By Lydia Shiu

I have been feeling a bit powerless lately. So much is out of my control it seems, from Covid to racial injustice. There’s so much happening in the world that I’m sad about, that I grieve, that I’m angry about, that I can’t do anything about. I feel like a drop in the ocean.

A recent documentary came out about Bruce Lee, a powerful force of personality and fitness, a Chinese-American who made an impact in Hollywood at a time when Asian actors weren’t taken seriously, is titled ‘Be Water’ after a quote from Bruce talking about the power of water. He says, “You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ&feature=youtu.be)

So then again, a drop of water here and a drop of water there can be powerful. That’s what I’ve been learning through the work of organizing. As many of you know, Reservoir Church has been a member of Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO), partnering with 40+ congregations, synagogues, mosques to work together toward public good. Since the outbreak of Covid and in the wake of George Floyd’s death, GBIO and new folks who’ve never been involved with GBIO were activated to come together to take action. From individual grief and powerlessness, we came together for a Racial Justice Campaign for police reform and healthcare reform in the state of MA. We began setting up In District Meetings (IDM) to engage our state representatives who will be voting on some important legislation that would impact real change and accountability in both our police and healthcare system. 

It has been hard work. It has been confusing work. Amendments were being added or taken out daily and it was difficult to keep up with all the politics! I was constantly Googling who’s in what district, and learning that how to pronounce “Representative Provost” was important (It’s just pro-vo. The “st” is silent!) We were all doing this over zoom of course and lots of emails. But through it, I experienced little drops of Reservoir (yes, I’m trying to do a pun) gather here and gather there, becoming a powerful force of water that put grooves into state politics that sometimes feel like heavy stones to break through.

Our church SHOWED UP with stories from their personal lives:

-like Meghan Cary about her journey through mental health care,

–Phil Reavis about police brutality (https://www.facebook.com/265194353559805/posts/3188974247848453/?vh=e&d=n),

–Herma Parham and her story,

–Michaiah Healy sharing stories from her town, and more.

Our church SHOWED up with Kristina Harrison, Evelyn Manning, Iueh Soh, Estivaliz Castro, Roger and Clarie Dewey, Paul Castiglione, Sue Rosenkranz, Grace Golding, and Kimberley Hutter in the planning of IDM’s, running the meeting, asking Representatives hard questions in the meeting. And MANY more showed up as constituents. Shout outs to the Faith Into Action Team and everyone else who I didn’t catch at the various meetings–THANK YOU for showing up. 

Our drops of tears, our frustrations, our emails and calls to representatives, our presence in the Zoom calls were poured into the containers of various districts in the Greater Boston area, and it made an impression on our state House Reps. I didn’t know I had that kind of power. Well, maybe I don’t, but we do. And as I learned from Iueh, one of our Faith Into Action Core Team leaders, he likes to remind us of a quote from Roberto Unger and Cornel West, “hope is not the cause of action, hope is the consequence.” Which has been true for me. 

I’m so proud of the work that Reservoir was a part of and that I got to be a part of. And there’s much more work to be done.

Here’s another example of Reservoir people bringing their own stories to make an impact: John Griffith, Aina Adler and their daughter Lily shared their story on WCVB5 News.

Their experience of racial disparity in the healthcare system moved me to tears. John spoke out about it on his Facebook and it’s been shared a few thousand times. Lily shouldn’t have experienced this because of the color of her mother Aina’s skin. But this is being black in America today. 

The #BlackLivesMatter movement is an opportunity for all of us to advocate for those who are being marginalized because of their skin color–their health and their lives are at risk. GBIO will be continuing in the work of racial justice focusing on police reform and healthcare reform in the weeks and months to come. Stories like John and Aina’s should not leave us powerless but take it from them, and let’s speak out and do something. Our faith can inform us to do something about it. If you’d like to be involved with Faith into Action, a group of Reservoir folks who want to organize towards justice and action, please email me at lydia@reservoirchurch.org. Don’t underestimate the power of a drop of water, like Bruce Lee said. Or like Jesus said, the power of a seed. 

“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matt 17:20

(text is from the letter that went out to the Reservoir Church community 6/24/20)

Happy Summer!
 

While all our weekly emails sign off from Steve, our senior pastor, they’re really from your whole pastoral team. This week in particular is from Steve and Ivy, our pastor of community life, as we’re excited to share a bit about in person gatherings in our community!

It has been incredibly moving to see how you have carried one another during these last few months of pandemic.  In a time where the realities of these hard, wild days do their best to tug us into isolation and disconnection – you have rallied and adapted and continued to make sacred space proving that there is “no distance in the Spirit.”
 

