It's our heads on the block.

I don't normally do posts targeted to one specific group of people, but right now I feel the need to.  This is a blog post for my fellow first-semester seminarians here at Princeton, as we round the end of reading week and move into finals.

I am making a specific blog post because I have had the joy of getting to know some of you incredible people in the past three months, and I am so grateful you are in my life.  Seriously.  I think seminary is a particularly interesting grad school experience because we all come from such different walks of life, with completely different backgrounds and experiences and stories.  We are different ages, we are from all over the world, we come from all different undergraduate degrees and careers, with extremely varied religious history.  The stories of yours that I have had the privilege to listen to have been inspiring and beautiful.  And in all the differences of these stories, there seems to be one common thread:

We all sacrificed something to come here.

For some, it was money.  People who gave up thriving businesses and secure jobs to start a journey on the financial tightrope that is going into ministry.  For some, it was a sense of home and rootedness.  People who moved across the country or across the world to home here and still feel adrift without their friends and family by their side.  For some, it was their community.  People who were in communities that didn't supper their choice to go to Princeton, to go to seminary, or even to enter into ministry at all.  For some, it was lifelong dreams and plans.  People who had aspirations and ideas for how their life would go, before it took a jarring left turn that  dropped them off abruptly on a small campus in New Jersey.

Every story I've heard has a moment where I discover the courage it took for the person to come here and I am astounded at the bravery of this class.

And I do not think there can be anything more discouraging than making such a sacrifice in order to follow God's call, and then feeling the discouragement, displacement, and despair that many of us are facing right now.  The feeling that this isn't going anywhere.  The feeling that we are not supposed to be here.  The feeling that we have squandered the gifts we have been given.  The feeling that we were completely wrong about what those gifts were in the first place.  The feeling that after finals everyone will know that we're a fraud.  The feeling of calling out to God night after night after night and hearing nothing.  The feeling of frustration at vocab words that will not stick in our brains or outlines that seem pointless, and the panic that if we can't get it all done, our future at the school and maybe even in ministry is over.

It is awful and it is coming to many of us no matter what angle we come from.  Whether we have a religious studies background and feel like we should be doing far better than we are.  Whether we're second or third career students with degrees and experience in finances, computers, theater, business, and have never had to fit into an academic mold like this one and have been out of it for years.

And for those of us taking the more standard intro courses, it is frustrating because we are trying to cram so much sheer information into our brains.  We feel like we're just regurgitating, and we are trying to figure out what the teachers want us to do so we can get the magical "right" answer and live another day here, as opposed to truly figuring out how to apply this to our lives and ministry.  And we are told from those who have gone through this that "it gets better" and we hope that they're right, that once we're able to focus in on what is interesting to us that we will find that passion that we lost, but also we find it hard to trust in that hope when, for many of us, that flexibility doesn't come into our schedules until next fall.

So here's the thing I have to say for us, now:

This is not our teachers' education.  This is our education.

Ultimately, this is not about these finals.  This is not about our grades.

This is about our ministry.

I know, it's hard, when we are shaking with fear that we'll fail.  Our midterms this semester were the first time I ever deeply worried about failing a test and that fear sat in my stomach like the worst sickness I've ever had.  It was awful.  But more awful is having that fear combined with the feeling that there is no point beyond this test.

I know for those of us on the younger side of things, who grew up with standardized testing and a very strong focus on "get straight A's so you can get into the best school possible", it's EXTREMELY.  DIFFICULT.  to focus ourselves away from the grades and the expectations from others (but more from ourselves) on this letter or number.  We have been trained for almost all of our cognizant lives to fulfill assignments, and if we're here at Princeton, we're good at it.

But your grade is not an assessment of who you are as a person or as a minister.  Your grade is an assessment of your ability to complete a certain test or assignment as decided by one or maybe two people.

That's all it is.  We just think it's more because it is given power.

Here's the deal, my totally depraved friends: NONE of us are perfect.  No one can deserve to be here, no one can claim righteousness.  But I do believe that all of us are supposed to be here, because we are here. That is grace. The grace of God is all we have to lean on.  Even if we do leave, even if we do decide that this isn't the best place or way for us to respond to God's call, God is at work in us now.  God is using this experience to mold us, the potter always responding to the clay and shaping it.

The fact that none of us are or ever will be worthy or prepared and are here only by the grace of God frees us from worrying about being something we're not.  But if you're in church history with me you'll know that I'm not THAT Augustinian, and I think we are faced with a task: to get what we need for ministry out of this education.

Those needs will be different for each of us, and I think that we'll be fine at picking out classes that suit our needs, but the hardest part of that is what we're facing right now: how to we get what we need out of classes that we didn't pick and often require us to learn in ways that aren't natural for us?

We are called to wrestle with these classes, and yes, these finals, like Jacob wrestled with the angel, screaming in their ear, "I will not let you go until you bless me."  We are called to find the relevance, so that the memorization, while still rigorous and hard, isn't an isolated experience that will quickly be forgotten, but something that enters in us and informs our further study and work.

How memorizing outlines can be about knowing approximately where to go in the Bible to find the verse to use when faced with a person in need.

How struggling though Anselm and Aquinas can help us show the critically thinking person who is on the brink of leaving the church because they think there is no room for them in the church that there is a place for them and their mind.

How Hadewjich can offer solace to someone who has just had an experience of God they have no words to understand or communicate.

How knowing the movement of tribes and geography in the Ancient Middle East can shed light on the political issues still plaguing that area.

I'm not saying to ignore the test.  I'm saying USE the test.  I'm saying that if they tell us we have to know this information, our job is to figure out why we need to know this information.  Why it is relevant to our lives.  Because in doing that, we are not passively having education happening to us, but rather, we are self-educating.  We are not ruled by the school - we are using it as a resource.  And we might feel a little less lost, or less like we're wasting our time, and it might even be a little bit easier to remember, because it is OURS.

"Let a student enter the school with this advice: No matter how good the school is, his education is in his own hands.  All education must be self-education.  … A school should be an offering of opportunity, not a direction, and the student should know that the school will be good for him only to the degree that he makes it good.  It is a field for activity where he will see much, hear much and where he must be a judge, selecting for his special need, and daily discovering his need. … The man who goes into a school to educate himself and not to be educated will get somewhere." - Robert Henri, The Art Spirit (sorry about masculine pronouns, seminarians.)

And of course, we will fall short of this. I know I fall short of it every day.  We will fall short of everything we ever do, which makes the miracle of God's grace shine that much brighter.  We are, as Mandela said, "sinners who keep trying".  Let's be honest… I'm not going to remember all of these outlines even a few weeks from now.  (Except Genesis.  I've totally got Genesis.)  But the work I put into them will continue to inform me.  Nyame adom, it will.

We are all going to get through this.  Whether it works out the way we want it to or not.  God is bigger than all of it.  God uses whatever happens--that is the glory of Divine Sovereignty.  And as I look through my Facebook feed and see such extraordinarily honest statuses and reflections of our various states of frustration, depression, hopelessness, and fear (which also warms my heart from the sheer honesty that brings us closer), I wish the universe was a Proverbs claims it to be, with wisdom that WANTS me to succeed and a clear path.  But it so often is closer to Ecclesiastes or Job.  There will be a flash of understanding where everything seems clear and then darkness, and that moment of light only seems to serve to make the darkness darker.  God will seem like the absent God of the psalms of lament, or the abusive God of Jeremiah.  But even in the depths of Job's anger and frustration and confusion, the other side of the truth is told:

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
   and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
   then in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see on my side,
   and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
   My heart faints within me!

Thanks be to God.

Countless gifts of love.

There are many things I have to be thankful for, and one post and one day is not enough.  But today, the day after the day after Thanksgiving, this list of things I am particularly thankful for at this moment will have to suffice.

For being here at Princeton Theological Seminary.
When applied for undergrad, it was a straight-shot.  I knew I wanted a program that offered a four-year directing track/the option to apply as a director (as opposed to the popular model of “go for acting or arts management for two years and then apply to maybe be in the directing program”).  This narrowed down my options to about three schools.  From there I obsessively looked over their programs, and by the beginning of my junior year of high school had decided that NYU/PHTS was the program for me.  I applied early decision, I got in, I went.

