Saying Grace

Let me tell you about the weather: April 16 is another snowy Monday here in Dubuque. It’s cloudy and windy, too. The many hills in this part of Iowa make walking outside an icy adventure. I’m feeling weighed down by a long, dreary winter-into-spring.

It’s not just the meteorological atmosphere that has me in its tight grip. Members of my extended family are undergoing significant life changes with ripple effects into our family system. And I dread hearing about the daily political tensions—national and global—that embroil us in interpersonal and international conflicts. There’s this envelope of gray, heavy feelings all around.

Where is the joy?

Birds help. Watching birds. On Sunday I stopped on the shoulder of US 20, north of Freeport, to scan a small pond for shorebirds. I found two Wilson’s Snipe.

Semis went flying past as the snipes poked their bills into the mud, searching for worms and seeds in the near-freezing water. Grasses bent over in the northeast wind. Snow flurries blew around. I rolled down the window and, for just a few minutes, I entered into the world of foraging snipes.

It’s actually the middle of spring bird migration over North America. Birdwatchers in the Chicago-area started posting their “first of year” (FOY) sightings of early migrants back in late February. Bald Eagles that cluster around the locks and dams of the Mississippi River have flown north, replaced by another large raptor, Turkey Vultures. This week brought reports of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, Brown Creepers, and Common Loons. One of my favorite spring sights is the Great Blue Heron, legs trailing out behind and carrying sticks for their large nests.

I have a copy of  Wendell Berry’s poem “The Peace of Wild Things” stuck to my refrigerator door. He, too, finds solace in the company of birds:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

Such a peaceful image. Today I feel closer to the lament found in Psalm 102:6-7:

I am like an owl of the wilderness,
   like a little owl of the waste places. 
I lie awake;
   I am like a lonely bird on the housetop. 

Whether I identify with the Berry’s calmly sleeping duck or the lonely little owl of the psalm, in real life birds pull me out of my corners of fear and self-concern. God’s creation is vast and varied, full of living creatures that need to eat and nest and raise their young. I stand in awe of the aerial maneuvers of a tiny Anna’s Hummingbird and hold my breath with a Bufflehead diving underwater. My eyes water as I follow a Rough-legged Hawk soaring against a cloudy sky.

When a pair of American Robins built a nest in a hanging basket on my front porch last year, I felt blessed. Why should these animals grant me such a trust? How can we trust more in the goodness of God? Maybe we can act like the birds of Psalm 84, building our homes close to our loving God:

Even the sparrow finds a home,
   and the swallow a nest for herself,
   where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
   my King and my God. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like many women, for years (decades even) of my life, I have felt anxiety, fear, and outrage about sexual harassment. The public accusations of the #MeToo movement brought this into our common consciousness this past fall.

In my family, we’ve had conversations about our own experiences of gender and the workplace. We’ve discussed the downfalls of the rich and famous and debated how our legal system could speak and act against such injustices.

Surely, Christians are called to create spaces where women and men receive equitable emotional, financial, and physical benefits at work. Such a culture would manifest the true reign of God: each person, regardless of their sex, fulfilling their purpose as God’s beloved children.

Last week I ventured up the steep stairs into my freezing-cold and dusty attic to find a cardboard box of sermons. These manuscripts only exist in hard-copy because they come from 1989-99, the decade when I served as a pastor at LaSalle Street Church-Chicago.

I was looking for a particular sermon, one that talked about the U.S. Senate hearings with now-Professor Anita Hill on the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. It was a memorable sermon to me because at the end of the worship service, a church member chastised me for bringing politics into the church, calling me out for speaking “inappropriately.”

Up in the attic, I found the sermons organized in colorful file folders and arranged in biblical canonical order: Genesis to Revelation. The title of each was carefully printed on the tab as well. But what Bible passage could have inspired me to mention the Clarence Thomas hearings? Genesis 38, the story of Tamar and Judah? Something from the Book of Judges, where many of the women suffer greatly? A narrative about Mary Magdalene or the woman caught in adultery?

Hmmm. I had to start at the beginning and riffle through each one. Finally I found it. The date was October 20, 1991, and the title was “What We Want.” The sermon text was Mark 10:35-45, where James and John ask Jesus for the special privilege of sitting next to him in his glory.

Now, in my memory, I had spoken as one of God’s prophets, advocating for justice and respect for women at work and in the world. And the sermon does open with that theme:

“They just don’t get it. Men really just don’t get it.” I was listening to a woman friend last Friday. She repeated the phrase used by many women in the last few weeks regarding sexual harassment in the workplace.

But the next sentences go in a slightly different direction:

I disagree with her blanket condemnation of men. In my experience there are some men that do get it, and also some women who don’t get it. But the phrase came back to me as I studied the text from Mark. It’s a judgment that could easily be applied to the Twelve, the disciples who were in Jesus’ inner circle. . . . They just didn’t get what Jesus was about.

