Revisiting a Troubling Question:

A while back, after a Sunday church service, a friend of mine sought me out for some parenting advice, in the religion department. Her elementary school-aged daughter had asked her, “Mommy, why did Jesus die?” And as she was about to answer the question, she realized that she didn’t want to share the only answer that she had to offer. 

See, my friend had been taught some version of this story about Jesus: All people sin. Some of those sins may seem small (say, not praying enough, or lying to our dentist about how much we floss), other sins big (the axe-murderer and genocidal tyrant sin divisions) but all of them reveal our human depravity that offends God and cries out for punishment. God, being both loving and ingenious, but hell-bent on punishment still, devises a plan. God’s only Son, who shares God’s identity and nature, is born a human being, and in his unjust death, is punished instead of us. In Jesus’ brutal, violent death, the punishment and estrangement from God that our evil merits is experienced by Jesus as a substitute on our behalf. Trust God that this transaction works, and be free from punishment. God will look at you and love you, because when God sees you, God will now see Jesus instead.

But my friend, just as she’s about to explain this to her daughter – God punished Jesus so God won’t have to punish you! – stops herself and is troubled. 

There are many reasons she might be troubled. So many. I mean, my friend thinks: when my daughter needs punishment, it’s usually not an execution-worthy punishment. She’s a pretty good kid after all. And aren’t we learning that the point of parenting is to teach and nourish and guide, more than punish? In short, she’s wondering: is God meaner than I am? If God is so good, how is it that I seem more loving than this God? 

A theologian and podcaster named Tripp Fuller puts my friend’s question on other terms. Christian trinitarian theology teaches us that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit share the same nature and qualities – one essence in three persons. And the scriptures teach that no one has ever seen God, but Jesus has made God known. God looks like Jesus. Which is why Tripp likes to ask, “God should be at least as nice as Jesus, shouldn’t he?”

The understanding of Jesus’ death that my friend didn’t want to tell her daughter is technically known as penal substitutionary atonement. This theory says that the main human problem is guilt that requires punishment, and that Jesus was punished by God on our behalf, so that we can be forgiven. It is not the only theory of why Jesus died, and it isn’t the oldest one either. 

This theory has roots in medieval Christendom and even earlier, but it was really developed and popularized by John Calvin, Swiss Christian reformer who – unsurprisingly – was trained as a lawyer and so thought a lot about crime and punishment, and saw God partly on these terms. 

This theory of penal substitutionary atonement, whatever its strengths may be, has caused so many difficulties. A few:

• Many of us don’t want to share it with our children. It seems to portray a vindictive, violent, punishment-obsessed God, a God who would also kill his child to save others. 
• It may not have borne the best of fruit in the Prostestant Christian-influenced Western world. Worship of a sometimes violent God has usually made it easier for people to do violence on one another. Christians with this view of God have happily colonized, enslaved, and executed others in the name of this God.
• A belief that punishment requires justice has helped us make peace with things like mass incarceration. But we have learned that most of our conceptions of punishment aren’t just and don’t seem to heal or change the world for the better.
• This theory doesn’t sound like good news to most of us, and the story and life of Jesus – including his death – is supposed to be good news to us all. 

So why did Jesus die? 

Our good news for today is that there are other ways of understanding this. We’ll return to those next week. 

Ivy Anthony:

We are entering into an election year where loud, frenzied voices will take even more of center stage – reinforcing just how simple our stories should be – how obvious and justified it is to discount, ignore and disengage with the stories around us that don’t complement our own. However, our stories are much more complex and layered than the powerful voices of our day would have us believe.

The news and political leaders of all stripes can train us to summarize stories into neat, concise paragraphs – trim to one main theme, and identify the protagonist, the antagonist and plot. We’ve learned this approach of course in educational and classroom settings – but we also utilize this approach as a way to skirt some of the complexities of the people and the world around us.  It is so much easier to tell ourselves an abridged version of what we see, classify a person or groups of people as “other,” to justify and direct our actions, feelings and words.