These months more than ever, have revealed just how vital connection is to our well-being, our souls.  And the ways that you have continued to meet with one another to pray, to express joy, to weep, to grieve, to celebrate daily victories, to sit in the presence of God has been encouraging.

“Where two or three are gathered,” Jesus said, “there I will be also.” Turns out – Yes! – even via virtual platforms.  This gathering together has been so powerful, beautiful and a lifeline to so many! Thank you, thank you!

Unlike many summers, where we encourage community groups to take a break  – we’ve heard from many group leaders, that there is an eagerness to continue to meet virtually as well as start to hold smaller in-person gatherings. 

As COVID-19 numbers are decreasing, the state is gradually, and carefully reopening. As such, we are inviting community groups and other small circles of people in the community to gather in person, if you would like to. No group should feel they need to meet in person, and we ask all groups to continue to meet virtually if you have members who would prefer that, either for their safety or their risk tolerance.

If you do gather in person however, please observe the following precautions (these are meant to supplement – not replace – any laws, rules or regulations in your local communities):

• Gather outdoors
  (look for a time when the ground is dry and odds of rain are low!)
• Gather in groups of 10 or fewer
  (if your group is larger, split into two or more pods for meet-ups this summer)
• Meet in a large backyard (if possible), or an area of a public park without a lot of foot traffic, here are a few in the greater Boston area; Danehy Park (Cambridge), Larz Anderson (Brookline), Arnold Arboretum (Boston – JP), Lincoln Park (Somerville).
• Maintain *at least* six feet physical distance. 
• Wear masks
• Bring your own food or drink, rather than sharing.
• Consider air high-fives, footshakes, or elbow taps instead of hugging and handshakes. 
• Enjoy conversation, prayer as you normally would.
• If you feel sick, or are exhibiting any ill symptoms, please stay home. 
• Have hand sanitizer available, if hand-washing is not easily accessible.

However you gather this summer, whether virtually or in-person or a hybrid – remember that Jesus is with you, binding you to one another, spirit to spirit – may you relish in this warmth in the weeks to come. 

Peace,

Steve and Ivy

steve@reservoirchurch.org, ivy@reservoirchurch.org

Examen Written Collaboratively by Vernée Wilkinson and Ted Wueste 

For many of us, we are realizing that the statement “I’m not a racist” is not enough. Better is to say “I’m antiracist.” In other words: proactively standing against racism in our hearts and minds, in our interactions with others, and in the way we strive to see our cultural institutions operate. In that spirit, we offer this examen. An examen is a structured prayer in which we are led to prayerfully reflect on our lives by focusing on being present to God and asking God to search our hearts and guide our steps. *set aside time daily to slowly pray through these questions .

1. Remind yourself that you are in God’s presence. Give thanks for God’s grace in your life. Give thanks for God’s love for all who have been made in His image. 

2. Pray for the grace to understand how God is at work in you as it relates to living as an antiracist person. Review, with God, the call to be active in bringing peace and justice to the world around you. 

As you consider the injustice of racism, what does the Spirit seem to be stirring in your spirit? Do I extend the peace of Christ to people of color with my words, deeds, actions and influence? How have I allowed the evil of racism to affect me? Have I “wept with those who weep?” 

3. Review your day … Ask God to search your heart and mind to see how embedded thought patterns of bias might have affected you today. 

Have I done anything to diminish the image of God in my neighbor, friend, colleague or family members that are persons of color? Did I say hurtful words to someone or about someone because of their race? Have I been silent when I could have spoken peace and truth into a racially biased or explicitly racist situation? 

4. Reflect on what you did, said, or thought in those instances. Were you drawing closer to God’s heart concerning racial injustice, or further away? 

Are my private thoughts uplifting and loving towards all races? Do I recognize people of color as fearfully and wonderfully made? Where do I struggle with this the most? a specific person, people group or environment? Where can I let go of my ego and make more space for racial justice? 

Are there ways in which I promoted peace and extended love to people of color? 

Take a few moments to repent and ask for forgiveness where it is needed, and then celebrate with God where you see growth and transformation. 

5. Look toward tomorrow — think of how you might collaborate more effectively with God’s heart to extend brotherly and sisterly love. 

How can I speak up, show up and affirm people of color in my life? in society? What action can I take tomorrow to nourish the longing for racial justice? 

Are there things that need to be undone? Is there someone to whom I need to apologize? Is there someone to whom I need to reach out? 

How can I be antiracist in my community of influence as well as help in the work of larger societal change? What ongoing values and actions will I apply towards living a life as an antiracist person? 

