On Drinking Cokes and Hitting Your Sister

Go here first! Romans 6:1-11

In the fourth grade, I had my first sacrament of reconciliation. In the Catholic church, it’s one of seven holy sacraments. This particular sacrament is one where you go before a priest to confess your sins. And then, after listening to you, the priest absolves you of your sins in the name of Jesus, gives you a penance of some sort, usually in the form of a few Hail Marys, and then sends you on your way. Done. Forgiven. Well, as a kid who always wanted to please, who always wanted to do the right thing, and who never wanted to disappoint, Reconciliation was particularly daunting for me. I’d have to go in front of a priest and say, out loud, all the ways that I’d screwed up, all the ways that I’d fallen short, all the ways that I’d disappointed God? It was terrifying. But we all had to go through it. 

That day, the day of my first Reconciliation, wearing the itchy dress and the shiny shoes mom made me wear,  I had to make a choice. Go to the short line with the scary priest who’d listen to you from behind a screen. Or, go to the long line with the nice priest whom you’d have to talk to face-to-face? Well, I chose the long line and the face to face confession. And as I stood in that line, waiting with a bunch of other sinful ten year olds, I racked my brain for all the ways that I had disappointed God. 

I was a “good” kid. I mean, I was sad a lot, but the worst thing that I could hear coming out of my parents’ mouths was not “get over here young lady,” or “go to your room,” but rather, “I am so disappointed in you.” To disappoint my parents, to not meet up with their expectations, was devastating, shameful, an unforgivable sin. So I always strived to “do my best,” which is all that my parents ever asked of me. 

It’s a well-intentioned expectation, to “do your best,” meant to inspire greatness and leave room for failure if need be. But it was so amorphous, so unclear, so undefined, that you never knew when you hit the mark, you never knew if you’d succeeded. You never knew if you’d really, truly done “your best.” 

It’s a question that still haunts me. Did I do “my best” when I got that B- in handwriting in the fifth grade, or got that C in Calculus my senior year of high school? Did I do my best when I ran a 5:20 mile, or was there always that chance that I could do better, go faster, run harder? It’s a really inspiring saying to some, “do your best,” but for me, it was simply another way for me to question if I was ok. In every day, every action, every decision, I asked myself, I asked others, “am I ok?” Am I ok? Tell me I’m ok. Yes. I know you told me last week, but things have changed, we have more information now, are you sure I’m still ok? Each day, with each choice, with each action, the ok-o-meter reset, forcing me to ask, once again, “Am I ok?”

Well, I finally reached the front of the line and entered in to the room. It was brightly lit with buzzing fluorescent lights, and it was strange. There were vestments hanging in an open closet on the right, candles and brass holders and banners and extra communion cups on the left. And in the middle, two chairs. One empty, for me, one occupied by Father Tony, who, now that I think about it, must have been slightly annoyed and slightly tickled by the endless conveyor belt of one fourth grader after another, confessing their deepest darkest sins from their short ten year old lives. But for me, at the time, it was a gravely serious moment, and I was terrified. I was going to go in there, sit in that big chair, and confess to someone, someone I admired, someone my parents admired, that I was not ok. That I screwed up. 

That I hadn’t, in fact, done my best.  So I took a deep breath and recited the words we’d been trained to say by the nuns at the school. “Forgive me father for I have sinned. This is my first holy confession.” 

And then I confessed. “I hit my sister,” I said. 

He smiled. We talked for a minute about why I hit my sister and brainstormed ways to avoid doing so in the future. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, your sins are forgiven,” he said. Then he told me to go back out there, kneel in the front pew, pray two Hail Marys and ask God to help me not hit my sister again. I said I’d try my best.

Of course, I’d fail that challenge within the week. So much for doing my best.

Later, I’m not really sure how much later, Father Tony came over to our house for dinner. We lived right across the street from the rectory, so this was not an uncommon occurrence, and my mom kept a special supply of Coca-Cola Classic just for him. We called them “Tony Cokes” and we’d get a frosty mug from the freezer, fill it with ice and hand him a can as soon as he’d walk through the door. 

Well, that night, I was feeling particularly rebellious. I took a can from the box and felt its weight in my hand. I set it on the counter, and I got one of those frosty mugs and I just stared at it. The devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other must have been dueling it out for some time because Father Tony walked in and asked me what I was doing. I told him the truth: “I really want a Coke,” I said. “But we’re not really allowed to have them.” And that same priest who’d absolved me for hitting my sister, who’d told me to “go and sin no more,” said to me, “Well, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.” And then he walked away. 

I pondered the meaning of those words as the bubbly fizz popped up from my frosty mug. I pondered the ramifications of those words as the icy corn syrup tickled my tongue and slid down my throat. 

“Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” 

Is it better to “ask for forgiveness than for permission?”

Should I drink the coke? What if I hit my sister again? 

Should I always strive to “do my best?”

