We Create Exclusion or Belonging

Richard Rohr describes how exclusion works. Everything does not belong when people and systems project their evil elsewhere:  

If our egos are still in charge, we will find a “disposable” person or group on which to project our problems. People who haven’t come to at least a minimal awareness of their own shadow side will always find someone else to hate, fear, and exclude. Hatred holds a group together much more quickly and easily than love and inclusivity, I am sorry to say. [1] 

Sadly, the history of violence and the history of religion are almost the same history. When religion remains at an immature level, it tends to create very violent people who ensconce themselves on the side of the good, the worthy, the pure, the saved. They project all their evil somewhere else and attack it over there. [2] 

Something has to be sacrificed. Blood has to be shed. Someone has to be blamed, attacked, tortured, imprisoned, or killed. Sacrificial systems create religions and governments of exclusion and violence. Yet Jesus taught and modeled inclusivity and forgiveness! 

As long as we try to deal with evil by some other means than forgiveness, we will never experience the real meaning of evil and sin. We will keep projecting, fearing, and attacking it over there, instead of “gazing” on it within ourselves and weeping over it.  

The longer we gaze, the more we will see our own complicity in and profitability from the sin of others, even if it’s the satisfaction of feeling we are on higher moral ground. Forgiveness demands three new simultaneous “seeings”: I must see God in the other, I must access God in myself, and I must experience God in a new way that is larger than an “Enforcer.” [3] 

Author Cole Arthur Riley, creator of Black Liturgies, considers the toll that exclusion takes:  

Exclusion operates by the same rule of mutuality as welcome, for it harms both the excluded and the excluder. If you are the hands of exclusion for long enough, you learn acceptance only at the hands of someone else’s exile. You learn belonging as competition, not restoration. It is also a kind of restlessness, for the energy you expend forbidding others to walk through the door of community is only matched by the energy you expend competing to stay inside yourself. This is maybe more dangerous; no one ever perceives the doorkeeper as needing an invitation themselves.… 

I wonder if God feels as alienated from us as we do from [God]. Sometimes, it cracks me up to think of the stories that describe Christ just boldly inviting himself over to people’s houses for dinner. Roaming around telling people to stop everything and follow him. Multiplying food, but making everyone sit down in groups to eat it. He knew how to make his own belonging. Do we? [4] 

[53] Goodness

The Father was all in all to the Son, and the Son no more thought of His own goodness than an honest man thinks of his honesty. When the good man sees goodness, he thinks of his own evil: Jesus had no evil to think of, but neither does He think of His goodness: He delights in His Father’s. “Why callest thou Me good?”

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 29). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Holding the Paradox

This week, the Daily Meditations focus on the fourth of CAC’s Seven Themes of an Alternative Orthodoxy:  

Everything belongs. No one needs to be punished, scapegoated, or excluded. We cannot directly fight or separate ourselves from evil or untruth. Evil becomes apparent when exposed to the Truth. [1] 

Richard Rohr affirms that “everything belongs,” both the good and the bad, and it takes discernment to learn how to hold the paradox: 

The spiritual gift of discernment (1 Corinthians 12:10) shows how seemingly good things can be recognized as sometimes bad things, and seemingly bad things can also be seen to bear some good fruit. Darn it! This kind of discernment invites people into yes/and thinking, rather than simplistic either/or thinking. This is the difference between merely having correct information and the true spiritual gift of wisdom (1 Corinthians 12:8).  

Once we have learned to discern the real and disguised nature of both good and evil, we recognize that everything is broken and fallen, weak and poor—while still being the dwelling place of God: you and me, our countries, our children, our marriages, and even our churches, mosques, and synagogues. That is not a put-down of anybody or anything, but actually creates the freedom to love imperfect things. As Jesus told the rich young man, “God alone is good” (Mark 10:18). We cannot wait for things to be totally perfect to fall in love with them, or we will never love anything. Now, instead, we can love everything! [2] 

Jesus uses a number of mixture images to illustrate the tension of our own mixture of good and evil. They seem to say this world is a mixture of different things, and unless we learn how to see, we don’t know how to separate; we get lost in the weeds and can’t see the wheat. In one parable, servants ask, “Should we pull out the weeds?” Jesus responds, “No. Let them both grow together until the harvest.” Then, at the end of time, he will decide what is wheat and what is weed (Matthew 13:24–30). But we are a mixture of weed and wheat, and we always will be. As Martin Luther put it, we are simul justus et peccator[at once justified and a sinner], each of us simultaneously saint and sinner. That’s the mystery of holding weed and wheat together in our one field of life. It takes a lot more patience, compassion, forgiveness, and love than aiming for some illusory perfection that usually cannot see its own faults. The only true perfection available to us is the honest acceptance of our imperfection. 