The seminary decision was not as straightforward.  I started with a pretty clear first choice, but tried to stay open with my options.  I visited almost all the schools I applied to.  I worked very hard not to make decisions before I had all the information.  Which allowed something really funny to happen:

1. Princeton snuck its way onto my application list.  It was not a place I was particularly interested in before the application process started.  I think it ended up on the list because I thought I should apply to at least one Presbyterian seminary, and I KNEW I didn’t want to apply to Union in Richmond or to Columbia, and it was nearby so I could go out and see it.  I had mic’ed one Princeton professor the summer before my application process started who invited me out to see the school.  Partially, I think Princeton ended up on my list because I felt like I should be applying to more schools.
2. I visited Princeton by way one of their seminars where they invite prospective students to stay on campus for a few days, and by the end of the first day, I hated it. I could not see myself at the school at all, it seemed way too rigid and traditional and conservative.  I was ready to move to Atlanta before going to Princeton.
3. As I stuck it out with Princeton on that visit, the change was 180 degrees.  I began to see that the reason I was uncomfortable at Princeton was because it was challenging me in ways that I hadn’t been, and needed to be.  I saw that my gifts would be particularly valued there because I bring a unique voice (some of my other schools had a lot more students with arts backgrounds).

And somehow this school that snuck its way onto my list, that I didn’t care about for most of my time looking at seminary, is the school I’m now enrolled in.  Through all of the wild, tumultuous journey that is seminary (please see last post), one thing that has been made extraordinarily clear is that this is where I am meant to be.  If I wasn’t meant to be here, it wouldn’t be as hard.

For my theater education.
Let me make one thing clear: it is incredibly intimidating starting an academic grad school program with very little experience in higher-education academia.  While an MDiv, the degree I am getting at seminary, is designed for people going into the ministry and therefore has some practical aspects as well, it is a very academically rigorous degree.  On the opposite end, while my BFA in Drama did include some academic elements, most of my time was geared towards practical application.  Our papers were not rigorous.  Princeton, on the other hand, is a popular seminary for people to go to if they are planning on continuing into PhD work, and there is a completely different set of expectations.  While I knew that the theater training would be essential to my further education, I wasn’t entirely sure how it would play in outside of the obvious: speech class.

Answer: the theater training has been vital in every. Single. Aspect. Of my being at seminary.  From social interactions to class discussions to memorizing for tests to helping me deal with the emotional rollercoaster that is seminary to, yes, even papers.  There will be more about how it has helped in upcoming blogs, but I am starting to make connections to how the basics of my theater directing/design/collaboration background are vital to whatever path I travel in ministry in the future.  The undergraduate program I was in has changed to the point where I can no longer endorse it, which makes me even more grateful I was in that program when I was.

For Montreat.
OK, so I knew that going to a Presbyterian seminary meant that my Montreat time would serve me well.  And indeed—as someone who was not raised in the Reformed tradition, the jumpstart into Reformed thought and theology that pervaded my time there has been very helpful.  And indeed—there is starting to be a running joke on campus about the fact that I have mic’ed … everyone, because people I’ve mic’ed often come by Princeton as guest lecturers, or even work here.  (Next year I get to deal with the fact that I’ve mic’ed my preaching professor.)  But beyond that, I am grateful at the relationships that Montreat has placed in my life, for the people I’ve met, and for my continuing relationship with that place.  Last summer I got to be down there as a small group leader, this summer I’m doing something else down there, and I’m realizing that Montreat has truly become a place where I get to grow up—it is a place where I am always welcome, a place that allows me to grow and experiment and apply what I’m thinking and learning, and always to serve it in new and exciting ways, and I am truly blessed to have such a place in my life.

For my really fabulously supportive friends.
I went back into NYC for Thanksgiving, with my theater friends from the past six years of my life, in our joyous celebration where somehow we gather together comfortably in apartments that are totally too small and laughable kitchens but somehow we all make really amazing food and take a bedroom door off its hinges to make a dining room table and drink and laugh and feast and celebrate.  Coming back to this group has been delightful, and while there might have been a secret drinking game going on with the rule “whenever Colleen starts talking about religion, take a drink,” my rants about the importance of the Old Testament and the misinterpretation of Hebrew were listened to and loved and accepted.  I have groups of people who have my back 100%.  Not just my friends in New York, but the outpouring of love on Facebook from people in Virginia, people in North Carolina, people now across the country.  It is truly humbling, and I know many people at seminary who do not have that kind of support, who have people in their life who constantly doubt and challenge their decision to go to seminary, often with the fear the seminary will ruin their faith.  I watch them handle these people with grace and poise and am amazed and how they do so.  It reminds me that this cannot be taken for granted.  If you are reading this, you are one of those people and I’m so lucky to have you in my life.

Then you realize you didn't know anything

Seminary is… a lot.

Don’t get me wrong—I love it.  I love school.  No one is surprised by this.  I adore being in an educational environment, I love my classes, I love the people, it is just… a LOT.

Here’s a recipe for you: Take your brain, your heart, and your soul.  Put them into a blender on the “crush” setting.  Crush for longer than you think you can stand it.  Empty the blender into a hot cast iron skillet.  Season with curiosity and doubt.  Remove from skillet, and try to reassemble the individual ingredients on three separate plates.

My friend Karen described it by saying, “It’s like there’s an avalanche coming at you and you only have a snow shovel.”  This semester alone I am covering a few millennia of church history, the Old Testament (perspective: that’s 3/4ths of the Bible), and attempting to learn Biblical Hebrew, which, as a semitic language, has pretty much nothing in common with English or any other Indo-European language.  It is a lot.  Some days it is too much.

One week, we were talking about conquest narratives in the Old Testament (the Israelites, after the Exodus/Ten Commandments/Prince of Egypt business, going into Canaan and conquering and slaughtering the people living there because “God gave us this land”), how people used scriptural and theological arguments to support slavery in America, and the background and effect of Stop And Frisk and Stand Your Ground laws.  And I got home one day and just started sobbing because of how it seems that nothing has changed over thousands of years and what hope is there for us now?

And about halfway through my Hebrew midterm I looked at all of these strange letters and none of them made any sense to me anymore except the definite noun marker and I almost started crying and thought, “What am I doing here?  How did I ever think this was a good idea when I am clearly going to fail this midterm?  I’m not used to tests and academia.”

One day, during reading week, I sang at the inauguration of our new President, and it was incredible.  We were in the Princeton University Chapel which is almost unfairly beautiful, it was full of people who cared about theological education and had some of the best congregational singing I’ve heard and we sang a commissioned anthem and the new President spoke of the deep importance of recognition of the arts and beauty in religious practice and I could not have been happier or prouder to be a part of this community.  And then I went into the city to see the screening of the West End production of Merrily We Roll Along, a musical by Stephen Sondheim, and I remembered all the things I loved about theater.  And I felt these two strong loves and still had no idea how they came together, even though I knew they must somehow.  Every time I get an inkling of how I might combine the two, I want to build my life on that idea instead of letting these things exist and learning to live in the tension and confusion.

It’s the feeling of being hopelessly lost.  Nothing about this is comfortable.  It is being confronted daily with how you have failed to live as you are called to live.

Here’s the thing though: in stories of faith, people spend a lot of time feeling lost.

The primary example is, of course, the Israelites wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.  After the whole exodus from Egypt shenanigans happened, after the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea, the Israelites wandered, never knowing where they were going, led by God in the form of a cloud of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.  They were fed each day by a food that appeared each morning called "manna", which is a word we all accept as an actual name nowadays, but in Hebrew the word "manna" is devised from the question: "what is it?"  They had no idea what they were even eating, and if they tried to store up more than would last them a day (or two, before the Sabbath), it would go bad.  They had no idea what they were going, what they were eating, and they could not even plan ahead.  No wonder they kept complaining and misbehaving (see: the Golden Calf incident).