“What if my best isn’t good enough?” 

What does “doing my best” even mean? 

“Well,” Paul says in our reading today, “You’re asking all the wrong questions.” “You’re measuring with the wrong tools. You’re trying to use a ruler to determine how many ounces there are. You’re trying to use kilograms to determine how many miles we have left to go.”

“Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means!” He says. 

And he spends the next ten verses breaking down the binaries that we have set up for ourselves. There are so many dichotomies here. Life and death. Enslavement and freedom. Separation and unity. Sin and grace. And he breaks them down, one by one. You who are baptized are baptized into Christ’s death and his resurrection. You who are full of sin have died to sin, just as Jesus died on the cross. And because Christ’s story didn’t end in death, but in resurrection, so does your story. He is alive in God, and thus, so are you. Paul tells us that our identities are now beyond dichotomies, they’re beyond questions of “either/or.” The binaries are broken down. We are dead to sin and alive to God. 

Sin isn’t even the question anymore because Jesus is more than a get-out-of-jail-free card. Jesus is relationship. “Doing my best” in order to please, in order to be assured that I’m ok, in order to be loved, is to bark up the wrong tree. It’s asking the wrong question. It’s striving for the wrong thing. 

In the previous chapter, Paul preaches such a radical, impossible, overwhelming, immeasurable grace, that it begs the question, “Should we continue to sin in order that grace may abound?” Paul proclaims such a radical, impossible, overwhelming, immeasurable freedom that it forces us to ask what its limits are.

So, too, should we explore the depth and breadth of God’s grace for us, so, too, should we preach a gospel of grace that is so intense that it begs the question, “Well, if there’s so much grace, shouldn’t we sin some more so that we realize and recognize the grace all around us?” Shouldn’t we sin some more so that we can get more grace?

And even as it begs the question, even as we are logically forced to ask the question, to wonder how far grace goes, in the asking of the question, we come to find out that it’s the wrong question. It’s no longer about sin or no-sin. It’s no longer about following the rules or breaking them. It’s no longer about “doing your best” and “not disappointing” and asking “am I ok” all the time. 

Sin becomes a non-issue. Following Christ surpasses questions of sin or no-sin. Just like a temper tantrum is calmed when the child tires herself out and falls asleep in her mother’s arms, when we enter in to relationship, when we form our identity around Christ and God’s love for us, the either/ors fall away. “Good enough” no longer becomes an issue. “Am I ok?” No longer becomes a question. We are dead to sin. We are alive to God in Christ Jesus. We don’t have to focus on sin anymore. We get to focus on God instead. Sin or no sin, you’re already ok, because you have both died and lived with Christ. Sin or no sin, “doing your best” is no longer the goal, because you are already a beloved child of God. There is no “best.” 

Sin or no sin, belief or unbelief, your best or your worst, all gets wrapped up in you, in who you are, the beloved of God. God just wants you to be more you. God just wants us to be more us. Because that’s who God loves. You. Us. As we are. Warts and all. Flailing, striving, worrying, questioning, all of it. God loves. God redeems. God puts to death and resurrects. 

Of course we’re going to sin. And of course, we should try not to. There is grace for both.

This is more than “I’m ok; you’re ok.” This is more radical than simply accepting that we are broken people, simply accepting that we’re going to sin and that’s just how we’re built. This is more than just getting comfortable with our own sin so that we don’t feel bad anymore. And it’s more than striving for a perfection that we will never reach.  It’s about identity. It’s about not having to prove yourself anymore. It’s being freed from the question of whether or not you’re ok. It’s freedom from measuring altogether. It’s freedom from dichotomies that define what is “doing evil” and what is “being good.” It’s freedom from perfection and failure. It’s freedom from the weariness of trying to make yourself acceptable to your God, your neighbors, your friends, your family, yourself. 

I hope I’m making sense. I hope that you’re able to see that there is a difference between asking “am I ok,” “am I good enough,” “am I failure” “am I a disappointment” and “am I a child of God?” It’s no longer about sin or no sin. It’s about identity. And that has already been determined, simply because you are who you are. Simply because you are a child of God. 

It’s a question of identity. So that, when you realize who and what you are, when you realize whose arms you fall asleep in after your massive temper tantrum, you wake up wanting to do a little better, wanting to be a little more, wanting to embrace more of who God created you to be. When your identity changes, so do your actions. 

When you see that you are loved for who you are, that you are embraced because of who God made you to be, questions of being ok fall away. 

When we come to understand our own stories in the story of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, we learn to hold both things: that we’re broken, sinful people who are also beloveds of God. We can hold both.

I shouldn’t hit my sister. It’ll be ok if I drink the Coke.

Thanks be to God. 

Egg Shells and Showing Up.

Matthew 9:35-10:23

A few weeks ago, I posted a controversial question on Facebook. I wrote, “Help me resolve a dispute that my husband doesn't even know we're having. Egg shells: in the disposer or in the trash?” 