If we must have perfection to be happy with ourselves, we have only two choices. We can either ignore our own evil (deny the weeds) or we can give up in discouragement (deny the wheat). But if we put aside perfection and face the tension of having both, then we can hear the good news with open hearts. [3] 

Oneness with Everyone

If “everything belongs,” then no one needs to be punished, scapegoated, or excluded. [1] God has loving room for all of us—even those we consider enemies. Author Lerita Coleman Brown considers the mystic Howard Thurman’s (1899–1981) insistence that everyone is a child of God.   

The understanding that I am a holy child of God contains within itself often unrealized consequences. If I embrace this notion about myself, I must accept its corollary: that is, if I am a holy child of God, then so is everyone else. This sentiment is echoed in an interview in which Howard’s daughter, Olive Thurman Wong, bemoaned the fact that people didn’t fully comprehend the importance of oneness in her father’s life and work. “‘Oneness’ is an easy enough thing to bandy about,” writes Thurman scholar Liza Rankow, who interviewed Wong. “It is even an easy thing to profess, until we realize that it must include not only the people we like and agree with, not only those to whom we are sympathetic, but also those whom we view as abhorrent (whatever side of a political position we may hold). We don’t get to choose who we are one with—it’s everybody.” [2] 

Sometimes the faces of the people I detest flash across my mind and heart…. How can they possibly be holy children of God? Howard Thurman answers this question in the final chapter of Jesus and the Disinherited. Pointing to the centrality of the love ethic in Jesus’s teachings, he observes the types of people Jesus befriended who, by all accounts, should have been absolute enemies. Thurman points to the necessity of extinguishing bitterness within the heart in order to recognize adversaries as holy children of God. [3] 

Thurman emphasizes Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies as a radical challenge to love as if everyone belongs: 

Jesus, however, approaches life from the point of view of God. The serious problem for him had to be: Is the Roman a child of God? Is my enemy God’s child? If he is, I must work upon myself until I am willing to bring him back into the family.… If God loves them, that binds me. Can it be that God does not know how terrible my enemy is? No, God knows them as well as he knows himself and much better than I know them. It must be true, then, that there is something in every human that remains intact, inviolate, regardless of what he [or she] does. I wonder! Is this true? Is there an integrity of the person, so intrinsic in its value and significance that no deed, however evil, can ultimately undermine this given thing? If a person is of infinite worth in the sight of God, whether they are saint or sinner, whether they are a good person or a bad person, evil or not, if that is true, then I am never relieved of my responsibility for trying to make contact with this worthy thing in them. [4] 

[52] The Body

It is by the body that we come into contact with Nature, with our fellowmen, with all their revelations to us. It is through the body that we receive all the lessons of passion, of suffering, of love, of beauty, of science. It is through the body that we are both trained outward from ourselves, and driven inward into our deepest selves to find God. There is glory and might in this vital evanescence, this slow glacier like flow of clothing and revealing matter, this ever uptossed rainbow of tangible humanity. It is no less of God’s making than the spirit that is clothed therein.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 28-29). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 28). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Episcopal priest and author Adam Bucko reminds us of the Gospel call to solidarity with the poor, who reveal Christ:  

The Christian spiritual tradition is very clear about how we are to relate to those who are fragile, who have been rejected and forgotten, and who are standing on the bread lines waiting for food. We are to see them as Christ and approach them with the same kind of reverence and willingness to say yes. This identification of Christ with the poor is such that an old Anglo-Catholic saying, often cited in the context of the slum priest movement of the 1920s, tells us that unless we are willing and able to see Christ on the highways and byways of our cities in those who are rejected, homeless, and poor, we have no business talking about meeting him in the Eucharist. Our faith cannot be complete unless we have connected the two. As one theologian said, “The real presence of Christ, which is hidden in the bread and wine, is visibly manifested in his social presence in the poor who are the sign and image of his ongoing passion in the world.” [1] 

