Hi, Friends,

Happy New Year! One of my kids showed me a meme that said we are now living in a year whose name tells us 2020-won. Get it?!? I’m going to go old time religion here, though, and curse that gloomy outlook of despair. This year, as with all years and all times, God is with us to together walk into a year of possibility for love, life, joy, and justice. 

As Ivy shared in Sunday’s spiritual practice – which featured this beautiful rendition of and visual response to Auld Lang Syne – may what sustained us last year carry us in this one. And may we see the many new opportunities God gives us for faith, hope, love, and freedom in the year to come!

Additionally, let me celebrate your generosity as a congregation one more time.  In the final week of 2020, you made additional year end gifts to the ministry of Reservoir Church, so that we will end last year above budget. Given the rocky year we had, that feels like its own miracle and puts us in a good position to continue online ministry in 2021 and also prepare for more in-person ministry, worship, and community together. 

You also gave $20,000 last month to our Neighboring and Justice fund, which enables us to launch our Beloved Community Fund with sufficient resources to bless many individuals and families this year. 

Last week, Reservoir Church also received thanks and praise from several partners in public life. The American Red Cross thanked us for surpassing 30 blood drives and nearly 1000 donations of blood in 2020. That included a visit from Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and First Lady Lauren Baker, who both donated at Reservoir this past weekend. The City of Cambridge election commission also thanks and appreciates our church for serving as a polling location for two election days this year as well. And Greater Boston Interfaith has extended appreciation for Reservoir’s engagement in legislative accomplishments on public safety reform and health care equity and access. 

This Sunday, I look forward to speaking with you all as we start a winter Sunday mini-series in the parables, called “Stories Jesus Tells Us.” I hope to see you there at 10:00 on Zoom or anytime later over YouTube. 

Let me know if there are ways I can be praying for you, friends. It’s a joy to do so. 

Peace,

Steve

Part 6 and the last in my series this year which asks, “Why Did Jesus Die?”

Why was God so invested in humanity that God became one of us, born a child in Bethlehem? Why was God so committed to life on this little planet of ours that God entered into the story as a poor, Jewish child in a backwater town, on the Eastern edge of the ancient Roman empire? The shortest and oldest answer to this question is God became like us, so we could become like God.

During Lent this past winter, I began a series of six reflections on the question: Why did Jesus die? Shockingly, as the coronavirus shut down set in, I never finished! While that feels like 9 years, not 9 months ago, Christmas seemed a great time to finish the series, as the last entry is all about the incarnation: God taking on a body, becoming a human being like you and me. 

To sum up where we were during Lent, way back last winter:

• I began this six part series saying that many of us aren’t sure how to explain why Jesus died to ourselves, let alone anyone else. I suggested that whether we have our own children or not, if we are to practice a faith we’d hope we could transmit to a future generation, it would help if we could explain why Jesus died to a child of any age, and to do so clearly, confidently, and gladly. 
• Next we were encouraged to practice some perspective and humility when we think about who God is to us in Jesus. After all, the New Testament has dozens of metaphors and images to help us think about sin, grace, salvation, and the meaning of the life and death of Jesus.
• Our third entry looked at the intersection of the cross on which Jesus died and the great pains of our lives and history, especially America’s closest equivalent to the Roman cross, which is the lynching tree on which so many African American innocents were killed. A God who died on the cross suffers with us, in solidarity with injustice and pain.
• Next we looked at the emerging field of scapegoat theory, and how that helps us reinterpret the sacrificial language for Jesus’ death. People, from ancient times through today, have been so addicted to scapegoating, looking for other people and groups to blame for our problems. In dying as a scapegoat, God upends that whole story, commanding respect and sympathy for innocent victims and encouraging a more just, peaceful, and whole humanity.
• And before I lost track of it, our second to last entry discussed how God looks like Jesus. 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. 

This Christmas, we finish with the final thought in this series. God became like us, so that we could become like God.

This was first written by the second century pastor Iranaeus, born in Turkey, but later bishop of Lyons, in modern day France. He wrote, “The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, through his transcendent love, became what we are, that he might bring us to be even what he is himself.” Other founding fathers and mothers of the faith echoed this sentiment in the centuries to come. They were responding to scriptures in the New Testament that speak to the transformative significance of God becoming a human being in the person of Nazareth, as well as scriptures that speak of the exalted future of humankind: becoming heirs of all God has with Christ, being transformed from glory to glory, and the like.