Dan and I have been married for nineteen years, and for nineteen years, I’ve been annoyed that he puts his egg shells in the sink and not in the trash can. Of course, eighteen years and forty-some-odd-weeks ago, I could have asked him about it. I could have shared how I felt about it. We could have talked about the best place to dispose of egg shells and the reasons why. We could have worked through this minor disagreement, if this was even what it was. But no. I kept it in. Let it fester like a sore. It wasn’t a big deal, after all. It’s just a little thing. Just a small disagreement that we really don’t need to make a big deal about. And if I do bring it up, maybe that will lead the way to bigger disagreements and bigger annoyances that will ultimately convict me. Would I awaken the beast, open the door to all the things about me that drive Dan crazy? I leave my wet towels on the floor and I sleep too much and I’m a terrible housekeeper and I forget to switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer about 80% of the time, so then we have to run the load through all over again. I have this knack for adopting problematic pets. What other, scarier, criticisms would he have to launch at me? Is our relationship so fragile that picking at one, tiny, loose thread would unravel the whole darn thing? 

Throughout the history of our relationship, we were terrified to get “mad” at each other. We’d get “sad” at each other instead. Turns out, that wasn’t a good plan for our long-term relationship. Turns out, when you stop relating to each other, even over the hard stuff, your relationship suffers. Turns out, nineteen years of just being “nice” and not facing the hard stuff will just lead you to a lot of marriage therapy co-pays. And we’re working on it. We’re trying to show up to each other as our real, broken selves, so that we can have some real, although broken, connection. We’re starting to learn that it’s in the repairs that relationships are built. 

All real relationships have conflict. All real relationships have disagreements. All real relationships are a back and forth struggle between understanding and misunderstanding. The important thing is, when something is broken, how do you come back together to repair? And the more you practice repair, the easier it is. The more you practice repair, the stronger it becomes so that you can use it for the big deal things, the big deceptions, the big betrayals, the big misunderstandings that are bound to come in to the relationship eventually. 

We need to practice showing up for each other, as our real and authentic selves, and maybe, with practice, we will have compassion and understanding for one another. 

“Look,” Jesus says, as he’s moved with compassion, literally, moved in his bowels, in the depths of his insides, “Look at all these people who need compassion. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray to God that God will send out more laborers to help with this harvest.” He tells the disciples to pray that God would send leaders into the land to profess the coming of the kingdom of God. And, lo and behold, in that next verse, the disciples themselves are the answer to that prayer. The answer to their own prayers. God tells us to pray for a need, and then, in the next verse, in the next breath, God says, “Ok, you do it, you, go, fill that need. You be the answer to your own prayer.” “You go, show up, as you are, with what you have, and cure the sick and cast out demons and raise the dead and share the gospel.” 

So Jesus sends out the flawed, the broken, the messy, the ridiculous twelve, to share the Gospel to all the neighboring towns and cities. He sends out Peter, who, when he gets it wrong, he gets it really wrong. He sends out Thomas, who will doubt. And he sends out Matthew, the tax collector, who might as well have “corruption” tattooed on his forehead. And he sends out Judas, who will ultimately betray him in the end. Jesus asks them to go out to their neighbors first. Go out to the people they know, people with whom they already have some kind of relationship, and proclaim the good news -- the kingdom of heaven has come near. Go and cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out the demons. 

He sends them out with nothing but themselves. They take no gold or copper, no bag full of necessities, no cell phones, no gps, no credit card, no extra shirts or pairs of sandals, not even a walking stick. He just sends them out with themselves, as themselves. He sends them broken and flailing and sinning and confused, but he sends them as they are, he doesn’t fix them first. He doesn’t give them detailed instructions or IKEA construction plans. He doesn’t give them tools or a curriculum or even a detailed objective. He simply gives them his compassion. Go, go with this same compassion that I have for you, and cure the sick, heal the lame, raise the dead, exorcise the demons. Be yourself. Use your stories. 

Make connections and relationships with people who will listen to you and hear your words. Stay with them. Let them support you. Rely on them for your food and your shelter. 

This is dangerous work, because radical love and incalculable compassion will always be met with hate. People can’t handle that kind of compassion. People don’t know what to do with this radical, reconciling God. They will fear it. They will resist it. But God will meet them with even more radical, reconciling love. Because that’s what God does. When there is brokenness, God strives to repair, to reconcile. 

God shows up for us, in real and authentic ways, through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, and shows us how to show up for each other in those real and authentic and compassionate ways. 

That’s what gets me in this passage. Jesus tells them that they are going to encounter conflict. People are going to disagree with you. People are going to be threatened by what you say. You’ll be rejected. People will get mad. They might tell you all the things you’ve done wrong, they might name all the ways that you’ve failed, all the ways that you’ve let them down. You might open the door to your own sin and your own mistakes. And maybe the relationship can’t survive such an onslaught. Maybe you can’t survive such an onslaught.

