I am not careful, I do not do nothing, but I instead do millions of things. Many of these things I do well, but many just happen because I show up with a body and make motions and I have a particular knack.  I cannot, however, say that I am always present in the doing of these things and that is a loss.

So, earlier this week, as I was planning our evening meals, I decided to make Chicken Tikka Masala on Thursday night.  And then Wednesday night came and I was at home for the night and we did not have enough fresh ginger and we did not have enough whole cumin seeds.  Thursday after visiting my friend who is dying - and with whom I managed to sit and do nothing very well for several minutes before we were joined by others and we sang hymns and we partook in Communion and we laughed and people shared their love for this friend of ours and I sat there and cried and cried and cried.  I kissed my friend goodbye, not knowing when or if I would see him again and I went to get a hair cut and buy spices and pick up that dreaded herb cilantro.

Late after dinner on Thursday night, I decided that if I was going to practice doing nothing well, I might as well practice how to do one thing well.  I carefully measured the cumin seeds and the coriander seeds.  I poured them into a small skillet and toasted them over a flame.  I set them aside to cool and measured the smoked paprika, the turmeric, the cayenne.  I touched and smelled and tasted each spice in turn.  When the cumin and coriander where sufficiently cooled, I put them in my spice grinder and gave them an extended run.  I added them to the bowl of other spices, touching, smelling, tasting.  I set everything aside for the night.

This morning, after breakfast, I continued.  I grated garlic and ginger, reveling in the feeling of the firm cloves shrinking between my finger and the box grater, delighting in the stringy remnant of ginger left behind.  I prepared the marinade, added the chicken, place everything in the refrigerator, and headed to work, where I let other people know how painful it is to watch a beloved friend die.  At work, I let others minister to me throughout the day.  And I cried.  A lot.

When I got home, I carried on - slicing onions, feeling them beneath my fingers as I separated the segments, the knife heavy in my hand.  I grated more garlic, noticing how the papery skin of subsequent cloves stuck to my garlic-coated fingers.  I carefully peeled and grated more ginger.  I began to sauté the onions and I paused each time to take a picture - overdone in the world of food-porn, I know, but it reminded me to look and see and feel and smell and touch and taste what is here now - to be fully present in the moment rather than cooking by rote.

I squeezed the lemon and delighted in the way the sticky juice and slick lemon oil coated my hands, as I cupped one hand beneath the other, gingerly moving to the sink to wash them without splattering the floor.

Tonight's dinner is sure to be delicious - I have used the recipe before.  The rice is cooking and the chicken is marinating.  Shortly, I will broil it to achieve a good char before chopping it, after which it will finish cooking in the sauce.

I hope I remember to sit and eat and be present at this meal.  I hope I remember to be present for each moment of my life.  I am not always good at this.  That is why I continue to practice how to do nothing well.

Humility Required

It’s been a difficult week in the world.  At the time of my writing this sermon, the news had confirmed thirty-five deaths in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.  One chemical plant outside of Houston, TX had experienced two fires and a 1½ mile radius around the plant had been evacuated.  Other chemical plants were facing similar concerns.  The flood waters were not expected to fully recede for at least another week and a half to two weeks.  In other towns around Houston, floodwaters are still rising.

And the United States aren’t alone this week.  In Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, flooding has killed nearly 1200 people.  Two weeks ago, three hundred were killed in flash flooding in Sierra Leone.  It can be difficult and scary to watch the news.  One can feel helpless in the face of such devastation, reaped by mother nature – exacerbated by poverty, substandard or non-existent building codes, deregulation of environmental standards.  It is difficult to know what to do in the face of unrelenting environmental disasters.

We all have different gifts, Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans.  In last week’s lectionary reading, Paul listed those specific gifts.  This week, we are given practical advice on how to use our unique giftings to positively impact the world.

When we see the plight of people around us (as God did in our Old Testament passage today), when we heard their cries (as God did in our Old Testament passage today), when we are moved with compassion and feel their suffering (as God did in our Old Testament passage today), we are called to action (as God acted in calling Moses in our Old Testament passage today).  If we are to take seriously the notion that we are made in the image of the divine, then surely we can see and hear what is going on in the world today, feel the sorrow of a broken and hurting world, and respond in a way that brings God’s love more readily into the world.