This same theme continues throughout the New Testament.  In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus says:

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
 ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Throughout scripture, the followers of God are lost, and even encouraged to be.  God often does not say where you are being led, and the journey often takes longer, is more frustrating and more terrifying than you signed up for.  There are so many reasons that I do not recommend the Christian life for anyone seeking comfort--this is one.  It is living with all the tensions constantly battling within you, because it is a calling not to resolve the tensions but to embrace them and let them overtake you.

It is lonely.  It is confusing.  It is terrifying.  It is constantly feeling inadequate, because in that totally depraved sense, you are.  It is frantic searching for connection.  It is hopeless.  It is anger.  It is night.

But then sometimes, you’re rehearsing in the chapel and you’re not watching the choir director as much as you should be because you are struck by the beauty of the sound bouncing off in ribbons of red, green, yellow, and wonder if there can be anything more breathtaking than voices lifted in praise.

Sometimes you spend hours outside of class in lectures about worship, liturgy and the psalms and feel the coursing of obsession through your veins like you haven't felt in years, but used to keep you awake late into the night as you analyzed musicals, and you feel alive again.

Sometimes you say "YES!" a bit too loudly when someone called out the number of your favorite hymn, "The Canticle of the Turning", at a hymn sing, and are approached at dinner by someone who felt the same way in that moment.

Sometimes you write on yourself in Latin, like you did throughout undergrad, and someone else can read it.

Sometimes you come to choir rehearsal and see the new Presbyterian hymnals for the first time and gasp, grab a copy and begin to stroke it, and then the next three people who come into the room have the exact same reaction.

Sometimes someone who is not in seminary hears something about a Hebrew word that might help validate their sexuality due to the contexts it is used in, and asks if anyone knows anything about it, and you are able to look at the texts (with some help), and give them more information about the word, the meaning, and the context.

Sometimes you find out you completely misjudged someone else and their theology and you have your eyes opened to something you would never have accepted before.

Sometimes you listen to someone else's story and are amazed by the strength of the human spirit.  Sometimes you hear what people want to do and your faith in humanity starts to show its face again, listening to the many ways people work for justice.

I would be lying if I said it was not overwhelming.  I would be lying if I said it was easy.  I would be lying if I said I had any idea of where I was going beyond the small bit that is illuminated by the pillar of light.

But mercy of mercies: the light is there.

One bread, one body, one Lord of all.

"I am a Christian, but…"

Most of my non-seminary friends are not Christian.  The circles I inhabit when I'm not flirting with different denominations of the church are often filled with atheists, people who are spiritual but not religious, former Catholics, and people who are rightly very suspicious of the church and its motives.  So often when I admit my religious leanings to folks, I immediately find myself doing damage control.

"I'm a Christian, but in the most open way."
"I'm a Christian, but not the kind that thinks you're going to hell if you're not."
"I'm a Christian, but I clearly don't hate anyone who's not heterosexual."
"I'm a Christian, but I'm not one of THOSE Christians."

One of my classes this semester is about looking at Christianity in America and how it has influenced and been influenced by historical and social movements, combined with the complicated relationship between church and state in this country.  This has been the main class that has been constantly challenging my deeply held beliefs about church and politics and whether true exegesis is even possible (hint: I think it's not).  It is also one of my most uncomfortable classes, in that it makes us deal with ways that Christian scriptures, thought, and teaching have been used to justify hate, exclusion, murder, indifference, slavery… the list goes on and on, into today.

The gutwrenching thing about studying these theologies is that we can see how they reached their conclusions.  We can track their Biblical arguments.  We can understand how people within their context would think that this was the proper interpretation of God's Word.  And the terrifying thing is, while it's easy to look back and see how wrong they were, we realize that we could be just as misguided.  The first thing I learned in undergrad was that you cannot escape your own originality.  You cannot approach a text as a blank state.  You ALWAYS carry your own set of assumptions and opinions and interpretations, and there is no such thing as neutrality.  (see earlier hint that I don't think true exegesis is possible)  So how do we acknowledge that when we are called upon to deal with this text?  Are we always twisting it for our own purposes?

Like many of us, I am angry about the current state of our government.  Primarily, I am angry about the people that have been furloughed.  I am angry about services that the shutdown has suddenly halted.  I am angry about the fact that my friend's brother can't get epilepsy medication that he depends on for survival because of the government shutdown.  I am angry because of how this may affect WIC and therefore people's ability to eat.  I am angry because of the effect that this can have on the economy which will likely further the gap between the rich and the poor, making it more and more impossible for people to rise out of poverty.

Mostly, I am furious because almost 400 members of the House of Representatives identify as Christians, and while I agree with the separation of church and state in legislature, it is inconceivable to me that anyone who calls themselves a Christian would even consider the reckless toying with human lives for political gain that Congress is currently engaged in.

And as I fumed about how "those other Christians who certainly aren't like most of the Christians I know and love" get it all wrong and how tired I am of constantly having to combat the reputation that Christians are all homophobic, materialistic and exclusionary, if not downright violent… it hit me like a ton of bricks.

We are one body.

In Christianity, when we speak of the Church (which I'm capitalizing to mean the Church as an institution, as opposed to the uncapitalized church building that you pass on your way to work), we speak of it as "the Church universal" or "the catholic Church" (where catholic means not Roman Catholicism, but the whole Church, universal, again).  We also speak of the Church as a body (specifically, the Church is the body of Christ in the world), with many parts that serve many different purposes in different ways.  While we have different denominations (Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist, Pentecostal, etc), we don't consider those different religions, but different branches of the same religion.  We are all members of the same family, and yes, we have plenty arguments, but even then, we create a wide and diverse religion.  We often use the sacrament of communion (where we eat bread and drink wine/grape juice, depending on where you are, in remembrance of Christ's sacrifice) as a reminder of our unity in Christ.  The Methodist communion liturgy says, "Because there is one loaf, we, though we be many, are one body."  Or, as said in the communion hymn: "one bread, one body, one Lord of all, one cup of blessing which we bless, and we, though many throughout the Earth, we are one body in this one Lord."

And I realized that I cannot separate myself from the Christians who I (and many many others) disagree with, who have done reprehensible things in the name of God.  I can't separate myself from the Crusaders, from the Inquisition, from the southern theologians who argued that slavery was a divine mandate or the northern theologians who skirted the issue, from fundamentalists who think that closing Planned Parenthoods is working to scourge the devil from this land.  I cannot draw a line between myself and the pastor whose fire-and-brimstone sermon about the dangers of homosexuality lead a young gay teen to run away from church and home, or the Christian congressperson who thinks that the hurt the shutdown will do to the poor is necessary collateral damage.  We don't get to do that, not when our religion, for thousands of years, has been based in community and diversity, in unity without uniformity.  We are called to live as members together in the body of Christ, and that means that one of us does, we all do.

Why is this important?  What purpose does this serve other than making us feel terrible about ourselves?  It is important because we are really good at skirting around and blaming the uncomfortable parts of Christianity on other people.  It wasn't us, it was those people calling themselves Christian over there.  It was those folks who got it wrong.  It was the people from that other seminary.  Not here.  Not us.  We didn't do anything wrong.  It is not our responsibility.

Friends, it is our responsibility.  If anyone in the Church has done it, we have done it.  If one member of a physical body is broken, the other parts have to compensate until it is healed… and let's be honest, the problem with the body of the Church is less that individual parts are broken and more that there are sicknesses invading the entire system, and while the symptoms might show up more in some parts of the body than in others, the sickness is a problem for the whole.  And if we are to have any hope of survival, we have some serious repenting to do. In Hebrew, there are two words that are used for repentance: נָחַם (nacham), which is usually translated as "to be sorry" and שׁוּב (shuv), which means "to return".  We as a Church have to own up to the crimes we have committed.  We believe in confessions, in the self-awareness and recognition that comes from the discipline of saying what we have done wrong and we believe in the grace that follows.  And then we must return to the path we were called to walk, the path that leads to life--not death, not hate, not exclusion, not division.

It is time to stop shifting the blame, and to start taking responsibility for what we the church have done.  And my suspicion is that, if we do this, we will become better at recognizing when it is our own individual direct actions that are the problems in the Church.  (that wording is important: not if… when.  We all fall short of the glory of God, especially when we think we are the ones doing it "right", like I so often think.)