I think that’s what scares me so much in my anti-racism work. I want people to like me. I want them to agree with me, and I want them to understand where I’m coming from. I want to do antiracism “right.” I want to be the “right kind” of antiracist, the perfect “white ally.” But I’m so afraid of saying the wrong thing, or doing the wrong thing, that I just stay quiet, I don’t confront the things that are really bothering me, and, more importantly, I’m so afraid to hear about the litany of things I’ve done wrong that I don’t really listen to the other’s complaints. It’s a failure of repair. I don’t trust enough in the grace of the relationship in order to continue the relationship, with my flailing around and failures and missteps and mistakes. 

I just get sad and cower in to myself, afraid that, if I took the risk of showing up, if I took the risk of sharing how I really feel, I’ll be rejected. 

But that’s not how real relationship is formed or maintained or grown. Suddenly, you look back and nineteen years have passed, and you’ve missed each other, you’ve grown apart, you haven’t been real, you haven’t shown up, and the relationship has suffered because of it. That’s why it’s so misguided to say that you are “colorblind” or that “all lives matter.” It’s just not helpful, because saying that refuses to take the risk of knowing the other in her hardship, in her hurt, in all those ways that we have failed her. 

Jesus sends us out. He sends us out into the mess, out into the hurt, out into the world full of demonic powers and principalities that we’re all a part of. He sends us out and tells us to bring nothing but ourselves. He tells us to just show up. There is healing and there is freedom and there is redemption just in the showing up. Jesus throws the disciples, and he throws us, into the deep end of relationship, and he tells us to figure it out, he tells us to swim, to show up and be real and honest and true, even when it’s hard, even when folks will disagree with you, even when you mess things up, even when it’s all your fault, even when others will point out the log imbedded in your own eye. Because there is no repair without first showing up. There is no repair without being honest. There is no change if you’re not willing to show up and be changed. 

I was once in an antiracism conversation sponsored by a church I was attending at the time. It was this really well coordinated time of conversation and listening with our black brothers and sisters, where we confronted hard topics and tried our best to talk about them together. I’ll never forget when I spoke up about some of the economic inequality that exists between the black community and the white. And a black woman spoke up, offended. “You don’t know how much money I make!” She said. She said, “I resent that you’re just going to lump us all together and say that we’re poor. Well, I’m not poor, and I take offense that you’d make those assumptions!” 

I was trying to speak up for justice. I was trying to say that the economic system that we’re all trying to function under has been rigged. But instead of clarifying, instead of showing up and entering in and trying to explain myself, I shut up, I shut down, I stayed in my seat, but I essentially “left” the conversation. I curled in on myself and licked my wounds. Well, leaving the conversation is not antiracism work. Leaving the conversation is one more way to show my white privilege. I needed to keep showing up, I needed to be open to learning, I needed to step in to the relationship in order for us to do the work of repair. Instead, I just left. I shook off the dust from my feet and I left.

But wait. Isn’t that what Jesus tells us to do? Doesn’t Jesus explicitly tell us to walk away and let our peace come back to us? Well, yes, and no. You see, it depends on whose house it is. It depends on who needs to change. It depends on what the message is. We’re so used to being “right” that we have a really hard time finding out that we’ve been wrong. Sometimes I think that the prophets, the minorities, the oppressed and the hurt are the ones coming in to our houses, into our villages, sent by Jesus, they’re professing their truth, they’re taking the risk, and we’ve been the ones to reject them, we’ve kicked them out of our houses and our towns. We’ve rejected their message. Wo to us. They need to shake the dust off of their feet, walk out of our homes, and leave. 

I don’t blame them for being angry, for self preservation, for giving up on the dialogue. We’ve rejected their message. We’re not listening and they deserve some peace.

But it’s a scary thing, isn’t it? Finding out that we’ve been wrong. Finding out that we’ve messed up. It leads to uncomfortable conversations and convictions and demands for reparations. Someone might have a problem with what we’ve done or what we’ve said or what we believe. We might find out that we’ve screwed up. That’s why we aren’t sent out totally empty handed. Jesus is moved with compassion, and he gives us that compassion, both for the other and for ourselves. 

Because if we are truly encountering others with a message of compassion, with a message that the kingdom of God has come near, there’s grace, there’s room to screw up, there’s space to be wrong, there’s room to stick around. Repair doesn’t happen if we ignore it. Repair doesn’t happen if we walk away. Repair doesn’t happen if we refuse to show up with who we are and what little we have. Jesus sends us out to repair. He sends us out as we are, with only who we are, and he gives us the power of compassion, the power to heal and raise and cleanse and cast out and proclaim. 

And Jesus also instructs those of us who don’t go out, those of us who stay in our homes. He tells us to let the stranger in, to hear their message, to listen to their words, to accept their gospel. And maybe, just maybe, even accept some healing. Radical love will be met with hate, but God’s response is only more radical love. 

