Scriptures: 
Job 40:15
1 Corinthians 14.34-40
John 3:16

When you introduce yourself as a Pastor; it elicits a few reactions. Often people will begin to make confessions, why they haven’t been to church…and it’s not even my church but they tell me how they have been busy or sick and how much they are meaning to get there. So I listen and consider giving them some kind of magic hand gesture to assure them of forgiveness, like I can put it in the dinive portal so every cleric everywhere knows they are in good standing. 

The second kind of response my profession elicits is, “I don’t go to church”….then a litany of spiritual places like nature, back yard coffee, the cozy sofa and what I am tempted to call golf church. I of course don’t call it “golf church” because people expect pastors to be nice. 

The third most common response I get is the person's story of deep wounding by a church or a pastor. So I listen, I hold their heartbreak, I grieve their hurt and acknowledge their pain. I can’t really but I do try to apologize on behalf of the church universal. 

The fourth most common response I receive is, “Well, I don’t believe women can be pastors.” And now that I’ve been a pastor for a while I’ve stopped engaging in this interaction and simply respond, “Well, I’m not a unicorn. I’m real. You don’t have to believe in me.” (P.S. The United Methodist Church has been ordaining women since the 1950’s.) 

Then there are the most memorable encounters. I will introduce myself as a pastor and the person will respond with some very deep, deep, deep cut into Christian tradition or  scripture and assume that I know about it. It usually starts with some kind of statement about their Christian identity and then an acknowledgment that the Bible is true because of X. And I have never heard of their X. Which is usually troubling because for them it is this essential foundation to their entire belief system. And what kind of Pastor doesn't know the essential foundation of what they perceive should be everyone's belief system. 

The Bible Is True Because…

10 years ago I was at a beautiful Christmas party in the home of a gay man and I thought surely it is safe to tell people my profession here. That was true until a young architect cornered me.

“I’m a Christian.” I nodded and he continued. “You know the Bible is true.” I wasn’t sure I knew where he was going so I nodded and he continued. “The Bible is true because it’s divisible by seven.” 

He wanted a knowing look that I couldn’t give. I smiled and tried to let him down easily, I wasn’t familiar with dividing the Bible by seven, I explained as kindly as I could and invited him to share a little more. Excitedly, he told me how you break out all the syllables in the whole Bible and it is divisible by seven. He went even further. It must be true, it must mean that God wrote it because there’s seven days in creation. 

He couldn’t believe I hadn’t learned this in seminary, “haven’t you taken classes on the Bible?” 

I smiled and said, “There’s not a lot of math in seminary.” 

He was shocked. I tried to make a joke about Shakespeare and iambic pentameter…it was not funny. So I said honestly, “I just don’t know much about this way of exploring the Bible, maybe you can tell me more. Where they are counting syllables, are they using a translation, is it in Greek? Or is it in Hebrew and how do they account for the struggle modern folks have understanding Biblical Hebrew?”

“What?” 

“Well it’s my understanding that we might not know all the vowels in Biblical Hebrew and I wonder if that impacts the number of syllables folks are counting?”

He paused and said, “what?” 

So I asked, “do you know what language folks are using when they count syllables?” 

“English.”

“Do you know what version or I mean what translation? Like NRSV or King James English or something else?”

“What?”

“The books of the Bible were not written in English, so there are different translations.” 

It’s a real downer when a pastor you just met ruins your faith at a Christmas party. The reason he thought the Bible was true was gone. Or at least severely diminished until he could get home and re-read whatever inspired him in the first place. I’m sure math is attractive, it’s solid and dependable, it can be right but here it could be wrong too. Even if math is true, I am sure it’s not what inspired me in any way to try to live Jesus’ life of justice and compassion.  

The Bible is True

Recently, I was driving behind the most fascinating truck. It wasn’t the kind of truck one may find running in and out of construction sites or hauling farm equipment, it was pretty. It had elaborate art covering the tailgate.  A lush prehistoric rainforest covered the tailgate and just right of center a was what I assumed to be a brontosaurus. I can’t be sure because I wasn’t riding with a preschooler or a paleontologist but I can tell you it looked to be pleasantly chomping on enormous leaves as vines hung from its mouth. Below the Brontosaurus in bold print, I read. 