It’s no wonder that we feel exhausted, down-trodden, and hopeless – not just because we are witnessing a divisive and fractured nation, but because our stories don’t fit into a one-page template.  We are in fact carrying around volumes and volumes of stories in our bodies and souls. Some that we’ve lost track of, or been lost in, some that we’ve dead-ended too soon, and some that we’ve paused waiting for the next chapter to begin – but all of our stories are complex and multi-layered. Stories that demand attention and time and patience to be fully told.  And yet the resources of time and patience are scarce in the landscape we read, and survival is more an immediate tug, so we shelve anything that could grow or be unwieldy, (our feelings, our hearts, our imagination, our understanding), alongside the only things that can tame them – isolation and separation. 

The story Jesus tells to “love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself,” (Luke 10:27), has made us fumble a bit as we attempt to apply our well-trained literary skills to this story.  Jesus’ seemingly simple story, to “love,” is a bit unruly and gangly when applied in real life, and refuses to be summarized into a trite quip, or fall into predictable character types of “us v. them”.  In fact what Jesus’ story does point to, is the very thing we try to evade and ignore in our own story-telling: that our lives and our world are messy, and when we try to press them into stream-lined narratives it actually denies the power of our heart, soul, and mind  – the very sources of strength from which we love.  

You may have heard me share in church services that I grew up in a small, central Maine town where people’s stories centered around and were fueled by a large paper mill.  Success, happiness and loyalty were easy themes to skim off the top of this story. However, layered underneath were generational story-lines of deception, denial, poverty, weariness, and decay.  These under-stories emerged as the link between the paper mill’s waste and the poisoning of its surroundings rose, (bodies of water, air, land and human bodies). But there was no place for these hard, messy stories to go, in an environment where people summarized their lives as, “just fine” and “never been better.”  You see, as governing authorities began to regulate and catalyze changes, the paper mill began to close many of its jobs. As jobs were lost, so were people’s ways of living, identity and purpose – and another byproduct appeared – fear.  Fear and its “twin sons of thunder – anxiety and despair,” as Howard Thurman said. (Jesus and the Disinherited, 37).  Fear and isolation became the new accepted protagonists of this town’s story, writing its plot into the visible decay and suffocation of it’s human beings, town and state. 

What does this have to do with our nation and election year? Isolation, anxiety and despair permeate and are killing us. “In the 1960s, Americans had among the highest life expectancy in the world. Today, we rank near the bottom of major developed nations. Neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta suggests we have an epidemic of self-inflicted deaths of despair on our hands,  from drug overdose, chronic liver disease and suicide – this rise in the U.S. mortality rate can be seen as a symptom of the toxic, pervasive stress in America today.” (Gupta, “Why is the US Death Rate Rising? Dr. Sanjay Gupta Looks at the Deadly Effects of Despair”)  A stress and anxiety that erodes relationships and connection and instead suggests that “going it alone,” with a story-line of isolation is survival.

We are so scared of unearthing our under-stories.  We don’t think we can survive the messy stories, the unspeakable stories of our hearts; of fear, of being wrong, of vulnerability, of perceived failure.   So we isolate, separate ourselves from one another. Yet we don’t realize that when we draw away – we leave ourselves in the most vulnerable of states. At the mercy of our own fears, judgement and thoughts, that grind and churn in our heads..which in isolation are the only things that grow.

It’s one long, hard, flat story. 

These are stories that are very easy to write.

These are stories that permeate our nation – it’s endemic –  all across America.

We see it wherever lines of difference are drawn, politically, culturally, racially, generationally, religiously, and economically 

This isn’t just a story about sickness and disconnection and poverty, it’s a story about our tendencies as human beings to isolate.

It’s a story where the summaries written are, “no one cares,” and “go it alone.” 

It’s a story that is a “church” story, a “religion” story, a “family” story,  a “work” story – as much as it is a “mill town story”.

And it is the story that reigns as some kind of gospel – to so many who are heart-sick and “poor in spirit,” and straight up poor, those who are bereft and mourn the state of our world, who are weary from efforts of justice-seeking, who are afraid, who have just worked so hard, for so long. 