When have we refused to show up, refused to take the risk, and met radical love with our own quiet, passive, shutting down, walking away form of hate? 

Jesus calls us to take the risk. To be vulnerable. To be real and open and to show up. That’s how hate is knocked down. That’s how relationships are repaired. It takes practice. It takes compromise. I takes vulnerable listening. Let’s try it now.

We got a compost bin. That’s where our eggshells go now. 

Thanks be to God.

Dancing With the Other

When I first encountered the reality of racism, head on, I was maybe a sophomore or junior in high school. I mean, I’d learned about slavery, I’d learned about the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. I’d learned about how our country was founded and about Manifest Destiny and the Trail of Tears and the smallpox blankets long before that day. But it was all theoretical. It was all in the past, it was history, after all, so it certainly wasn’t my problem anymore. And it was all interpreted from a certain point of view, so that the ends justified the means, so that even though we have these horrors in our past, we just need to look at the amazing country that we’ve built in spite of it. 

It was never made clear to me that we’d built this country to be the way that it is because of those means. But one day in high school, we took the whole day, they cancelled classes, they rearranged schedules, and they had us all watch this documentary called The Color of Fear. It was an eyeopening dive into the reality that we live in a white world, that the structures of our society are set up so that white folks, as a whole, have more power, more prestige, more money, and more choices than people of color. Well, I watched this documentary, I confronted my own privilege, and I just lost it. I basically threw a sobbing temper tantrum in Ms. Haffley’s English Composition classroom. 

I freaked out all my friends. What about me? I asked. What about those of us who have to live with the reality that we are the oppressors? What about reverse racism and sexism and how my family has struggled and how I’m not that privileged and I haven’t specifically, directly oppressed anyone, after all, I’m just a kid!? 

I was looking for exoneration. I was looking for absolution. I was looking for all the wrong things. And as I paced and cried and sat down and got up again and asked all the wrong questions and said all the wrong things, Ms. Haffley sat and listened, she held the space for me, she let me feel what I had to feel. 

And as I paced and cried and sat down and got up again and asked all the wrong questions, my friend, Rasheed, challenged me, he kept at me, he redirected my questions and called me out on my self-centeredness. He described his world to me. He was the class president and the wrestling captain and the top student in our grade. But he was still scared to drive his car at night. He was still afraid to visit his friends in the rich white suburbs and was still the only one in history class who took on parts of Black history for his independent project. He still had to be the black “representative,” speaking for all the other blacks in his predominantly white school. 

He sacrificed a lot that day, as I wept in that classroom. He gave me his time, his focus, his thoughtfulness, his stories and his perspective. All so that I might understand, even just a little, about how racism is part of the air I breathe, and that I, too, am a racist, even when I try my hardest not to be. But Ms. Haffley and Rasheed were present for me anyway. They stayed with me, simultaneously challenging and comforting me, until I wore myself out. I went home with salt on my sleeves and just a tiny seed of understanding. 

That was day one. Day one of step one of the beginnings of just the start of my realization about the insidious nature of racism. Oof. And I’ve made some big mistakes. I’ve said the wrong things and I’ve not paid attention and I’ve tuned out and overlooked and ignored.

I’d have, and I still have, a long way to go. It felt, and it still feels, like this concept that I’ll never fully understand, never fully “get,” never fully have a handle on, and never really know how to “fix.” Boy, don’t we just want to know how to fix things so that we can just move on? Don’t we wish we just had the answers so that we could be sure and confident and “right?” We humans don’t like being wrong. We want to be in control. We want to have all the answers.  

We want to have it all figured out so that we don’t have to live in the grey of uncertainty. But there is no certainty. There is only The Dance.

My biggest challenge in Seminary wasn’t parsing Greek verbs or memorizing the maps of the Ancient Near East. It wasn’t avoiding a certain homophobic professor in the halls. And it wasn’t the listening to twenty-two year olds talk about the “right way to do a funeral” and “how to talk to someone who is grieving” as they walked back to their dorm rooms. 

Nope. It was the Trinity.

The frickin’ Trinity.

If you’ve ever read some Aristotle or Plato or any kind of philosophy and then turned around to read a text of theology, it can be truly maddening. Philosophy has nice clear lines. Boundaries and definitions. Rules. Logic. In philosophy, you need rational proofs, building blocks upon which to decipher the meaning of reality or our very existence or whether the poets should be banished from the Republic. 

In theology, you also need rational proofs, building blocks upon which to decipher the existence of God or the nature of the Good or the existence of evil. Building blocks of rational proofs as far as reason can take those theologians, and then, the big jump. 

They end up in a rational dead end and then suddenly, “it’s all a mystery,” “this is where you need faith,” or “this is what the Nicene fathers said, so it must be true.”