Bucko visited a refugee camp in Greece and draws a parallel between the “Good Shepherd” Jesus and those who act in solidarity with refugees: 

In Jesus’s Parable of the Lost Sheep, we meet the Christ who is the good shepherd, who, like the thousands of volunteers who rescued those refugees from the freezing waters of the Mediterranean Sea, is there searching for those who are lost, in need of being wrapped in literal or metaphorical blankets of motherly love. We meet the One who is an open gate, not unlike the gate of that refugee camp, which made the passage to safety and care possible for so many. I love how frankly Matthew’s Gospel puts it:  

What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost (Matthew 18:12–14).

Indeed, Christ comes to us not only in prayer, not only in beautiful celebrations like those that we experience in church on the great festivals and holidays, but also in those who are hungry and thirsty for our presence and our love, in those who ask us for help. And, “our attitude towards them, or rather our commitment to them, will indicate whether or not we are directing our existence in conformity with the will of the Father.” [2] They both open the door to God’s house for us and they give us a chance to become the door for others.  

______________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Listens

Everlasting God, You, the Creator of the universe, are with me and for me. You are all I need! When I feel as if something is lacking, it’s because I’m not connecting with You at a deep level. You offer me abundant Life. Help me respond to Your abundance by receiving Your blessings gratefully—trusting in Your provision and refusing to worry about anything. I’m learning that it’s not primarily the adverse events in my world that make me anxious; the main culprit is my thoughts about those events. When something troubles me, my mind starts working strenuously to take control of the situation—striving to bring about the result I desire. My thoughts close in on the problem like ravenous wolves. Determined to make things go my way, I forget that You are in charge of my life. At such times, I desperately need to switch my focus from the problem to Your Presence. Teach me how to stop my anxious striving and wait for You—watching in hope to see what You will do. You are God my Savior! In Your redeeming Name, Jesus, Amen

ISAIAH 41:10 NLT; Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand. 

ROMANS 8:31–32;  What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

JOHN 10:10 ESV; The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 

MICAH 7:7; But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 198). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Lord,  
plunge me deep into a sense of sadness  
at the pain of my sisters and brothers….
that I may learn again to cry as a child 
until my tears baptize me 
into a person who touches with care 
those I now touch in prayer….  
Amen. —Ted Loder, “I Remember Now in Silence,” Guerrillas of Grace  

Almost twenty years ago, Richard Rohr wrote an essay for CAC’s newsletter Radical Grace to articulate the Center’s position to stand at the margins in solidarity with others.  

Jesus consistently stands with the excluded: outsiders, sinners, and poor people. That is his place of freedom from every local culture, his unique way of critiquing all self-serving culture, and his way of standing in union with the suffering of the world—all at the same time. That is his form of world healing. 

It’s rather obvious that Jesus spends most of his ministry standing with the ones accused of unworthiness, the so-called bad people, the demonized. It is actually rather scandalous how the only way he tries to change them is by loving and healing them, never accusing anybody but the accusers themselves. His social program is solidarity. As Jesuit Greg Boyle, the street priest in Los Angeles, says, “Jesus stands with the demonized until the demonizing stops.” Father Greg insists this is Jesus’ primary form of justice work, which is why Jesus’ “strategy” is always so hard to pinpoint and name. His justice strategy is solidarity—even more than working or fighting for justice per se, which disappoints many activists. Mary does the same by standing at the foot of the cross. He and she stand with the pain, to call us all to lives of communion with the world’s suffering. This is so much harder than merely trying to fix it, understand it, control it, or even localize it. Only love can do this, and really only God’s love.  

I am sure you see how Jesus’ insight has led us to our emphasis on contemplation and spiritual conversion here at the CAC, over pure and simple activism. If universal kinship, solidarity, communion with God, with ourselves, and with the rest of the world, is daily experienced and lived, we do have a very grounded plan and runway for peacemaking, justice work, social reform, civil and human rights—but now from a very positive place, where “I and the Father are one” [John 10:30]. 