Dinosaurs are real. 

The Bible is true.

And the personalize plate said JOB 40 15

What is happening here I wondered? 

I got Rev Chris Jorgensen on the speaker phone…because “Pastor Crashes into Dino Truck while looking up Job on her Phone” wasn’t the kind of headline I wanted to make.  “Hey are you somewhere you can look something up in the Bible?” That’s a weird greeting but I had to tell her about the tailgate and she kindly pulled up Job. There was a chapter 40 and she found verse 15.

‘Look at Behemoth,

   which I made just as I made you;

   it eats grass like an ox. 

Its strength is in its loins,

   and its power in the muscles of its belly. 

It makes its tail stiff like a cedar;

   the sinews of its thighs are knit together. 

Its bones are tubes of bronze,

   its limbs like bars of iron. 

Job = Dinosaurs?

Had he read the rest of Job I wondered? Because I would not have considered dinosaurs to be the top take away. Plus it’s hard to say that a behemoth equals a brontosaurus. Medieval Christians depicted the Behemoth like a tall hippo, sometimes more like a disproportionate ox/elephant minus the trunk. The ancient world is full of stories of monsters and giants and creatures that are strange to us; there are six winged snakes and goat men and Minotaurs, Gorgons, sea serpents and divinities with human torsos and fins in the place of feet. It is wild and strange and rich and we just don’t know enough of the context to say the behemoth is a brontosaurus that you can find in the fossil record. 

Job is a rich text of world literature. Perhaps something of a folk tale shared in different cultures all around the ancient Mesopotamian world. Job is unique, some of the words in this book aren’t found anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible and yet there are fascinating links and references echoed in the prophets or the psalms. I’m not suggesting it’s plagiarism, but there are stores in neighboring cultures that sound the same, particularly in Babylon. 

The reason Job’s story mattered to ancient people is because it grappled with suffering and raised the question, “why do bad things happen to good people.” Job is a good man. Generous, kind, just, a good neighbor and father to ten kids who probably were all valedictorian. Job is rocking life until Satan shows up. 

In this text, Satan or the Satan is not a Fallen Angel but more of a lesser deity at the table of conversation with God who in this telling of the story must be Yahweh. He is the original  “devil’s advocate” and he says to God, of course Job is so righteous you give him everything. He has wealth and power and health and happiness…shouldn’t righteousness be something expressed no matter the circumstances…see if he is still righteous if you take everything away. 

So God does. God takes a bet and the gamble ruins Job’s life. Virginia Woolf writes, “I have read the book of Job and God doesn’t come out looking so good.” She is right. God takes everything; Job loses the farm, his children die, his skin is covered in boils and he sits grieving in ash. Then his friends show up and they say all of the worst clichés. Their friend, Job, sits in a heap of ash, covered in sores, grieving ten children and they are jerks. A fantastic take away from Job may at the very least be; don’t say terrible things to your friends.

In the end Job gets what he was seeking which is a sense of connection with God once again. And in this moment he names to God this sense of injustice and God responds as if to say the question isn’t about justice or injustice but power. Who does Job think he is? Were you there when I spun the whirling planets and calmed to the chaos? Can you take on the behemoth and the Leviathan? Who do you think you are to question me?

Job recants his complaint and in the end God restores everything to him and acknowledges his righteousness. See he never curses God as Satan had predicted but rather curses the day of his birth…which friends is likely an echo from Greek culture rather than the Hebrew tradition. 

Job is powerful because his story invites us into his struggle and our own. The text isn’t afraid to raise hard questions about God‘s nature, what kind of divinity do we want to celebrate? The poetry is powerful in teaching us how we might show up when our neighbors are suffering and at the very least try not to make the same mistakes as Job’s so-called friends. Job and his wife have courage enough to raise ten more children after dwelling in the grief of losing their first ten. This is a brave and perhaps the boldest aspect of the book. This ancient tale matters today because we grapple with the same questions and struggles. We  are invited to consider our nature and God's nature and if the only thing you take away is dinosaurs are real, I grieve this because whoever taught you this robbed you of the wisdom the Biblical Narrative actually might offer. 

