Frilly Socks

I like the healing stories in the Bible best of all. The people around me who get nervous about miracle stories just love this about me. That's just fine with me. I don't actually think that Jesus had to perform a miracle in order for the story about Jesus performing the miracle to be transformative. That, however, is another day's writing.

I like the stories because of what they don't say. In pretty much every case, be it the blind man, or the paralyzed man, or the man with the withered hand, it's a story of economic security. The feeding stories aren't that. The feeding stories are very much, "Here's your daily bread." And that's good.

But healing someone meant that person could work and support themselves. It meant they could earn a living that was better than begging. Work that can support and sustain a person and their family mattered then as much as it does now. It's also a very different vision of how the world's economics should work than the way they do.

Last Sunday morning, I didn't hit snooze on my alarm clock. There were people waiting on me to bring them breakfast. Well, at least if they were going to have breakfast, it was because I was taking it to them. I got out of my cozy, comfortable bed and stopped at the grocery store. I picked up three boxes of instant oatmeal packets in different flavors. I remembered paper bowls. I got the raspberries that were on sale and some bananas, too, to top the oatmeal. I've heard people like fruit on their oatmeal, although it sounds terrible to me. I was proud of myself for thinking of an easy, hot breakfast for the sixteen homeless guests in my church.

My living room is full of all sorts of things right now. I cleaned last weekend. I put up the tree. I decorated a bit. Then nothing. Now, there are an assortment of empty boxes from recent online shopping, the contents of those boxes, and an even larger assortment of shopping bags. The bags mostly aren't for my friends and family. They're Christmas gifts for a family my boyfriend and I were matched with through a local agency. (Most people would say we "adopted" them for Christmas; I'm heeding my friends' words who remind me that adoption is permanent, and what makes a family for many people.)

We managed to get most of the things requested, both needs and wants. It broke my heart that one of the household requests was for a broom and dustpan. The most expensive broom and dustpan at Target was $13. I don't even know what to do with that sort of request. The $13 one was large enough that we opted for the $11 set instead. It's in my living room, along with a set of sheets, a blanket, towels, washcloths, and a set of pots and pans. Another bag holds pants, shirts, socks, underwear and assorted Frozen toys for a six year old girl. Another bag holds jeans, shirts, Nike socks, a video game and controller for the fourteen year old boy. He wanted Nike socks, quite specifically. She wanted frilly socks, so yes, hers are frilly. I'm quite proud of couponing skills that stretched money into that many gifts.

Both those things, for all the good they do, are a band-aid. I've guilt and anger over these two things in one weekend, things that made me feel good but didn't fix the problem. I am glad there was hot breakfast on Sunday. I am glad there was a hot dinner the night before and a safe place for our neighbors to sleep. I am glad there's a grandmother raising her grandchildren who will have gifts for their home.

Something is desperately wrong, though, if we think people sleeping in churches and getting names of kids from agencies is what should happen. This isn't healing. This isn't restoration. This is managing a broken system. Our neighbors should be able to eat hot oatmeal in their pajamas in a comfortable, safe home of their own. Many of the men and women sleeping in my church have jobs. Some have college degrees. They still don't earn enough to live. I can't shake my worry that the people raising and loving the children should be picking out frilly socks and video games on holidays and special occasions.

We need healing, not of physical maladies, but of broken economics. As I wrap packages to give as we celebrate the birth of the Christ child, I am reminded how much we need that child, who promised something better.

My Muslim Neighbors

Her name was Amira. She was a confident, poised high school student. My favorite memory of her is the night I was at their potluck dinner as they broke the day's fast together during Ramadan--now nearly 10 years ago. She understood what my US palate would prefer more than anyone else in her family. Maybe it was her duty as the daughter of the mosque's president, but either way, she guided me with skill through a sea of beautiful, completely unfamiliar food.

We passed the baby over the half door into the men's portion of their masjid. She was chubby, laughing, and delightful. Prayers for the day were over; her father wanted to show her off to the other men gathered for worship. I remained on the other side of the door, chatting with women who were almost all doctors. At that time, I couldn't answer their questions well: when do Christians fast? Do you know we know about Mary, too? One woman was wonderfully shocked at the bustier shaped purses popular at the time. She was the one whose final words were, "Tell them we are not terrorists."