This demands our own ongoing transformation, our changing places, and even a new identity, as Jesus shows in his great self-emptying (Philippians 2:6–7). He stood in solidarity with the problem itself, hardly ever with specific answers for people’s problems. This was his strategy and therefore it is ours. It feels like weakness, but it finally changes things in very creative, patient, and humble ways. Such solidarity is learned and expressed in two special places—contemplation and actions of communion with human suffering.  

This is our name and our task, and it comes from watching Jesus.

_______________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Listens

Majestic Jesus, I come joyfully into Your Presence, my Prince of Peace. I love to hear You whispering the words You spoke to Your fearful disciples: “Peace be with you!” I rejoice that Your Peace is always with me because You are my constant Companion. When I keep my focus on You, I can experience both Your Presence and Your Peace. You are worthy of all my worship—for You are King of kings, Lord of lords, and Prince of Peace. I need Your Peace each moment in order to accomplish Your purposes in my life. I confess that sometimes I’m tempted to take shortcuts—to reach my goals as quickly as possible. But I’m learning that if the shortcuts involve turning away from Your peaceful Presence, I must choose the longer route. Lord, please help me to keep walking with You along the path of Peace—enjoying the journey in Your Presence. In Your worthy Name, Amen

ISAIAH 9:6; For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called. Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

JOHN 20:19; “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. ”

PSALM 25:4 NKJV; Show me Your ways, O Lord; Teach me Your paths.

LUKE 1:79; to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” 

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 197). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Divine Solidarity with Suffering

Father Richard believes that Jesus’ cross reveals God’s solidarity with suffering:  

When we try to live in solidarity with the pain of the world—and don’t spend our lives running from necessary suffering—we will encounter various “crucifixions.” Many say pain is physical discomfort, but suffering comes from our resistance, denial, and sense of injustice or wrongness about that pain. I know that is very true for me. This is the core meaning of suffering on one level or another, and we all learn it the hard way. Pain is the rent we pay for being human, it seems, but suffering is usually optional. The cross was Jesus’ voluntary acceptance of undeserved suffering as an act of total solidarity with the pain of the world. Reflecting on this mystery of love can change our lives.  

I think the acceptance of that invitation to solidarity with the larger pain of the world is what it means to be “a Christian.” It takes great inner freedom to be a follower of Jesus. His life is an option, a choice, a call, a vocation for us, and we are totally free to say yes or no or maybe. We do not have to do this to make God love us. That is already taken care of. We do it to love God back and to love what God loves and how God loves! We either are baptized “into his death” and “resurrection” (Romans 6:3; Philippians 3:10–12), or Christianity is largely a mere belonging system, not a transformational system that will change the world.  

The “crucified God” as personified in Jesus revealed that God is always on the side of suffering wherever it is found, including the wounded and dying troops on both sides in every kind of war, and both the victims and the predators of this world; frankly, this pleases very few people. Our resistance to suffering is an entire industry now, perhaps symbolized by the total power of the gun lobby and the permanent war economy in America, the fear of any profit sharing with the poor, or the need to be constantly entertained. Maybe that is why some have said that the foundational virtue underlying all others is courage (cor-agere, an action of the heart). It takes immense courage to walk in solidarity with the suffering of others, and even our own. [1] 

If God is somehow participating in human suffering, instead of just passively tolerating it and observing it, that changes everything—at least for those who are willing to “gaze” contemplatively. All humble, suffering souls learn this from God, but the Christian Scriptures named it and revealed it publicly and dramatically in Jesus.  

We can’t do it alone at all, but only by a deep identification with the Crucified One and crucified humanity. Jesus then does it in us, through us, with us, and for us. Then we have become a “new creation” (Galatians 6:15) and a very different kind of human being. [2] 

[52] The Body

It is by the body that we come into contact with Nature, with our fellowmen, with all their revelations to us. It is through the body that we receive all the lessons of passion, of suffering, of love, of beauty, of science. It is through the body that we are both trained outward from ourselves, and driven inward into our deepest selves to find God. There is glory and might in this vital evanescence, this slow glacier like flow of clothing and revealing matter, this ever uptossed rainbow of tangible humanity. It is no less of God’s making than the spirit that is clothed therein.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 28-29). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The Spirituality of Solidarity