These thoughts did not immediately form themselves into a blog post.  I plunged into a good bout of despair and tears.  To be fair, the past couple weeks have been a mess in the current event realm, with the shutdown and debt ceiling, and in seminary we've been talking about conquest narratives ("God wants us to kill all of you and take your land"), pro-slavery theology, massive early church arguments about very fine points of doctrine that usually ended up with someone excommunicated, the Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow laws and other systemic injustices in response to the freedom of the slaves, how the country has always depended on a system of servitude for its workforce and economy (and still does), Christian dominionism, and the traumatic effect of "Stop and Frisk" laws.  It has been a lot of awful, important things that have left me wondering why God bothers with us at all.  My first thoughts came in the form of prayer and song, which I've now refined into a confession, and I'm working on a hymn with this kind of tone.  So, here it is.  I understand that some of these words are too strong to use in many churches.  I also know that strong language is in the Bible.

We, your Church, come before you this day, confessing that we have turned from the path you have intended for us.

We have barricaded ourselves in our churches so we can ignore your people as they cry out in the street.
We have stolen food from the hungry by denying them the opportunity to earn a living wage and the aid to make up the difference.
We have slaughtered the sick by condemning them to live without the hope of care.
We have persecuted victims instead of offering compassion and support.
We have locked the doors of opportunity against our neighbors through our systemic suspicion and fear of different skin tones, cultures, genders, and sexualities.
We have taught our children to treat others as objects instead of people.
We have worn our privilege like armor, and have fashioned our power into swords to be wielded against those who we have labeled "undeserving".

Because of us, many associate your name with violence, hatred, discrimination and exclusion, instead of loving-kindness, gentleness, mercy and peace.

If you are the way and the truth and the life, then we are on the path to death, for we denied you in the least of these.  Yet despite our best efforts to castrate your grace, you still live and work in the world.  We rejoice that your love is greater than our failure to live as you have called us to live.  Heal the hurt that we have inflicted in your name, and turn us back to your way of abundant life for all--even your undeserving Church.

We are marching in the light of God.

My last post here was about the importance of engaging with and having conversations with people who do not share the same views.  Of course, it's easy while doing that to move to the place where we agree with everyone, become wishy-washy, and refuse to take a stand.  What other people have to say is important--what YOU have to say is equally important, and the game of life in community is constantly striking balances.  So this post is about what I believe, and experiences I had this summer that showed me the Kingdom of God.

Come we that love the Lord,

And let our joys be known!

Join in a song with sweet accord,

Join in a song with sweet accord,

And thus surround the throne,

And thus surround the throne.

It's often said that Sunday morning worship is only a part of what church is.  That church, that is, the coming together of the community of believers, should happen everywhere.  It should happen in schools and in workplaces.  It should happen in times and areas of disaster, and it should happen on the streets.

On Sunday, June 30th, our church service at Middle Collegiate Church had two "sections" to it.  There was the portion of the service that happened inside the church, where we gathered and sang and read scripture and prayed.  And when that bit was done, we grabbed bagged lunches, got on the subway, heading up to 39th street, where we connected with members of the other Collegiate Churches, and continued our worship on the streets.

By marching in the NYC Pride March.

We're marching to Zion!

Beautiful, beautiful Zion!

We're marching upward to Zion,

The beautiful city of God!

For those of you unaware of the history of the LGBT Rights movement in America, there was one event that really kicked off the movement, that became a rallying point and help bring together the various activists and organizations throughout the country.  That event was the Stonewall Riots on June 28th, 1969.  There was a police raid on a gay bar in Greenwich Village, and the patrons essentially said, "We're not gonna take it," starting riots that lasted for three days and involved kicklines.

Each year since then, there has been a march on or around that day, commemorating the Stonewall Riots.  Eventually that spread throughout the world, and that's why it's in late June that all these Pride parades and celebrations happen.

As for me, despite 6 years in NYC, this was my first Pride.  I tend to leave the city during the summer, like any sane person, so I've just never been around for it.  And honestly, large gatherings of people in NYC isn't really my thing (I've never been to the Macy's Parade, or watched the ball drop in Times Square)… but when the opportunity came to march in Pride with my church, that just seemed so right.

One of my friends marching in our group turned to me and, with a twinkle in her eye, challenged me to a contest of "who can spot the first protester?"  Neither of us won.  We didn't see a single protester as we walked in the parade.  She was so surprised--in her many years of marching, there had always been protesters, some harmless, some scary.  Instead, we saw people celebrating life--dare I say, celebrating the lives that God has given all of us.

Let those refuse to sing 

who never knew our God; 

but children of the heavenly King, 

but children of the heavenly King 

may speak their joys abroad,

may speak their joys abroad.

On Saturday, August 24th, very early in the morning, I arrived in Washington DC's Union Station, and slowly began to find my way the National Mall, to see what I could see of the monuments before the crowds joined as part of the March on Washington.  (For those confused, there were TWO March on Washington 50th Anniversary events, one on the 24th and one on the 28th.)  Later in the morning, I joined in the march.

The most miraculous thing about that day, in my experience, was that, for that day, in that place, it was assumed that we were all there because we believed in equal rights.  For that day, in that place, we all knew we were fighting together.  Having lived for two years in a place where race tensions run high, being white in a primarily black neighborhood that is slowly being overrun by white starving artists, daily having to confront my own role in gentrification but not being able to afford to live in other neighborhoods, I'm in an environment where I encounter racial tension on a daily basis.  And at the march, there was no second-guessing of motives.  We have not achieved King's dream yet--there is far too much social, economic, and political inequality out there for us to pretend we're living in a world where people of all skin colors are treated the same, but for that day, I saw that world come alive.  On that lawn, on that day, we saw a glimpse of King's dream coming true.

I would say, a glimpse of the Kingdom of God.

The hill of Zion yields 

a thousand sacred sweets 

before we reach the heavenly fields, 

before we reach the heavenly fields, 

or walk the golden streets, 

or walk the golden streets.

You know who else was there at the March on Washington?  My church.  Yep, Middle Collegiate, marching for justice, as we do.

When people ask me why I'm going to seminary, there's usually a different question they're actually asking.  It might be "What are you going to do afterwards?" or "Are you leaving theater?" or "Are you going to become a crazy Christian who I'll hate?"  And I'll give a different answer based on what question I think they're really asking.  I might talk about the possibility of chaplaincy or nonprofit work, I might talk about merging the arts and religion in interesting ways or their shared backgrounds, I might talk about pushing the church towards inclusion.

But when it comes down to it, why am I going to seminary?  Because I believe in the vision of the Kingdom of God that isn't about condemnation, or judgement, or getting to heaven.  It's a vision of a world we celebrate and take care each other and the world.  It's a vision of a world where our differences are valued, not feared.  It's a vision of the world where we encounter each other in a spirit of collaboration rather than with walls of self-interest.  And perhaps the most important thing my religion teaches me is that it is my responsibility to help this idea of what the world could be come to fruition.  It is also my joy.  In these marches, this moments where the Kingdom can almost be seen, I see God.  Not a God that comes down out of heaven but a God that is created among us when we treat others with curiosity and compassion.  Let those refuse to sing who never knew that God, but children of the heavenly king--Christian, atheist, gay, straight, black, white, all denominations in between and beyond--we will speak our joys abroad, as we cry out for freedom, as we sing for equality, as we shout for justice.

I am blessed and privileged to be a part of religious communities that take this seriously and are on the front lines for equality, which I believe to be God's work in the world.  Before we reach the heavenly fields or walk the golden streets, before death and whatever comes after it, the thousand sacred sweets of Zion, the Kingdom, are here, on this earth.  We march for them.  We march to that Kingdom.  It is a march through time, through laws that are just and unjust, through economic crises, through violence and blame.  It is a long march, but it is worth it.

Come and dance here, at the crossroads.

To be completely honest… I have never been into youth ministry.

I wasn't really into youth ministry when I WAS a youth.  Of course, I went to youth group, I loved mission trips, and I had GREAT youth ministers.  But most youth ministry focuses heavily on being social, doing things as a group, and I wasn't really into that.  I also disliked feeling like programs, lessons, etc.  were "targeted for my age group"--the best times I had as a youth were the times when I went to retreats and the preachers didn't talk down to us, or went on mission trips and used power tools, or had a small group Bible study on Micah.  Essentially, when I wasn't being treated like a kid.