In the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, this teaching has become central doctrine. It is often labelled the doctrine of deification or divinization: the divine destiny of human beings in Christ Jesus. Just as we were all created in God’s image – people who would in particular ways have the character, authority, and beauty of the living God – God will fully restore that image through this life and beyond the grave in the life to come. With God’s help, we will again be like God. 

For modern people who find this language of deification or divinization foreign or off-putting, another way of stating the same concept is to call this the doctrine of our new humanity. With God’s help, we will again become fully human, our own unique selves fully infused with the love and wisdom of God. With the help of God, we will be the full measure of who we were meant to be. 

How does this work, though? How does one human who lived so very long ago have anything to do with the exalted destiny of you and me and the whole human race? 

Well, it is more of a mystery than a formula. But the life and teaching of Jesus indicates at least two ways we can ponder how this can be so.

First, there is the cosmic, historical dimension. Jesus was every bit the real person that we are. He had the same complex, glorious, and sometimes embarrassing digestive system we do. He bled when he fell, cried when sad, laughed when amused. He had favorite foods and people. All the things. But Jesus’ best friends and his biographers, and the many followers and scholars of his life that followed insisted that he was more than just this, that in his life, they saw the love and kindness and power and wisdom of God. Christian theologians have a formula to describe this complexity; they say Jesus was fully human and also fully divine. 

As a result, we say things like God took on a body, was made incarnate. We say God spoke through Jesus. We say that when Jesus was executed, God died on that cross. For those of us that believe Jesus expressed a unique human-divine union, what this means is that God has brought all the limits and sins and mortality of humanity into God’s nature. And God has brought the boundless love and life and immortality that is God’s into our nature. 

I call this a cosmic, historical dimension because it is cosmic: it is a big, sweeping spiritual mystery you cannot prove or disprove, but can believe if you’re so inclined. And it is historic: it is something God has done in human history that has opened up new possibilities for our current connection with God and our post-mortem union with God. 

So that’s all pretty high level mystery. But there is a persuasive dimension to this as well. Jesus told his disciples: you are my friends, not my servants, because I have shared everything with you. And then he also told them: you are my friends, if you do what I have commanded, which is to love one another as I have loved you. It’s a particular friendship into which that Jesus invited his 1st century best friends, as well as all friends of Jesus to come. Listen to what I have to say, learn what God is like through me, and love as I love. That will make you friends of God. It will change you. It will make you, in your own unique way, like me. 

This is a more down to earth picture of divinization, or walking into our full humanity: learning to be a friend of God, by following the ways of Jesus, and seeing over time what we become. 

In the same place we read Jesus speaking about love and friendship (John 13-17), Jesus says that this is not work we have to do alone. Jesus says we will not be alone because the One-who-comes-alongside will be with us. This word in Greek is “paraclete.” It often means an advocate – one who represents or defends. It can also mean a consoler or counsel – one who comes alongside to aid and comfort. Jesus says God in invisible form, what we call Holy Spirit, will be there for us in these ways to continue to woo us, to encourage us, and to give us strength and help to listen to Jesus, to follow his ways, and to become the God-infused, fully human version of ourselves. 

This is why Jesus lived and this is why Jesus died, God becoming like us, so that we can become like God.

This Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, I hope we all can remember and welcome this intention of God for us. To show us what God is like, to join us in our story, and to invite us to join God in God’s story in and for and through us too. 

The Beloved Community Fund is a resource that will support individuals within Reservoir’s community by

• Connecting them to short-term financial assistance
• Connecting them to longer-term resources and networks within, and beyond Reservoir Church.

At Reservoir we seek to provide avenues of joy, hope, wholeness, and vitality through human relationship in community, and the beloved community fund will be no exception to this.

Therefore, the Beloved Community Fund’s scope will go beyond just financial need, and offer access to human connection and empowerment via all that our beloved community has to offer.  Over the next few months, the beloved fund committee will focus on building a human network of financial, mental, spiritual and physical health resources.  As we seek to live out the words of I John 3:11, “for this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.”