Barbara Holmes reflects on solidarity and this year’s Daily Meditations theme The Prophetic Path:  

I’m reminded of the power of the prophetic path to create solidarity where it least seems possible, and to enhance compassion for the suffering of others and the suffering of the world. But what are we to do about the troubles of the world? Well, Jesus calls us—his brash and troublesome disciples who question, doubt, and continually fail him—to take up the mantle of prophecy, to discern the signs of the times, and to be an ever-present balm in a troubled world.… 

Physicist Neil de Grasse Tyson reminds us that our solidarity is not a choice, it’s a reality. He says we’re all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, and to the rest of the universe atomically. Our solidarity is a scientific fact, as well as the salvific act of a loving Savior and a wise and guiding Holy Spirit. Even our call to solidarity is exemplified by the Divine…. Because Jesus has come, and truly overturned and overcome the systems of the world, he beckons us to do likewise.  

The systems say that change can’t come, that gravity wins, that religion is of no use except to placate the people, that you’d better put your trust in growth mutual funds. But Jesus says there is another way—the prophetic way—and even now he beckons for us to step out on the Word, to come together as one, and to exercise our gifts. Only then can we make peace with our neighbors, end the gun violence, and stop our addiction to division. Solidarity and compassion is love in action. [1] 

Author Margaret Swedish considers a spirituality of solidarity that begins with honoring the divine presence in each human being: 

“I believe that God gave us the greatest example of solidarity when God sent his son Jesus to live with us,” [Salvadoran refugee] Ernesto Martell says. “God gave us the dignity of living with Jesus among us.”… This is one of the pillars of a Christian spirituality of solidarity—belief in a God who became human like us and in so doing revealed the true dignity of each human being.  

What this means is that we must, first of all, be able to see the other, the human being next to us, or in a Salvadoran village, or in a refugee camp in Rwanda, as a person with value equal to our own. My life is no more valuable and worthy, of no greater or lesser significance, than that of this other human being. I am no more or less deserving. My rights are not more important than those of this person.… 

This spirituality starts in a painful place—with an acceptance of the fact that the world is broken and that we are broken. In this we find our deep bonds with the wounded ones of our world. And in that vulnerable place we find the heart of solidarity: compassion. [2]

[51] Love and Justice

Man is not made for justice from his fellow, but for love, which is greater than justice, and by including supersedes justice. Mere justice is an impossibility, a fiction of analysis…. Justice to be justice must be much more than justice. Love is the law of our condition, without which we can no more render justice than a man can keep a straight line, walking in the dark.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 28). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Solidarity Not Judgment

Father Richard Rohr understands the heart of Christianity as God’s loving solidarity with all people and with reality itself: 

Through Jesus Christ, God’s own broad, deep, and all-inclusive worldview is made available to us. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the point of the Christian life is to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the Incarnation—symbolized by the cross, which is God’s great act of solidarity instead of judgment. This is how we are to imitate Jesus, the good Jewish man who saw and called forth the divine in Gentiles like the Syrophoenician woman and the Roman centurions who followed him; in Jewish tax collectors who collaborated with the Empire; in zealots who opposed it; in sinners of all stripes; in eunuchs, pagan astrologers, and all those “outside the law.” Jesus had no trouble whatsoever with otherness. 

If we are ready to reclaim the true meaning of “catholic,” which is “universal,” we must concentrate on including—as Jesus clearly did—instead of excluding—which he never did. The only thing Jesus excluded was exclusion itself. [1] 

Transgender priest Shannon Kearns provides an example of God’s inclusive solidarity with eunuchs, sexual minorities in the time of the prophet Isaiah:  

In Isaiah 56:3b–5 … the prophet says, “And don’t let the eunuch say, ‘I’m just a dry tree.’ The Lord says: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, choose what I desire, and remain loyal to my covenant. In my temple and courts, I will give them a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give to them an enduring name that won’t be removed.”  