Mirwaiz and Taneem sat in my apartment, eating cake. Another time, they were there to carve pumpkins. My roommate's birthday was on Halloween. The couple across the hall had a 4 year old boy. I was the only person from the U.S. there. I would surely know how to carve pumpkins. Little did they know that my family opted for painting pumpkins instead. Still, we gather with cake, pumpkins, and knives, eventually producing a few jack-o-lanterns. I worried about them at the long winter break. These two men from Afghanistan had few possessions in their student housing apartment; they could not go home to visit their families for fear of not getting back into the country. Did I mention they were also doctors? They were working on a Masters of Public Health, hoping to help build an infrastructure when they returned to their country.

I laughed at myself when I met an Imam here, one who later came and preached at my church. I know some Muslim men do not touch women who are not part of their immediate family, especially if they are married. I don't want to seem rude, but I never assume a handshake. This man certainly did not care, and bought me delicious food. I'm a sucker for Middle Eastern food. Or Mediterranean. Whatever you want to call it. If there's baba ghanouj, falafel, and baklava, I'm in.

The restaurant owner spoke to me on the way out of her restaurant, eyeing the small box in my hand. "Baklava?" she asked. "Yes," I answered. "Good girl."

Only a few weeks ago, Hanan and Asna sat in my office, as we talk about the way my congregation could help to welcome refugees who are fleeing to Phoenix. Asna's daughter came, too, having a day off school. She's not the first six-year-old I've seen who loved her jewelry and glittery things.

These are my neighbors. In particular, these are my Muslim neighbors. In every instance, they have made me feel welcome and safe. I hope I did the same for them. I know one thing is true: any time I invite them into my church, I take extra care to make sure they know they will be safe. I wish that I didn't know they might not feel safe, or that they might worry about what will be said to them.

These are my neighbors whose faith is different my own. They have always honored me and my faith, trusting that somehow that binds us together more fully, not less.

I am angry at a media that mentions when someone shooting others is Muslim but is silent when they are Christian. I am angry that we think more guns in the right hands is the answer, which seems to mean those hands are white and Christian. I am angry by the phrase "Muslim Terrorist." I am angry by more media attention given when a shooter is Muslim. I am angry that we are all complicit in feeding that behavior. Even as I write, I wonder if angry is the right word. I am sad. I am heartbroken. I am worried. Perhaps I am only angry about the ignorance.

And please, can't we be kinder to my neighbors?

We Are All Living with AIDS

A great uncle of mine passed away a couple of weeks ago. He and his wife were always vaguely part of my life, in and out at various times. They sent cards at graduations but didn't show up at birthday parties. They were family, but more distant family. Because he was around all my life, I didn't think much about his disability. I don't know that I would have ever asked what was wrong with him. My mother just mentioned in passing one day, "Haven't you ever noticed he almost touches the ground every time he takes a step?"

I knew what she meant. He had a strange gait, dipping down significantly with each step. Yes, his hand could have easily brushed the ground had he tried. He'd had polio as a child; this was the lasting effect. I never got any more details.

That great uncle was born in 1920, though, so it shouldn't really be a surprise that he would have polio. It wasn't eradicated in the US until 1979 and is still a threat in other countries. Still, for all intents and purposes, in 1984 I was born into a world without polio. In another country, that wouldn't have been true. However, it was true for my world, my childhood, my schools. No one worried that a sneeze or unwashed hand would transmit a disease that could leave a limb nearly useless. Actually, the interwebs was required to even find out how polio is transmitted.

By contrast, I have always lived in a world with AIDS. Somehow, even in conservative rural Kentucky, AIDS was covered in my elementary school education. Everyone knew how it was transmitted. Of course, no one talked much about what the "sexually" part of sexually transmitted meant. Still, the mystery was limited to origin, not transmission. Blood and sex, that much we knew.