This week is a big one in our state’s journey through the COVID-19 pandemic, as Governor Baker announced on Monday the beginning of Stage 1 of our reentry plan, effective immediately. As you may have read, “houses of worship” were authorized to meet in person under a variety of conditions. 

I am working on an approach to reentry for Reservoir, which we’ll share with you after our Board and staff team have more time to communicate, collaborate, and consult. In short, though, as I’ve said before, we are in no rush to put any one in our community or broader public in harm’s way. While I support Governor Baker and all of our local leaders’ complicated and valiant efforts to protect public safety and support the freedom of worship for faith communities, I still have a variety of concerns and questions regarding the current guidelines and whether or not they are adequate for our safety and that of the public at large. We’ll have more thoughts on this and a more detailed approach to reentry for our community in the weeks to come. 

Meanwhile, our worship services and community groups will continue to gather online. It’s incredibly heartening that so many of us continue to get together in online groups on a regular basis. I encourage you to take opportunities to get the support and refreshment you need. Ivy Anthony, our Pastor of Community Groups, can help connect you if you want. And we’ll continue to share resources and content to help us discover more of the love of Jesus, the gift of community, and the joy of living as best we can during these circumstances. 

Much love to you all this week,

Steve

Since our COVID-19 shelter in place began nearly two months ago, our church has had an unusual amount of opportunity to think about love of neighbor, love in public, and public justice. It’s ironic that so many of us could be spending so much time in our own homes and yet also be so connected to our place, our work, and God’s work in the broader world.

I want to share a few things I’ve learned as I’ve watched you do this, and as I’ve done my own public work as a clergy member, and leader in the interfaith justice work of Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. I’ve had the opportunity to be part of meetings with our governor, our state attorney general, sheriffs, district attorneys, and more, and want to share things I’ve learned there as well. So this is a longer email; thanks for taking the time to read!

Stuff I’ve learned from public officials first, then other things:

• No one wants anyone to lose their housing right now. We’ve helped encourage legislations to protect people on this. If you’re being threatened with eviction or foreclosure, contact the Attorney General’s consumer complaint line: 617-727-8400. They’ll fight for you if the law allows.
• Politicians are people too, even really powerful ones. Whether you voted for them or not, pray for people like Governor Baker and others; these are hard times for them.
• Advocacy works. In our meeting with the governor, we watched and heard lights turn on for him as we advocated for health care access we’ve been fighting for, for years (greater mental health care access, ending surprise billing, lowering prescription drug costs, etc.). I’m hopeful Massachusetts will keep leading the way towards better work here, even if it’s not as fast or thorough as many of think it should be.
• More and more of us are aware that our country imprisons way too many people, that racism is deeply baked into our criminal justice system, and that prisons and jails are dangerous places to be – especially during a Covid outbreak. However, few public officials want to let people out. The political, logistical, legal, and service-providing barriers are still large, but we’re part of a broad-based coalition that is working hard on this issue.
• If you want to get involved in advocacy on these and other things, you should! Contact Lydia (lydia@reservoirchurch.org) about our emerging Faith Into Action group and work. We have a growing number of skilled, passionate leaders in our congregation!
• Our public leaders are really worried that people with urgent health care needs aren’t getting the care they need. If you have a chronic health condition or an emergency, call your doctor or, as needed, go to the ER. It’s scary, but we need to attend to our health.
• Elders have it really, really hard right now. Reach out to your elders. Offer help. Offer connection and communication. Pray for them. Please. Today.
• I’ve learned through Attorney General Healey and through my work with Samaritans that domestic violence and child neglect and endangerment are on the rise right now. If you’re being abused or neglected, or if you wonder if you’re doing that yourself, stop reading this now and contact me or another one of our pastors, and we’ll help put you in touch with the help you need.
• Help is available. If you live in Cambridge and meet certain income guidelines, look into our city’s Mayors Fund, for cash relief for people impacted by this season. Millions are available, literally.
• If you can offer help, you and your community group should check out our growing list of resources for how you can help right now!
• Our church just decided to make a $1,000 donation to the recently established One Church Fund, where churches that are still well provided for in this crisis can share with churches that face larger barriers. 
• You are amazing. You’ve worked with our city’s homeless, sometimes getting sick as a result. You’ve sewn masks for others (email Ivy to join this ongoing effort of mask donation to Pine Street Inn and Victory Programs, Inc.). You’ve done your work in human services bravely, admirably, courageously. You’ve raised funds. You’ve transformed our sanctuary into a holy space for blood donations. You’ve loved your kids as well as you can. You’ve borne your losses honestly and courageously. You’ve given stimulus money to people who needed it more. You’ve grieved. You’ve hoped. You’ve raised important issues. You’ve raised your voice for others. You’ve challenged scapegoating and racial stigmas. You’ve cooked up a storm. You’ve done the work of healing – medical and otherwise – in impossibly hard conditions. You’ve shopped for others. You’ve made your needs known. You’ve practiced public love, even when that just meant staying home. You are amazing.
• This has been so hard. Everything from missing our routines, to seeing our kids’ losses, to mental health challenges, to isolation, to … I can’t name it all; it’s just hard. Hard is normal right now. Hang in there. Reach out for help. Help where you can. This will not last forever.
• This may not be true of you personally, but on the whole, our church is very privileged. Few of us, compared to the state at large, have lost our jobs. Few of us, compared to the city at large, have been hospitalized. While our shared inconvenience, fear, and suffering is real and important, our church community’s economic and social privilege shows. And it is our opportunity to decide what to do about that – how to be generous, how to advocate well for others, how to choose solidarity with those who are hurt or hurting. Our church is collectively choosing ways to do this, and if you can, I encourage you personally to do the same. 