I never attended a Montreat youth conference, though I've more than made up for that with the number I worked while on summer staff there.  If I'd had, I would have been the kid that LOVED worship and keynote and never went to the recreational events, the "fun activities" planned for afternoon and evening times.  Indeed, when I was at Montreat as a Worship and Music youth conferee, I skipped the "Fun and Games" class on my schedule, and stayed at home, or out by the lake, while my parents went to the evening Talent show.

In the last two weeks, I was plunged into the deep end of youth ministry.  I spent those weeks at Montreat--NOT as summer staff, however.  I was a small group leader.

Here's the breakdown of how Montreat Youth Conferences work:

You come with a group of youth and adult chaperones from your home church, generally living together in either a hotel or a house.  We call this group your "back home group" and the chaperones are the "back home leaders".

You attend two main events in Anderson Auditorium (the Aud) each day.  The morning event is keynote, which is a longer message about the topics of the day (that correspond to the larger theme of the week).  It starts off with the recreation (rec) leaders leading energizers (the strangest tradition of the Presbyterian church ever which involves everyone bursting into synchronized dances), the music leaders leading music, and then segways into the keynote itself.  In the evening, you attend worship in the Aud.

In the evening, after worship, and in the afternoon, around 3:30, are recreation events which are themed, fun activities.

But a good chunk of your day is spent in small group, which means just after keynote, and just after lunch (before afternoon rec).  You are randomly assigned to a small group, and, unless your back home group is really big, you generally are not in small group with anyone you came to Montreat with.  So the idea is to put you into a group with people you don't know so that you can meet new people and discuss the ideas being presented through the conference with people who have different opinions and experiences than you.  Small group is part games/activities, part discussion, part Bible study, and small group leaders are volunteers who come down for however many weeks they can/want to.  Many small group leaders are teachers, or pastors, or retired pastors, or youth ministers, or church workers… and then there's, like… me.  Also someone who did it with me who was a lawyer.  Additionally, I was one of the back home leaders for the few individually registered youth (who didn't come with a group) for the first week.  So I suddenly went from having next to nothing to do with youth ministry to being an authority figure helping to ensure high schoolers learned a little more about God and also went to bed on time.

It was at times overwhelming, at times terrifying, but always and overall thrilling, rewarding, and eye-opening.  It was exhausting in the best way, and I learned so much and hope to do it again next summer.

I learned SO MUCH from the youth who were in my groups, and I'm sure I'll be telling stories about them for years to come.  But right now, there's one specific story I want to share about how I grew up a bit in these weeks.

I don't think anyone here has a hard time guessing my political stance. I am quite liberal, politically and theologically, and have been living in a happy liberal artistic bubble for the past six years in New York City.  And I said to myself before I went down to Montreat that I wanted to show a gospel of inclusion, of God loving everyone.  I didn't have to get deep into the politics of it, but that was my message.

My small group for week 1 was a very intellectual one.  They asked a lot of questions about church history and theology, and I was kept afloat completely because of the suggested reading I am doing for seminary right now.  In one session, we got onto the subject of the New Covenant and why is it Christians don't follow the laws written in the Old Testament about eating pork, etc?  This opened the door a bit to the larger question of Biblical validity, which we didn't get to in the small group session, but afterwards one of the youth came up to me and asked one of those incredibly smart, ultimately unanswerable questions, about how much of the Bible we should keep and how much we don't particularly pay attention to anymore, and how do we know what to do?  We talked briefly about homosexuality, as an example of the issue nowadays--most Christians have decided to leave the Leviticus scriptures out of the argument, but keep the Pauline passages in play.  We've now also said, for the most part, that women are okay to lead in church, but Paul was against that as well.  How do we figure this out?

And another example he asked about, specifically, was about "needing to be a Christian to go to heaven," that Christ said, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but through me," which is traditionally interpreted as, "Christianity is the only way to heaven," and he said, "It says that, and I know a lot of people who ignore that because they have non-Christian friends and it makes them uncomfortable, but can we really do that?"

And standing there, I wanted to say, "No, the passage doesn't necessarily mean that, if you put it in conversation with parts of 1 John."  Standing there, I thought, "I don't believe that, I cannot reconcile that belief with the image of God throughout the scriptures as a loving one."  Standing there, I even thought, "Post-death salvation isn't the point, we need to work together towards the kingdom on Earth."  I had all the answers I'd learned in that liberal bubble, and then I realized that I could not, in good conscience, say any of them.  I couldn't proselytize.

So I explained a bit of the other viewpoint, saying, "The argument on the other side of that text is that if God is love, that really means no one comes to the Father but through love."  But then I paused and said something to the effect of, "But no matter what, there is no easy answer to these questions.  The important thing is that we continue to ask the questions, and continue to engage and talk with others who don't necessarily think the same way as us."

And you know?  There was a part of me that said, "No!  Convert him to your way of seeing things!  Get him on our side!"  Because that's so often how we see it, on both sides of things, liberal or conservative.  But as long as well continue to see things as an us vs. them situation, the more divided and extreme the world is going to get.  Can we be big enough to release the idea that no one has to "win", but instead we can learn from and challenge each other?  I know there are things in the Bible that I prefer to ignore because it's inconvenient, and if I don't listen long enough for someone to remind me to grapple with them, it's my own loss.

The youth I met over the past two weeks were some of the most open-minded people I have ever encountered, because they truly listen to all viewpoints.  My response was inspired by them and I hope to live into it.

Five minutes in and I'm bored again...

I was going to post about Easter before this, but then I got inspired.

This is probably the last time I can go on this specific rant.  This is an issue that has been personally close to my heart for many years now but as I grow older, and as I move towards a more official life in the church, my opinion will lose the particular impact it has now, when I am a young layperson.  And I've said many things about it, but I've had conversations and discoveries lately that have sharpened my beliefs on this.

The issue is: how to get young people in churches.

Growing up in the church, I heard a lot of conversation around this subject, that was generally focused around traditional vs. contemporary worship services, with a thought that "young people" like contemporary worship styles over traditional.  Now, I acknowledge that I am a little more into traditional worship services than most people I know.  I actually like MORE traditional worship styles than those I grew up with, because I think they are beautiful, mysterious, and deeply theatrical.  But my main problem with the "young people want contemporary music" argument was that… no one was asking us.  These were assumptions made by people several decades older than us.

Recently in the Sunday Forum at my church, we had a discussion about the future of the Book of Common Prayer.  While no poll had been made about whether people were interested in a new edition of the Book of Common Prayer, there had recently been a poll concerning whether the people of the Episcopal church wanted a new hymnal to replace the Hymnal 1982.  The result of the poll was negative, people did NOT want a new hymnal, and when the person leading our discussion asked us which group we thought was the most resistant to a new hymnal, the room generally responded with, "The oldest group."  Sitting there, I shook my head, and thought, "The youngest."  

Much to the surprise of the others in the room, the group who wanted a new hymnal the least was the group 29 and younger.

There is an assumption out there that young people are captivated by the familiar, or, more accurately, are turned off by anything that feels "old", "traditional" or "orthodox".  I can see why that assumption is made… our generation is more socially liberal and often shuns conventional ways of life, moving to cities instead of suburbs, taking longer to settle down.  But I believe that is a dangerous assumption--or at least, a dangerous focus--because it puts all the emphasis on the external clothing of the church instead of the inner life.

