memorials

I saw Joe Pug play a great show here in DC not too long ago. Toward the end of his set, someone shouted out a request for this song:






Joe refused to play the song. "I can't play that song anymore," he said, "and I'll tell you why. Not because it's a bad song - it's a really good song. But my grandfather died recently, and he was buried right near here at Arlington Cemetery. I went. And since that day, I just haven't been able to play that song again. I'm sorry about that, and I just hope you can respect it."

Joe's confession was honest and raw, like his songwriting, and I heard in it more than just grief over his grandfather's passing. I heard real struggle with concepts of honor, and respect, and sacrifice.

I get that.

My church long ago agreed that our official position was, is, and will be "all war is sin." I agree with that, wholeheartedly. I have read and studied and argued the theological nooks and crannies of just war theory versus pacifism, fought back against what I heard as the million caveats toward pacifism (yes, except in the case of...; right, unless...; sure, that's what Jesus would do, but we aren't Jesus...).

And now, I work as a pastor in the belly of the beast - Northern Virginia, where government and military and government and military contractors dominate almost every square inch of life and lifestyle.  My Church of the Brethren congregation includes passionate pacifists, moderate realists, and a large number of active and retired military, government employees, and plenty of people whose livelihoods and vocation are tied securely to what President Eisenhower called the "military industrial complex." Not too long ago, Pastor Jeff and I were at a burial at Arlington National Cemetery one week and officiating at a Civil War Living History funeral the next. Military, militarism, service and selflessness, honor and respect, war and peace - they all swirl around us here, in the air we breathe, the news we read, the thick soup of life lived in overlapping circles of faith and place, trying always to be in the world at the same time we refuse to be of it.

I am not sure what it is I want to say today, except that, like Joe Pug's inability to play his very own song, pastoral pacifism is complicated to live out. I love the people of Manassas Church of the Brethren, a lot. My youth who've entered military service are constantly in my prayers, as are their parents, worried and loving and bursting with pride. Welcoming the faces of service members finally back in their pews after long months away from their families (whose joyful faces themselves are a sight to see!) is a celebratory privilege. To hear people's stories of service, struggle, and making peace with their lives - or not - is a gift.

All of that is true.

There is, of course, much more to it - where our ultimate loyalties lie, which liturgies of the world are forming us most powerfully, how we speak truth in ways of gentle love, what the military and its structures might have to teach the church, in what ways our own narrow hearts might be broken open to larger realities...

But today is Memorial Day - a holiday begun after the Civil War, a war that began here in this very town where I live and work - and so, instead of argument or condemnation, instead of blissful ignorance filled with hotdogs and pool time, I think I'd rather really remember: that life is complex and complicated. That it is possible to love people deeply, even when we disagree. That people I love have given their lives in service to something greater than themselves, that this desire to join in and be a part of greater good, larger identity, honor and meaning is a basic human inclination. That Jesus did not defend or secure himself, but neither did he condemn. And to remember the people who share their lives and their stories generously with me: it's a gift.

against my better judgement

I was baptized by a fraud.

I was only 11, so I don't really know all the scandalous details of the pastoral ethics. There was, I think, something about claiming degrees that didn't exist, secrets coming to light and, eventually, a defrocking.

What I do remember is someone asking me if I thought I needed to be baptized again, just so, you know, we could make sure it...took.

I did not think so. Once was hard enough.

In the Church of the Brethren, we practice believer's baptism. You have to be old enough to make a conscious decision to join the church, to follow Jesus. You have to be able to, as A. Mack said, count well the cost. Babies can't. Adolescents, apparently, can. As a youth minister who spends an above-average amount of time with 12 year olds, there are plenty of days I'd argue the point. But anabaptists we are, and 12 years old it is.

The fraudulent minister didn't really do a membership class for us. Years later, I and a couple of other kids did a class after church with his successor. Memory of that experience mostly consists of the inordinate amount of beef jerky we ate during those afternoons. Beef jerky and pork rinds. But for my actual baptism, there was very little instruction in counting the cost. I wasn't exactly sure what was happening. And nobody told me that once I got up there in the baptistry, changed out of Sunday dress and into old work clothes, kneeling in the water in front of the entire congregation with this guy who was rather intimidating and weird...nobody told me that I'd have to SAY anything.