Two last bits of news, before our usual reminders.

1. Our church was eventually approved for a low interest, forgivable loan through the Payroll Protection Program. Thanks to our Board and Cambridge Savings Bank for their work on this, helping protect our bottom line so we can sustainably serve our city. 
2. My planned sabbatical for this summer has been postponed, at my request. It’s just not a great time to take 3 months off, for a whole bunch of reasons. I’m excited to serve our community this summer and excited to take the sabbatical in 2021. 

(Announcements to the church congregation omitted here.)

Fifth in the Lenten Series, “Why Did Jesus Die?”

The first time I stood on the Great Wall of China was a revelation. I thought I knew what it was. I remember in elementary school, a teacher said that the Great Wall of China was the one human-made structure you could see from space. It turns out this is not at all true, for more than one reason. But it sounded amazing to me, that people could make something so large and so big. I’d seen many, many pictures over the years after that, of the wall and the verdant, mountainous scenery surrounding it. I had even read bits of history about the great Qin dynasty and Emperor Qin Shi Huang, under whose brutal but powerful rule the wall construction really gathered momentum. 

I thought I knew the Great Wall of China.

But standing there for the first time, on a summer day at the start of this millenium, I was speechless. It was larger and steeper than I had imagined. Even on a grey, rainy morning, the views from its peaks were more breathtaking than I had expected. I knew that this wall was long, but seeing it wind through the distant mountains, I just remember having this extraordinary sense of awe at what natural beauty, human engineering, back-breaking labor, and historical preservation had together made possible. 

Thanks for reading about my relationship with the Great Wall. In this year of endless cancellations, the most painful for me was the cancellation of our family’s plans for our kids’ first ever trip to China. Our family is a beautiful interracial mix of my wife’s family’s Chinese roots and my family’s mix of Northwest European heritage, and our kids are all teenagers and getting ready to head out into the world on their own soon. The biggest thing we wanted to do together first was to go to China. And a clear must-see for all was the kids’ first trip to the Great Wall themselves. 

There’s a reason, though, that I tell this story as we explore why Jesus died. Most sane people throughout history have acknowledged that when it comes to our thinking about our Creator, the Spirit or being above or within all things, some humility is called for. We have rightly viewed who or what we call God with mystery.

And yet, we have often assumed that more or less, we know what God is like. By way of vision or tradition, story and rumor, we have imagined that the force behind the sun and the rain, life and death, our great hopes and fears, to be called God. We have, our human family, called God the creator, the power behind all power, the cause beneath all causes, the force of life that has brought all life into being. And it’s not that none of this is true.  But our sense of God has remained murky and far too often a cosmic reflection of the best and the worst of our own muddled conceptions and experience of love, power, fear, and violence. 

Something interesting happened, though, in the collective thoughts and imaginations of the first followers of Jesus. Their memory of the life and teaching of Jesus, how Jesus provoked and inspired them, and even how their sense of the unseen Spirit of Jesus continued to move them, made them think that for the first time, people had seen God face to face. God had walked among them, spoken to them, and shared meals of bread and beans and fish with them. 

God looked like Jesus.

They said this in different ways. Here are three, just as a sampling, all from the late Eugene Peterson’s poetic translation he called The Message.

“No one has ever seen God,

        not so much as a glimpse.