In our discussion about the Book of Common Prayer and the Hymnal 1982 the leader pointed out that those born in the 50's, etc, were raised in a very strict, regimented society and the overall struggle of growing up was breaking free of those restrictive, conservative, prescribed lifestyles and were more likely to want to overthrow the reign of the Hymnal 1982. I spoke as the youngest person in the room (and possibly the only person under 30).  I cannot speak for my whole generation, but speaking for myself and the people I know, those of us who end up at the church tend to be looking for something stable, something that has history.  We are living in a time where everything is shifting around us.  We were coming of age in the biggest economic crash since the Great Depression.  The employment landscape is completely different than it was for the generations before us--we tend to work multiple part-time jobs, or worse, internships, because we somehow cannot get full-time jobs with benefits even with our impressive degrees.  We are in major debt for student loans.  Nothing is certain, everything is changing, and we want SOMETHING in our lives to ground us.  And so some of us turn to church, to a tradition that stretches back thousands of years and offers a different story of how to live life than the one we grew up with.  For a generation who has been overstimulated for most of our lives with the emergency of technology, it's a story about a way to live simply.  For a generation that struggles with relationships and how community life has shifted in a world of Facebook, it's a story that celebrates connection.  For a generation living in a globalized world where we are being exposed to more and more people completely different from us, it is a story that shows us how to treat the Other with love and compassion.  For a generation struggling with the idea of the American Dream, which is essentially seen as unachievable, it's a story that reminds us that material possessions and climbing up the ladder of success is not the most meaningful way to live life.

We go to church looking for this story, and ways to live this story in our lives, and often we find people arguing over whether guitars have a place in worship.  And THAT'S when we leave.  Because the other thing is, a lot of us feel like we've been lied to.  There've been so many editorials about this, some of which resonate with me and some of which make my generation sound like a bunch of brats, but no one can deny that it's an issue.  The "study hard in school --> go to a good college --> get a good job --> raise a family, buy a house --> retire" narrative that we were told is not working out for us so far.  We don't trust that there will be Social Security for us.  We are bitter and angry and want desperately for something to be genuine.  And so when we go to churches looking for God, looking for a new way to interact with this world, and find people who are not interested in that, and are instead arguing about something that ultimately doesn't matter as far as the mission of the church goes, we say, "Oh, another hypocritical place," and leave.

The church shouldn't exist for itself.  The church doesn't exist to be an institution.  The church is here to be the hands and feet and body of Christ in the world.  So when we talk about revitalizing the church, even when we talk about revitalizing worship, that work we have been given to do has to be the focus.  How can worship prepare us?  How can worship deepen and challenge our relationship with God so that we can more truly live as disciples of Christ?  How can we use the resources and gifts of our church community to engage ourselves and those around us as a community of love in the world?  And YES, in there there might be some questions about guitars, but then you can examine the vocational relationship of the church and its community, instead of saying, "Well, we need to increase the numbers."  Because ultimately, it's not about getting people in the doors.  It's about getting the people who are in the doors, out, and into the world in Christ's service.  Feeding the hungry, reaching out to the outcasts, showing our love for God in the way that Christ asked us to: by tending His sheep.  To love one another has Christ loved us--without judgement and with compassion.  And man, if we young people saw churches doing that, we'd come in droves.  

We want our lives to have meaning--we've been criticized for not wanting to do work we find to be "beneath us", but ultimately that attitude means that we want to spend our time doing work that we feel matters.  We volunteer, we do service work, often outside of the church.  We yearn for a deeper spirituality that we find in yoga classes more than in church.  So please, please, PLEASE, stop assuming that we are so shallow that something like the presence of a praise band will make or break our decision to come to church, because as long as those kinds of conversations are at the forefront of our church experience, we will continue to write off church as not being the place to truly re-examine our lives.  We aren't looking for entertainment, we're looking for God.  We will take our questions and our spirituality and our interest in living more purposefully elsewhere. And I, personally, am saddened when I watch churches try to solve important problems by asking unimportant questions.

Or, as I summarized in an Unvirtuous Abbey-style prayer: "For those who seek to revitalize the church by reconsidering worship styles instead of by reconsidering how we follow the Gospel, O Lord, we pray."

The Saviour King goes forth to die...

Okay, folks, it's Holy Week and I have some opinions.

First of all, for those of you just tuning in, a brief run-down of the different days of this week, what's generally happening.

PALM SUNDAY - Last Sunday, March 24th.  Jesus comes to Jerusalem, encounters crowds of adoring fans waving palm branches and taking off their clothes.  They greet him as a king, as the person who is going to save their people.  (yes, he is… but not like they expected…)

MAUNDY THURSDAY - So… what the heck is a "Maundy" and is it related to a "Shrove"?!  Maundy comes from the Latin "mandatum", meaning "commandment".  This is the day of the Last Supper, where some important things happen.  1. Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, as a gesture of humility and love, and explains it by saying, "I give you a new commandment--you shall love one another as I have loved you." 2. Jesus establishes what is now known as communion, or the Eucharist, the eating of bread and drinking of wine in remembrance of him.  3. Judas betrays Jesus, setting the whole thing in motion for the ending of the story.  Peter denies knowing Jesus.  So the night starts off great and then takes a particularly intense downward spiral for Jesus, who is betrayed and abandoned by his friends, with the crowd that cheered is entrance into Jerusalem on Sunday now screaming for his crucifixion.  Ouch.

GOOD FRIDAY - The day of Jesus' crucifixion and death.  He's shuffled back and forth between judges for a while, due to where he's from and what religion he is and whose jurisdiction does he really fall under anyways, but is eventually flogged, forced to carry his own cross up to the hill, is nailed to it, and suffers a pretty awful death.  With people mocking him.  Right after his friends abandoned and betrayed him last night.  Yep.

We've reached the time in the church year that really is the basis of the whole religion.  Despite the popularity of Christmas, Christianity is NOT about Christ's birth.  It's about Christ's death.  And for those of us who have a large part of ourselves steeped in the church, it's these major events that are the spark for most Christian theology.

Now, I must confess I am a theology nerd.  I was really excited whenever I got to sit in on a Systematic Theology class when I visited seminaries.  So the criticisms I'm about to level on more traditional theology are meant with love, and what I love about theology is pretty much the same thing I hate about it.

Here's my beef with a lot of the traditional theology I've encountered: it seems to be about solving problems, fitting things into systems, figuring out how to justify the claims of religion within the reality of the world.  A classic example is the problem of sin existing in the world after Christ's death and resurrection.  If Christ's sacrifice paid the price for all sins up to that point--what do we do with the fact that we keep sinning?  Does Christ have to keep dying?  Was that one death enough?  How do we absolve ourselves from our sin in the post-resurrection world? In the heyday of the Medieval church, they had one answer--through the sacrament of communion, where Christ appears in the bread and wine, literally, through transubstantiation (the bread and wine actually BECOMING the body and blood of Christ) his sacrifice is made again and we are once again absolved from sin.  Of course, this raised a whole different set of theological questions, like how do you deal with the actual body and blood of Christ, and how terrible are we as we perform the mass if we are constantly re-killing Christ?

A very largely accepted theological point that I cannot stand is known as "substitutionary atonement".  It arises from the idea of a God who demands sacrifices, and the gist of it is that Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, and has paid the price for our sins.  It makes perfect sense that this language is all over the Bible--the time was a time of burnt offerings, of appeasing angry gods, and even in the monotheistic culture of the Old Testament, God demands and accepts sacrifices--and even rejects the ones that are not pleasing.  So it makes sense to have that language helping to fix that particular theological point, and yet something about it, now, seems cheap to me.  I don't like the primary story in my religion to be one of a transaction for my soul--it seems too simplistic.  Having grown up in the church my entire life, I know the "right" answers.  When asked how I am saved, I can respond that it is through no action of my own but only through the grace of God through His Son Jesus Christ, who I profess as my personal Lord and Savior.  I can talk about faith and works, I can quote the right passages, but frankly, I don't believe that salvation is about finding the right answers and believing the right things.  I don't think there ARE any right answers, or that there is one belief set that will get you to heaven, and honestly?  I'm not sure "salvation", by which people tend to mean "getting to heaven" is a good end goal.