It’s our story.
Jesus invites us to tell the gospel story that starts with “love” and ends with “love.”  To regard the words, “love one another as we love ourselves” not just as a nice set of words to live by, but words to act, create and build upon.  Perhaps these are the only words that will help us unearth the complex, messy stories of one another and give us the patience this election year, to gather at tables where we find there is no “them,” there is only “us.” 

After our hometown New England Patriots just suffered an early playoff loss, there was much talk that this may be the end of a stunning two decade run of excellence. Perhaps this could be the end of American football’s greatest dynasty. (If you’re not a sports fan, or a football fan in particular, hang in there for just a moment – we’re taking this somewhere else soon!) 

Many New Englanders love the Patriots because of their excellence. Once they were bad to mediocre, but recently they have been dominant. Their talent and efficiency and strength have been predictably great, while the particular ways they have repeatedly triumphed have surprised and delighted us. They’ve given us a winning story, one that many of us in some way feel is a story about our region, even a story about ourselves.

You may know, though, that many people around the country have seen the Patriots with different eyes, and read a different story in the team’s success. For many, the Patriots are a story about ruthlessness, heartlessness, and winning at all costs. Your reaction to this team’s rise to dominance, and the possibility of their decline, depends on the story they tell you, and what you think and how you feel about that.

It turns out this is true about just about everything. 

Be it the sports we watch or the products we buy, the public figures we root for or the neighborhoods we live in, we make many of our choices based on the stories they speak to us, and the stories we’re trying to tell about our own lives. This is why successful marketers and politicians and artists and even religious leaders are all storytellers. 

As it turns out, though, a lot of them are telling the same few stories. 

Two people I appreciate – Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren have created a project about our stories. They’ve called it The Seventh Story. They’ve identified six stories people have been telling each other for ages. These stories are: Domination. Revolution. Isolation. Purification. Victimization. Accumulation.

Being the boss of others.

Getting revenge on those who bossed you around.

Running away afraid.

Turning on those who look different.

Giving up in helplessness.

Taking pride in having more than others.

So much of the time, these are the stories we live by: our families, our friends, our companies, our churches, even our nations. Pay attention, and you’ll see these stories being told in the ads you see online, the words and actions of our politicians, the movies we love and hate, the social media of our friends and ourselves, and, well, pretty much everywhere.

Higgins and McLaren think, though (and I agree!) that these stories don’t end well. They don’t heal us, or the earth, or one another. They don’t make for flourishing. 

They notice, though, that there is a seventh story people have been drawn to, a story that binds us together, a story that heals us, and a story that promotes well-being for us all. It’s a story of liberation and reconciliation. And it also just happens to be the story of Jesus – the story Jesus lived, and the story Jesus told.

This winter at Reservoir, we want to tell the story of Jesus, as we do, and explore what it looks and feels to live this story as well. And to do so, we’re going to contrast it with these six other stories we’ve been telling, and listening to, and following for too long. 

Join us on our podcast or website sermon feed, or join us in person on Sundays from January 12 through February 16, as Pastors Ivy and Lydia and I tell the seventh story. 

In this year’s advent, the season in which we remember, welcome, and hope for Jesus’ arrival, I’ve been thinking about what we are hoping for and how to make room for it.

Depending on the tradition through which you learned of Jesus, you may have heard that Jesus is our great Liberator or our great Forgiver. Jesus the Liberator stands in solidarity with the poor and oppressed, and with all people as they grieve and suffer and die. Jesus the Liberator delivers us from the harm done to us and gives us courage to seek justice and mercy in our world. Jesus the Forgiver is the revelation of the perfected and whole human that none of us are today and welcomes us as we are into transformative relationship with God. Jesus the Forgiver extends compassion, mercy, and welcome to us in our folly, freeing us from guilt and shame, and enabling us to live with new peace and purpose.

It’s become obvious to me over the years that both of these promises are part of the same story. Jesus’ story is reconciliation and liberation. And in the weeks before Christmas, we’d do well to lament our lives’ pain and injustices and to confess our sins and turn away from the things that choke out joy and life in us. 