    This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,

        who exists at the very heart of the Father,

        has made him plain as day.” (John 1:18)

No one had ever seen God, until Jesus made God plain as day.

“We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created.” (Colossians 1:15)

In the history of the earth, the human species has been the closest approximation of the creative mind and vibrant love that God is. In Jesus, this approximation becomes the real deal, the accurate reflection of God, the original purpose. 

“We heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us.” (I John 1:1-2)

We now have an eyewitness sighting of the infinite life of God. God looks like Jesus. 

In their hope that God looks like Jesus, his followers to this day are not limited to how Jesus died, but our vision does continue to center there. Because in Jesus’ death, we see what the best writing and worship about God had always hoped might be true: that God is self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love. 

God shares and gives all the best that God has and is. God is by nature kind and forgiving, eager to see the best and heal the worst in us. And God is present in compassion with all who suffer. 

Jesus on the cross then becomes a kind of litmus test for all of our screwy traditions, opinions, hopes, and fears about God. Does what our parents or church or anyone else told us about God look and sound like Jesus? Maybe then it is. But if not, we can forget about it. 

This is another reason then that Jesus died, to cut through the pile of rumor and report of all we have thought about God, and to show us what God is like: self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love. 

Fourth in the Lenten series, “Why Did Jesus Die?”

A friend of mine recently told me about a conversation she’d had in the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis we’re facing right now. Let’s call my friend Anne. Anne and a friend of hers were making plans to go out to eat, and she suggested a place in Chinatown. Anne’s friend told her she would go to any other neighborhood in the city, but not there. She then described her view of Chinatown – that it is dirty and a hub of illegal immigration and likely very virus-infected right now. Anne and her friend both grew up in America, but Anne’s ancestors are East Asian, and her friend’s are West African. Anne tried to reason with her friend, that Chinatown hadn’t had any documented cases of coronavirus, that the restaurants are great, and that they are needlessly hurting for business right now because of people’s negative associations with all things Chinese. But the only thing that changed Anne’s friend’s perspective at all was when Anne reminded her how awful some people treated her during the Ebola crisis a few years back, when some people associated West Africans with their fears of disease. 

My friend’s conversation is not unusual these days, or really throughout human history. Right now, there are widespread reports of stigmatizing of and violence against Asian Americans. Humans have often done this kind of thing in times of fear and outbreaks of illness. Shamefully, many 14th century Christians blamed the Black Plague on Jews, spreading lies that they had poisoned wells. There is something in our species that longs to find blame for our problems outside of ourselves, and that looks for external scapegoats to punish or ostracize when we face fear or tension. 

There is a whole field of study of this phenomenon. It is called scapegoat theory. The term dates back to the Levitical law, where there is provision for a priest to symbolically place the blame for the whole nation’s sins upon a blameless goat. That goat was cast out into the wilderness, symbolically removing the blame and shame of the people from their midst. 

Twentieth century literary critic and historian Renee Girard and other scholars have helped us to see the universality of scapegoating in the human experience. Ancient legends and founding stories of societies often include tales of violence, through which evil is averted. Sacrifices of animals and gods and sometimes even children are nearly ubiquitous in ancient religious practice. There is something in us that needs to externalize our fears, and find blame for what threatens us outside of ourselves and our people.  

Of course, there are some serious downsides to this habit of ours. But let me name just two – it doesn’t work, and it is a horrible moral evil.

Scapegoating doesn’t heal. When nations blame members of an ethnic group for the spread of a disease, no one gets healthier. When insecure pre-teens tease peers who seem vulnerable or different, they don’t suddenly find inner peace and security. Kill all the animals you want, and you don’t produce more life, health, or safety for your species. Scapegoating produces a strong, sometimes exhilarating, sense of relief for a community. At last, a cause of blame and an outlet for aggression is found! But like most highs, it passes quickly, and the problems remain.

More importantly, scapegoating is violent, cruel, and unjust. It might start with labelling a virus after an ethnicity, a simple change of a word that takes our fears of sickness and economic loss and places the blame far away, on a global adversary. From there, though, businesses and people are avoided. Then they are spat upon, and eventually beaten or worse. This is the current impact of the use of the phrase “Chinese virus” and in various forms, it has been the story of Christian scapegoating of Jews for centuries. Call someone a Christ killer, and it’s not long before you start killing them yourself. 