We’ve Been Building Walls

My friend Rev. Brian Kemp-Schlemmer has the most perfect metaphor to unpack: Dinosaurs are real so the Bible is true. We have been building walls when we should be weaving webs. Brick upon brick, we have been building walls. We have a Biblical inerrancy brick and the original sin brick and the communion brick and the God is love brick and then we start to experience faith and life and perhaps even read the Bible and our bricks start to crack. 

We learn about how important communion is, maybe we even have a special party for our First Communion and this brick seems so solid until then we go to church with our Grandma and she can’t come to the table because she is divorced and we have to wonder why? It doesn’t feel right. 

We learn the bible is true but find the instructions on how to sell your daughter into slavey or she bears attacking teens for mocking a bald prophet and that brick starts cracking. We learned about God answering prayers and healing but we prayed and our aunt still got sick and she never got better and we wondered if we prayed right; hard enough or long enough. We get this brick about salvation and damnation and then your best friend tells you how her fundamentalist Aunt tried to convert her Buddhist Grandma as she lay taking her last breaths in Japan. And that brick just doesn’t hold up anymore, wasn’t God Loving, couldn’t this woman just hold her mothers hand and take in the moment with an open heart? Something cracks. Something feels wrong and we have two choices, we acknowledge it or we find some gorilla glue to slather on the cracks. 

This is where most folks either dig in and decide Job is about Dinosaurs so the Bible can be true or they chuck the whole thing all together. But sometimes, they let it set for a moment, cracks and all and they show up here with all their broken bricks to ask for help.

“Pastor, fix my bricks.”

“Pastor, fix my bricks.” Folks pull out all these broken up pieces that don’t work and ask for new ones, the right ones that fit this time in their life. But the truth is I can’t give you a new brick. I can’t give you a feminist empowerment brick or a critical thinking skills brick. They don’t exist. I can’t give you a rainbow inclusion brick, which you in turn can use to shut up your Uncle Joe or Mrs. Plushplume who is always giving you side eye for enjoying life.

The best I can do is invite you to let go of your bricks and sit down as we weave something new together. Inclusive, empowering and liberating theology and practice exists in our tradition. But they do not serve anyone in power; they do not serve powerful churches and they certainly do not serve powerful empires so they are hard for us to find. Theologies that promote control, violence and domination have been echoed through history, their leaders have been given bigger platforms and good brick makers keep being rewarded. But we don’t have to be a part of this echo, we don’t have to choose this practice that deals shame, hurt and anxiety. 

I can’t fix your bricks and I certainly can’t give you a brick that you can use to prove your point to anyone else, even if you are still just trying to prove something to yourself. This work is intricate and requires time and passion and most of all presence. I can’t give you a new brick but we can all sit together to work on a new tapestry. We can look for the beautiful threads that give life, the stories that challenge us to grow and the nourishment we receive at the table. 

They take work and time and deep digging and courage to do the hard work of personal reflection and community growth. All I can offer is a space to sit together and pull out some beautiful new threads that we can learn to weave. This requires presence and courage. It requires the embrace of a whole new set of tools but also the willingness to let go of all the old brick making practices we have held onto for so long.

Just say No…to Bricks

When I was in college, I discerned a call to be a pastor. Everything felt right, suddenly it all clicked. I met with my pastor. He was thrilled. I met with the Baptist Pastor in my hometown, he was thrilled. I was a yes. They were a yes. This is heading the right way until I told the folks at the campus ministry I was attending. They said, “WOW.”  But not wow like that’s so great and I am so delighted with and for you. More of a non-affirming Wow. A “WOW '' you might use watching a dumpster fire and trying to figure out how to manage it. I didn’t know how to distinguish between the two because well, I wasn’t familiar with what I now call “the fundamentalist wow '' and I hadn’t considered my sense of call into ministry to be a problem for someone else to manage. I had only started going to this group because they said their would be pizza and boys but now they changed the bible student for young women to be “Why women are secondary.” Every woman received a three ring binder with all the verses that tell them to be quiet in church. There were diagrams about women being submissive to husbands and in case I wasn’t sure God was on the top of the pyramid. The first page read,

Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?     -1 Corinthians 14.34-40