Think of the life and teaching of Malcolm X. We decided to introduce our children to Spike Lee’s great 1992 film, and since it’s so long, it’s become an Advent project in our home. As a young adult, Malcolm’s had by his own admission become a mess. He was an addict, a thief, and a philanderer. When he found Islam, he sought mercy and redirected his life, with the help of God and friends. And yet as my kids watch the film, that was not at all their main impression of Malcolm’s childhood and youth. They see how Malcolm’s family was terrorized by White Christian racists, how his father was killed, he and his siblings removed from the custody of their mother, diminished and abused in foster care, and left parentless to fend for himself in a country which stood against his very existence, let alone his rights. My children watch his story and they rightfully assess that the story of Malcom X’s youth is of what a raw deal our country gave him, how he was in need of justice and liberation. 

Likely none of us will impact history as Malcolm X. Perhaps none of us faces such staggering oppression and injustice in our lives as he did either; I don’t know. But follow this need for healing and justice, for forgiveness and liberation, for freedom within and freedom without into our lives and times.

Bruce Rogers-Vaughn is a psychologist who teaches at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and he has a book out called Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age. His analysis, born out of cultural critique and thousands of hours of patient care, is that our current form of capitalism is eating away at social, interpersonal, and psychological health.

On a recent podcast, I heard him say, “We call (our society) meritocracy… and the merits are … ambitiousness, enthusiasm, drive, talent, and intelligence.” And if you’re not deemed to have these talents, “too bad for you.” Inequality is also a “central feature of late capitalism, or neoliberalism.” “Three men hold as much wealth as the bottom fifty percent of the population of the United States. So here’s what happens…. We emphasize the responsibility of individuals to manage themselves, including their feelings, and then we deprive them of the resources to do it. I would call that demonic.” Demonic has long been a religious word to refer to the destructive spiritual power of accusation. 

If you’ve stuck with me for all this theology and cultural analysis, you may be wondering what this has to do with Christmas, and with waiting for and making room for Jesus. 

Here it is: We all need greater health and freedom. Likely your life has degrees of compulsion and stress and strain you wish weren’t there. You likely also have less gratitude, joy, wonder, and connection than you wish you had. You are not alone. In fact, all of us are being robbed of those things. And in varying degrees, our violent, disordered world or our own jacked-up lives and mentalities are doing the robbing. 

Jesus is interested in your freedom. A quick google search of the New Testament for the word “freedom” will show you how important this is to the good news of Jesus. Jesus also, I believe, wants to visit you, as Liberator and as Forgiver, in this Christmas season, to stir joy, wonder, gratitude, and connection in your life again. 

So make room.

When Mother Mary heard that Jesus was coming, she told God she saw the evil, unjust systems of our age and called out confidently for a change. Join Mary and lament the ways that your circumstances or our world at large are crushing you. Ask Jesus to sit with you in your frustration, and to visit you and all of us with hope and power. 

And when Papa Joseph dreamed of Jesus, he heard that Jesus would save us from our sins and be Immanuel, God with us all. So join Joseph in turning away from your most life-draining habits and welcoming Jesus’ forgiveness, redirection, and the experience of God with us that he brings. 

Let Jesus know how it is you need to see God again this Christmastime, how it is you long for freedom, and keep your eyes out to see if God won’t come to you again. 

With Thanksgiving this week, and the Christmas season around the corner, let’s take a moment to get ready. At its best, the holiday season can be a time for  gratitude, wonder, joy, and connection. But to welcome something good, we need to make room for it. So let’s first take a moment to notice the stress, the shame, and the violence that can choke out our joy, wonder, gratitude, and connection.. 

I spend a lot of time around fellow working parents, people who when I ask how they’re doing, they start by sighing. There’s probably nothing that new to this – midlife has always been a time when responsibilities and burdens tend to pile up. What’s new these days is how many kids feel the same. Ask your nearest teenager if they’re stressed out and see what they have to say. Many of us are stressed out a lot these days. 