But the thing is, we are either all Christ killers, or none of us are. From a purely forensic point of view, the Roman empire and its machinery of criminal injustice killed Jesus. From a theological perspective, though, we all did, and perhaps God did as well. The gospel of John and the book of Revelation represent Jesus as a sacrificial lamb, an innocent victim who removes humanity’s sin and blame. The New Testament letter entitled Hebrews understands Jesus to be the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. We could read this from God’s perspective – that our creator requires sacrifice to find peace with humanity. Sometimes the Bible implies this might be true of God. Yet at other times, it mocks this perspective. Why would God need us to kill a cow or a lamb – let alone a person? 

We do better when we read all this sacrifice from a human perspective. What if we’re the ones that needed all that death and bloodshed? What if our consciences and fears cry out for a place to lay the blame for our guilt and death? From this reading, God condescends in empathy to our need, first in the sacrifice of animals and eventually in the sacrifice of Godself. 

When our very God becomes our scapegoat, some radical shifts occur. Pretty much nobody – believer or not – looks at a crucifix and thinks: that Jesus got what he deserved! Rightfully read, the gospels shift our sympathies from the fearful, scapegoating mob to the innocent, scapegoated victim. They don’t just let the scapegoated speak, but align the falsely accused with the divine. Jesus the sacrificial lamb cries out: Do unto God, what you need to stop doing to one another. 

Devotion to a scapegoated God opens up three healthier postures for our insecurity and anxiety. 

When things are worst in us and in our world, when we most need someone or something to blame, the memory of Jesus’ death invites us to believe that God has not abandoned us but is with us still. Devotion to a crucified God dares us to in some sense lay the blame for all our problems on God’s shoulders, rather than casting about for a human scapegoat. Morally, God may be innocent, but emotionally and psychically, God would rather bear the blame for our problems than having us continually blame one another.

Secondly, when God becomes our scapegoat, we are freed to turn our energies inward. We can practice Jesus’ teaching to stop trying to pull the speck from our neighbor’s eye and spend some time on the planked lodged within our own. Scapegoating always fosters simplistic, other-focused blame for our shared problems. Our sickness, our lack, our anxieties must be some far-off politician’s fault, or the fault of some far-off country or people group or social class. But what if all this fault-finding gets us nowhere? What if a more nuanced, introspective, humble way forward in life is more likely to move us toward health and peace? 

And lastly, when Jesus becomes our scapegoat, there is an invitation, even a command, to break the cycle. Through his solidarity with all innocent victims, Jesus’ blood cries out: No more!  When we blame others for our problems, when we curse them or wish or do them harm, we have ourselves become what we call others: an infection, a killer of God and others, and a scourge against our own human race. It’s time to stop. 

From Steve’s sermon last Sunday:

“…not all of us have known fathers, or mothers for that matter, to be full of love and forgiveness, or very good at expressing it. A few of us have known outright cruel parents. Most of us have known parents that tried their best and never wanted to be cruel, but were cruel on occasion nevertheless, sometimes cruel without wanting to be, sometimes cruel without even realizing that was the effect they were having.

Jesus seemed to get this, when he said, you parents are evil. (And I’m paraphrasing here, but only a little – it’s in Luke 11 and Matthew 7.) …How much more, Jesus says, will a perfectly loving parent like God give you all that you need, especially the kindness and compassion and forgiveness that you need. 

God’s not a crueler or meaner parent than us. God is not obsessed with punishment and blame, bound by the need to satisfy his own anger before he can associate with us. Our instincts that tell us this can’t be true, and so does Jesus.”

Meditate on God as the ultimate Forgiving Parent – through the image of Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son” in Week 1 of the Lent Bible Guide

Reflect on how character Chidi’s words from the hit TV series “The Good Place,” resonates with our wrestling about justice, cruelty, and forgiveness.

When we ask the question, “Why did Jesus die?” it’s tempting to start with the snarky but true response, “Because people killed him.” Jesus was kind and gentle and amazing to just about everyone he encountered, except for the religious and cultural and political elite of his age. When he wasn’t calling them flamingly cruel hypocrites, he ignored them and undermined their authority and messaging. Of course, they’d conspire to silence or eliminate him. Jesus seemed to know his ministry would end this way. 

The cross at first seems like a pretty specific version of our cultural lament: This is why we can’t have nice things.

We could end our inquiry with this tragic observation, except that Jesus and his first followers didn’t cast Jesus as a victim. They saw the cross as part of the plan, in fact, a central part of Jesus’ destiny. Jesus death there wasn’t the end of his impact on earth, but the heart of its beginnings. 

So let’s make our question a little more specific. We’ll ask not just why Jesus died, but why Jesus thought he had to die as he did. What was God doing or showing us on the cross? And why does that matter still? 

There are many theories and metaphors that all partially answer these questions, and I find four of them especially powerful. We’ll look at the first of those four today, and follow with three others in the weeks to come. 