But I did. The service started and I assume he said all the prescribed things - announcing who I was and that I had made this decision to be baptized, explaining why we baptize adults and not babies, etc., etc. And then, he asked me the question: "So, Dana Beth, why do you want to get baptized?"

I froze. First of all, this was not supposed to be about me having to speak in front of all these people. There would be dunking, and there would be praying, and nowhere in there would I have to SAY things. Second of all, I honestly wasn't sure why I wanted to get baptized. No one had asked me that before. It was just time, I was the right age, and there was a baptism scheduled. I'm sure I agreed to do it - no one forced me. But no one had asked me why I wanted to do it, either. Until that moment. And I had no answer.

If memory serves me, I sat silent for long minutes. The congregation knew me, knew I didn't speak up a lot, and my impression of their waiting for my answer is one of grace and encouragement. But the minister did nothing to encourage me. He knelt, silent himself, waiting. I can remember the sensation of my brain running ahead of me, knowing the answer but unwilling to relinquish it to my lips, unwilling to give it up to the public space, unwilling to share that inner certainty for fear it might be diluted. I remember the distinct tug of war between my brain and my lips, knowing I needed to say something, unwilling to speak the truth. Weird.

Eventually, truth won out - though all I could manage was a sentence fragment:

"Because I want to be a part of the church."

This Sunday, I'll be ordained as a minister of the gospel. There is all kinds of irony in that, and all kinds of sense behind it. Ordination is a calling out of leaders for the church. It is also reminder of the call we all answer in our baptism, the call to discipleship, the call to the priesthood of all believers. One of my good friends told me that ordination felt like a second baptism for her - the same sensation, the same certainty, the same grace.

I am not certain what ordination will feel like. I imagine that argument between my own private certainties and public proclamation will go on ad infinitum. But it's been twenty years, now. At the very least, I have learned some inner negotiating skill. I have learned to pay attention to that uptick in anxiety that means I ought to say the thing I'm thinking, out loud. I have learned that this is where the Spirit often works - right here in the midst of this very argument of public versus private. And my answer is still the same. If they ask me on Sunday why it is that I want to be ordained, I'll know the answer. And I'll know how to say it.

I want to be a part of the church. It's that simple. It's that ridiculous. It doesn't matter if I have to get baptized by a fraud. I don't care if this current iteration of church is a crumbling institutional nightmare. If they make me do credentialing processes twice over, well all right, then. Because I want to be a part of the church. I did then, I do now. Against odds, against logic, against - on many days - my better judgement. What more of an answer could I want?

poetics, process and prodigality

Last week, the NuDunkers got to hang out (in a HangOut, of all things) with David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw, authors of Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier. You can check out the video (where three of us become mysteriously invisible partway through!) of our conversation here:

We spent a good deal of the conversation talking about language, how it shapes us, and the ways we choose to use it. I think that's important. I love words. Language intrigues and motivates me. It's easy to dismiss an idea because of the words with which someone chooses to express it. It's even easier, for me, to become enamored, sometimes mistakenly, of a thought because of the way the words fit together. Language is powerful, and it matters.

But I don't think our conversations about conversation, talking about how we talk, using language for our own language, is really helpful in very many situations. It is too tempting to fall into a long, drawn-out exegesis of a single term and forget what important implications we were worried about in the first place. Language is meant to be used. It's slippery and fun and alive that way. I think the way to redeem language is not to talk about which words we use, but to simply USE them in creative and redemptive ways.

[And now, I shall immediately disobey my own command and proceed to talk about the words we use.]

For instance:

I recently went through a series of interviews with district committees and boards in order to be approved for ordination in my denomination. In preparation for those interviews, I answered a dozen or so essay questions about theology, practice, and call. The committees and boards got to read my answers, and ask questions about my essays.