To fill out a form to start a conversation about your need or someone you’d like us to know about, click HERE.  All information provided in this google form will be held in confidence. The BCF budget is $150/week for immediate financial needs, and current distribution turnaround time is 2 weeks. (Effective Date of this form is 11/25/2020.)

Hi, Friends. This month, in our “Salt of the Earth” Sunday series, we are exploring different aspects of what it means to practice healthy and useful faith in community in a post-Christian world. I talked specifically about church this past weekend. While we wait to return to in person worship together at some point in 2021, this year represents both a crisis and an opportunity for us. Most of us don’t like how homebound and physically separate we are in many areas of our lives. Many of us dearly miss the physicality of shared public life, including that around Reservoir. This is certainly true for me. But with some of that stripped away, there is an opportunity to remember that who we are called to be has not changed. Reservoir Church gathers people who want to be inspired to discover more of the love of Jesus, the joy of living, and the gift of community. We are inclusive of everyone, just as we are, without exception because we believe God is.  And humbly, joyfully, we are looking to walk with God and one another into lives that promote flourishing, for one another and for the world at large.   As we move toward the end of the year in church life, here are a few things we encourage you to keep in mind or to respond to. For those of you who have made or want to make Reservoir your church, we strongly encourage you to become members this month. Part of membership at Reservoir involves giving time and resources to support the life and work of the church. If you would like to start giving financially at Reservoir or to make an additional year-end gift beyond your normal contributions, you can do so here at any time. Because are a vibrant, active church in a transient city, every year we need to replace $5,000 to $10,000 per month in giving. Late last year, thanks to folks’ generosity, we were successful in doing so. We are praying for the same this year.  And one more thing on membership. We usually hold potluck members’ meetings 3-4 times per year. It’s been a while. We can’t have a potluck yet, but we will hold a year-end Members Meeting on Sunday, December 6 from 1:00 – 2:30 pm.  Please hold the date if you’re able – we’’ll share details very soon!  I mentioned the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in my sermon this past Sunday. Sacks strongly advocates for people of faith to practice the deep particulars of their faith (in our case, to love and respond to Jesus in many ways), while also joyfully engaging in the common good of the whole pluralistic society. Sacks’ writing and speaking is accessible in many places if you’re curious. A great introduction to his wise voice, if you are curious, can be found in a recent “On Being” rebroadcast of an interview with him. I found his comments on faith, on love of the stranger, on sabbath, and on religious reform in our times really helpful. His bracing line he quotes, “We must love one another or die,” and his hopeful response to that were also just what I needed to hear today. We’ll spend two more Sundays looking at healthy and useful faith in the world before we transition to what I’m praying will be the joyful, hopeful Advent and Christmas season that we all need.  Peace, Love, Courage be yours today,Steve

Hi, Friends,

This week I’m writing the church letter before This is Us airs, so you won’t have to, or get to, read me quoting it. 😉

I want to first catch the attention of anyone who is newer at Reservoir, and then share an update about how our church is thinking about this season of fewer in-person gatherings. 

If you are new to Reservoir in 2019 or 2020, or perhaps still feeling new regardless of your first Sunday with us, join us immediately after Virch this Sunday, November 15th at 11:00am for our New to Reservoir gathering! We’ll meet on Zoom; get the meeting link by emailing info@reservoirchurch.org and joining our church newsletter. Two or our pastors (Ivy and me), as well as one of our Board members and one of our community group leaders, will share our stories of how we came to this church and what we love about it. I’ll also share a bit more about what membership looks like here. And then I’ll stick around as long as you like for questions about anything to do with Reservoir. (If you’re a member who’s been around for a while, this isn’t for you! We’re finally working on scheduling our next members meeting online – perhaps I’ll have a date for you next week on that.)