Treatments were more in development than wonderfully effective. It was always there, though, that knowledge of AIDS and HIV as the virus that causes AIDS. People talked about it directly in TV shows and roundabout ways in country songs. Strangely, given everything I know now, I never thought of AIDS as affecting a particular group of people. (That could say an entirely different thing about my education.) I only learned that AIDS had once been known as GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) from an episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Still, on World AIDS Day, I'm always reminded that this is the disease that has come with caution and worry in my lifetime. I am glad to know, firsthand, that diseases that once came with caution and worry no longer do--at least not for me, in my part of the world. Other scary things are gone from every place: smallpox, for example, eradicated in 1977.

I remember the stories of paralyzed men let down through roofs to Jesus. I remember lepers and blind men, outcasts of all sorts, crying out from the sides of roads. I remember a friend who died with AIDS. I remember others diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. But most of all, I remember hope: what was is no longer; what is does not have to be this way. Because that is the story of the leper, the blind man, the paralyzed man, and so many others.

Let us hope more fully.

No Secrets

"Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops." Jesus, Matthew 12:2-3

An article in my college's newspaper is causing quite a stir in my newsfeed. Many of my friends are pleasantly surprised that an article recognizing the fact that LGBTQ alumni exist was published in the school newspaper. For me, there is an underlying reality all of us at the college knew: we have gay and lesbian friends here, and we're not quite sure what to do with that reality.

For many reasons I won't go into now, we weren't certain where the line was between loving our neighbor and holding people accountable for their sin. The presence of sin, in my experience, wasn't called into question then. "Love the sinner, hate the sin," was fairly common, of course.

I wept as I read the article. The alumni interviewed arrived at Milligan after I had left. I didn't know them, though I knew other LGBTQ students who have gradually come out as the years go by. The tears weren't just for them, or their fear and love of that place intermingled. It was for so many who kept secrets because they feared what would happen if they didn't.

My freshman year, near the end of the year, a young woman showed up to a dorm event wearing maternity clothes. She was a senior, beautiful, blonde, and pregnant. No one had known. She talked later about how nervous she'd been. What might happen? She and the child's father married later, I think. I don't remember her name or much else about her. However, I do remember my classmate who disappeared for a semester. I'm ever more certain she had a baby and that was how it was handled--a 1950s style go-stay-with-your-aunt, never talk about it sort of way. Premarital sex, of course, was against the rules, both the school's and the faith in which it was founded.

A friend came to me one day. She was a year younger, worried about a mutual friend. That friend was angry and struggling, which included drinking too much. Drinking alcohol, except for communion, was against the rules for students whether they were on or off campus. The Dean of Students was rumored to have spies around the bars just in case you dared to drink. Asking for help for someone who needed it was complicated by the need to not get a struggling person in even more trouble. Looking back, I wonder about the difficulties I caused for the person I spoke with in an effort to get that young woman the help and support she needed.

For the record, I just kept my bottle of whiskey well hidden in clothes under my bed my senior year, after I realized I was done with all the rules I'd willingly agreed to at not quite 18 years old. In retrospect, I chose to be oblivious to a lot that happened on campus. Because I opted to follow the rules, I assumed most people did. I realize I was wrong. In some cases, following the rules had to be torture.

Now, I shudder at the thought of a faith that demands keeping secrets. I know the response I learned as a child and young adult, "Don't do anything you'd have to keep secret." It doesn't hold water.

Life happens. Decisions of all sorts are made. Things don't pan out like you thought they would. I could go through a long, long list of possible derailments that happen to people. Mostly, I shudder at the thought of a faith that demands keeping secrets.

Jesus spoke the words I quoted at the beginning in response to the Pharisees, in response to religious people who wanted to make sure they were appropriately pious at all times. These leaders, too, had a faith that demanded secrets, that some things not be talked about, that some things were simply not acceptable.

And Jesus condemned them for that sort of faith.

Let us have faith that will hold secrets we would have not dared to speak aloud. Let us have churches whose faithful know the worst and cry out, "Welcome." Let us trust in a God who knows all the things we cannot say, yet loves us with an everlasting, unshakeable love.