In one answer, I used a feminine pronoun for God. I wrote that particular "her" without giving it a second thought. I didn't even know I had done it until it came up in the interview, but it turns out that "her" is the only pronoun - masculine OR feminine - that I used for God anywhere in my essays. The question wasn't even about the personhood of God - the mention was offhand, peripheral to the substance of my answer. I was just using the language I had for the concepts I was trying to express.

So. A member of the committee read my own paragraph back to me and said, "Talk to me about that." Well...okay. I explained the answer, clarified the concepts, reiterated my (stunning!) theological point. "No," he said, "that wasn't what I was asking about." Someone else at the table said "It's the pronoun. He wants to know about the pronoun."

OH! Well.

Here's my answer: God is bigger than a pronoun. In our human cognition, we need categories. We have men and we have women, and we assign sex and gender as such in order to understand the world. Humans exist in sexed bodies, in gendered understandings. God isn't human, and as such, is bigger than human gendered pronouns. I know that God is larger than my understanding, and I know that my language is inadequate. I don't know much, but I do know that I do not know much. Using feminine pronouns for God in addition to the masculine ones that we hear so often reminds me: God is bigger than I can understand.

(Sidenote: kids in Baltimore might know more about God than I do.)

And that satisfied the interviewer, even though his theological perspective and gender norms are probably far afield from what's familiar to me.

I'd much rather speak creatively, redemptively, surprisingly, nodding at the vast unknown, than talk about why the way we talk is wrong. Language is meant to be used, not analyzed. The analysis is fun, sometimes, but it doesn't effect change. It doesn't surprise people to hear yet another conversation about why the way they talk is backward. There is little redemptive in arguing about whether or not words can be redeemed. Words are meant to be spoken. Language is meant to be used.

So. The masculine language of "God's Kingdom" may be problematic. But I just don't have the energy to have that conversation again, and kingdom language is what we're gifted - through scripture, tradition, language and translation. And besides, it still MEANS something very particular, very evocative. When juxtaposed and used creatively, it's even evocatively redemptive: Imagine "kingdom." Now, imagine "peaceable kingdom." Imagine "upside down kingdom." Imagine king. Now imagine "servant king." When we move away from kingdom language, it's hard to convey the complete upheaval that scripture tells us happens when God shows up. "Realm," for instance, doesn't have an immediate connotation or image attached. I can immediately conjure up an image of "kingdom," but "realm" feels distant, amorphous, made-up. So, when I try to imagine a "new realm," I'm not sure what would make it different than the old one.

All right. Enough meta-level reflection. Let's get back to poetry, shall we?

Prodigal Christianity (a NuDunker Review)

The NuDunkers are at it again. Our next Hangout is planned for Friday, May 3, at 11am EST. We'll be joined by David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw, authors of Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier. Join us, won't ya? 

These are my initial thoughts on the book:

A few weeks ago, friend and fellow NuDunker Laura Stone summed up one of the particularities of Brethren theological understanding this way:

“…we are committed to our principles and committed to denouncing evil practices and life-denying policies, but we will throw all that out in favor of taking the most loving action toward a child of God.”  

That line struck me immediately as true, and also as the reason why neither the current trends in systematic theology nor the popular descriptions of Christian practice ever seem to sit right. In true Anabaptist+Pietist or Believer’s Church tradition, the theology that we’ve inherited is filled with inherent tensions: faith + practice, doctrine + ethics, ideas + relationships.

It’s that Anabaptist familiarity with ambiguity that shines through Prodigal Christianity, David Fitch & Geoff Holsclaw’s attempt at making a way forward between what they see as the extremes of “emergent” and “neo-reformed” thought. In so doing, they land in a third way that they call “evangelical Anabaptist,” or “radical evangelical.”

Much of Fitch and Holsclaw’s book sounds familiar. What’s most striking and most Anabaptist (if I can claim some authority for a minute on that one) about their arguments is the ways in which they seem to be borne out of their communal practices of witness and discernment with their own congregation in suburban Chicago.

Fitch and Holsclaw use particular situations from the life of their congregation from the very beginning to the very end of the book, describing disagreements about sexuality, conversation about justice, and discernment of mission that they’ve walked through together. This writing from experience as theological method is not an unfamiliar tactic. What makes this particular perspective different is that Fitch and Holsclaw write not as experts or even as individuals, but as members of a community committed to discerning God’s movement, together.