And now on the COVID-19 front: Perhaps you’ve noticed that cases are going up throughout the country, including in New England. Needless to say, this is heartbreaking for many reasons, one of which is how this impacts church life. We long to be able to gather together in person for Sunday worship, for our community groups, for meals and kids’ gatherings, and all the other many ways we love to be together. But we can’t yet, not in person. I’m trying to think of this as a small taste of the Bible’s accounts of exile. Frankly, having your homeland destroyed and settling as a persecuted minority in a foreign land is far worse than this pandemic. But in both cases, there is freedom to lament our losses and also an invitation to stay close to God and one another: physically distant but spiritually together.  And in both cases, the community is encouraged to wonder: what new investments can we make in ourselves, our faith, and our community life? What new discoveries can we find during this time? In what ways can we move toward greater flourishing?

Our Board has extended our timeline for in person worship to no sooner than April, 2021. We do not perceive a safe and appropriate way to gather for Sunday worship in our sanctuary this winter. Instead, we will be using that time to prepare ourselves for the time in 2021 when we will be able to resume worship in person. While I don’t know when that date will be, I know that we will need to make some investments in air circulation and other changes. Board member Dr. Peter Choo and our Director of Operations and Communications Trecia Reavis will be examining our needs and options for preparing our sanctuary for in person worship. Additionally, Peter and Trecia are examining whether or not we will be able to make our sanctuary available for community groups’ indoor use this winter. We will keep you posted, as we do our research. 

Peace, Love, Courage be yours today,

Steve

Hi, Friends,

There’s an election next week, have you heard? I’m kidding. It would be hard to miss the collective anxiety and tension so many of us are experiencing. If you’re able to vote and haven’t, please do so. A doctor I know told me about physicians that have prescribed voting to their patients because using our own agency and voice are good for us. There are real stakes in the election too, as you know. I’ve voted already, and I am praying for outcomes that move us toward healthier, more just futures. I am also praying for you, Reservoir community, that you will know God’s peace and strength for you as we move together through all this year brings. 

As we wait, I am trying to pray into the faith the writer of Psalm 146 has, remembering that none of our political leaders merit too much of our trust. So many of their plans – for good or for harm – perish. The psalm remembers that God can be our hope in all circumstances. People have lived and loved and persevered – even when they have suffered – through all manner of political times. And regardless of the will or power of our government, God will remain determined to “set the prisoners free,” “open the eyes of the blind,” “lift up those who are bowed down,” “watch over the foreigners,” and uphold the most vulnerable. May it be, God. May it be. 

If you’d like places to gather together next week, in addition to our Sunday services and your community group, we have two offerings available. Our pastor Ivy will be hosting online a time of listening and prayer on Wednesday evening, November 4th. (Details emailed out that day.) And I’m part of a team with Greater Boston Interfaith Organization that is planning a citywide interfaith gathering online on Thursday, November 5th, to remember our shared commitments to human dignity and fair democratic process. (Register for the citywide gathering HERE.) We’d love to have you at either or both gatherings if that would serve you.

This month, we also pivot on Sundays into a short four-week series called Salt of the Earth, in which we’ll look at some ways our faith can be healthy and useful in the times we live in. We’ll be inviting you to remember what it means to belong to Reservoir Church during this time and if you’re not already, to consider becoming a member. 

A  short warning that in my sermon about God this week, I’ll say a few words about Holocaust theology, including how there were children burned alive by the Nazis during the Holocaust. I won’t linger over the details for long, but I will mention the reality of horrendous human evil in our world – this example being just one of many – and what it means to have faith in God in the face of such evil. 

Friends, I wish I could look you in the eye today and shake your hand or give you a hug and whatnot. I’m missing you all in this season of physical distance, even as I am so grateful that we are still spiritually together. As Beth from the TV Show “This is US” pastored us all who were listening last night: “This pain is not forever.” 

Peace, Love, Courage be yours today,

Steve

My newsletter this week includes a release of a report prepared by our Reservoir Equity Diversity and Inclusion team, known as REDI. REDI is an advisory team to help our staff listen, think, and act to become a healthier church of more profound belonging for everyone in our community, across their full range of experience and identity. 

I’m so thankful for each person on the team – Brian Kang, Michaiah Healy, Ian Jackson, Cara Foster Karim, Tara Deonauth, Michelle Phillips, Sue Rosenkranz, Alex Coston, and Lydia Shiu – and for the time, energy, and skill they are investing in our church becoming the beloved community we fully dream of being. A couple of years ago, when our Board first talked about commissioning this team, we didn’t know exactly what would first emerge, but I’m thrilled by the ways our REDI team is listening to our congregation and working with other leaders in our community to make us a church that is more whole, that is worthy of the time and trust of everyone involved.