In our epistle reading for today, Paul lays out how to respond to a world that is hurting.  Our response hinges, it seems to me, on verse 16, “Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.”  Paul’s central call in this passage to a posture of humility.  “See the truth in a situation and in yourself exactly as it is and you are.  Do not make the things, yourself included, larger or smaller than they are.”

One of the central issues we will wrestle with in the course of our life is what Carl Jung called our shadow side.  Our shadow side is the part of us that we cannot except – that which we seek to exile.  This can be lived out in forms either grandiose or shameful – assuming we either greater or lesser than the truth of our identity.  When we live lives disconnected from a posture of humility, we often find abrasive in others the things we cannot embrace in ourselves.  We reject in the other the very traits we cannot accept in ourselves.

“Live in harmony with others … so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”  The Greek word translated as “peace” is more similar to the Old Testament word “Shalom” than our common understanding of peace – which we often simply think of as lacking in discord.  Peace means “living in the gift of wholeness,” having “integrity of being.”  Peace is about justice, completeness, the common welfare.  True peace acknowledges that when some part of our world is hurting, all of our world is impacted.  True peace seeks not the calmness of an individual, but restoration of the whole of creation. 

Paul calls us to love genuinely, with mutual affection; to rejoice in hope; to persevere in prayer.  It is an impossible task to love genuinely in other what we have exiled in ourselves.  When we begin to make peace with our shadow side, when we begin to accept in wholeness that we are capable of both goodness and evil, when we embrace the totality of our humanness, we are finally able to fully embrace others.  We can find ourselves capable of stepping back, looking at things exactly as they are, and we can respond with humility.

From the vantage point of humility, we can truly rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, and persevere in prayer.  From a place of humility, we can see the plight of people around us, hear their cries, be moved with compassion, and respond to their needs.  What that looks like will change from one situation to the next; from one disaster to the next.  But it will always include contributing to the needs of the saints, extending hospitality to strangers, feeding those who oppose us, and giving them clean water to drink.

And perhaps in today’s world, it will also include calls address climate change, supporting regulations that keep chemical plants away from residential areas, and investing in infrastructure.  And if you’re wondering who the saints are in the midst of these disasters, so that you might contribute to their needs, I invite you to consider the words of Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers, who so graciously invited children from all over the United States into his neighborhood for generations:

I was spared from any great disaster when I was little, but there was plenty of news of them in newspapers and on the radio, and there were graphic images of them in newsreels.

For me, as for all children, the world could have come to seem a scary place to live.  But I felt secure in my parents, and they let me know that we were safely together whenever I showed concern about alarming events in the world.

There was something else my mother did that I’ve always remembered: “Always look for the 

helpers,” she’d tell me.  “There’s always someone trying to help.”  I did, and I came to see that the world is full of doctors and nurses, police and firemen, volunteers, neighbors, and friends who are ready to jump in to help when things go wrong.

Look for the helpers.  Join them in their quest to live peaceably.  And may you give up who you think you should be and embrace all that you are – for Jesus’s sake and for the sake of God’s kingdom and just reign on earth.  Amen.

Was Jesus a White Supremacist?

Reflections on Matthew 15:10-28

Sunday, August 20, 2017

When my maternal grandmother died five years ago, my aunt made certain that I received the family bible.  It had been my great-great-grandfather’s initially and was printed in Boston, MA in the early 1890s.  It contains very little by way of genealogy.  On the inside of the back cover is the name and birthdate of my great-great-grandfather and the name, birth, and death dates of my great-grandmother.  Tucked between pages at various points are a few pressed flowers – once pink carnations, now a brittle brown-tinged chiffon.

Within the bible itself are a few interesting pages that betray its age:  a fill-in-the-blank style marriage record for nuptials which took place “in the year of our Lord, 18__”; a “Temperance” pledge with signatures lines for all members of the household who solemnly promise to abstain from the use of “intoxicating drinks as a beverage.”  With good humor, I pointed these things out to my partner, David.  It was with similar good humor that I began leafing through the pages, looking at the artwork in the bible – painting after painting after painting illustrating scenes from the text.  With a bit of wry humor, I remarked on just how white the Israelites were, back in the day.