I’m not sure how to make that distinction as clear as it ought to be. This is not situational theology, doctrine dependent on circumstantial happenings. It is informed, intentional, and consistent. But it is also deeply contextual. In each chapter, Fitch and Holsclaw emphasize the relational nature of Prodigal Christianity, the primacy of living life rooted in place and committed to those neighbors who make up a life.

Discernment is the key to prodigal Christianity: “We are not arguing for one approach,” they say in their chapter on justice, “…just that we do not know how God might work until we are in the middle of discerning it.” (144).

Given their insistence on community, context and discernment, I find it interesting that Fitch and Holsclaw would choose to outline their book – and their thought – in a posture of opposition. Following their own personal journeys into and away from neo-reformed and emergent thought, each chapter critique of both camps and proposes an alternative, “third-way” forward. I’m not sure what to make of this set up, other than that it feels natural and comfortable for the authors to write in the style of their own thought progression.

Anabaptism was born of opposition, it’s true. But it is a way of thinking and living that has sought to avoid doing violence – both physical and intellectual – to any other. That does not mean conflict avoidance, of course, and perhaps Fitch and Holsclaw are attempting dialogue with the likely conversation partners they name and critique in the book.

Still, I am left wondering what a book like Prodigal Christianity would look and sound like if, instead of offering a theology in opposition to “emergent” thought or in the shadow of neo-reformed theology, it began from a positive posture of revelation, experience, joy. Certainly, we would lose some of the marketable element of disenchantment with the modern church, with which many, many people identify. And perhaps it would have to be written by others, whose journey has not led them through those communities of thought.

I am tired – bone-weary, really – of bickering over theological labeling and minutiae. I am much more interested in reports of God at work, of people being transformed, places being reclaimed, situations being made new. I’d much rather hear a life-giving gospel spoken in a life-giving way. I think Fitch and Holsclaw want this, too. Theirs is  a book full of stories just like this.

But the conversation partners with whom they are attempting to engage – Tony Jones, Scott McKnight, James K.A. Smith, among others – seem to be more interested in the bickering than in the practice and discovery. (That is probably a bit unfair. I actually think these guys who find themselves in both theological camps, emergent as well as neo-reformed, are struggling mightily with their theories to make them wider and more generous. But that is for another post.)

Anabaptists have never been particularly good at evangelism – who really wants to join a group famous for getting killed and martyred? Instead, we have a history of being a quiet people, content to live out a faith that makes its mark in humble service, attempting to remain more committed to the painfully slow movement of Kingdom transformation than we are co-opted by the lure of popularity, power, money. How do you live this way AND be in conversation with those enjoying the biggest book sales, most blog hits, and popular theological influence?

I don’t know the answer to that question. I DO think it will become more and more relevant as Anabaptism intrigues more and more Christians fed up with the structures of Christendom. I’m grateful to Fitch and Holsclaw, both for their theology AND for their attempts at humble, faithful conversation in its wake. May it continue.

for lots of people

April 21, 2013

Manassas Church of the Brethren

Acts 9:36-43

6 Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas.* She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. 37At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. 38Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, ‘Please come to us without delay.’ 39So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. 40Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, ‘Tabitha, get up.’ Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. 41He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. 42This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. 43Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.

Storyteller Donald Davis tells a story about his father, one of seven brothers, all who died relatively early in life, all of heart attacks. Donald’s father was the only remaining brother, the only one who not yet succumbed to heart problems. One day, when Donald was only 28 himself, he got a call from his cousin, Kay, telling him that his father, Joe Davis, had died – of a heart attack. Shocked, Donald began making all the necessary preparations – telling his wife and children, packing bags and readying the family for the trip to his hometown. And he started grieving – remembering all the unasked questions, the stories he’d never get to hear, the fatherly advice he wouldn’t get. “Oh, I wish I’d asked him this,” he thought, or “Why didn’t I ever get him to tell me about that?”