We are a community who believes all people are made beautifully in God’s image and that God is so in love with us all that God became one of us. So to tend to the safe and equitable experience of belonging of all members of our community is core spiritual work for us. While the rest of my comments will focus on our church, I’ll add that I believe our work to make all our communities places of safety and belonging for all people is a critical call on each of our lives. 

When you read this report, you’ll read about some beautiful experiences of belonging at Reservoir. We’re thrilled that so many people have found our community to be a place where their story is treasured and their voice is heard. But you’ll also hear times and moments when people felt excluded, misunderstood, or marginalized among us. I hope you can hear these voices as I do: with tenderness, with sadness, and with hope that we can do better. While less than half of the adults active in our community had the chance to complete this survey, I think the experiences shared are important and representative. 

The report ends noting some work already underway in our community as well as recommendations for more. Lydia Shiu, one of our pastors, and a co-leader of the REDI team, has done a fabulous job keeping me and her other colleagues informed about REDI discussions and hopes, and I want you to know that all three of REDI team’s recommendations are consistent with my hopes and our staff team’s thinking. I am glad that each of our church staff are supportive of this work in our church as well. In fact, everyone now has an annual anti-racism goal as part of our work plans, which will continue next year. 

At the heart of the bad news of this world, we know that people are marginalized and done violence in many forms because of their race, creed, class, culture, gender, sexual identity, sexual orientation, and more. As a church in America, we face some uniquely horrible legacies around white supremacy, patriarchy, misogyny, and LGBTQ discrimination in our faith and in our institutions. Yet we proclaim again that central to the good news of Jesus, we are told that we are all known and loved by God, and that we are all called to the work of healing, justice, and repair in our lives and in our communities. I hope that this report inspires you to your own part in that work and gives you some appreciation of the journey your church is on as work toward Jesus’ vision of beloved community for us all. 

Peace, Love, Courage, be yours today,

Steve

Hi, Friends.

A couple nights ago, we had our first of three presidential debates as we head into our final month of campaign season this year, so I’d like to say a couple words about church and politics.

1. None of our politicians are coming to save us. I addressed this at greater length in a sermon last fall, so I’ll be brief. History and our faith make it clear that people and systems of power are often corrupt and self-serving. Additionally, the best and most beautiful work of God revealed in Christ is not accomplished through our political rulers. Some political choices do far more harm, others far more good, but none of them can do as much good as they promise. And love and justice and mercy can find a way even when the worst of them prevail. 
2. People in your communities hold views that you don’t share, perhaps even that you find shocking or abhorrent. That’s likely true in your workplace, your extended family, and your church. I’m not saying that all viewpoints or political stances should be offered respect. Some do great harm. But all people in our communities, particularly here in our church community, are children of God trying the best they can. Please don’t assume everyone in your community group, for instance, sees the world as you do, and please exercise what kindness, curiosity, and humility you can if and when difference is discovered. This is part of the radical love we are called to in Christ. And love has changed more hearts and minds than disdain, shame, and arguments have. So speak your truth, tell your story, but please do so with respect for one another.
3. Lastly, leaders in your church and your pastors have opinions, but we try to operate in the prophetic tradition, not a position of political expertise. The prophetic tradition of our faith tries to connect God’s heart and mind with contemporary injustice. Our church engages in a local interfaith social justice coalition on issue-based change along these lines. Our pastors, myself included, make comments about practical expressions of the way of Jesus in the world. This is part of Jesus-centered community, to seek to see the redemptive work of God not only in our private lives but in our shared public world. Reservoir, though, doesn’t take collective policy or partisan stances on how government should operate or the precise ways our members should seek to follow Jesus in public life. In very rare cases, such as the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump, I have criticized the immoral, inhumane conduct, speech, and policy of a political leader. That again is part of our prophetic tradition. But still, the church doesn’t endorse particular candidates or parties or systems of change. We pray for and seek the good of our city and world together, encouraging us each to soberly and earnestly do the same however we can. 