It’s a word of comfort and hope. A word of healing…. Eunuchs are told they will be given an enduring legacy. This piece about being given an “enduring name” rings loudly for many transgender and nonbinary people, especially the ones who have claimed new names…. This also rings loudly for the many people who have felt excluded and cut off from entry into religious spaces because of their gender diversity.…  

The message of the eunuchs is that the boxes don’t work. They aren’t fit to live in. They will likely kill us if we stay there. The freedom to move between spaces and worlds, the freedom to claim all of who we are, the freedom to be is what we are called to. The message of the eunuchs also calls us to look around and ask: Who is being excluded? Who is not welcome? Who is there no space for? That list of people and those names that come to your mind? The message in Isaiah 56 and from the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 says, “There is space for them in the kingdom of God, too.”… They don’t need to change to be worthy; they are made worthy by wanting to be included.  

Anyone who desires the water is welcome.

Solidarity Works Shoulder to Shoulder 

Author Renny Golden writes about the biblical meaning of solidarity and her involvement in the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, which provided hospitality for Central American refugees fleeing violence.  

Solidarity as a word does not appear in the Bible. As a practice of faith, however, it captures the essence of the [Jewish and Christian traditions]. The Bible is a multithousand-year story of Israelites trying to maintain solidarity with their God and with the poor…. 

When God first called Moses to lead the people from bondage, he balks and gives excuses [Exodus 3:13, 4:1,10]. But God promises, “I will be with you.” That is the basis of the relationship of solidarity. It is not paternalism or pity; it is working shoulder to shoulder in the act of liberation.…  

The birth of Jesus, the incarnation of God into the world, is the paradigmatic act of solidarity. God so loved the world that God took human form. It was total identification with the human condition, total solidarity with human history. God embodied love in a stable in the midst of the most imperialistic empire in the world, and from the very beginning Jesus had to flee the excesses of [imperial] power. From the beginning Jesus was a threat to the established order and so had to flee the death squads of the Roman government [Matthew 2:13–14]. Jesus began life not as one of the elite but as a refugee, homeless, living on the run. Thus, the love of God for the world meant very specifically solidarity with the persecuted, the fugitive, the outcast. 

Scholar Robert Chao Romero describes the solidarity of Jesus’ ministry, which embodies good news for the poor and excluded:  

God became flesh and launched his movimiento [movement] among those who were despised and rejected by both their Roman colonizers and the elite of their own people. Jesus didn’t go to the big city and seek recruits among the religious, political, and economic elite.… He started in what today would be East LA, the Artesia Community Guild, or Spanish Harlem. To change the system, Jesus had to start with those who were excluded from the system.…  

Although the good news of Jesus is for the whole human family, it goes first to the poor and all who are marginalized. Like a loving father [or mother], God loves all [God’s] children equally, but shows special concern for those of his [or her] children who suffer most.…  

Riling under the double burden of Roman colonialism and economic and spiritual oppression by the elites of their own people, [the underclass of Jesus’ day] needed first to hear the announcement of God’s liberation. Though they were seen as weaker in the eyes of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and ruling elite, Jesus considered them indispensable; though they were thought to be less honorable, Jesus gave them greater honor. Jesus gave greater honor to those who lacked it (1 Corinthians 12:22–25). He went first to those “outside the gate” of institutional power and authority. [2] 

[50] What Cannot Be Loved

But how can we love a man or a woman who…is mean, unlovely, carping, uncertain, self-righteous, self-seeking, and self-admiring?—who can even sneer, the most inhuman of human faults, far worse in its essence than mere murder? These things cannot be loved. The best man hates them most; the worst man cannot love them. But are these the man?…Lies there not within the man and the woman a divine element of brotherhood, of sisterhood, a something lovely and lovable—slowly fading, it may be—dying away under the fierce heat of vile passions, or the yet more fearful cold of sepulchral selfishness, but there?…It is the very presence of this fading humanity that makes it possible for us to hate. If it were an animal only, and not a man or a woman, that did us hurt, we should not hate: we should only kill.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 27-28). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Barbara Holmes emphasizes how the arts are an integral part of crisis contemplation and healing communal wounds.  

The artists are the prophets. They say what can’t be said in ways that can be heard. They dance it, rap it, and write it in dramas. They are the forerunners for the community. During the Civil Rights Movement, what stitched the movement together was the art and the songs. Everybody did not agree on the process and strategies, but they all agreed on the old songs. Everybody knew them and could sing them. Art knit a community together without having to do a lot of talking about it. The poetry and rap rhythms offered survival to people who were marginalized into poverty. Through art, they could take that poverty and turn it on its head. In our communities, we offer graffiti images of folks who are slain. We dance. We let our bodies reveal our suffering and our persistence. When all else fails, we sing ourselves sane.  