And reading about the Trinity is the. worst.

The theologians will write on and on with all the greek and the pages of words and the footnotes. They’ll talk about the three in one and the one in three. They’ll use big words like perichoresis and hypostasis. One God in three persons, consubstantial in person, nature, essence and will. But also separate and distinct in and of themselves. Co-equal. Co-powerful. They write about the heresies of modalism and Sabellianism and Arianism. 

They use analogies like water and ice and steam, or the head, body and feet of a river, or a god “powerpack” that descends from the heavens, entirely God, but somehow suffused into a human body. They argue about the co-existence of the Son or the adoptionist theory that Jesus was made by God and then adopted in to God’s self. They argue about whether hypostasis means “essence” or “person.” And when they reach a dead end, when they start talking in circles and hiding their logical fallacies, after all the pages and the greek and the footnotes and the Fathers, they say, “it’s a mystery.” “You must have faith.”

I was basically told that I was not welcome at the Seminary after I had been prying the professor for some logical explanation of the Trinity. How can a simple being be both three and one? What’s the point if they have the same essence, or person, or will, or power? What is the nature of being, anyway? Is this ontologically so? How do can anyone know this?

I argued, “you can’t just use the rules of philosophy as far as is convenient and then dump it all once you reach a dead end and then call it “faith.” 

“Maybe you just don't belong here” the professor said.

And I was also jealous because it didn’t seem like anyone else had such a struggle. 

And I was angry because there were people walking around who claimed to know the very essence of God. Who claimed to know what God is and how God works and “here, let me just draw you a Venn diagram to show you.” “Or, it’s like this three-leaf clover. Or, look, it’s simple, just check out this trinitarian shield I drew for you.” 

God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God, one in being with the Father as the Nicene Creed professes. 

Honestly, it still doesn’t make any “sense.” 

And then I learned about this crazy theory — just a theory — of what this fancy word “perichoresis” might mean. I was cramming  for my ordination exams, trying to learn all the things I should have learned in seminary, trying to ingest all the things I was supposed to believe. And in a basic primer on Christian Doctrine, called…Christian Doctrine, it said this: the word “perichoresis” literally means “dancing around.” Shirley Guthrie says, “The oneness of God is not the oneness of  a distinct, self-contained individual; it is the unity of a community of persons who love each other and live together in harmony. And personal means, by definition, inter-personal; one cannot be truly personal alone but only in relation to other persons. Such is the unity and personal character of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. … 

There is a deep, intimate, indissoluble unity between them. … They are what they are only in relationship to each other.”

Essentially, the very essence of God is one of community. Relationship. A dancing together. An existence based upon the existence of the other. So then the “other” isn’t so “other” anymore. The boundaries between Jesus and God and Spirit get all blurry because the need for each other is so great that they lose themselves in one another, only to gain themselves by doing so. I can jive with the idea that we have no clue what or who God is, but that at the very heart of God is relationship. 

There’s so much we don’t know. We can never know. But, what if, at the heart of God is community?

Wouldn’t that change everything? 

Suddenly we are experiencing a tiny piece of God, we are participating in an act that is at the very heart of who God is when we need each other. When we struggle in community. When we catch each other’s colds and clean the community bathrooms and sing together on a cold Sunday morning. When we dip some bread in some juice. When we listen to the stories of those who have been oppressed and abused. When we take the time to really hear the cries of the mothers who have lost their sons to police violence. When we take some responsibility for that, just because we’ve benefited from a system that has been set up to do just that. 

I am not me without you. We have mutual need. A need for community that is so intense that it blurs the lines that separate us and suddenly we’re all wrapped up in each other. We are what we are only in relationship to each other.

And that’s the nature of God. Each time we dance with each other, each time we try to dance, or try to listen or try to understand those whose experiences are not like ours, we’re doing the work of God. 

Perichoresis isn’t three guys sipping tea together up on a cloud somewhere. It’s intense participation in the lives of the other. So intense, that the other isn’t so other any more. The person who we think is our complete opposite is actually us. Suddenly, the boundary between God and humans get so blurry that God comes to us as one of us. God, in relationship to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, in a dance with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, to such an extent that wherever one is, so are the others. So that Jesus could come to us, and we could experience the very nature of God. 

The essence of God is one of participation and relationship. 

And that’s why we do church. Because when we participate, when we are in these messy relationships with each other, we are doing what God does. We’re dancing. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a tiny glint of the relational heart of God in this mess of a community. That’s why we’re called to listen to the voices that have been suppressed in the past. That’s why we see the individual, the person, the unique situation, we listen to the unique story. Because you are a unique person, with unique situations and a unique story, invited to dance with others in their unique situations with their unique stories. 