With all this said, I encourage you to pray for our world and nation, to be active for good and healing and justice wherever you can, and to love your neighbors near and far as yourself. And as you do so, fear not.  God’s good news and redemptive work in the world isn’t riding on any one news cycle or election. With the help of God and friends, we’ll get through together.

Peace, Love, and Courage be yours today,

Steve

From Steve Watson: This wasn’t the summer any of us wanted. And the fall, well, we’re just starting to figure out what that’s going to look like, and it’s got its ups and downs ahead to be sure. Can I encourage you to try one thing in the next month, if you haven’t had the opportunity to this summer?

Take a break. Take a moment of restorative rest, what the Bible calls sabbath rest. And then ask yourself – or your partner if you have one – how you can keep doing this? 

Sabbath is a Hebrew word that means rest. In Judaism, it’s a weekly opportunity to stop our work and make space for rest, worship, and renewal. Sabbath is one of the ten commandments, which tells us that rest is central to a good life, to a life that honors God. In one of the ten commandments lists, we’re told to rest because we were meant to. When we break our rhythms of endless work and activity, we restore the order of creation. We rediscover something about life as it was meant to be. In the other records of the ten commandments, we’re told to rest as a reminder that we are free – that we’re never to submit ourselves to bondage, even bondage to our personal work or our busy-ness, even bondage to the collective, systemic burdens of an over-busy world and an over-driven economy. 

Our staff team at Reservoir is taking the week of August 24-30, Monday through Sunday, as a sabbath week. It’s been a hard year, and I gave the team the week off for whatever would most bring people rest and renewal. I’ll spend more time with my family, more time outside, and linger longer over morning prayers and reading. As a team, we won’t be having meetings. We (probably) won’t be checking our email. We’ll be less available to you, and we’ll be pre-recording the August 30th Sunday service and dropping it on Youtube for us all. The teachings will be on how we find sabbath rest.

If you’re able to do such a thing yourself, if you have unused vacation time you can take in the next month or so, can I strongly encourage you to do so? We don’t need to travel to enjoy sabbath rest. And if you don’t get vacation time, if your life as a working parent or a single parent or an hourly worker or a graduate student seems to afford little opportunity for rest, can I encourage you to get creative? 

Some ideas that friends of mine or I have tried that have brought us some measure of rest, freedom, and restoration, and that are possible even under current circumstances:

• A day where our phone and computers stay off, all day.
• Some extra time outdoors.
• A walk with a friend, even if that walk requires social distancing. 
• If you have kids at home and have a spouse or partner, giving each other a day off(or even half a day off!) from any chores or childcare. 
• A long, leisurely bike ride, or a visit to a green space you’ve never gone to.
• Carving out a quiet hour or two to try a new spiritual practice. (We keep loads of these on our website – here’s one spot. 

Hard years require deep souls. 

Hard times require rested, renewed people. 

If you’re worn down, please ask where you can find more sabbath in your life. And if you’re stuck and feel this is mysterious or impossible, let me know. I’d love to brainstorm with you!

Meanwhile, much love and peace and courage be yours today.

Steve

In early July, during a time of prayer for our church, I had this idea come to me with clarity – that I should walk the perimeter of several communities our church serves, praying for the people and concerns of the communities as I do so. “Should” is the wrong word really. When I pray, sometimes I have a strong intuitive instinct for an idea or an action. I trust these as emerging from the Spirit of God in me. Some people call this kind of thing “God speaking to them.” Whatever you call it, if Spirit of God is with us, it’s beautiful to learn to pay attention to that presence.