Prostitutes & Virgins

Rahab was a prostitute. She had sex with people in exchange for money, goods, or other services. The Bible isn't clear on what the preferred form of payment for prostitutes was. It is clear on the fact that Rahab was important. She helped spies escape from Jericho, and so was saved during the invasion of Jericho, along with her household. If stereotypes about brothels and houses of ill repute are true, then she might have managed to save a few more prostitutes in the process. You can read most of her story in Joshua, if you like. She is remembered as a helpful prostitute more than anything else.

Yet, in Matthew she's listed as an ancestor of Jesus, in Hebrews as one of the faithful role models, and  in James as one who was saved by her works. It would seem that prostitutes, in all their impurity, have a place in the reign of God, maybe even a place of honor.

I need that reminder this week. Some time last week, news of a young bride presenting her father with a certificate of her virginity started making the rounds. I've been in the world of purity pledges and True Love Waits. I've been in the world of "Jesus doesn't care what I do with my penis." I don't think either is a healthy approach to sexuality. However, the full discussion on a healthy approach to sexuality is for another day.

Instead, let me say this: there's a biblical precedent for abstinence until marriage. I'll easily concede that. But let's be clear that precedent is geared toward women. Without apology, these women were property. They didn't come with certificates of authenticity, but they might as well have. "Proof of virginity" comes up a few times. Her virginity, after all, made it easy to know her husband was the father of her children. Dad wouldn't have to worry about someone else inheriting his property. Property of all sorts seems to have been a big concern. Most of the rules about virgins and marriage are tied directly to that world. The awesome seminary phrase I like to pull out to discuss this is "patrilineal endogamy." The short version: men owned property and transferred that property to other men. End of story.

Our daughters, our sisters, our wives, our best friends Women deserve a better story. A story that isn't about their relationship to men. A story that doesn't reduce them to their sexuality. Yep, unabashedly this is a healthy dose of feminism through a Christian lens, in part because Christians suck at telling women they do matter. I'm pretty sure no institution has so firmly held on to traditional gender roles as the Church.

In another few weeks, churches will be telling stories of a virgin giving birth to the savior of the world. Some of them, like my church, will be nervous talking about a virgin birth because science. Others will be worried someone might actually use the word "pregnant" in worship. Most all of them will be a little nervous in talking about conception and childbirth and other things often relegated to private realms, or at least to the realm of women.

We will once again be reminded of the fact that our tradition says our savior was born of a virgin. We will once again see images of a young woman, pure and chaste. Let us not forget, though, that Matthew's gospel, the author who was most adamant that Mary was a virgin, is also the one who tells us of the prostitute in Jesus' lineage. Somehow, the person who worried far more about Joseph than Mary, telling us Joseph would just divorce her quietly, can hold the tension of a prostitute and a virgin    together. More than that, he proclaims it as Gospel.

Maybe, just maybe, we can also learn to tell the stories of prostitutes and virgins side-by-side. Maybe we can even remember the stories we've inherited name both as beloved children of God. Maybe we can live a faith that has room for both Rahab and Mary.

God is Not Done Yet

God is not done yet. That's my one line confession of faith. It's not the one I made at baptism or that admitted me into membership in any church, but it's what I come back to time after time. I'm just going to go ahead and say that up front.

And I need to say that up front because about every six months, I go to one meeting in particular that makes me give up on Church. That meeting, it's pretty much a guarantee. Actually, a lot of meetings with the larger denomination pretty well convince me that I should just give up. I'll pay some money to a career counseling firm, turn my résumé into something that makes sense in the business world, have plenty of money and weekends free. 

I don't think I'm alone in the reasons for why, exactly, I think I should give up on Church. There are remarkably few people like me at most of those meetings. I'm younger, which I can deal with mostly, except when I realize how radically different our worldviews are. What I care about is decidedly from those around me; it's partly generational, partly worldview, and partly just me. I don't see "it's church" as a reason to feign interest, or to accept mediocrity. Let's not even talk about gender and issues there.