When they were all finally ready, Don felt anxious, hurried: “If I had left as soon as I got the call, we would have been there by now!” he thought. Realizing that his family must be wondering where he and his kids were, he called his father’s house to let them know he was on his way.

The phone rang, and someone picked up.

“This is Joe Davis,” Donald’s father said.

Stunned, all Donald could get out was “BUT, you’re supposed to be DEAD!”

It turns out that another man by the name of Joe Davis had died of a heart attack, and a family member – also by the name of Kay, Donald’s cousin, had requested the operator call “Donald Davis.” But the operator, unknowingly, got the wrong Don Davis.

Now, Donald Davis travels the country telling stories, many of them about his father. But he opens his shows with this confession: all the stories he tells today are ones he learned AFTER that scary day when he was 28 and thought his father had died.

Stories like this - stories of death, grief, resurrection and second chances are stories that almost can’t fail to get our attention. We’ve all brushed up against death, we’ve all experienced grief, and there are surely very few of us who don’t wish for a second chance, a do-over, just one more day, one more opportunity. Grief and loss are hallmarks of human experience. They’re universal. And they hurt.

Our passage for today hits us right in that soft spot. A beloved friend and disciple, Tabitha, has fallen ill and died. It’s clear from the way that Luke writes about her that Tabitha was one of the good ones – she’s a woman identified as a disciple, a rare thing in itself. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity, and while we’re not exactly sure what those might have been, we do know that her good works touched the lives of many friends. At her bedside, a crowd has gathered to mourn her passing. The crowd, it seems, is comprised of widows who have been recipients of Tabitha’s kindness. In their weeping and wailing and grieving, they are waving the clothes that Tabitha had woven for them. Her good works must have been something like clothing the naked, caring for the widows, sharing God’s abundance with those in need.

Tabitha was one of the good ones. And her friends, gathered around her body, just couldn’t believe that she was gone. They weren’t sure what to do, but they knew that Peter was in the area, and they sent messengers to him. “Peter! Come quick! Tabitha fell ill, and died! Hurry!”

Something in that conversation strikes me as odd. Peter’s visit to Tabitha’s home seems, at first, like any pastoral visit. Peter was a leader, a teacher, and a healer. Of course they would send for him in their time of grief – sitting with grieving families, praying over the deceased, offering comfort and presence in times of great upheaval…it’s what pastors do. It makes sense that the gathered friends would call their pastor to join them.

But still, something is strange, here. If Tabitha, their friend and fellow disciple, has already died, why do the messengers run after Peter with such urgency? This is not like the other stories, stories where a centurion’s daughter is sick, or where Jesus’ friend Lazarus is in the process of dying…Tabitha has already died. She is gone. Her friends are grieving. And yet, something compels these disciples to run fast for Peter, and to insist that he come home with them immediately. What is it that’s so urgent? Why do they think Peter’s haste will make any difference, now?

One of my favorite ways to read scripture is with our Jr. Highs here at Manassas. The Jr. Highs are one DRAMATIC group, and they will jump at any chance to flex their acting muscles. On Wednesday night, we acted out this passage during Jr. High RAP. Olivia was Tabitha, and she got to practice her dramatic fainting and impeccable death scene. Anna and Paige were the quintessential weeping widows, wailing in grief. Nick and Travis were stellar messengers, running from the deathbed to find Peter in Joppa. And Tristen played Peter with great passion, praying and pronouncing Tabitha risen from the dead with the gravitas of a true apostle.

After we acted out the scene, complete with wailing and screaming, running and praying, death and resurrection, I asked the Jr. Highs what they made of the story. We’ve already celebrated Jesus being resurrected, I said, so why are we still reading stories about people coming back from the dead? What does it mean that this random woman (who, though she was a good, devoted disciple, loved by many and mourned by all, has never been mentioned in scripture before this point) ALSO gets resurrected? What do we make of that? I asked.

And these guys, being the exegetical experts that they are, reminded me: The point of the story is that resurrection is for lots of people.

Hear that? Resurrection is for lots of people.