Art opens portals to new realities…. Art is prophetic. Art is humanizing. It speaks truth to power, and so it is another way in which a community can come together and express themselves in ways the power structures can do nothing about. What do you do about a rap song that speaks of the brutality of the system?…  

Art is an expression of Spirit. A lot that comes out of artists is not coming from them. It’s coming through them. The reason art is so powerful is that when you have expressions of art coming through a group of people, a village, a community, you have a great deal of creative and strategic power that’s available to everyone for their use. Making art together is an act of creation that I find invigorating. My communities of choice are artistic communities because they’re always on the cutting edge. They’re not leading with what they think. They’re leading with what is coming through them and that’s always so healing. [1] 

CAC staff member Drew Jackson writes poetry inspired by the Bible. In this poem, he writes of the angel Gabriel and the prophets that confront injustice with God’s healing power. 

The Spirit of Elijah 

Luke 1:14–18 

I’ve been told that God shows up  
on shores, in boats, with Bibles  
and swords. 

I’ve been told that God does  
the bidding of kings  
seeking to plant their flag on my soil. 

I’ve been told that God snuggles up to  
power that delights to  
kill bodies like mine.   

But that’s not what Gabriel said.  

Gabriel said that God’s prophet  
will have the spirit of Elijah,  
bringing life to widows’ households.  

Gabriel said that God’s prophet  
will possess the power of the Tishbite,  
tearing down monuments to the god of domination.  

Gabriel said that God’s prophet  
will be filled with the Holy Spirit,  
committed to speaking out against Ahabs and Jezebels.  

Thus saith the LORD. [2] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Listens

All-satisfying God, My soul thirsts for You—for the living God. The deepest yearnings of my heart are for intimacy with You, Lord. I’m thankful You designed me to desire You, and I delight in seeking Your Face. Help me not to feel guilty about taking so much time to be still in Your Presence. I’m simply responding to the tugs of Your Spirit within me. You made me in Your image, and You hid heaven in my heart. My longing for You is a form of homesickness—a yearning for my true home in heaven. I realize my journey is different from that of other people, and I need courage to persevere. Yet I trust that the path You have called me to travel with You is exquisitely right for me. I’ve found that the more closely I follow Your leading, the more fully You develop my gifts. In order to follow You wholeheartedly, I need to relinquish my desire to please others. Still, my closeness to You can be a source of blessing to other people—as You enable me to reflect Your Glory in this dark world. In Your bright, shining Name, Jesus, Amen

PSALM 42:1–2; As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

1 CHRONICLES 16:11 NASB; Seek the Lord and His strength; Seek His face continually.

PSALM 34:5; They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed

2 CORINTHIANS 3:18; And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His image with intensifying glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 189). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Retired Episcopal bishop and Choctaw citizen Steven Charleston draws on his Native American experience to navigate collective crisis. 

We inhabit a period in history that seems to be filled with conflict. The world has become an uncertain place, a dark place, where we cannot see what may happen next. All we know, based on our recent experience, is that things could—and probably will—get worse.…  

For millennia, my ancestors followed a spiritual path that was respectful of the earth, inclusive of all humanity, and visionary in its transformative power. That tradition has survived. It is one of the oldest continuous spiritual paths on earth. My ancestors’ faith continues to this day despite every hardship and persecution it has been forced to endure…. I was asked to write a brief commentary about the Christian theology of the apocalypse: the final, terrible vision of the end of the world. I said my Native American culture was in a unique position to speak of this kind of vision, because we were among the few cultures that have already experienced it. In historic memory, we have seen our reality come crashing down as invaders destroyed our homeland. We have lived through genocide, concentration camps, religious persecution, and every human rights abuse imaginable. Yet we are still here. No darkness—not even the end of the world as we knew it—had the power to overcome us. So our message is powerful not because it is only for us, but because it speaks to and for every human heart that longs for light over darkness. [1] 

Charleston takes inspiration from the hope embodied by his ancestors during crisis and displacement.  