I had never heard this in my life and I grew up in church. I lived across the street until I was nine. It was a safe and loving place for me, I remember the songs and the pastors and the Sunday School Teachers and honestly the only thing I had been worried about was the “cup runneth over” meaning a big spill. So I went to my Pastor and he looked at my binder for a moment. And he didn’t dump it in the trash (which I would have) rather he said, “That’s true it's in the Bible. What do you want to do with it?” He gave me books and questions and reminded me of Lydia and the woman at the well and how Mary Magdalene is really the first preacher in Easter. He didn’t tell me to quit. He told me to ask questions. So I did. And in a room full of young women between the ages of 18 and 20 it just turned into sobbing. Everyone was crying. The binder didn’t have answers to my questions. I guess the leaders hadn’t even considered there would be questions. All semester, this group which turned out to be on the FBI list of “New Religious Movements'  (a PC way of saying cult) tried to give me their bricks. 

I eventually left the Bible study and they kept finding me. They kept giving me quotes from the Bible and heavy bricks and they couldn’t take “No” for an answer. It all culminated in an invitation they slid under my door. I opened the three fold embossed invitation to read,

We request

the honor of your presence

As Debra Kay McKnight 

marries 

her Lord and Savior 

Jesus Christ

My pulse quickens even now 20 years later. There was an address for the ceremony, a country club outside of Lincoln and below the address it read, “There will be cake.”

I hid every time I was in my dorm room that week, lights off. I avoided the RA and anyone else. They knocked, I didn’t answer.  I wasn’t going to some wooded area outside of town with these folks. 

It was all over with them. But it did take me years to unpack everything I had experienced in my freshman year. It was an understanding of Christianity that felt so foreign, so strange, so wrong. They wouldn’t let young women speak in the meetings. I guess you have to tell some guy named Chad what you have to say and hope for the best. I guess I wasn't that optimistic about Chad and the heart of the teaching relied on fear and control. 

Brick Management  

In the end I had to do the work. I didn’t have to do it alone but I had to show up for help. I did the work with amazing support and help to understand how the Bible could be full of truth and love that inspired me even as Paul or someone editing his words thought women should be silent in church. Pastor Steve gave me the best gift of all, his presence. He could have tossed the binder and said that’s shit. He had the wisdom to say, “Yes that’s in there, what do you want to do with it?”

So I explored and read and wondered and prayed and thought and doubted. Just like every person of faith. The Navigators kept trying to give me their bricks and I kept learning to say no. I learned to trust that something didn’t feel right and just because it looks like a formal document and has a three ring binder doesn’t mean it really holds any authority. There is a lot to unpack and learn about in the bible, it is written in a language we don’t speak for a time we are not in. That doesn’t make it untrue as much as it makes faith work. And eventually you may have to decide that the Bible holds truth for you and that some verses and some stories are dangerous to your well-being or the life of your community. You may have to decide I don’t need a new brick to fix how I think about this verse, I just need to put it down. 

Dr. Jouette Bassler, one of my favorite New Testament Professors, writes the most liberating look into this scripture in the Women’s Bible Commentary. Not just unpacking the context or the text history to wonder if Paul really authorized this but rather yes it says “Women should be silent in church” and that means that women were speaking. You don’t have to tell women to shut up if they are not talking. This text proves women were leading and inspiring and it was challenging to people and the status quo. When the Roman Church banned women’s ordination 500 years later, it means women were still leading and guess what they still have to do one more time. Maybe the voices of these women and the people who felt wisdom in their words,  didn’t win the day, maybe their gospels got cut or their names edited out. But they were leading, speaking, praying and hosting church thanks be to God. 

Doilies 

My first year in ministry, I struggled with Easter and Chrismtas most of all. It’s a hard season to have what seminary professors might call a low Christology. My mentor, Rev. Susan Davies listened and then told me her Christology and possibly her whole faith for that matter is really more like a doily. That’s right you remember them from your Grandma's side table. The power of her metaphor rests in this simple, woven beauty. It’s strong. It holds together even as it lets the light through and can be flexible enough to make space. It’s flexible and durable and ultimately you can’t hurt anyone with it, like you can with a brick. 