Jesus died to show us where God is. 

More specifically, Jesus died because God’s love compels God to be in solidarity with humanity’s greatest suffering. 

Let’s follow three very different thinkers who explore this – the great American theologian James Cone, the Catholic priest and gang intervention leader Father Greg Boyle, and the folk-rock American icon Johnny Cash.

In 2011, the late great theologian James Cone published a little book titled The Cross and the Lynching Tree. I’ve heard it said that it is the most important book about God ever published in this country. I’ve read it a couple of times now, once with the staff at Reservoir, and I can’t disagree. It’s a book of horror and of devotion. Cone pulls together the two symbols that have most terrorized African-Americans. There’s the cross, the flaming version of which has become an emblem of White supremacy. And there’s the lynching tree, the means of death for thousands of African Americans at the hands of White American racists. And Cone asks how these symbols speak to one another. How do we approach the cross of Christ through the American experience of the lynching tree? This might sound like painful or morbid work, but Cone argues that an American can’t faithfully respond to the Jesus who died on the cross, without making the comparison to our nation’s most similar practice of execution.

After all, under Rome, the cross was a tool of violence, wielded by the powerful to terrorize, humiliate, and subjugate the less powerful, and often ethnic and religious outsiders in particular. The scriptures evoke this mode of death in poetry that resonates in this context, saying of Christ, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” 

The Cross and the Lynching Tree has a lot to say, but it starts with the inarguable implication that Jesus is closer to the experience of Black American suffering than White American religion. The God who is revealed to us in the person of Jesus, whose biographies climax in his death on a cross, suffers with those who have (as Howard Thurman put it) “their backs against the wall”, and especially with those who suffer terror or violence at the hands of the powerful and privileged. God is in loving and powerful solidarity with Black Americans, and with all people whose lives and heritage and resilience are born of oppression.

Depending on your perspective and experience, this can be profoundly comforting and liberating, or profoundly unsettling. 

How do you react to this God of the cross? How do you respond to the God of solidarity?

James Cone shows us that where you find God is in solidarity with your suffering, you can trust and love this God, and you can hope in this God for your liberation. The story of the cross after all doesn’t end with a dying Jesus, but one who rises from the dead, with a Roman empire that eventually outlaws and banishes crucifixion, and with an image of shame become an image of redemption. 

Where your life has included shame or humiliation, suffering or grief, I hope that the cross tells you that God is profoundly with you there, that Jesus has brought God into your suffering to accompany you, to liberate you, or to reframe your story beyond the victimization that others may have intended for you. 

And where those of us are troubled, or confused, or provoked by the God of solidary, we can hear an invitation to join God where God can still most be found. God is not on the side of oppressors, and God is not on the sidelines. God is with the oppressed. This is the insight of two very different American religious voices I’ve been listening to lately – Father Greg Boyle, the Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries, and Johnny Cash, the American country/rock singer born of depression-era rural White Southern poverty, but who became the Man in Black, friend to American prisoners and addicts and others who suffer. 

Father Greg Boyle’s life work is among poor, traumatized gang members, coming alongside them for their healing and liberation. He insists he does this not to save gang members, or bring God to them, but to be saved by them, and find God with them. Boyle reminds us that when Jesus says we love Jesus by loving those who are poor or imprisoned or estranged, Jesus is saying that he is with those people and the ones being saved aren’t them, but the people who love them. Those who are marginalized are the best spiritual guides for those of who are less so. Greg Boyle’s teaching has been challenging me to consider what radical kinship the human family means for me. 

I’ve also been listening to the music and message of Johnny Cash, thanks to psychologist Richard Beck’s fascinating little book Trains, Jesus, Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash. Beck explores why Cash couldn’t stop singing about murderers and convicts and all kinds of American stories of suffering, and why he loved to sing these songs to American prisoners in particular. 

Beck writes, “This is the gospel according to the Man in Black: drawing near to and loving the lost, unnoticed, unremarkable, excluded, powerless, broken, condemned, and despicable. Solidary is a love that grows warmest in the coldest places.” (32) If we want to find more faith, or more of God, we’ll most reliably do that in loving connection with those God lives with most. If you want more hope, go where God is stirring hope among the hopeless. Put more crassly, “Hope is where your ass is.” (33)

I am not an expert in solidarity, so I can’t teach us how to do it. I’m a relatively wealthy, privileged, White American middle class pastor. I’m just finding my way. But this is why I’ve started to spend some time in jail. This is why I’m learning to organize with and on behalf of disempowered residents of our state. This is why I’m trying to learn a new relational lifestyle of radical kinship. I can’t tell you how, but I welcome you on the road with me. 