So let's cut out the theological stuff for a moment, and I just want to think about this story--not even including the resurrection, yet.  Let's leave out the miracles too, right now, let's just focus on things that humans are generally physically capable of.  This is the story of a man who cared deeply about those who were left out or thought to be unclean and therefore unloveable.  It's the story of a guy who shocked people by acting so outside of the social standards, which he did really to show outcasts that they have value--and show those who look down on them that there's something more there.  It's the story of someone who lived a life that focused on helping others, who modeled a way of life that even today we still find weird and slightly repulsive.  If you don't believe me, will you try this with me--will you think of the kind of person you find the most off-putting?  For some people, it might be those who are outwardly gay, for others it might be militant atheists, but thinking about the general readership of this blog, I think it's more likely that, for you, it might be those who are outwardly outspoken AGAINST the GLBT community.  It might be the Westboro Baptist Church.  Will you think of that kind of person, and can you imagine having a conversation with them--not an argument, not a debate, but a conversation where you listen to them and try to understand why they think the way they do, without judging them?  Can you imagine working with them?  Collaborating with them?  Or, on a different kind of example, imagine the people you avoid on the street, or the subway--someone of a different ethnic group who seems suspicious, or the homeless man smelling up the subway who probably also has issues with mental illness.  Would you invite them to dinner?  Let them into your home?

It is THAT kind of extravagant care that this man lived with.  He led this crazy lifestyle, and believed in it so much that he died for it.  Moreover, he died in order to show just how much he cared for everyone.

I don't believe that you have to believe in the Christian God in order to be a good person or go to "heaven".  I don't believe in heaven as a physical place.  I don't even really know what that means.  I don't think you have to be "saved".

But will I call that man my savior?  Absolutely.  Because I am continually inspired by his example to work towards living a life that value others, in finding ways to connect with those on the outside, and work to live that commandment to love others as this man did, and if that's not saving me from the self-absorbed, greedy life that I naturally gravitate towards (proven by the fact that even with this great example I too often slip back to that!)… then I don't know what is.

Many names, gathered into one.

I have a confession to make: I am a church junkie.

I was raised, as you all know, going to church every week, unless I was throwing up.  I was born Baptist, raised Methodist, worked for Presbyterians for three summers, and have been attending an Episcopal church going on six years, and I know that because I started attending that church in Year C of the lectionary.  I took a bit of time off in that six years, during one of my years of college, where I experimented with not going to church every week.  I also, later, experimented with “attending a church but not getting involved”.  Both of these experiments were, ultimately, failures, because I truly love going to church, to the point where, when we planned a family trip to start the Sunday after Christmas this year, I insisted on going to church in the morning.  My parents looked at me like I was crazy, so I took the car and went, not just to church, but to the EARLY SERVICE, because I am weird.

Recently, I have decided that waking up at 6am (which becomes 6:30 and, today, 6:45) to get to church before 8am for choir rehearsal and singing (and now often reading scripture and being the crucifer) at the 9am service, followed by the Adult Education Sunday School isn’t enough church for me.  Oh, no.  No, I have now added another service, an 11:15am service at another church, that goes until 12:30 or 1.  And since I’ve added on this other church, my Sunday mornings have become quite the spectrum of church-going.

The Episcopal church I’ve been attending for a while is Grace Church, on 10th and Broadway, known to NYU students as “that really pretty church across the street from that freshman dorm.”  Grace is a beautiful Gothic revival church, designed by James Renwick, who designed St. Patrick’s Cathedral, when he was 23 (I am 23 and OH NO WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?!).  That’s, honestly, why I first stepped through the door, my second Sunday living in NYC.  I was church-hopping, trying to figure out a church I could call home in NYC.  The week before I’d attended one of the few Methodist churches in my walkable range... and while it was comforting by being so familiar, it was a bit too familiar.  While they got me to coffee hour the first time I ever visited (a feat), I knew all the hymns, had sung soprano, alto, AND done liturgical dance to the anthem, and wasn’t challenged by the theology.

So I found myself at Grace, and while I continued checking out area churches, I had a good indication after that first service that this was the one.  Besides the sheer beauty of that building, Grace has a very strong music department (clearly important to me) and solid, confrontational theology.  While I doubt the Rector would himself use the word “confrontational” to describe what is preached at Grace, I clearly remember the first sermon I heard there.  It was on a section of Luke (Year C, I told you), that has since become one of my favorite Bible verses, Luke 14:26: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate mother, father, wife, child, yea, even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”  It is a hard text that most people won’t touch with a ten foot pole.  They will preach on any other text they possibly can that week.  And at Grace, they tackled it in all its complexity and difficulty, and it is that kind of delving into scripture, liturgy, and theology that I have found at Grace--they do not push anything aside because it’s uncomfortable, or dumb it down, they face it head on.  Their Sunday Forum (the adult education Sunday school) is also an EXCELLENT spot for this, for us church nerd types, often having guest speakers from local universities on topics such as the evolution of the Book of Common Prayer (actually fascinating), Ignatian spirituality, or issues of the church in society.

Grace is also a great church for an introvert.  This is not to be taken lightly--I’ve been to churches that are so outgoing that I’ve become very uncomfortable.  Grace allowed me to ease in, and slowly but surely, I became very involved.  (I also have to note that Grace is a big church in NYC, and I was a frequent but uninvolved member, and the Rector remembered my name after I was gone for 9 months in Montreat and Ghana.  I was totally impressed.)  It’s a church where I can indulge the more thoughtful side of me, that stays a bit restrained, and loves order, a classic liturgy, ritual and... Bach.  It is one of the more traditional churches, but in a very rich way.

Also WE ARE GETTING A NEW PIPE ORGAN.  NOT EVEN CAPSLOCK CAN EXPRESS HOW EXCITING THIS IS.

Recently, I have started to attend another church, a church that is, frankly, pretty far out of my comfort zone in some ways.  I am now attending Sunday morning worship at Middle Collegiate Church.  Middle is one of the Collegiate churches of NYC, that were the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in the good old days before the American revolution.  They are now four churches, all technically RCA (Reformed Church in America).  These Collegiate churches are essentially the REALLY LIBERAL sidearm of the much more conservative RCA.  And Middle, which is in the heart of the East Village, is one of the most diverse-- no, wait, THE most diverse church I have ever seen.  many races, ALL kinds of people... it seems like the one of the least represented groups is straight white men.  The extremely tattooed folks you see on St. Marks?  If they go to church, they go to Middle.  Middle is passionately involved in social justice efforts, they are radically inclusive, they are particularly artistic.  On any given day there might be a church choir, a gospel choir, a sermon that’s a story, a sermon told through drama, non-traditional prayer, etc. The building is basically in an Arts and Crafts style (windows by Tiffany), which is one of my favorite artistic movements.  And slowly, different parts of my life have led me to Middle.  A couple years ago, a group of my friends were hired to do theater with the children there, which got me through those doors for the first time.  Then this past summer, I found out that the Senior Minister there, Jacqui Lewis, was going to be speaking at the 2013 Montreat Signature Conference, Imagine, and when I told Pete, the President of Montreat, that I knew that church, he insisted that I go hear Jacqui preach.  Then I found out this fall that they were doing the Missa Gaia by Paul Winter, and since I love that work, I came to worship for the first time.  Due to my rehearsal schedule, I couldn’t go back for a while, but I started attending again a few weeks ago.  Then I visited Princeton Theological Seminary and immediately connected with someone, later to find out that he also attends Middle.  Today I found out that one of my teachers from when I studied abroad in Ghana attends Middle when he’s in NYC.

In many ways Middle is ideal, for that social justice bent and inclusiveness, but in many ways it also makes me uncomfortable... particularly in worship style.  For those of you who know my church background (particularly those who know my mother) know that I actually really like a certain amount of tradition in my service.  I don’t like boring, but I love richly traditional, and there are some “rules” that are bred into me, and some things that because of parts of my past, make me a little queasy.  I don’t do well in Pentecostal churches, or churches highly focused on emotions, because I have been emotionally manipulated by worship services before and let me tell you, that feels awful when you crash from it.  My denominational background is all in traditions that don’t really talk, that might give an appreciative “hmm” after something particularly moving, but otherwise, we are composed and orderly.  Middle is not.  Middle is loud and sometimes people stand up and sometimes people hold their hands in the air and sometimes people dance and often... people... clap.  Not just clapping along with songs (which thank GOD, this is my first time not being in a congregation of rhythmless white people, it’s awesome), but... when things are done, people... applaud.  (Mom I’m so sorry I’ve been applauding in church please don’t disown me please I promise I’ll always say “een” not “in”)  Furthermore, one of the longest parts of the service is the Passing of the Peace, where people get completely out of their pews, cross the aisles, sometimes even travel around the entire church saying hello to people.  It’s an amount of extroversion that makes it difficult to hide, which is good, but also scary for some of us, and I don’t think I could do Middle without the counterbalance of Grace.  Grace fills me with spirituality for myself, Middle fills me with spirituality for the world.