It turns out that the story of resurrection doesn’t end at Easter. It turns out, when we keep reading, when we keep paying attention, that Easter is only the beginning. Resurrection doesn’t stop with Jesus. All those lilies and tulips, those white cloths draped on the cross, the triumphal songs and shouts of joy that we used to celebrate just a few weeks ago…it turns out, those celebrations are not just for Jesus. Those celebrations are signs of an entirely new way of living in the world, a way of living that refuses to see death as the final word, that refuses to give up or resign to the world’s patterns of brokenness.

Resurrection is for lots of people.

I think that’s why the disciples were in such a hurry to get to Peter. I think they had, somehow, realized that Jesus’ resurrection was only the beginning. If death no longer has the final say, then even in grief and death we can hold out hope. Even though their friend Tabitha had already died, their hope was so large and so compelling that even death couldn’t stop them from doing all that they could to heal her.

And the result of their persistent faith – their love and grieving and running to find Peter – the result was another resurrection. Because they had seen it happen, because they believed it to be possible, because they had been convinced and compelled by the power of God to triumph even over death, they acted in ways that opened up a space for resurrection to take place.

How often do we act as if resurrection is a possibility? Not just in situations of physical death, but in times of all kinds of pain and loss. What would it look like to enter into a time or a season of loss with the certainty that even this pain, even this grief, will not be the end of the story? I think it looks a lot different than the status quo, a lot less anxious and fearful than what we experience on the news and in the culture and on the street in America today. Expecting resurrection changes how we do everything, how we think about anything.

The poet Wendell Berry has a poem called Manifesto: The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front. It’s a poem about how he hopes to live, how living life with the assumption of resurrection changes how we ought to behave. It goes like this:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Resurrection is for lots of people. But what does it look like to practice resurrection?

What would it look like to walk through persistent illness expecting resurrection?

What would it mean to weather the loss of relationship – divorce or betrayal, distance or change – believing that beyond the loss lies some kind of relational resurrection?

How would we act if we encountered change with the compelling hope that our story leads us through loss toward new life?

Who would we send for, if we believed every situation was redeemable? Who would we run after to ask for help? What would our prayers be?

Practicing resurrection seems a little overwhelming. If resurrection is for lots of people, then it is also for lots of situations. And there are plenty of situations in need of resurrection. We’ve seen more than our fair share of them this week alone: bombings in Boston, explosions in Texas, grieving our own friends here at home. We need resurrection. To practice it seems both necessary and just a little impossible.

But once again, our Jr. Highs have some advice for us. They reminded us that resurrection is for lots of people. And when they said that Wednesday night, my next question for them was “Yeah, but HOW does that happen? How do we get to experience resurrection?”

And Tristen, who had played Peter in our drama, who had knelt down by the body of poor, dead Tabitha, said a prayer and then commanded her to get up, to live again, to convince her friends of the power of new life, answered.

How does resurrection happen, Tristen?

“One prayer at a time.”

Sometimes, in weeks like this one, where the world can feel full of tragedy and fear, life feels overwhelming. It can seem like violence and death are ruling the day – or at least the airwaves. But this is the story of the gospel: resurrection happens. Resurrection is possible. Resurrection is for lots of people.

And here’s the thing about resurrection: it doesn’t circumvent death and grief. It doesn’t jump over them, or erase them, or make them magically disappear. This gospel of resurrection is not a miraculous, last-minute deathbed recovery. It is not, like Donald Davis’ story, a case of mistaken identity. This gospel of resurrection leads us straight through pain, death and grief. There is no way around it. Tabitha actually died. Jesus was actually crucified.

Joy comes in the morning, the psalmist tells us. Resurrection happens, next. And it is that hope that gives us strength to walk through valleys, to grieve together, to share in one another’s pain, knowing all the while that we live in a world where death has been defeated, where resurrection comes next, where we are all always being transformed.

So. When it feels overwhelming, when the losses pile up, what do we do? We hold out hope. We work for the kingdom. And we pray – one prayer at a time. One person, one situation, one moment, one prayer at a time. Because we know this: death is not the end of the story. Even Easter isn’t the end of the story. Resurrection is for lots of people. Resurrection is for us, and for our world. One prayer at a time.