Today, the truth of the whitewashing of our faith heritage is more cutting than humorous.  Today, the truth of how white American Christianity has become angers and aggrieves me.  Today, with mounting frustration and rage, I am disgusted by the ways those in power have co-opted the Gospel message for their own sick purposes, grabbing power and destroying lives in the process.  And without a careful reading of a text that is 2000 years removed from us in both language and culture, it’s not hard to see how these gross and grotesque distortions come about.

In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus makes one thing really abundantly clear:  nothing we take into our body has the power to defile our soul.  In an anatomy and physiology lesson, Jesus tells us that anything that we eat moves through our digestive system and is removed by the sewer system.  Rather, it is what comes out of our mouths that defiles us, Jesus says – for what comes out of our mouths proceeds from our hearts.  Defilement looks like this:  evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.[1]

The Canaanites were a people group living in the same geographic region as the Israelites in the time of Jesus.  From early in Jewish history, there was discord between the Israelites and the Canaanites.  The Canaanites were seen as culturally inferior, socially inferior, morally inferior, genetically inferior, spiritually inferior.  The Canaanites were listed in the book of Joshua as a people group the ancient Israelites were to exterminate.

In a world split into the “haves” and the “have nots,” in a world marked by the belief in scarcity rather than abundance, in a world where might made right, the Israelites decided that there wasn’t enough to go around, that they needed to lay claim to the goods (taking them forcibly if necessary), and that their ability to do so gave the right to do.  All of this was packaged up in the form of religious mandate and tied together with a bow of cultural and spiritual superiority. 

The not-at-all-subtle message of the oppressed turned oppressor became, “God is on our side.  We are trying to preserve what we have.  We want to preserve a future for our children and for our culture.”  And all the while, they seem to have forgotten both that a Canaanite is “one who comes from the land of Canaan” and that the Israelites, as a people group, were born in the land of Canaan.

And so, after telling his disciples that eating with unwashed hands does not defile a person (rather that it is the evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, and slander coming from the heart and spewing forth from the mouth which defile a person) Jesus and his disciples leave Jerusalem.  They head down from the literal, physical lofty heights of their mountain of metaphorical cultural and spiritual superiority.  They leave Israel behind and head north.  They walk into the land of Canaan and settle themselves in the region between the towns of Tyre and Sidon.

The ideology of settlers who created a grand new thing in Israel and the cultural investment in the notions of superiority and exceptionalism follow Jesus and his disciples back to the land of Canaan.  For in the land of Canaan Jesus and his disciples are met by a Canaanite woman.  This unnamed woman who has heard that Jesus entered her town calls to him:

“Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”  But Jesus did not answer her at all.  And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting at us.”[2]

Object lesson number 1 in our text today:  Jesus’s acclaim as a healer is growing in the regions around Jerusalem.  As he travels about, this woman pleads with him to heal her daughter.  And from the mouths of his disciples come their unjust pleas to send her away – despite the fact that they are the ones who have settled into her town for the day.  Settler mentality – we can go where we want, do what we want, say what we want, and there should be no consequences for our actions.

[Jesus] answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”[3]

Object lesson number 2 in our text today:  Jesus, having seen the sickness in the hearts of his own disciples, amplified their voices.  Jesus chooses to capitalize on the theology of scarcity.  “Sorry,” he tells her.  “Sure, I’m God.  You know that.  You’ve called me ‘Lord.’  Sure, we are cousins, hailing from common ancestors.  But, there just isn’t enough to go around.  I’m here for the house of Israel, not other Canaanite peoples.”

But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”  He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”[4]

Object lesson number 3 in our text today:  The assumed cultural superiority of those in positions of power.  This is the root of the evil intentions that come from the heart.  All those who are disadvantaged by systemic oppression are considered “less than,” “inferior,” “a threat to” those who directly benefit from systems of oppression.  “We are the ‘haves,’” Jesus tells this woman, “and it would be unfair to give our resources to the ‘have nots’ who are clearly inferior to us.”  We begin to slander those we see as competing for our resources – unclean, vile, dogs, worthy of ridicule, deserving ostracism.