So this morning, I went to choir at Grace, where we joked about not being able to say “alleluia” even though Sundays aren’t a part of Lent, and lovingly made fun of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, then we sang in the service--the first Sunday morning service completely done on the partially-finished new pipe organ.  I went to the Sunday Forum, where we had a lovely session about Mary Daly the radical lesbian feminist theologian, where the person leading the Forum passed around the course offerings booklet for Union Theological Seminary (which I have in my apartment, since I’ve applied there).  Then I headed over to Middle, where the sermon was a collaboration between Jacqui and a Rabbi friend of hers, talking about Exodus and liberation and Black History Month and how none of us are free until everyone is free.

Are any of these styles of worship better than the other?  No.  Not at all.  I am so glad God is big enough for all of them to exist.  It’s like last week, in the Sunday Forum conversation about the Book of Common Prayer, where I was torn about which was better: having one liturgy that you can delve deeply into over years, or having different liturgies enriching the service with new ideas every week?  The conclusion I came to was that I was glad that both of them exist in various churches.

Here is something that I started writing during one of the anthems at Middle’s service, based on this, based on the Sunday Forum and Mary Daly trying to find alternate images of God, and on ideas of God as “unchanging” that I encountered in a systematic theology class at Princeton:

I praise an ever-shifting God,
who slips through the fingers of any hand that tries to grasp it and pin it down.
My God is found in silver croses and pipe organs,
in long robes and candles--
and my God is found in drums and clapping and dancing and loud “Amen!”s.
My God forgives debts, trespasses and sins,
whether you believe in One God or God the Father Almighty.
My God sings through raised soft palates
and speaks in tongues.
My God penetrates the words of the great theologians,
and lifts up the voice of the testimony,
and sparks the questions of the doubting.

I worship the God of the mountains; majestic, eternal, unchanging.
I worship the God of the sea; unfathomable, unknowable, unpredictable.
I worship the God of the desert; harsh, purifying, searching.
I worship the God of the city; vibrant, busy, colorful.
I worship the God of the home; comforting, intimate, warm.
I worship a human God, who laughs and weeps as all humanity does.
I worship a separate God, who sees what I cannot.

And I sing to a God that left the church’s doors
to weave in and out of all the world
to appear in blue jeans
and on cardboard signs begging for money
a God that found its way into the synagogues, the mosques, the temples, the yoga classes,
who appears to the churchfolk through the voice of the atheist
who finds a strain of love in the world
and wraps itself around it, multiplying its light,
for my God is everything and anything that is based in love.

My God dances away from my reaching fingertips
but is somehow in my hand.
And I spend my life trying to glimpse it,
only to hear it laugh and say, “I am right here! Open your eyes!”

If your God is an idea you can easily grasp,
a one-gendered, unconfusing, comprehensible idea that seems to hold much power in that simplicity,
I would like to challenge our Gods to a duel.
For how could my big God lose against your tiny one?
For if we believe God is all-powerful,
how dare we restrict God to one image?

Is it not the gravest sin to limit this lively, playful, mysterious, abundant, loving thing we call God?

Mea maxima, maxima culpa.

In case anyone missed the memo, I have a minor obsession with the musical Sweeney Todd.  I have tried to articulate why many times, but nothing quite hits the mark.  It has to do with when and how it came into my life and the effect that had (aka: it's why I do theater), it has to do with what I knew of musical theater before and what I know now, it has to do with my music taste, it has to do with the breadth of emotion, it has to do with the brilliant use of the traditional Dies Irae theme… and I think I'll never be able to quite pin the attraction down, much in the same way that lovers can't quite articulate why they are in love.  But Sweeney and I have been going strong for 11 years now.

The thing I usually say is that I fell in love with the characters.  Every single one of them I could identify with and love.  Each flawed, each struggling, each trying, each with something redemptive inside of them.  While the joke(/truth) is that I'm most often like Toby, I feel for all of them, am like all of them, and adore all of them.

Even Judge Turpin.

Judge Turpin is the closest thing we have to a true villain in this show.  Many people act despicably, but it's Judge Turpin that is the "bad guy" throughout the show, and many known productions (and the movie) keep it that way.  But there's a song, written for the original production but left out-- it was performed at the first preview but didn't fit within the director's vision for the show and was cut.  It has since been restored and though it's not in the 1982 DVD with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn or the Tim Burton film, you can see it on the 2001 San Francisco Symphony concert DVD with Patti LuPone and George Hearn.  (or you can watch one of my favorite versions here... except it's in Catalan.) The song is the Judge's "Johanna".

It's the most awkward song to talk about, and I probably won't ever be able to use it as a sermon illustration.  (Though I did write a paper on it in high school.)  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Sweeney Todd, 15 years before the show, the Judge, coveting the wife of a simple barber, Benjamin Barker, has Barker sent to a penal colony on a false charge, and takes the wife by force, who then poisons herself.  In a moment of guilt and mercy, the Judge takes in the year-old, now orphaned daughter as his ward.  In the timeframe of the musical, however, the girl is now 16, and the Judge begins to lust after her. The song begins with the Judge singing a "mea culpa", and throughout the song he both prays for his deliverance and practices self-flagellation, which only increases his lust.

There are two major schools of interpretation of this song.  One pushes the Judge further into villain category, interpreting intent from the beginning of the song as using the scourging for pleasure.  The other realm of interpretation is that he begins this song truly repentant, but the act of his self-punishment turns on him, despite his good intentions.  This is the school I subscribe to, because it's much more interesting and paints a far more human picture.  Also, if you look at the Christopher Bond version of Sweeney Todd (the version that was the direct source material for the Sondheim), there's a monologue corresponding to this song that is pretty directly connected to this line of interpretation.  This monologue includes what I think is the most heartbreaking line in the entire play: "Heaven mocks my penitence, and turns my one good act into mockery."

Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent, a season of preparation looking forward Easter.  While Advent, our other main season of waiting (before Christmas) was marked with anticipation and hope, Lent can seem a little less magical.  Lent is described with words like "self-denial" "fasting" "repentance".  Lent is like getting kicked in the spiritual behind.  For 40 days.  And we plunge into it by being visibly reminded of our mortality and our sin.  The tradition of the imposition of ashes (being marked with a cross of ashes on our foreheads) grew out of several traditions regarding preparing people for baptism, and atoning for sins.  It is now common for churches (not just Catholic churches) to begin Lent with these symbols.

Of course, the ashes, crossed onto our foreheads with the words, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return," are a reminder that we are mortals, doomed to sin and death.  Ashes are also the remains of the "sackcloth and ashes" tradition, where people would wear course clothing and ashes in times of mourning or deep repentance.  But what you may not be aware of if you don't step into the church on Ash Wednesday and hear the reading, is we are sinning THROUGH the practice of Ash Wednesday.

Our lesson today is from Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21:

"Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Oof.

So on the day where we as a church get together to repent by bearing our sin on ourselves, publicly… we are told we should instead be doing this in secret.  On the day where we disfigure our faces, we are told not to disfigure our faces.  Even in our trying to repent, we sin.  Just like Judge Turpin.  All those theological quandaries about the human condition, the fall of man, total depravity, are summed up in this liturgical act: how we sin even in our repentance.

So where do we go from here?

What breaks my heart about Judge Turpin is he gives up.  He finds a legal loophole, smooths away the problem by pledging to marry Johanna in order to "sanctify" his lust.  In the Bond, he says, "We must be what we are.  I cannot change."  It is the easy way--finding some way to smooth over our imperfections, finding some logistical or practical or (dare I say it) even theological way out.  It is easy to simply continue coasting along, instead of traveling down the difficult road towards change.  Towards the cross.  That's the road of Lent.

Lent, simply speaking, is a time where we take stock and see that we are so far from perfect it seems foolish to try.  But we are fools, striving towards perfection, and we will walk together along this impossible road, working to become as good as we can.