Amen.

make some space

This morning began with a congregant's obituary, remembrance of hometown tragedy at Virginia Tech, and fresh horror from Boston. Grief stinks, and public, communal grief is even worse. Everybody does it differently, and when we're all doing it together, we inevitably annoy and offend one another. So. Instead of scripture memes or stale platitudes, here's some space where I found solace during the recent season - prayer stations from our evening Lenten worship at Manassas CoB. I think, maybe, that even when we can't understand together or even grieve together, we can still make some room for one another.

WORLD

Take some time to silently focus on the many needs of the world. When you are ready, take one or more beads and place them on the locations on the map that have stirred your prayers today.

LIGHT

Who needs your prayer? Light a candle to hold them in God’s light and God’s love.

PRAYER WALL

Prayer can be a simple “Help me” or “Thank you.” Write your simple prayers on a post-it – green for “Help” and pink for “Thanks” – and share them on the wall.

IDENTITY

How do you want to be known? What makes you who you are? Write a word or phrase here.

RESURRECTION

What do you hope for this season of Easter? Where are you looking for resurrection? Write your hope on a slip of paper, attach it to a flower, and place it on the cross.

lament

One of the lessons of Holy Saturday: God is dead.

I don't know, entirely, what that means. I hate Holy Saturday, and feel perfectly incapable of doing much of anything on this day. Every year, it's the same.

There's a transitive property about this day: Holy Saturday as a model of Christian life, caught between the already and the not yet, well aware of the death of things and yet still hoping against hope for their resurrection, leaning, working, striving toward new life.

Surely, that is a faithful posture to take in the world. Surely, that is a good way to live one's Christian life, to spend days in service, mission, and committed activity.

But on this actual Holy Saturday, I can't bring myself to DO anything. I do not want to serve. I do not want to strive. I do not want to work my fingers to the bone for the sake of the Kingdom.

On Holy Saturday, all I am capable of is lament. That's all I've got.

Surely, the disciples felt this way. Surely Jesus' friends spent this day in mourning, confusion, weeping. Can't we also learn to lament? Isn't this also a faithful posture to take in the world?

God is dead. And death is all around us. I can name seventeen encounters of death and dying I've had this week alone: illness, addiction, abuse, war, betrayal, greed, abandonment. Sin abounds. Brokenness rules the day.

Tomorrow, things will be different. I know the story. But today is not tomorrow. And thank God, it is also not yesterday. God died yesterday. God will rise tomorrow. And indeed there will be time, in those days after, for working and leaning and striving and serving.

But today...

Can't we just admit it? Can't we give ourselves an hour or two to grieve? Can't we find some space to call upon the Psalms, like Jesus did himself? Can't we just lament?

God is dead. Lord, have mercy.

60 Years

My grandparents, Bobby and JoJo, marked their 60th wedding anniversary last week, and yesterday was the big celebration. Over 100 people came to celebrate them. I couldn't be there, but wrote this little essay to share.

My dad always keeps pen and paper by his living room armchair, in order to keep tabs on his running List. The List isn’t about just one thing or another, it’s more of a List of General Purposes, or, as he’d probably say, “It’s the L of GP, baby!”

I’m pretty sure this practice is, if not hereditary, at least passed down through familial practice. My dad’s dad keeps his own list, by his own living room armchair, in his own General Purpose way.

On their lists: home improvements, vacation ideas, life goals, books to be read. Thoughts about tax season, which flowers to plant, articles to send to their children or grandchildren. Sit down in one of their chairs, glance at the list, and you’ll probably get a pretty good idea of Life At The Moment.

My grandmother does her own list-making, but hers aren’t so easily accessible. She doesn’t write about possibilities - what she wants to do or see, but instead documents reality as it is, right this moment. JoJo has lists of every book she’s ever read, recipe notes for everything she’s ever cooked, wardrobe highlights so that she doesn’t wear the same outfit to the same vacation the next year, and travel diaries with exact times of each and every pit stop and restaurant meal choices for every individual in the party.