I think that’s what Rasheed and Ms. Haffley did for me that messy day in that English Composition classroom. They danced with me, they maintained relationship, they helped me understand the Other in a new way. They taught me to listen. They taught me to stay open. They taught me how to feel what I needed to feel, but not at the expense of another. They didn’t walk away. They didn’t give up. They danced. And somehow, something, something so very very tiny, but something, was mended, something was united, one tiny little chunk of the wall that divides us was torn down. There was baptism. There was incarnation. The presence of God was in that place. For just a second, God looked a little bit like a confused white girl, a struggling young black man, and an empathetic English teacher. 

Let us do what the Trinity does. 

Let us dance.

Thanks be to God.

When the World Is on Fire

Happy Pentecost! Read this first! Acts 2:1-21

***

My kids love to set fires. Even in the backyard, probably disobeying about a dozen borough ordinances, they like to build tiny fires out of sticks and leaves and old newspaper.  They love to throw things in the fire, watch them burn. We went camping for the first time last summer, and their favorite thing, above the white water rafting and the swimming pool and the staying up late and the sleeping in a tent, was definitely the campfire. They’d sit around it for hours, watching the flames flicker, adding logs to the fire, testing what burned quickly and what slowly turned to bright red coals. We’d watch them carefully, of course. They know they can only set fires when there is proper adult supervision. They know that fires only belong in designated places where they can be contained and controlled. They know that fire can both hurt and heal. Fire can warm and enlighten and purify. But it can also burn and destroy. They know that we need fire for energy, for electricity, for heat and for baking their favorite chocolate chip cookies. But they know that it can burn fingers and scald the bottoms of their sandals if they’re making their s’mores a little too close to the campfire. 

And that’s where I am today, with this passage, with Pentecost, with the state of the world, with Minneapolis burning, with protests in cities across the country, with Pittsburgh shut down last night. I’m in the both/and of fire. I’m watching it carefully, wondering about it, listening to it, unsure of what it’s supposed to mean.

I mean, how do we welcome the Holy Spirit fire, when the whole world is on fire? 

No matter your media source, it’s clear that things are burning out of control. Like a pressure cooker, or a simmering volcano, what’s been bubbling underneath for some time is finally making itself known in wild and violent ways. But it’s always been there. Police brutality is nothing new. Racism is found in the foundations of our country. Violent reactions to injustice have been woven into the fabric our our nation since the Boston Tea Party. People in power have decimated communities in active ways, through smallpox blankets and trails of tears, and through redlining, through segregation, and in more deceptive, passive ways, like income inequality, systemic injustice, societal structures and unequal access to resources. Just look at the corona virus statistics. This pandemic has impacted communities of color in more intense and devastating ways than any other group of people. 

And as a person of privilege, racism is in the air I breathe. I’ve locked my car doors at intersections, clutched my purse tighter, I’ve commented about how articulate so and so is, and I’ve supported systems that keep me and my family safe at the expense of someone else’s safety. I don’t have to give my sons “the talk” about the reality of being a black man in America. I don’t have to lecture them about how to keep themselves safe from the police, how to act around white folks, how to look unthreatening and intelligent and responsible. I don’t have to warn them about any of these things. My kids can play with squirt guns in the front yard, and all I have to worry about is a scraped knee or a smudge on the window. They can go for a run or sleep soundly in their beds without fear of losing their lives. I don’t have to flee violence only to cross some arbitrary border that was created out of violence only to be locked in a cage and separated from my family.  This is my privilege, and I’m not quite sure what to do about it. 

And I know I’ve already said too much. I know I should let the oppressed speak for themselves. I am no white savior, come to stand up for the rights of the “least of these.” I will never fully understand, never fully comprehend the unique struggles of minority communities. I have no right to speak at all. I need to shut up and listen. I need to stay up too late watching sad videos on the internet. I need to read the books and search my heart and watch and witness. I need to pray. I need to talk to my kids about it and say all the wrong things and try again. But that all seems so useless, so pointless, when the world is on fire. 

The world is on fire. But so is the Holy Spirit.

It came to us feral and uncontrolled. It came to us in violent winds and in unpredictable flames. We like to think of the Holy Spirit as a gentle breeze, a still, quiet voice, and sometimes it is that. But it came to us in a way that shook us out of our homes and led us into the streets. It had us saying things that don’t make sense to people who understood. It had us looking a little drunk. It came to us like the wild geese, “harsh and exciting, over and over announcing our place in the family of things.”

Let’s not make the mistake of taming the Holy Spirit. It comes to us in fire. Let’s remember that even the lodgepole pines need extreme heat to melt their waxy cones and release their seeds. Even when forest fires ravage and blaze through the wilderness, there is still rebirth, still life, still a kind of resurrection that comes out of it. The Holy Spirit still moves amidst destruction. The Holy Spirit calls us out of those places where we hide and out into the streets. The Holy Spirit helps us connect to those who are unlike us.

But fire can also be the language of the unheard. We may not understand it. We may not speak it. It is certainly hard to hear. It can certainly get out of control. But maybe we can be curious about it. Maybe we can enter in to it, wonder about it, question it, without immediately condemning it. 