She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And her daughter was healed instantly.[5]

I imagine Jesus sat there waiting for his disciples to figure this thing out.  I read this text and I can feel his mounting frustration as his disciples miss object lesson after object lesson, forgetting that what makes people unclean isn’t what or how they eat (one of the biggest markers of who was a Gentile and who was a Jew), but the stuff that comes out of their hearts.  This Canaanite woman demonstrated a heart of humility, pleading persistently for what she knew was right.

And his disciples, having given up their hope that Jesus would rebuke her and send her on her way, sat silently by and watched him challenge her right to exist and compare her to a dog.  They stop their open insistence that Jesus send her away.  And they continue to be silent about the injustice of the conversation unfolding before their eyes.  Not one of them is willing to use their voice to speak truth to power.

There is much in today’s Gospel lesson that is being echoed in our world today.  Just over a week ago, white nationalists marched on Charlottesville, Virginia with shouts of, “You will not replace us” and “White lives matter.”  A second march took place the next day, organized the by the same people, in Seattle, Washington.  These were followed by marches in New York City, Boston, Massachusetts, and Durham, North Carolina.

One protester from Virginia is quoted as saying, “As white nationalist[s] …. We … deserve a future for our children and our culture … we just want to preserve what we have.”  And another, “The goal is to ethnically cleanse White nations of non-Whites and establish an authoritarian government.”

These are not the sentiments of “fringe” members of our society.  These same people and their ideologies are supported by doctors, nurses, social workers, police officers, lawyers, journalists, judges.  They come from all walks of life and they are maintaining the unjust system of oppression we call the United States of America.  And millions of well-intentioned people continue to sit silently by and watch it play out, saying nothing as the events taking place are far removed from their comfortable lives in other areas of the country.

How did we get here?  A Yale university social psychologist, Jennifer Richeson, says, “In some ways, it’s super simple.  People learn to be whatever their society and culture teaches them.  We often assume that it takes parents actively teaching their kids, for them to be racist.  The truth is that unless parents actively teach their kids not to be racists, they will be….  It comes from the environment, the air all around us….  Everything we’re exposed to gives us messages about who is good and bad….  The rhetoric for racism is still in place.  The environment for racism is still there.” [6]

The environment of racism is the air we breathe, the water we drink, the very fabric of the society in which we live.  It’s in the history of pastors and theologians who used biblical texts to justify slavery.  It’s in the founding of the Ku Klux Klan which claims to uphold Christian ideals.  It is in the representation of biblical figures such as Moses, the Hebrew people, Abraham, David, Solomon, Job, Sts. Peter, John, Matthew, Nathanael Bartholomew, and the women at the tomb as white.  It is in the fact that one version or another of Warner Sallman’s lily-white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus hangs in nearly every church in America – a nation that equates Christianity with whiteness and whiteness with superiority, rightness, and righteousness.

The only way to rid the world of the evils of racism is to dismantle the structures that support it.  And this means getting clear about how we benefit from its continued existence.  It means educating ourselves about how it functions in our society.  It means enhancing our awareness of how it exists in every segment of our society – it’s in the air we breathe; it’s in the water we drink. 

And when we start getting woke to these things, we have a choice.  Like Jesus’s disciples, we can sit idly by and let others engage in the hard work of dialogue; of confronting prejudice; of dismantling institutions and ideologies; of intentionally choosing to live integrated rather than segregated lives in our homes, our neighborhoods, our workplaces.  Or, we can start to speak up and speak out.  We can start to do our own work to rid our hearts of the things that defile us:  evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, and slander.

Jesus tells his disciples at another point, “Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do greater things than these.”[7]  It is well past time we, as a church and as a culture, do what Jesus did in his object lesson to his disciples – acknowledging the sin of racism and its effects.  It is well past time we, as a church and as a culture, stop thinking it is sufficient only to feed table scraps to those we deem beneath us.

It is well past time we welcome all peoples to the table as full human beings.  And if the table we have constructed is too small for everyone to fit, it is well past time we tear it down and build a new one.

---

[1] Matthew 15:17-19

[2] Matthew 15:22-23

[3] Matthew 15:24

[4] Matthew 15:26

[5] Matthew 15:27-18

[6] http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2017/08/why_are_people_still_racist_he.html

[7] John 14:13b