Since that's a lot of me talk that maybe doesn't make a great deal of sense, here's a conversation from a recent version of that meeting that I often use to convey why, exactly, these sorts of meetings make me give up on Church:

Very nicely dressed, sweet elderly lady: "You're the new pastor at Chalice?"

Me: "Well, I've been there well over two years, so I'm not really new any more." 

Ignore the look from the sweet elderly lady.

Very nicely dressed, sweet elderly lady: "We haven't been there since the building was dedicated."

I nod nicely in response. 

Very nicely dressed, sweet elderly lady: "I wonder something. When we were there, they were talking about moving the chairs to face the opposite direction. Did they ever do that?"

Me: "I haven't moved the chairs since I've been there, but I don't know what they did before."

Very nicely dressed, sweet elderly lady: "Well, I thought you might have seen pictures."

Me: "No." Because there are about seven hundred things more important to the history of the church than how chairs are or are not arranged. You know, things that are relevant to ministry and the future of the church.

I hope that adequately conveys the reason I now go home from these meetings to watch Netflix accompanied by chocolate and wine. 

Ok. Rum or tequila, actually. It's how I avoid actually sending in my résumé. 

I know, most certainly, that I'm not alone in my occasional desire to give up on Church. I know many people who have and who are. I know your reasons may be very different from mine. 

But, at the end of the day, I remember that deep confession: God is not done yet. 

When I see the kids who don't have adults to take care of them, people barely scraping by, illness, loneliness, church people worried about the arrangement of chairs--everything that makes anyone wonder, "Where is God?" then I confess: God is not done yet. 

I need that reminder from the Church because I'm pretty sure I'd forget if I were left to my own devices. God is not done yet is not my confession alone; it's a confession born from the faith handed down to me by many faithful before me. It's written in every story of healing, in every letter to a church, in every prophet's words: God is not done yet. All the things that break my heart break God's heart, too.

And so I hope, I pray, I confess: God is not done yet.

The Anniversary of a Death

A year ago today I walked into a hospital room. I didn't know when I got in my car that day that I would receive news that death was near. I found out after I donned a gown and gloves, according to protocol for that unit, and walked down the hall. His family was gathered. The machines would be turned off; I would have been called soon. And so we settled into that hospital room. We prayed, we sang, and then we waited. We waited for several difficult, beautiful hours. I was not there for many, but not all, the hours of waiting. 

The pain of those moments is real, but I'm often amazed at how fully sacred texts speak promises that cannot be forgotten in those moments, "But we do not grieve...as others who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 1:13). I've been present at deaths several times. It remains amazing to watch people of deep faith walk into death without fear. There is grief, to be sure, but it is not a hopeless grief. Christians are, after all, a resurrection people. 

I'm one of the people who is less certain about what comes after death. I'm not banking on eternity or bodies rising from the ground. My confession about death is this: whatever comes after, God is there. On a good day, I believe that we are only more fully in the presence of God. But I am always aware that my grief is a hopeful one. 

The funeral sermon for that man was punctuated with the line from scripture, "Well done, good and faithful servant." It's from Matthew 25, a vision of the final judgment, when Jesus names all the things that those who follow him do. For a retired chaplain and pastor, it was well-suited. I imagine, though, it would have been well-suited even if he'd chosen a different vocation. 

His stoles, a sign of the office of clergy, now hang on my wall and occasionally around my neck; his wife gave them to me a few weeks after his death. They are a deep reminder of the great cloud of witnesses that holds me now (Hebrews 12:1). I am certain that cloud of witnesses only grows larger with the passage of time. 

On this difficult, but beautiful, anniversary I cannot forget one of the great gifts of the Christian faith: we do not grieve as those who have no hope. We trust in and occasionally live in the the thin places, where God could break in and fully take over at any moment. We are never too far from the holy, for God calls us to be partners in what God is doing in this world. By virtue of our name, Church, we are called out to a holy purpose. The Christ who has called us and bound us together remains with us; the Spirit breathes new life into us with each passing day. We do not grieve as those who have no hope for we are resurrection people, trusting that life can and will overpower death at any moment. 

Today, I am so grateful for this cloud of witnesses.