When I think of Doilies, I think of my Great Grandma; my mother’s, mother’s mother. She met her husband at the Iowa School for the Deaf and they were artisans living before the social safety networks of the New Deal would have made their life less of a struggle. My Grandma’s hands made doilies and bedspreads and more, intricate and beautiful. She must have learned over and over, perhaps even making mistakes into clever patterns or learning for the next creation. A life of weaving threads together with skill and care and artistry. I don’t know much about her but I know somehow she and my grandfather fed their kids and scraped together a life. I know that she understood her art so well even as she aged and lost her sight, she still made masterpieces from threads. My Grandma would hold her hands and sign so she could feel her words. Losing her sight didn’t take her craft.

That’s what we are doing. We are learning a new craft. We are setting down all the old tools and all the old junk and all the strategies we have inherited from 2000 years of the Christian church. Because the only one who makes folks build bricks is Pharo. 

Getting comfortable with new tools.

We have to stop making bricks and we have to pick up new tools, which are going to be different, which you may find annoying or confusing or frustrating. Sometimes we may be trying and failing with new tools and new strategies together, sometimes we may even slip into old habits and later realize oh that doesn’t feel right. And the history of the church is going to make us all feel like we should probably have a Confirmation Class, First Communion,  a mission trip to Guatemala, a bell choir, a church van or a church ladies holiday tea with ham balls because that is what churches do. Like we don’t really have a church if we don’t really make bricks and frankly, as Rev. Chris Jorgensen says, “Some things should not be balled.”

And sometimes you may ask, when will we do X like we did at my last church and I may disappoint you. Because I’m not sure if we ever will. We don’t have a First Communion class or ritual with a special dress because we don’t have hard vocabulary like transubstantiation or Consubstantiation (not to leave out the Lutherans) because everyone is welcome at this table and first communion is whenever a child’s parents feels they are ready to taste the bread. We don’t have rules about what kind of flour can comprise a proper communion element and we don’t require anyone to make a confession before coming to the table. We don’t have hard vocabulary but we do have the hard work of presence. Our language for communion is Real Presence. God is present in the bread, cup, you and I and beyond and the hard part of communion isn’t something we have to learn as much as something we have to practice. How are we going to take the nourishment in to take to others?

We don’t have Serve Saturdays or mission trips to save people because service isn’t a project and mission isn’t a trip. There are plenty of churches that drive into a different zip code, do some work that makes them feel pretty good and then they drive home without a single thought as to why there is such economic disparity between the two zip codes. There are plenty of churches that organize and fundraise for mission trips to save people in other countries. Rather than approaching this journey as a chance to learn and be immersed it is a chance to make people in our image and honestly if you wouldn’t let your youth group build a playground at your church then they probably should be experimenting with their carpentry skills. Folks go help those people, take some photos and then come back without a single thought to the politics and policies that would allow ‘those people’ to become our neighbors as immigrants and refugees. 

Sometimes I think we have made ministries like these because there is safety in distance. If communion is set apart we don’t have to think about our nourishment and the ways we open our tables. If missions are a trip and service is a project we don’t have to embody faith in the everyday. If we approach our every day as a mission and service, then we are asked to speak up. In the classroom or the boardroom we may need to say, “Hey folks, Lisa said that idea already.” We don’t have to tell people we are uncomfortable with their jokes and we certainly don’t have to be the ones who will ask questions about the disparity between executive pay and custodial pay. This kind of service won’t be easy and it won’t make us popular. When we explore faith we are asked to be all in and we may certainly learn as we serve, even on a saturday but we will  approach this work with partnerships and a listening ear. Every month we have a partner, we have asked them what they need and what they want. We have been patient to grow relationships and trust. And rarely does this work make the feel good spot on the news. 

We inherit a church that isn’t practiced at listening, partnering and being in relationship. We inherit this brick making factory that turns out strong facts for us to memorize and right steps to accomplish and lists of rights and wrongs. We have a history of colonization and violence and I think it has something to do with the biggest brick in the room, atonement theology. 