Before we think about solutions, it helps me to remember that the system we’re living in is getting results for which it was designed. If you didn’t listen to the New York Times podcast 1619 this year, I highly recommend it. Remembering 500 years since the start of slavery in this country, the podcast explores some of the legacy this part of our country’s history. In the second episode, “The Economy That Slavery Built”, we learn how America’s burgeoning cotton industry rocketed the American economy toward wealth in the early 1800s. The three keys to this story of American wealth: technological innovation, stolen land, and enslaved workers. By 1850, three million African descendants are toiling in this country – without pay, without rights, living under brutally violent conditions. They’re working on land taken from displaced Native Americans. And this land and labor is enriching a relatively small number of wealthy American descendants of European colonizers. It was in this context that American capitalism found its legs. 

I’m not an economist. So I have no argument to make for or against capitalism. But in our 21st century American economy, in which the richest three Americans hold more wealth than half of this country’s residents, I find it relevant that  American methods of producing and growing wealth involved began with practices like slave-backed mortgages, stolen capital, and unpaid labor. Relentless, poorly paid, and unpaid work as a source of wealth and convenience for others wasn’t invented by Amazon or Walmart. And an economy that produces wealth and ease for people at the top and center, while pushing violence and costs out to its edges and bottom is nothing new. 

It’s as participants in this economic system that most of us have more debt and less savings than we want, that most of us are busier and lonelier than we want to be, and that most of us hit the holiday season tired and stressed out. We absorb constant messages that we do not have enough, and that buying more will bring us joy. And we are constantly told that we are not enough, and that if we work harder, we might become worthy. These messages are saturated in idolatry – false promises of security – and packed with lies. 

The systems we live in are bigger than all of us. I don’t have a plan to change all this. But as a pastor in the good news of Jesus tradition, I do want to invite us toward freedom. I want to invite you to walk away from some of this crushing stress so you can make room for joy, gratitude, wonder, and connection. 

So can I suggest three practices to consider through Thanksgiving and Christmas? These are three practices that might open up some space and perspective, that might give us more freedom, that might open up space for the gratitude and joy we would like to experience more? 

Play “What’s Not My Fault”
It’s healthy to take responsibility for our lives. But it is also liberating to name the problems we think we have that aren’t really problems, and the other problems we have that aren’t our fault. Our economy, our culture, and our inner critics shame us when we have problems, even when they’re not our fault. And shame chokes out joy and wonder.;

You can play this by yourself, but it’s even better with a friend. The way it works is you write down five problems you have that stress you out – ten if they come quickly! And then next to each problem, you write down if it’s mainly your fault or mainly not your fault. Half and half is not a choice; make a call one way or another. For instance, with three teenagers, I might write down: probably can’t afford their college education. And with Thanksgiving around the corner, I might add: relative or two I don’t know how to talk to anymore. In each case, I contribute to the issue somewhat, but in both cases, it turns out these are mainly not my fault! College educations have become ridiculously expensive, and I don’t control my relatives or how we’ve all changed over the years. 

Discovering many of our problems are not our fault doesn’t take them away, but it does lift shame and make some room to not take it personally, to pray, or to just let it go for today. And there’s freedom in that. 

This Holiday, Tell Stories of Thanks and Tell Stories of Resilience
Secondly, during the Thanksgiving weekend, take an opportunity to share stories. Though the American myth of Thanksgiving has a troubled and violent backstory, at its best, this weekend gives us the opportunity to eat a big meal and to be thankful. 

For years, I’ve been in the habit of sharing something I’m thankful for over the past year, both with family and with friends. I think this is a great habit; share a story of gratitude this weekend. And suggest to your friends or family that you share a second story. Share a story of resilience – a time when things were hard, but you got through. You overcame, or even just survived. These stories of resilience remind us that with the help of God and friends, we are strong. There is enough. Telling and hearing these stories encourage us and strengthen us. 

Participate in Buy Nothing Day (or Week, or Month!)
And thirdly, participate in the phenomenon of Buy Nothing Day. On Black Friday this year, don’t spend a single dollar. Or see if you can go a week or even longer without making a single purchase, even online. To survive and flourish these days, almost all of us need to make and spend money. But to fast from spending money for a bit – when our culture is going crazy spending – is to say the life and joy are not to be found in the accumulation of possessions or costly experiences. The greatest gifts we can give to others involve our time and attention. Making, and spending, and having more tend to make us far less happy than we think it will. If we take Jesus’ teaching seriously, we’ll need to consider that all of this may just make us more anxious. 

By opting out of this consumer culture, even just temporarily, we make space to consider what satisfies us most deeply. We open up time and space to consider what a more joyful life might look like. We may even open up attention to wonder how we can participate in the creation of a more just and peaceful world. At the very least, it will help us end the month with less debt and more peace – two pretty good things on their own terms. 

Happy Thanksgiving, friends! May joy, wonder, gratitude, and connection be yours abundantly in this season!

I hope you’re enjoying our late fall series, Your Faith Journey at Reservoir, thus far. I opened the series focused on our church’s value for connection. We talked about how the simple process of connecting more deeply with a friend or with our natural environment can bring greater life and greater ease in connecting with God. Last week, Pastor Lydia gave us a great word on action, and we passed out a spiritual practices booklet prepared by Pastor Ivy, capturing some of our teaching on Sundays over the past several months. It’s available online now where we house resources for our community groups. 

As you’ll continue to hear on Sundays, a great way you can connect with Reservoir as your community is to become a member or review your membership agreement. Membership is a practical way of signifying your belonging in this community and your desire to be part of the hundreds of people that sustain this community. You can join online today, and a pastor will be in touch with you.

I also wanted to write to you about a theme from my upcoming Sunday sermon, on our value for Everyone. (“We seek to welcome people in all their diversity, without condition or exception, to embrace a life connected to Jesus and others.”) A hallmark of Jesus’ ministry was a radical expansion of God’s welcome; we find joy when we receive and extend that ourselves. 

In particular, this Sunday, I’ll share some teaching on baptism as one of the most powerful ways we experience the welcome and love of God. I’ll also share that after years of prayer and consideration on my end, our pastoral staff and Board have been talking about extending baptism to any in our community who are interested, children and infants included.

A bit of background. We don’t keep records on numbers, but our church has baptized hundreds of people over the past twenty-five years. Thus far, they have all been grade school aged and older. Our church’s roots are in the Protestant renewalist tradition – churches in modern charismatic and Pentecostal denominations and unaffiliated churches like ours that emphasize and treasure lived, felt experience of God by faith. For these churches, baptism – usually by brief immersion under water – has been an opportunity to express one’s faith in Jesus. It has also been a physical taste of God’s cleansing and powerful love and a symbol of our union (being connected to, made one) with Jesus, who died and is risen. In this tradition, a person chooses to be baptized as an expression of faith and eagerness for more life in God. When parents have infants or young children, they can dedicate their children and their parenting to God, but the child will choose – or not choose – baptism for themselves when they are older.

The majority of Christian churches, both now and throughout Christian history, have also baptised children of all ages, including infants. For these churches, baptism is an expression by the community of faith that the child is known and loved by God and included in God’s family. Infant baptism is an expression of grace – that God loves and chooses us before we can love or choose God, and even when we struggle to love and choose God ourselves. Generally, when infants are baptized, they are not immersed, but a small amount of water is sprinkled or poured on their heads, with the water representing the anointing of the Holy Spirit – the loving presence of God with the child. 

For families that would like their child to be baptised, our pastoral staff and Board would like to offer this as well. A few things this would and wouldn’t mean:

• Baptism would be available for infants and children of families who are part of the Reservoir community and want this for their children.
• We will continue to offer child dedication for families who would prefer not to baptise their children, but would like to dedicate their child and parenting and let their child choose or not choose baptism after they grow older.
• We will continue to offer preparation for baptism and baptism for youth and adults who would like to be baptised. This is not only for children, but a powerful rite for any person interested in Jesus-centered faith. 
• Our youth ministry team has been thinking through best ways to prepare youth who are interested to consider baptism as they also consider ways to help youth who were baptised as children make sense of faith and church for themselves (a process that has traditionally been called confirmation, among other things.) This will continue. 
• Reservoir will continue to honor anyone’s baptism, no matter where that happened, and regardless of when it happened. This has always been the case for us. 
• Baptism is not a requirement for participation at Reservoir and we do not believe or teach that God requires baptism for someone to live a good life or go to heaven or anything like that. We are making available to people and families an important experience of God’s welcome and loving connection, not requiring it of anyone!

Early in the new year, we will be in touch about when and how child dedication, child baptism, youth baptism, and adult baptism will be available in 2020. Our team needs some time to work through the details. Meanwhile, If you have questions or concerns, feel free to talk with me or any of our pastors. 

We are God’s children. God loves us so and is delighted to include us in the embrace of God’s community of faith and to teach us to learn connection and life with Jesus. It’s an honor to walk with you and serve you on this journey. I’m looking forward to sharing more about God and Everyone this Sunday!

Peace,

Steve

Captured between the “over and under” movement of the needle weaving its’ darning pattern – was also the vulnerable frayed edges, the torn pieces of our lives laid out alongside one another.

by Pastor Ivy

This past weekend we held our 5th annual church-wide retreat.  Steadily year after year, we’ve had a crew of 250 or so folks who join together, to step out of their regular rhythm of life and experience something new in the vastness of time and space that a retreat can afford.  We had the privilege this year, of welcoming the voice of Laura Everett, (Executive Director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches) who took us down a meaningful historical, spiritual, and tactile experience of mending.

Mending is a metaphor that is powerful and rich in it’s introspective call to all of us. It surfaces questions such as, “Where do you feel worn?  Where in you needs mending? Where are you feeling stressed, frayed, friction? How do you approach repair?”

On Saturday morning, I watched as these mending questions reached our community. I watched as the mending metaphor went beyond just an intake of historical and technical knowledge and unfolded into an integration of physicality, soul and community. Laura Everett invited each person to take a holey sock, a needle, a thread of yarn and begin the process of repair – through a technique called “darning”.  

180 adults were invited to learn something new. 
180 adults were invited to be challenged by the unfamiliar.
180 adults were invited to be vulnerable. 

And 180 adults started to darn their socks. The magic that was to transpire in that slightly worn, flickering lighted ballroom over the next hour, was of heavenly quality.  You see, the challenge was not in the technical learning of the new mending practice, (within a few minutes most people seemed to pick up the necessary weaving pattern). The challenge was in the starting. The challenge was in poking the needle through the fabric for the first time. The challenge was to find what wasn’t visibly provided in the center of the table – not the needle, the thread, nor the apple. The challenge was in finding the essential material that was located within the center of each person.  The invisible material of vulnerability. Vulnerability, turned out to be the incredibly powerful key in unlocking the process of mending. 

It is so vulnerable to learn something new, and it is so vulnerable to mend. Both, assuredly usher in a measure of awkwardness, self-consciousness, uncertainty, and fear –  which can lead to postures of concealing, ignoring or retracting.

Yet, at this retreat, I witnessed the power of entering into a space of communal vulnerability that allowed for a greater opening of oneself, of connection to others, and the Spirit of God.  

A natural nervousness spread across the room as everyone made that first needle poke into the fabric, and made the long pull of repairing yarn.  Glances flew left and right from folks to make sure that they were making the correct stitches and patterns. Helpful tips were uttered from one to another, as thread tangled or needles frustratingly slid off the long tail of yarn. Soon though, the connection across tables shifted from the learned technique that was centering everyone – and stretched into the lives and stories embodied at the tables. 

The creative, vulnerable engagement allowed for discovery of one another at deep, transparent and tender levels.  The room itself moved from a nervous-quiet, to a convivial, called-to-life tenor. There was an attention on fingers and fabric, but also an attention on hearts and stories.  The beauty found in the cross-generational connections, introvert – extrovert connections and all the manners by which we generally separate and align ourselves, was powerful to witness. 

What was being tended to, and mended at each table was more than a worn sock.  Captured between the “over and under” movement of the needle weaving its’ darning pattern – was also the frayed edges, the torn pieces of our lives laid out alongside one another:

Over: “My child’s neurological testing will come back early next week…”
Under: “I’m so alone.”
Over: “I’m trying to figure out how to move my elderly mom from her
place.”
Under:  “I needed this retreat so badly.”
Over: “I never knew that about you..”

Vulnerability, as I watched it spread throughout the room, wove a deep belief into each person.  A belief that this real life mending process is one that we don’t have to master alone. The belief that other people will lean over our shoulders and look at our efforts of mending, and sometimes laugh with us at our fumbled attempts, but also encourage us as we learn new techniques.   A belief that God is devoted to the steady, slow work of repair in us, and that God will not give up on us. And a belief that we are worthy – that our experiences of pain, rifts, weariness and oppression are worth the effort it takes to fix.   

Jean Vanier, the recently deceased founder of the L’Arche community says, 

“It is the human heart and its need for communion that weakens the walls of
ideology and prejudice. It leads us from closedness to openness,
from illusion of superiority to vulnerability and humility.”

May Vanier’s words that speak of connection and vulnerability, indeed prove to be a powerful mending force that weakens the dividing walls found in our relationships, neighborhoods, cities and nations.   The time I spent in the tiny town of Sturbridge this past weekend was an experience that pierced my heart, (my fingers at times), and sewed connecting lines of vulnerability throughout my story to so many others.  May the strength of these threads be ones that we can all reach out and grasp onto as we continue our own stories of mending. 

We invite you to go through the prayer prompts from Mend: Reservoir’s 2019 Retreat.

Reservoir has a spiritual heart-bond with its partner, Asha, which serves people in the heart of the slums Delhi in India.

One of our pastors, Michaiah Healy, delivered these words at Cambridge’s Lights for Liberty vigil to end detention camps:

Greetings. My name is Michaiah Healy. I am a Pastor at Reservoir Church. We are here tonight on behalf of our community: citizens, immigrants, refugees, naturalized, faith traditions, and cultures of every type. We stand with all of the residents and leaders of this City, to end detention camps and to protest the inhumane treatment faced by migrants, to demand human rights and human dignity for all on this land. 

Tonight we have stopped in the street, Interrupting the rhythms and patterns of our lives, to STAND together as ONE people with no divides in the purpose of our gathering. 

Tonight, we will raise our individual single light into the night sky, noticing the limits of the light cast from this candle, maybe even noticing within ourselves our own limitations, despair, or frustration.

But we are not alone in the dark of night

We stand in the power of collective light, believing that our collective light will become an inescapable FLOODLIGHT onto the suffering we see. We demand tonight as we did at the start of this great nation, for the rights of liberty and dignity for all. 

As a person of faith, the treatment done to the refugee and immigrant, in the name of the citizens and government of the United States of America, directly opposes our Christian, Confuscian, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Judaic, Taoist, and Zoroastrian core beliefs and tenets of faith which say to love and care and treat our neighbor as we love, care, and treat ourselves.The Golden Rule. 

The Jewish Talmud, says: What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.

The Hindu Mahabharata says: This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you.

From the Islamic Sunnah: No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.

I come out of the Christian tradition that says to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said, do this and you will live. Do this Cambridge and we will live.

Jesus told a story of a traveler, stripped of clothing, beaten, and left for dead alongside the road. Leaders came one by one, passing and avoiding the traveler. Finally, a Samaritan, a despised and marginalized person, happens upon the abused man.The Samaritan stops, bandages the wounds, puts the traveler on the donkey and takes the traveler into the care of an innkeeper, expensing all care for the traveler onto himself. Many have pondered why the others didn’t care for the traveler the way that the Samaritan did. I believe the Samaritan saw themselves in the person left for dead, overlooked, left on their own. The Samaritan stopped because the Samaritan loved another as they loved themselves. 

How we treat others matters. Not only as policy but as a matter of identity and character, a means of our own survival. 

Tonight we stop because the conditions in these detention centers are deplorable.

We stop because we are alive, we are free, we have a voice, we have collective power, because we too have been in need and we want to be good neighbors. 

Where faith in government and leadership and institution has been eroded, we build it back tonight. 

We stand together as a city, across neighborhoods, traditions, economics and class, abled and disabled, using our voices and our lights as instruments of our power and unity, declaring as a city boldly, loudly, unapologetically that we are committed to truth, we are committed to human dignity, and we are committed to hospitality. 

Bring on the floodlight.

Peace be with you. Peace be upon you.