Let’s find the God of the cross together. 

Some Perspective and Humility:

Last week, we looked at one theory that has been very influential in some of the Christian traditions that shaped a lot of American spirituality and religion. Its technical name is rather unfortunate: penal substitutionary atonement theory. To break it down word by word, 

• Penal: this theory posits that our many barrier to God is our rebellion and evil that angers a just God, who requires punishment.
• Substitutionary: God punishes God’s child/God’s own self, Jesus, by killing him/letting him be killed by humans.
• Atonement: And that punishment satisfies God’s anger and justice, so that God can forgive those that put their trust in this process for their eternal salvation, enabling people to at peace with, one with, God again.

Last week, I shared the experience of many parents realizing they could never teach this theory to their children. It has concepts of justice and punishment that many of us have come to understand as toxic. (Why is punishment central to justice? How does any punishment – especially murder – heal harm or injustice?) We also noted more fundamentally that this picture of God seems both arbitrary and mean, not one that many of us wanted to share with our children or with anyone else. 

And that left us wondering: why did Jesus die? Are there other explanations? How do we interact with such a central part of the story of the life of Jesus and what seems to be an important part of a Jesus-centered faith? 

Well, I have got some great news for us here, even if this week, it might seem a bit overwhelming. As it tuns out, there are dozens of metaphors and images that the Bible uses to engage us in reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ death. And over the past twenty centuries, churches and theologians have engaged with and proclaimed several different ideas (called “theories of atonement”) over the centuries. 

For instance, the psychologist Richard Beck has this beautiful little book called Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Morality. In it, he identifies twenty-two different metaphors the New Testament uses to discuss sin, grace, and salvation. That’s right: twenty-two! And even that list isn’t exhaustive. One of these metaphors is legal: sin is crime that calls for forgiveness and punishment. But there are twenty-one others. There’s the military metaphor. Sin is war, and we need Jesus to bring peace. Or the metaphor of slavery. Sin is slavery, and we need Jesus’ help for liberation. Or the metaphor of our biological cycles. A state of sin is to be asleep, and God’s grace awakens us. Or one more: the familial metaphor. 

I love this range of metaphor. It gives me so many options to think about what’s wrong with the human condition and how Jesus can be at the center of making it right. It also reminds me that when we get super-focused on a single metaphor, a single way of understanding the center of our faith, than we’re missing the point. It would be like watching one minute of the Oscars and thinking you knew what the point of it all was. It would be like analyzing a pine cone and thinking you understood the ecology of its forest. It would be like reading this one sentence, and thinking that you understood what this whole blog was about. Lots more metaphors here – I hope you see my point. 

The legal metaphor that tries to get at one aspect of God’s work on our behalf in Christ is too small and too limited to carry the meaning of something as large as the significance of the life and death of Jesus, and the saving work of God on our behalf. 

This metaphor also hasn’t always been the dominant view of Christians in the past, and still in many circles isn’t today. In the early centuries of the church, there was a take on Jesus’ death called the ransom theory. It used economic metaphors familiar from ancient economies around slavery and land rights. In this theory, humans are trapped in this cycle of unhealthy, wayward living and death. And on the cross, Jesus’ death is like a ransom payment from God that frees us from our debt and captivity. It’s not clear who God is paying off. The devil? Death personified? Super-weird, I know, but for many thousands of believers for many centuries, it was compelling. 

Different times and places, different cultures seem to call for different ways of understanding life’s central questions. And as it turns out, the story of Jesus has been durable and powerful enough to keep speaking effectively to us in different ways.

Over the next four blogs in this series, I’m going to briefly explain four different ways of understanding the meaning of the death of Jesus. Each of the four has some scholarship and history behind it, some decades and others many centuries. I find each compelling to me and others in my time and culture. Each has biblical roots. Each is simple and sensible enough to be explained to a young child. And each of the four is complex and deep enough to seem worthy of a beautiful and eternal God.

They’re not the only four ways forward, but they’re ones I want us to keep talking about.  

Meanwhile, if nothing else, I hope that people who see things differently can have the grace to hold their own ideas with humility. So many religious people weaponize and throw around words like “orthodox” and “biblical” to indicate that their tradition, and their point of view is the only faithful or viable or worthy one. Which from a historical or philosophical or just common sense perspective is just rubbish. 
Let’s listen more, persuade less, and see if our faith and theology can bear more fruit of mercy, justice, and humble and loving walk with God and our fellow humans, shall we?