It runs in the family. I am a list-maker myself, as is my sister (Her preferred media: post-it notes.  Mine: pen scrawls on the back of my hand). And we’re coming upon a pretty list-worthy occasion: my grandparents, Bobby and JoJo, have been married for 60 entire years this month. So, in the family spirit, I tried to make an occasion-marking list, documentary like my grandma and aspirational like my grandpa. But I ran aground after only a couple of bullet points. The trick is, six decades of love and life together can’t be neatly numbered into a representative document. I can tell you that, and I’ve only been around to witness the latter half.

I could tell you that JoJo and Bobby have been married for 60 years, or 720 months, or 21,900 days, or 525,600 hours, or 31,536,000 minutes. The calculator on my iPhone actually refuses to calculate the seconds, there are so many of them. I can tell you that in those years, they had 2 children, gained 2 children-in-law, 4 grandchildren, 2 grandchildren-in-law, 2 (almost 3) great-grandchildren, and several great-granddogs. But really, the accounting stops there. And even those numbers don’t tell you all that those moments and those relationships involved.

They don’t tell you how many elementary school band concerts and basketball games and golf lessons having all that family translates into. They don’t make mention of the oysters fried every December for my dad’s birthday, the coconut cake made every Christmas or the chocolate chip cookies sent in innumerable care packages to kids off at college.

Those numbers don’t include the years and years of caregiving – for JoJo’s mom, Granny Shaver and for Bobby’s, Granny Etta. They don’t tell you how JoJo was next of kin, social security payee, caretaker and nightgown buyer for her maiden Aunt Anne, a cranky old lady who saved her pennies for the great-great nieces and nephews and spent the twilight of her life alone in a tiny smoke-scented apartment in Roanoke. There’s no way to know from those numbers that my grandparents’ marriage included an extended bout of breast cancer, a triple bypass and a hip replacement, not to mention all those hospital visits for kids, grandkids, and friends. When I had some surgery a few years ago, my grandparents showed up at the hospital at 6am to wait with me during pre-op. They were still there hours later when I woke from anesthesia.

Those numbers can’t begin to tell the stories of friendships that have spanned decades – from an illicit trip to North Carolina for the sneaky wedding of Bobby’s cousin Doug to golfing buddies who’ve known each other since high school; quilting groups and Keenagers, traveling friends and the regular Saturday breakfast crowd. Go anywhere – near or far – with my grandparents, and you’ll be hard-pressed to meet a stranger. JoJo can tell you the genealogy of any given person back to the third generation: “Well, that’s Molly, and her sister was Dolly, but Dolly had a daughter, you know, Polly, who married my third cousin’s uncle…” And Bobby, well, it takes him under a minute to know your full name, your hometown, and your favorite football team. I’ve witnessed the two of them make friends with beach lifeguards, restaurant wait staff, nurses, cashiers, fellow airplane passengers, museum guards, street vendors, the guy behind them in the grocery store line. And it’s not false friendship, either. They are genuinely happy to know you.

My friends love my grandparents, universally. Anyone whose met them, home with me from college or hosting them in my Atlanta apartment, falls immediately in love. When they visited me here in Manassas, they charmed the retiree’s Sunday school class in such a way that one man came up to me weeks later and said, “Well, when I met your grandparents I just knew…there was something special. They were good, good people.”

It’s true.

The number 60 doesn’t tell you how many cards they’ve sent – to friends or grandkids or fellow church people, telling them to get well or congratulations or happy birthday or just – thinking of you. It doesn’t tell you how much of their lives they’ve given away – money and time and advice, how much of themselves has been spent in service to the church, to their family, to their community.

And the number 60 won’t tell you that Bobby no longer uses JoJo’s name in conversation, because feminine pronouns no longer need refer to any other woman. He’ll start in on a sentence these days, without any prior referent, just “we’ll have to see what She wants to do,” or “well, you’ll have to ask Her.” It’s as if, after all these years, he knows that no one would even need to consider another Her as the woman he’s talking about. And we don’t. We know. It’s Her.

60 years is a long time, and my grandparents have filled those years with life well lived – in love, in service, in faith. It’s a gift.

Love you lots, Bobby and JoJo. Thanks for being who you are, for giving us the gift of your love, and for living life in such a beautifully rooted way.