Big Bad Daddy God

Atonement Theology is a way of talking about how we long to be and how the Divine longs to be at one with us. I like to think about it as “At-One-Ment” and there is a diversity of theologies and voices that speak to us over our 2000 years of Christian history. But the one that echos louder than all the others is a theology that says Jesus died for our sins so we can be at-one with God. This theology is woven through with the histories of animal sacrifices and with Greek and Roman  philosophers. But most concerning is how the empire plays a role in elevating this theology that God needs a bloody sacrifice to be in relationship with us. In Saving Paradise, Rita Nakashima Brock looks at the earliest art and the voices in our tradition, finding a time when at-one-ment wasn't about the violence of Good Friday but about the work of Baptism. This theology finds a place as Rome adopted Chritianity and is cemented into our belief not by faithful Chrisitians but by the violence of Charlemagne 800 years after Christ. Priests who could point towards violence as a sacred tool, priests who could point the community toward heaven rather than earth as it is in heaven made his way of dominating others to the point of killing whole communities in the name of Jesus Christ, not only acceptable but sacred. Those who question don’t fare well, if you get what I mean. 

But that doesn't mean we shouldn’t question. What does it say about God that someone has to die for our sins? Do we want to celebrate a God who requires a bloody death? Maybe men debating in ivory towers found it noble of Father God to sacrifice his child a thousand years ago or even 200 years ago, but we know a lot more about domestic violence and abuse these days. This theology can be found if you are looking for it, but if you are looking for something more than a Grand Canyon with you one one side and God on the other and a crucified Christ bridging the gap then you have to do a little more work. 

John 3:16 has long been a key verse to this theology, it’s not the only one but is the one I always see on signs at football games.

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. -John 3:16

But if you read it in context, Jesus says this to a religious leader, Nicodemous. Nicodemouos has come to him at night wanting to know more but cautious. He must have felt something undeniable about this teacher, so he came despite his best interests and he asked Jesus about being born again in the most stupid way, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ (John 3:4).

And Jesus, rather than rolling his eyes and using his own name in vain, unpacks the metaphor of being so transformed you are made new. Then he takes this scholar into the tradition they share saying, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 14-15). Which may seem like nothing to us, because frankly we don’t live in the same context so it is nothing to us. But to Nicodemus and Jesus, being lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness actually says something about Jesus’ understanding of salvation. 

Snakes of Salvation

This passage means something to ancient people in general because the snake is an ancient pre-patriarchal symbol of renewal, regeneration and linked with the divine. So even as patriarchal religions started bashing on snakes by making them the bad guys like the snake that tricks Eve or Medusa’s snaky hair, this hint of something ancient remains. Numbers 21 invites us into the story Jesus is referencing. Moses is in the wilderness and once again the people are getting annoyed and whiny. They are complaining the food isn’t good enough and now they have to walk around the red sea, they have pretty much been so whiny that Moses at some point wished he could just die rather than deal with these folks one more day (this is written by the priestly class and “leadership is hard” might be a subtext.) God hears the complaints and then God sends poisonous snakes to bite the people. I like to imagine Moses approaching the great Divine saying, “Ummm so thanks for listening…I didn't mean for you to kill everyone.” 

Moses prays on behalf of these people “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.’ So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live” (Numbers 21: 8-9). 

This is a weird and wild story all about healing, healing the relationship between the Divine and the people and healing people from all that poisons them. We know this symbol of healing, we see it on the crest of our medical professionals yet today. Jesus compares himself to the serpent. His presence is to bring healing and life, to draw folks out of the poinsions of the world and into communion. Salvation isn’t rooted in violence but rather in healing. It comes from the same place as Salve, the stuff your Grandma might make to heal a wound. Jesus gives himself into this healing work because “God so loved the world.” And this salvation gives life. 

This is an atonement theology about love that doesn't require a violent death. It doesn't require Jesus to die for our sins but rather reminds us that Jesus died because of human sin and with every breath we are called to bear witness to this incredible love that no more may parish and that all may have life abundant. This is an atonement theology that doesn't really fit on a pamphlet or a poster and it doesn’t make anyone afraid of God’s eternal damnation. Because God is so loving and we are called to be a part of that beautiful and wonderful and challenging practice day in and day out. I believe it is more challenging to practice and most of all  it will not help anyone in power dominate others. 