Why I Walk and Pray

These two pictures capture the subtle difference between two different ways to walk and pray, only one of which works for me. The day was hot, muggy, with temps rising into the 90s, so I was dressed casually. But I got ready to bike to the Cambridge border to begin my first walk around Cambridge, wearing the stole of an ordained clergy person, as I was praying as a pastor on behalf of the city. But I remembered that these stoles have their origins in the vestments of Roman imperial officials, later copied by pastors and priests, to signify their position or power. And I thought – that’s all wrong for my prayer walks. So I replaced the stole with a basic kitchen towel. One, I didn’t want to sweat all over my friend’s stole I’d been borrowing and I could use a towel to mop all my sweat on this day’s 12-15 mile walk. But two, I walk and pray not doing anything imperial. I’m not claiming land or people for Jesus, not doing spiritual battle in that sense. (If that makes no sense to you, know that there is a whole bunch of prayer teaching that has this kind of martial attitude.) That’s not my style at all. I walk and pray to learn about a place, and to pray for what I learn. I walk and pray because I have ADHD and I just think better while I’m moving. And I walk and pray because I have a theology that says God walks with us and God can be found everywhere, so when I walk and pray, I believe God is ahead to me to be discovered and that God at the same time walks with me, helping me see and learn and shaping my heart as I do so.

Cambridge – Power to Heal or Destroy

I started my prayer walk just across the JFK Bridge from Cambridge, in front of a field by the Harvard Business School, where Napalm was first tested. Napalm was the stuff the U.S. used to fire bomb Japanese cities during the final year of World War II and used to firebomb Vietnam some twenty-five years later. It was invented by Harvard chemists, with some help from Dupont, under commission from the U.S. Air Force. And it was used to kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Japanese and Vietnamese civilians, and to burn many houses and cities, and despoil forests and ecosystems. It was tested in a whole dug into this soccer field, or one of the other ones nearby. Cambridge – with its premier research universities and large and influential technical and pharmaceutical companies – is a city of enormous influence and power. So I prayed again and again that God would raise up more of us, made in God’s image, to use our power and privilege to heal, not to harm. And that God would more healing and less destruction through these mighty institutions of Cambridge.

Signs of Life Everywhere – And on Not Taking Ourselves Too Seriously

While walking alongside Memorial Drive, you see so much more than travelling by car or even bike. Cambridge is so beautiful – and there is life of all kinds everywhere, be it in the flowers growing alongside sidewalks, or the mix of wasted and ingenious solutions to shelter where some of our city’s unhoused sleep at night, or in the flocks of birds that travel and rest and breed and eat alongside the river. Struck my all this delightful life, I was aware that I was walking right by Cambridge’s Morse Elementary School, where our church gathered for Sunday worship most of its first six or seven years. I only visited a service once during those years, but both from my visit and from all I’ve heard of that era since, there was so much life in our church during those early years. We grew, and grew exclusively – as fast as any church in New England has ever grown. And we had so much fun – there was a lot of delight and surprise in the community and in our gatherings. We also, though, started to take ourselves too seriously during those years. We got a lot of attention – too much attention – for our growth, and we thought we were so very special. Sometimes we seemed to think we were one of the most important things God was part of on earth, or at least in our region. And that taking ourselves too seriously didn’t do us any favors, then or in the future. There was a lot for me to ponder in this – about joy, about fun, about staying humble and grounded, regardless of what other people say about you. 

MIT, The State House, and a Big Baptismal Pool

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Continuing to walk along the Charles, I saw the mighty concrete structures of MIT and felt the impressive image of strength that institution projects – intellectual formidability meets hand-on ingenuity. What can those gods not do? And then as I prayed, I felt the insecurity and fear of so many of MIT’s younger students, and maybe of so many of its staff and faculty of all ages as well. I prayed for healing. And I prayed for the learning and discussion around race happening on all our campuses and in so many of our institutions, for capacity to listen, to really listen in the Jesus they-who-have-ears-to-hear kind of way. And I prayed for the humility that will help facilitate learning and transformation. 

Looking across the river to the State House, I prayed for our legislature and governor, as I did throughout the day, that beneath their gilded dome, and beneath the mix of people-pleasing and policy making and politicking that happens there, our elected officials would do justice, and particularly that they would do justice in police reform, in health care access, and in immigrant rights.

One more funny little vision. Either in the Spirit, or kind of dehydrated at this point, as I looked at this widest section of the Charles River, I pictured it as an enormous baptismal and also as a giant civic swimming pool, where residents of Cambridge and Boston and surrounding communities get into the water to identify with the crucified and risen Jesus and feel the freedom of new life, and also just to play and cool off. Let me know if you need baptising, friends – it so joyful to get under the water or have water poured over the head as a sign of death and life, and the pouring out of the Spirit upon us!

Cambridge Street – Heart of the City