The rest of the sermon explores what happens when people, like James and John, desire power–and that’s where I named some powerful people, including Clarence Thomas, President Bush, the U.S. senators, and other politicians.

I was thinking about the Gospel story through the lenses of gender, power, and faith. With a false sigh of relief, I stated:

It looks to me like the politicians and the Twelve are all the same kind of power-hungry people. And we can thank God that we are not at all like them, right? . . . I mean, after all, these twelve disciples and the politicians we saw on TV last week– they’re all men, and I’m a woman. So that lets me, and some of you, off the hook.

Perhaps women are immune from seeking power. The Gospel of Mark portrays the women disciples in a very positive light. They leave everything and follow him all the way to the cross, where they do not abandon him, as the Twelve did. In a society that valued power, they understand and practice true Christian leadership, which is: to be a servant to all. 

The problem is, if I’m going to be honest, I know that many women want power, too. We may want different kinds of power and we may try to get it in different ways than men do. In Matthew’s Gospel, it’s not James and John who come directly to Jesus asking for positions of power. It’s their mother, Mary who approaches Jesus, seeking to increase her own status through her sons’ accomplishments.

We all want power. Any one of us might have asked Jesus for a position of power if we were given the opportunity. That is the system the disciples grew up in, and we still experience it today. It’s a system where you’re either up or down. [If I were preaching this sermon today, I would definitely use the word “patriarchal” to describe the ladder-like social system.]

There’s a whole ladder of who’s higher than whom. And it’s hurtful to be down rather than up the ladder. People on the bottom get stepped on in many ways. Their mental and physical health suffers because of the prejudice and bigotry of those above them. They find it hard to move up the ladder in significant ways. They’re told to stay in their place. Maybe that’s happened to you or to someone you know.

It was eye-opening to re-read an old sermon, and I felt especially discouraged to realize that our society still promotes gender stereotypes that entangle our God-created humanity in sinful attitudes and behaviors. And yet, I had concluded with a hopeful image, one that even now I hold in my heart:

In this teaching, Jesus says that the ladder of power, status, and domination must be abolished in his fellowship. That ladder needs to be replaced by a new form of leadership: a circle of equal servanthood. It is the Spirit of this Jesus who is with us today, holding out a new way to form relationships, and giving us the power to create a community of equal servants here and around the world.

 

 

 

 

This statement would come as a great surprise to my eighteen-year old self, who vowed to stop going to church as soon as she left home for college. Up till then I had been a confirmed member of a small-town United Methodist church.

I sang alto in the church choir every single Sunday, and attended Sunday School and youth group. I was even elected as the youth representative to the Administrative Board.

But in the 1960’s, the world around me seemed increasingly chaotic due to the continuing Cold War, several political assassinations, and passionate student protests. The civil rights movements and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations–while inspired and led by many Christians–made my own particular church seem insular and superficial. And, to epitomize the attitude of the times: “irrelevant.”

I’m not sure why I didn’t just leave the church behind, as so many of my peers did. Instead, I took my righteous anger and religious confusion to college, where I encountered the Jesus People, and folk-mass Catholicism, and the charismatic movement. Christian faith just kept dogging my steps.

I was pondering those usual questions: what is my place in this universe? . . . what am I going to do with my life? . . . why do people suffer? . . . how can human beings become more loving and more just? . . . how should I behave with integrity in my relationships? . . . and, of course, where is God in all of this?

My concerns led me to Wesley Theological Seminary (D.C.) in 1974. What a grand time to experience theological education! Living in a dorm on the quad, worshipping in a gorgeous chapel with well-planned worship services three times a week, access to an actual bookstore on campus, and dining with friends in the inviting refectory.

My perceptions of Christianity expanded as I met a great variety of people there:

• Zimbabwean Methodist ministers Canaan Banana and Abel Muzorewa
• gay and lesbian Christians just starting to articulate their stories
• male students seeking shelter from the military draft
• members of the Sojourners community Jim Wallis, and Karin and Wes Granberg-Michaelson
• gifted professors and preachers, musicians and writers.

During those years of intense study and lively community, theological education changed my life. I delved deeper into the wisdom of the Bible and testimonies from church history. I learned how to articulate my faith, and also to worship, pray, and share around the Lord’s Table. I found places to work for peace and to serve those in need. I experienced the abundant grace of God-with-us.

Theological education still changes lives today. Students follow their questions and discern their calls. Professors and mentors teach and guide them in the ways of the Lord. Prayer and celebration bind us together in the unity of the Spirit. Through these practices, we each are changed, prepared, and empowered to walk in the world carrying the good news of God’s redemptive love.

Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift.