Saying Grace

This is a slightly-revised manuscript of the sermon I preached at UDTS chapel yesterday.

For the third time in Advent chapel, we hear the word of the Lord about lifting up and bringing down. First, in Mary’s song (Luke 1:46-55) and then in Zechariah’s (luke 1:67-79), we were reminded that God is turning things over, making things right, exalting the lowly while deposing the mighty. God is changing everything.

Now here in Isaiah, we discover some of the roots of their prophecies: all of reality, the ground itself is headed for a seismic upheaval.

Think for a minute about what Isaiah’s images would actually look like, sound like, feel like.

Shaking earthquakes, red-hot volcanoes, roaring rockslides, canyons filled up to the very edges, tall mountains crumbling to pieces—

It would be terrifying for the land itself to change so much right under your feet, confusing, chaotic, overwhelming. This is not really a sweet scene at all, no matter how lovely it is to sing about. [We had just sung “Let the Valleys Be Raised,” by Dan Schutte, S.J.] This is really a picture of the apocalypse—an end-time of such everlasting change that can hardly be imagined or endured.

While reflecting on this passage for several weeks, I kept remembering a sci-fi series that I read earlier this year called the Broken Earth Trilogy. In this series, the Hugo Award-winning African-American author N. K. Jemisin creates an earth far in the future, an earth which suffers from episodes of apocalyptic seizures of earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis. Human beings are understandably very afraid of entering into another one of these seasons of unbalance and disorder. In families, clans, and towns, they try to find ways to survive the literal overturning of the land around them – running away from shattered cliffs and wide open crevasses, suffering  the loss of animals and crops and entire villages, and then turning on one another with weapons in the wake of the earth’s shaking and breaking. That’s really the sort of experience envisioned by Isaiah, no matter the beautiful music of Handel and the song we sang today.

 So what makes such a total upheaval necessary? Why does God want to do this, to change the whole world so completely?

 In the time of Isaiah 40, God is preparing the way for the return of the exiles to Judah after decades in captivity in Babylon. For the people, this is a great overturning, an unmistakable sign that God forgives them. That Cyrus, ruler of Persia, should conquer Babylon and release the captives is a sign of God’s almighty power—so much power that the earth itself is radically changed.

For Mary and Zechariah, and for all later Christ-believers, God’s powerful, earth-shaking changes are also signs. Signs that all will be made right within us and with the world because of the coming of the Messiah in the time of Caesar Augustus and in the future. The first verses of Isaiah 40 capture the good news preached by Jesus: the reign of God is coming—in both power and compassion. Because even though the overturning of the world is absolutely terrifying to us fragile humans, it also brings peace and justice. It brings a straightening of crooked things, a smoothing-out of all the rough places.

 In fact, the “highway for our God” is not for God to travel on, right? Why would the Almighty need these changes to the land in order to make for easy transportation? The overturning construction of this path is for the people to travel. Like a shepherd, God cares for the people, and commands that a straight and smooth path be made for the people. And, to put it simply, God cares for us, so the path is for us too.

In re-reading the passage from Isaiah, I noticed something else: look at the verbs. In the Hebrew and Greek, and even in the English translation, you can see that many of the verbs are imperatives. The two imperatives in verse 3 are in the second person plural, meaning, “you all do this!”

You prepare the way of the Lord. You make a straight highway

So who, exactly, is going to do this work of constructing a road in the desert? In the timeframe of this text, no one constructed a nearly 1700-mile path for the exiles to return to the land, so we can see that the prophet was again speaking in images.

Since the text is clearly open to imaginative interpretation, I allowed my thoughts to wander a bit. Almost 2500 years later, I wondered how are we to answer the command to prepare the way and make it straight? Two ideas came to mind:

1. Each one of us has an internal landscape of our own history, preferences, gifts, and sins. What if we spent some time in prayerful self-examination as a way of preparing and straightening? Maybe we could make some rough places plain by observing our tendency to interrupt others. Or we could openly acknowledge our mixed motives for service, and the ways we elevate ourselves over others. We could notice how stressful situations make us exaggerate our selves, and ask forgiveness.

We each have “valleys” within us as well, parts of ourselves that seem too humble or weak to present to the world. A talent for singing or for justice-speaking that is held back because we’re afraid of what others might think. Or a traumatic experience that feels like a wound that cannot be expressed for fear of being reinjured. A physical problem that causes us to disengage from other people. Such “low places” might turn out to be just the gifts that God wants us to offer. It does no one any good for us to try to conceal what we think of as flaws when these are the things that make us human and that allow us to connect with other humans. Plus, God has already seen the ups and downs of our internal landscape and desires to make us whole in body, soul, and spirit.

2. In the external landscape of our global society, the mission of God is to prepare the way and make it straight for everyone. We can join in that mission, which I also think of helping to create a level playing field. Among my network of family and friends, and I’ll bet among your family and friends, too, there are some who need to have an easier road in front of them. My grandchild on the autism spectrum and my less-able 95-year old father need literal help in navigating this world. My transgender sibling and my gay nephew need to be accepted for who they are. The Afghani refugee family sponsored by a friend and all the people affected by the tornadoes a few days ago need emotional and economic support. My pastors who are Black and my friends who are Muslim need to be able to walk around this world in safety. Can we prepare the way of the Lord for them? Make the way straight and at least a little bit smoother?

Yes, says the prophet. Yes, says the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Yes, says the Lord Jesus.

You create a level playing field for all people, all people everywhere, so that every one of us, all flesh, can see the glory of God together on this path.

 

Here’s one thing I know: music draws me closer to God and to God’s people. My body moves to the rhythms. My singing lifts my spirits. I harmonize with the voices around me.

Often when I wake up in the morning, a musical lyric floats into my awareness. One week I heard “I’m not making a joke, you know me, I take everything so seriously” (Indigo Girls, “Galileo”). Hmmm. What does that say about my personality? Or this line from Clannad: “All I wanted was love and affection.”

This summer I remembered another Indigo Girls line: “I’m just a little bit off these days”! And for the last 20 years of academic study I’ve walked to “As I went down in the river to pray, studying about the good old way . . . Good Lord, show me the way.”

I consider each of these to be a prayer, a way of expressing how it is with my soul and for asking God to attend to these spaces.

Of course, since March 2020 I’ve only rarely had the option to sing with other people. Yet God continues to meet me through music. Thus, here are a few pieces that touched me over the months.

1. My friend Paul shared this clip of a Korean Soul cover of “I’m Still Here” by the Williams Brothers. Good lyrics for these long months of trying to adjust to differing realities.

2. Two of my granddaughters sing with the Chicago Children’s Choir, and I have learned to value their mission “to inspire and unite youth from diverse backgrounds to become global citizens through music.” Here’s a clip from 2014 of “I Need You to Survive” by David Frazier and Hezekiah Walker:

3. Carrie Newcomer never fails to get right to the heart of living, as in this version of “I Believe.”

4. And lastly, I have found consolation in this gospel song from South Africa. Jonathan Ulanday, worship director at my church, first introduced it through a virtual choir. This version of “Ungizungezile” is sung by the writer Khaya Mthethwa and We Will Worship.

I had just arrived in Colorado last month when the CDC announced the new recommendations for those fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Go ahead, bare your face!

So we did — my spouse Tim, my sister Andrea and I on a short hike at Browns Canyon National Monument.

As many others have commented, it still feels strange after a year of hiding our faces, hanging back from hugs, and counting the number of cart lengths between shoppers. Restaurants took down the signs requiring face coverings and people moved closer when boarding our flight. When we returned to Chicago, we had long mask-free visits with our grandchildren whose faces have changed more distinctly than those of adults.

This is such a good time for introspection and questioning: what do you look like now? What kind of human connection do I need? Who are we after all this suffering? How do we face this new world?

I thought of this poem by New Zealander Fleur Adcock who wrote about her aging face. For many of us, the phrases “My hair will grow grey” and “my waist thicken” just about sum up the months of pandemic life!

Weathering

Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face
catches the wind off the snow-line and flushes
with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well:
that was a metropolitan vanity,
wanting to look young for ever, to pass.

I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty
nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy
men who need to be seen with passable women.
But now that I am in love with a place
which doesn’t care how I look, or if I’m happy,

happy is how I look, and that’s all.
My hair will grow grey in any case,
my nails chip and flake, my waist thicken,
and the years work all their usual changes.
If my face is to be weather-beaten as well

that’s little enough lost, a fair bargain
for a year among the lakes and fells, when simply
to look out of my window at the high pass
makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what
my soul may wear over its new complexion.

Today I hope that “happy is how I look” and that my soul has emerged with a “new complexion” underneath my weathered and opened face.

Here’s a link to a short sermon I preached for the first seminary chapel service of the spring semester (January 18, 2021).

The Dawn from on High

Near the end I mention birdwatching in Saguaro National Park just outside Tucson, AZ (although I think I misspoke the name of the trail, which is Picture Rocks Wash trail). Here’s what that area looks like:

I found my thoughts on light more eloquently expressed by Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman at the close of her inauguration poem from yesterday:

When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

I said to Tim the other day, “It’s hard to imagine that we are living through an incredibly significant time in history.” I suppose every historical era is significant, but these past months have touched us with an intensity that comes only in times of crisis.

It’s not just that the global pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of our daily lives—work and home, church and school, food and entertainment, neighborhood and transportation, recreation and medical care. The smaller changes in our individual patterns lead into greater and more complicated changes on a national and international scale.

So much is unknown to us. We don’t know what will happen next for ourselves—for our health, our jobs, our families. And we don’t know what will happen regarding the bigger events and movements of our time—

• What decisions will come from the November elections?
• Which small or large businesses will succeed or fail?
• Can we find ways to create a more just and peaceful world?
• What can we possibly do to heal creation in the face of climate change that affects an increasing number of human communities and ecological systems?

I’ve been reflecting on my own individual human-ness since the pandemic began. I have felt very small in the face of huge threats (see my blog-post from April 3 “Occupied with Small Things”). I have been convicted repeatedly about the role of White privilege in my life. I have wrestled with my weaknesses as a Christian leader at the seminary. I have suffered from sleeplessness and anxieties about how COVID and economic insecurities will affect my children and grandchildren.

I’m sure that you too have experienced these kinds of theological, psychological and social challenges. Then how can we live as faithful Christians? Two practices that help me navigate these times:

1. Asking for help and support. Every weekday afternoon, my church sponsors a 30-minute Zoom call for those who just want to check in with other people. There are about 15 of us who chat on a regular basis, sometimes about silly things and sometimes about momentous life-changes. I also have regular appointments with my spiritual director (via Zoom) which bring me into a grounded spiritual place.
2. Taking time for solitude and reflection. This is a time when I try to pay attention to scripture verses, song lyrics, phrases from poems that pop into my consciousness. “I am listening” by Lea Morris stuck with me after Dr. Susan Forshey played that song during the seminary’s evening prayer this August. Just yesterday, Proverbs 3:5 came to mind: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” Such thoughts strengthen our sense of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our hearts.

Another phrase that came to me is the title of a Eugene Peterson book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Actually, I don’t remember ever reading the book, but the title gives me a sense of the need for perseverance in the Christian life. Or perseverance in the middle of a semester, or especially in the overwhelming circumstances of a pandemic.

I am consoled by the words of the New Creed from the United Church of Canada:

In life, in death, in life beyond death,
    God is with us.
We are not alone.

    Thanks be to God.

When I participate in an organization, I tend to stick with it for a very long time. That’s been the case with my commitment to LaSalle Street Church (Chicago), which I joined just over 40 years ago. My spouse Tim and I sometimes remark on how our marriage has been challenged, supported, and even preserved by our participation in worship and ministry at LSC.

At this point in time, I’m reminded that it’s been about 21 months since my church began its latest discussion of and actions around racial justice issues (see the post from Oct. 4, 2018). Combine that essential focus over many months with the complications of being and doing church during the global pandemic and you have many times for despair and exhaustion (for staff and members) as well as amazing opportunities for creativity and hope.

I want to highlight a few of the amazing opportunities here just to encourage you and your worshiping community to reflect on how to bring together all of our mixed feelings and diverse social movements and then place them in the very middle of the people gathered to worship before God.

Being a nondenominational church with a wide variety of opinions, the church board decided that the pastors would celebrate the Lord’s Supper twice a month as usual and people “watching at home” would participate as they felt led. When the antiracist protests began in late May, sometimes the pastors’ celebrations moved to historically significant sites in Chicago. You can watch Executive Pastor Randall Blakey and Senior Pastor Laura Truax in two of these rituals:

• Celebrating the Lord’s Supper at the home of Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, African-American journalist and one leader of anti-lynching campaigns beginning in the late 1800s. Wells-Barnett was awarded a Pulitzer Prize special citation “f]or her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.” [pulitzer.org]
• Celebrating the Lord’s Supper at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, Marquette Park, Chicago

And from the LSC worship service on May 31, here is an especially encouraging version of “The Prayer” sung in English and Italian by Elizabeth Norman, and Keil Williams in Chicago, Illinois, accompanied by Rob Clearfield in Paris, France (edited by Pastor Randall). (You may need to click on the title in the upper left of the image.)

Words fail to describe how I much I have been moved, changed, comforted and empowered by people from my church over so many years. What an unanticipated and unearned blessing from God.

 

Watch — and pray along with — this lament from our worship service yesterday. Led by Senior Pastor Laura Truax and Executive Pastor Randall Blakey.

At the UDTS morning prayer yesterday we read one of the shortest of Psalms, number 131.*

“O LORD, my heart is not lifted high up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and marvelous for me.”

A lovely thought, not being occupied with great and marvelous things.  I decided to make it my Lenten discipline to occupy myself with some small things instead.

I tightened all the hex nuts on my Ikea Poang chair and footrest. Amazing how it feels more sturdy. Even more amazing: I was able to find the correct hex wrench in our tool box!

I started a list of bird species that I’ve seen in my backyard since the sheltering began. The wintering Dark-eyed Junco will fly north from here very soon to summer in Canada. The Song Sparrow is an early spring migrant.

In the evenings, I’ve been knitting cotton washcloths as a way to keep my hands busy. Hoping to give these away to neighbors in the weeks ahead.

One more small and very joyful thing: our new granddaughter, Dixon Rhys Huizenga, was born whole and healthy on March 25

These small things occupy me while I’m sheltering in Chicago. I sit at my desk in a not-very-supportive chair, working from home. I bought a new webcam so now I’m fiddling with the lighting for video-conferencing. I spend way too much time staring at screens. My mind finds it difficult to concentrate on reading. I really miss hanging out with my seminary colleagues.

Always remembering that, unlike many others around the world during this pandemic, I have a home to shelter in, meaningful work to do, ways to connect digitally, and the means to obtain food.

And I try to follow the example of the psalmist:

“But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me

O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time on and forevermore.”

 

______________
* In my first edition of this post, I said that Psalm 131 was the shortest of Psalms. I have been corrected by my friend and UDTS graduate Carol Bayma. Carol points out that Psalm 117 is the shortest, which she knows because of a 5th-grade Sunday School assignment to read a chapter of the Bible each week. When pressed for time, Carol would always return to Psalm 117 so she could honestly say she had read a chapter. I don’t know how Carol got away with reading the same chapter so often. Maybe she was as persuasive and engaging at 10 years old as in her adult life!

Last week I walked through the second-floor hall of Severance and I thought: “There’s so much energy and activity here. I’ve got to blog about some of these projects and plans and people.” So here are a few sketches of life at UDTS since the beginning of January 2020.

1. A joyful announcement: Dr. Mary Emily Duba, our Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology, will no longer be “visiting” with us. She will join UDTS as a full-time faculty member after the conclusion of her post-doctoral fellowship this summer. Dr. Duba’s primary teaching and administrative responsibilities will be in the undergraduate theology program (watch a quick video here). We have already witnessed and benefited from her insight, creativity, and collaboration in this program.She is a gifted teacher and advisor who exemplifies the “caring intrusiveness” of the mission of the University of Dubuque.

2. The Young Adult Ministry Scholars bring fresh insights and a commitment to serve to the entire student body. Here’s a short list of their practica (plural of “practicum”):

• teaching undergraduate courses;
• directing and staffing the UD food pantry;
• working with international students as instructors and hosts;
• worship and Bible study leaders with campus ministry;
• leading workshops and other tasks with the career center; and,
• recruiting for seminary admissions.
  

  Dr. Lindsey Ward recently joined the seminary faculty as Director of Young Adult Ministry Scholars Program and Assistant Professor of Worldview Studies. This photo of her on Mt. Whitney gives a hint of her gift of perseverance!

3. The Seminary Faculty-Staff Council continues to discern what new things God might be pointing out about our distinctive mission in theological education.

• For the past few months, we’ve focused on building our community relationships–so we each had lunch or coffee with at least one colleague we wanted to get to know better. Some people had the benefit of multiple collegial lunches!
• A small task force of faculty, staff, and students is reviewing and renewing our worship practices.
• The Clergy Coaching Initiative, funded by a grant from the Lilly Foundation, has given us insights into supporting pastors in a range of ministries. Rev. Dr. Elmer Colyer, Rev. Dr. Christopher James, and Rev. David Rohrer lead separate cohorts, and the project is directed by Rev. Karen Nelson.
  

  The faculty-staff council is reading this important book together. Our discussion happens over lunch on March 25.

Of course, we’re also still teaching, advising, and working on scholarship in order to participate in God’s mission in the church and the world.

And that’s some news from Dubuque Seminary. May your own ministry be established in God’s mercy and justice.

 

When I look back over my life, I am surprised to realize how many years I have spent as a student. . . . K-12, 4 years of college, 6 years of masters-level work, 9 years on my doctoral studies. For almost half my life I identified as a student, and I can now add 11+ years as a teacher. I will hold my father partly responsible for my life-long focus because he constantly encouraged (and sometimes pushed) his five children to excel at school. Of course, the encouragement wouldn’t have stuck with me if I hadn’t experienced the joy of successful learning.

And here we are near the start of another academic year at UDTS. I say “near the start” because most of our students have already taken courses during the August residency. During our two weeks together, the new students express such an interesting combination of nervousness and enthusiasm while the returning students seem like old-hands at navigating the intense schedule of classes, worship, meals, studies, and field trips.

 

At this time of year, my thoughts often settle on departures and arrivals: we said fare-well to graduating students in May and then welcomed new students in August. Earlier in the summer, I had spent some “quality time” in the International Terminal at O’Hare Airport while waiting for my luggage to catch up to me. I started out near the departure gate, observing many long hugs, some teary faces, and anxious goodbyes as the passenger began their travels into the security area.

After about an hour, British Airways told me that my bag would be waiting for me downstairs at the arrivals lobby. The scenes just outside these doors showed different emotions: relief, laughter, and tears of joy. I saw smiles, balloons and flowers, and many selfies being taken.

So when I decided to preach on the story of Abram and Sarai leaving Haran (Genesis 12), I had these kinds of travels in mind. But of course, our ancestors in faith had far more and complicated difficulties than passing through U.S. Customs (although that is difficult for some). In fact, Abram and Sarai shared many of the same problems–political pressures, economic failures, military violence, famine and drought, dealing with unknown languages, customs, and cultures–faced by modern-day refugees and immigrants. It’s very appropriate to think of Abraham and Sarah as immigrants for their whole lives. (You can listen/watch the whole sermon starting at around 11:20 on this video). 

Refugees of war and natural disasters are uprooted overnight with no idea of where they will go. Desperate people try to cross the U.S.-Mexican border in the desert, or they flee war-ravaged Syria by boat across the Mediterranean, leaving their possessions and familiar lives behind. Like Abraham and Sarah, their journey is full of danger and misery, even as it’s fueled by the hope of something new and better.

I have never had to suffer from this kind of travel. But I believe the Holy Spirit wants me and those in my situation to imagine what these immigrant experiences might be like for other human beings. So I have listened to the stories of the journeys from people I know.

• I have met UDTS seminary students who have found the U.S. to be a refuge from violence: Ekram Kachu from Sudan, Paul Both from South Sudan, Gilo Agwa from Ethiopia.
• I sit with Blanca, a member of my church, who came to the U.S. illegally after being sexually assaulted by family members.
• I listen to my doctor of ministry student Rev. Benjamin Sang-Bawi from Myanmar, who tells me the joys and concerns about pastoring the Carson Chin Baptist Church (immigrant Burmese) in Columbus Junction, Iowa.

My world has expanded because these brave believers have shared their stories of immigration and God’s faithfulness to them.

At the very least, no matter what we think about the politics of the situation on our southern border and the rhetoric in the news, I am convinced that we need

• To respect each desperate immigrant as a child of God.
• To imagine the emotional distress of these fellow human beings.
• To connect with their experiences of dislocation, fear, insecurity, and the unknown by remembering our own similar experiences.

In reality, we are all sojourners, immigrants, strangers in a strange land. We are all on journeys through different and sometimes frightening places. We bump up against new languages and odd foods. We have conflicts over different opinions and behaviors. Worse than that, we encounter people who intentionally, or maybe unintentionally, shame us or even harm us. In all these situations, we find courage when we look to Jesus, who walked this same earthly journey, an immigrant from heaven, a stranger in a strange land.