My ancestors did not survive the Trail of Tears because they were set apart from the rest of humanity. Their exodus was not a sign of their exclusivity, but rather their inclusivity. In their suffering, they embodied the finite and vulnerable condition of all humanity. They experienced what the whole tribe of the human beings has experienced at one time or another throughout history: the struggle of life, the pain of oppression, and the fear of the unknown. Their long walk was the walk of every person who has known what it means to be alone and afraid. But they walked with courage and dignity because they had the hope of the Spirit within them.… 

Hope makes room for love in the world. We can all share it, we can all believe in it, even if we are radically different in every other way. We no longer need to fear our differences because we have common ground. We can hope together—therefore, hope liberates us. It frees us from our fear of the other. It opens our eyes to see love all around us. It unites us and breaks our isolation. When we decide to embrace hope—when we choose to make that our goal and our message—we release a flow of energy that cannot be overcome. Hope is a light that darkness can never contain. [2] 

_______________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Listens

Triumphant God, Your Word poses the rhetorical question: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” I trust that You are indeed for me since I am Your follower. I realize this verse does not mean that no one will ever oppose me. It does mean that having You on my side is the most important fact of my existence. Regardless of what losses I experience, I am on the winning side. You have already won the decisive victory through Your death and resurrection! You are the eternal Victor, and I share in Your triumph because I belong to You forever. No matter how much adversity I encounter on my journey to heaven, nothing can ultimately prevail against me! Knowing that my future is utterly secure is changing my perspective dramatically. Instead of living in defensive mode—striving to protect myself from suffering—I am learning to follow You confidently, wherever You lead. You are teaching me not only to seek Your Face and follow Your lead but to enjoy this adventure of abandoning myself to You. I rejoice that You are with me continually and You are always ready to help me in times of trouble. In Your magnificent Name, Jesus, Amen

ROMANS 8:31; What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

PSALM 27:8 NKJV; When You said, “Seek My face,”. My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”

PSALM 46:1 NLT; God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble.

Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 188). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Dancing in the Darkness

United Church of Christ minister Otis Moss III reflects on joy’s availability even in difficult times. During a harrowing period when his church received violent threats, Moss woke late one night to unexpected sounds in his house. Fearing an intruder, Moss instead discovers his daughter dancing in her room. 

Her movements were so jubilant, her spirit so free of worry or fear that I couldn’t even stay mad at my baby girl.

She’s dancing. The darkness is all around her as it’s all around you—but she’s still dancing….  

Instead of seeing Makayla as just another addition to the night’s problems, I glimpsed her as a fellow traveler…. Like her frightened father, this six-year-old fellow traveler was awake in the night.  

Even so, there was a difference. I was caught in a cycle of worry and anger. I was not just walking a dark path; I had let the darkness inside me. Evil always seeks to obscure the light, because once it has you living in darkness, that which should not be painful becomes so….  

What we forget, faithwise, in our fear—what I was forgetting that night in my daughter’s room—is that even in the darkest night, when we see no light at all, the light is still there. The sun is still shining over Earth even when our side of Earth rotates away from it. The stars still shine above us, no matter … how thick the clouds above our heads. What we need in the darkest nights is to keep walking along the path until we can glimpse the stars again. What we don’t need is to panic and run blindly into the woods.  

Makayla was just a child, but on this night, she had moved ahead of me on that path. By dancing in the dark, by doing one of the things she most loved, she was making her own light.…  

The enduring words of Psalm 30 struck me afresh: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning…” The eleventh verse of the Scripture made me shout: “You have turned my mourning into dancing.” 

Seeing his daughter dance inspired Moss to share the message with his community:   

Sunday, I told the congregation that we must meet the threats in our lives. We must fight for justice, for our safety, and for the right to live in a world where we can thrive. But even in the darkness of midnight we can maintain a connection to the light. When we cannot survive in darkness by using visual tools of sight, we still have internal tools of memory to remind us of our terrain. Until dawn comes, we need more than the determination to fight for justice. We need love to keep us from getting lost in distraction, love to keep us from falling into despair, love to help us restore ourselves, get back into harmony with ourselves, so we can last through that dark night.  

“Dance,” I urged them. “Dance in the dark!”  

[49] The Same

The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 26-27). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.