How do we welcome the Holy Spirit fire, when the whole world is on fire? 

Well, as my friend and colleague said, maybe it’s the same fire?

Or at least, maybe some of it is. 

Is the Holy Spirit looting our Targets and burning down our restaurants? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know what to think about the riots and looting in Minneapolis and other cities, including here in Pittsburgh.  But I do think that at least some of the protests are a proclamation of deep pain, deep frustration, deep anger about the state of the world that we are in. People are heartbroken. They’re scared.

Just like the Bible and theology and churches and beliefs, people can abuse fire, too, causing destruction where God never intended. Like Scripture, words that came from love are transformed into hate. We throw doctrine or bible verses at each other like bombs, trying to dominate and convince, without ever really listening to each other. God gives us the free will to even abuse God, to even crucify God, even lets us use the name of God in order to crucify each other.

Martin Luther King Jr. says it better, about the riots in his day. He says, “Now I wanted to say something about the fact that we have lived over these last two or three summers with agony and we have seen our cities going up in flames. And I would be the first to say that I am still committed to militant, powerful, massive, non-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the problem from a direct action point of view. I'm absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

Now every year about this time, our newspapers and our televisions and people generally start talking about the long hot summer ahead. What always bothers me is that the long hot summer has always been preceded by a long cold winter. And the great problem is that the nation has not used its winters creatively enough to develop the program, to develop the kind of massive acts of concern that will bring about a solution to the problem. And so we must still face the fact that our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay."

Sometimes, fire is a response to deep pain and frustration. And the Holy Spirit is always with those who are experiencing deep pain, and deep frustration. The Holy Spirit is always walking with those who are oppressed, always interceding on behalf of the victims of systemic prejudice. What if those of us with the power listened to those without it, really listened? I think we’d encounter the Holy Spirit fire in ways we’ve never encountered before.

And I think the Holy Spirit translates for us. When we’re talking at cross purposes and over each other, when we’re missing each other and we’re saying and thinking all the wrong things, there’s still the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us understand each other, amidst differences of language and culture, amidst past histories of pain and oppression. But we have to listen to one another. We have to pay attention. We have to be curious. We have to not rush to judgment.

The disciples are alone, isolated, hiding in the upper room. But then the Holy Spirit comes and they catch fire, they begin speaking in other languages, they come down from their hideouts and out into the streets. Divisions that once existed between them are melted away. Seeds of connection are planted. It’s wild and uncontrolled and a little dangerous. But God is revealed, even when the world is on fire, maybe even because the world is on fire. 

The disciples don’t get a typical “happy ending.” The birth of the church comes from a wildfire that doesn’t lead us to safety and security. The disciples will be beaten and imprisoned and tortured and killed for the sake of this fire. And later, we will take those same Holy Spirit fires and use them to determine who is in and who is out, we’ll use them to condemn and convict, we’ll use them to control and manipulate and justify our own actions. The Church hasn’t done a great job at tending to the fire in a way that provides warmth and security these last 2000 years. In fact, our attempts to control and contain this fire have caused far more burns and heartache and injustice.

But God gives us fire anyway. God gives us God’s self anyway. God cannot be tamed or controlled, condensed or manipulated. God is a wildfire, and sometimes, an echo of God’s demand for justice can be heard in even the most uncontrollable fires. But we have to listen for it. We have to be curious about it. We have to watch and wait and ask questions about it. It might be a destructive force built from hate and fear and anger. It might be a spiral of injustice that never ends, just recycles itself and produces victim after victim. It might be violence adding to more violence. But it could also be the language of the oppressed that we desperately need to hear. It could also be that destructive force that leads the way to new life. We can’t know until we listen. Fire can be the untamed Holy Spirit. The presence of Jesus makes our hearts burn within us. 

God is presence and warmth and purification and protection. God is also dangerous and wild and unpredictable. But God is always love. That’s how we’ll know. That’s how we’ll figure it out.  We’ll look back upon our encounters with God and find a little of that fire within us. “Were not our hearts burning within us as he spoke to us on the road?"

The world is on fire. It’s burning, indeed. But some of that fire comes in the form of tongues hovering over our heads, in the form of translation and understanding, in the form of justice and repentance.

I know I’ve gone on too long. I’ve said too much, and probably some wrong things, but let’s listen. Let’s listen hard. Listen for the love. Listen for the demand for justice. Listen for the cries of God’s people, people whom God loves. Listen for and to the fire of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is speaking. The Holy Spirit is translating. The Holy Spirit is interceding for us. It may not look like what we expect. It may not be convenient or contained. But this is how God comes to us. This is how the Church is born. This is how connections are made and bridges are built and understanding is formed. It’s messy. It’s a little dangerous. But it’s God’s way. Let’s listen. 

Thanks be to God.