Letting Go

The Abbey can’t give you new bricks, not even beautiful ones. And one of the hardest parts might be letting go of some old bricks, they may even pop up and surprise you sometimes. But you will have to do the work of setting them down and the gift is you won’t be alone. That is what we do together as we gather, pick up new tools and start to weave.

Bricks I’m not willing to lug around:

• You are sinful, like really sinful and should feel a ton of shame about how bad you are rather than so loved that we can grow into our most beautiful beings. 

• Purity culture with its purity rings, purity balls and pledges and weird Father-Daughter Proms but most especially it’s absence only education and refusal of research based sex education. 

• Also if someone told you you are a dirty piece of tape or a broken rose because of intimacy or killing kittens because you are masterbating, you don’t need that shit. 

• Also some of  Augustine, he had a hard time dealing with his sexuality, we don’t really need to pick that shame up for him…including his understanding of Original Sin.

• Shame about your body and the phrase “The Spirit is Willing but the flesh is weak.” Shame about enjoying your body, loving your body, healing your body and knowing your body. Any sense that body and spirit are separate. 

• Shaming women for dressing in ways that tempt men. 

• God has a plan for you rather than a promise of loving presence that you can be a part of no matter what happens. 

• Prayer as magic.

• God as He. Just He.

• Women as secondary, silent little worker bees who should be obedient to their husbands. Hallmark Merch celebrating Proverbs 31.   

• You have to help save everybody from eternal damnation. 

• Also, eternal damnation. 

• Easy Absolutes. Like one prayer means salvation. Faith that fits on a pamphlet, Roman’s Road, Tracks, Creeds, Seven Deadly Sins

• Poverty tourism, colonialism, domination, mission trips, service projects and white savior complex, helping people to feel good about ourselves, deciding what other people need when we help them 

• Music that makes you feel bad about yourself or rambles on and on about how shameful you are.

• Bible as the inerrant word of God.

  • The Bible is divisible by seven 

  • Dinosaurs are real 

  • God hates (anybody)

  • That the earth is 6,000 years old and the two different creation stories in Genesis are obviously intended to replace your science class.

• The whole Left Behind series and the notion that your pastor can convince anyone that believes in the end times to consider how ancient oppressed people were maybe using a lot of metaphors because it kept them safer from Roman Authorities.  

• Anything Kirk Cameron is in, except maybe Growing Pains. 

• Watching the Passion of the Christ with your youth group.

• Militant language, like Campus Crusade, Onward Chrisitan Soldiers, Salvation Army and Prayer Warrior…just because we can do something better that doesn't make violence so normalized. 

• Being a Chrisitan means saying Yes all the time and having no boundaries, seeing self-care as selfish rather than what allows you to be present for others in the work of healing the world. 

• A divide between the sacred and the profane, like everything isn’t already holy now

• God has a plan and bad things are God testing you.

• The Devil leading you astray rather than you working through some hard shit. 

• Communion is so special other people can’t have it.

• Baptism only counts if the right words, the right person or the right amount of water were used. Also, babies need to be baptized or they might go to hell. 

• Imperial theologies that really only served powerful folks. 

• White Christian Nationalism 

• Probably 100 other ideas, notions and reminders of heavy bricks that bring us down. 

Showing up to weave something new 

The Abbey can’t give you new bricks, not even beautiful ones. All we can do is sit down together and pick up our new tools and try. It’s going to be hard. And the first row isn’t going to look great. There will be mistakes and there will be moments where we have to undo our work and start over again. These tools are ancient and yet new to us, so it’s going to be hard work, especially at first. The primary work is in showing up, being together, leaning together, listening together, practicing individually and  together.

My Great Grandma knew how to create with her hands and practiced her whole life. So much so that I know that she understood her art so well even as she aged and lost her sight, she still made masterpieces from threads. She lost her sight but knew the work by heart. That’s the work of faith that is before us. Finding the treads that empower and hold us tight, weaving something strong and flexible. Weaving a life and a community that is loving and brings healing in a world of domination and control. Weaving is sacred, text and textile come from the same root. Wisdom woven together for the next generation to embrace. There may be 200 years of egos and agendas clouding our view but that doesn't mean we can’t dive a little deeper. This wisdom is a part of us, it is a part of our tradition and we are called to draw it out, lift it up and live it out.

May it be so.  
Amen.