Spokane Friends Meeting

1.  How Friends Will be Known

In the thirteenth chapter of John’s Gospel, we witness an exceptionally tender and vulnerable moment in the Christian story. Jesus, cognizant that his death is at hand, that the Accuser is present, and that he would soon reunite with his Beloved, has washed the disciple’s feet.

He put an apron on. He poured water into a basin. With his fingers, he washed their dirty, blistered, stinky feet—and then he dried them with his apron.

In doing so, Jesus has shown us what it means to love and care for the world. Humble service and small but profoundly meaningful acts of good.

Jesus has also told the disciples that one of his own friends, who we later learn is Judas, will betray him. I often wonder if that was the cruelest wound Jesus bore in his passion: betrayal from an intimate friend.

It is also in the 13^th chapter of John that the disciples receive a new commandment, a commandment which, if enacted by the disciples after Jesus is gone, will demonstrate Christ’s continued presence in the world. We, Jesus says, are, in a very mystical kind of way, to become His Presence.

“Let me give you a new command,” Jesus says. “Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my friends—when they see the love you have for each other.”

Our wise teacher and friend knew that love is a confusing and complex challenge. That loving requires guidance, direction, and practice. In John 15, Jesus gives clear instruction on how divine love will be possible through them.

⁵ “I am the vine; you are the branches,” Jesus says. “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷ If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

We, the friends of Jesus, are to be the fruit for the world—fruit that nourishes and leads to abundant, everlasting life. Bearing such fruit requires a real rootedness in Christ.

2.  The Streets

I love city streets. Downtown streets in particular. Even more particularly: I love the downtown streets of Spokane.

The stores in downtown Spokane are pretty neat. In the mall, there is a relatively new store that sells products created by local artists. Forgive me for forgetting the name, but I can tell you it’s on the second floor and that I recently bought a sticker which reads, in rainbow colors, “Spokane doesn’t suck.”

There’s also a lot of fun coffee shops and restaurants in downtown Spokane. A new brewery just opened up on Main. You can go in there, bring a pet, play a game—and watch one on TV. Have ya’ll seen the new Pavilion at River Front Park? It is quite a site. I am excited to see a concert there at night under the lights.

The downtown library, which will sadly soon close for two years for renovations, is also a remarkable place. A literal treasure of knowledge available for free—unless, like me, you tend to acquire late fees. And what a remarkable view. Standing from the library you can look out at Spokane Falls and observe, as one of my neighbors put it, “the most beautiful thing in town.”

If you know me, you also know that I have a heart for people who are homeless. I love that people who are homeless are on our streets (though, of course, I don’t love why they are on our streets) and, while not turning them into objects of inadequate charity, that they offer us evidence of cultural woundedness and a chance to create social healing so that no one is left behind in the economy.

• A Scene

Last summer, I attended a funeral service for a man named Tom Meenock. Tom was a man beloved by many in the community of Spokane and someone who functioned like a father to Veronika. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never attended such a beautiful and loving memorial. At a pizza joint on the edge of town, person after person spoke about how Tom touched their lives with care and joy. How he served. How he cared.

Near the end of the service, Harold, a man who I later learned is a Jehovah’s witness, stood up and said what we had all come to learn. The presence of this man, Tom, had been loving. He had acted like Jesus and thus had lived a life that really mattered.

A few months later, in the Fall, I noticed Harold on the streets of downtown Spokane. Curiously, he was playing drums. And he wasn’t the only one playing. There was a person who seemed homeless shaking a tambourine and an elderly gentleman with powdery white hair on guitar. After every few minutes of playing, Harold would stop and tell people why he was playing. He is doing it for the kid’s he’d say. To raise money for underserved kids in Spokane who need resources in order to have the tools they need to create a good future.

Since Harold is not here, I can be candid with you. His music is not terribly good. In one way, actually, it’s not very pleasant to listen to. It’s loud and crass. Safe to say I’d never purchase one of Harold’s CDs. But, on the other hand, I’ve hardly heard and seen such a beautiful thing in the past few years. Harold is not mopey when he plays. He is infected with joy and happiness and, as such, he infects others with joy and happiness. It is hard, I think, not to listen to Harold play and talk about raising money for the kids and not smile and be lifted up.

Last week, when we got our first snow, after Veronika and I drove her nephew home after we made gingerbread houses together, I saw Harold and Company playing on the streets. Strikingly, he doesn’t just do it when it’s easy. He does it even when it’s cold out.

3. What Ignites you?

Last week we had a great service. We did something experimental in that we tried to create a safe space for people to express anger. I referred to it as holy anger because, expressed well (that is, safely and constructively), it can be a force that helps us love others and build God’s kin-dom here earth. That is why I think creating spaces for holy anger to be expressed and embraced is an important form of spiritual friendship in our world today.

Near the end of the service, Tina made an astute observation. She also raised important question. Her observation was that lot of what was expressed was anger at God’s people not doing enough to care for the world and for those who are suffering. And her question was about how we might respond to that rather than just talk about it. She said we should consider what ignites us, lights us on fire—and go and do it.

5. On What we Do Well

At Spokane Friends, we do a lot of things well. For example, we spend time in quiet. We create space within ourselves, that is, to listen to God speak. This is a remarkable practice that I hope I never tire of. It was what most drew me to the Quaker tradition in the first place. When I spoke at a seminary class two weeks ago in San Diego, at the Franciscan School of Theology, my professor told me that she was moved to attend a Quaker service after I began the class in a moment of silence and said I’d do so because of what I have been learning from Quakers. She, a distinguished professor of spirituality and history, said that Quakers can help us learn a healing language in our loud world.

Another thing we do well is create social space for others. We do that by showing up at our meetinghouse. Last week, we created a beautiful room with Christmas warmth. It was so lovely to see people hanging lights and putting candles together. And when we come here, we welcome people. No matter who people are and where they are at on their journey, they are welcome here.

It is good that we go inward. That we create space in ourselves to hear God speak. It is also good that we show up here. That we come to church to create space for people to feel welcomed and fed. Here is an area in which I think we can grow. I think we need to work on stepping outside of ourselves and our church in order to learn how to befriend the world together—in order to learn how to be the presence of Christ to our own community of Spokane and work for justice.

6. Church Growth

Once in a while, we talk a lot about church growth. We realize that, in order to survive as a church, we need to grow. It’s an important conversation because we believe in the healing power of Quakerism, and we believe that people would be encouraged if they learned more about it and sometimes joined us here.

Let me make a bold proposition. Our greatest chance at survival and growth will be in how we befriend the public. Not in the church, but outside the church. At the dog park. In the grocery store. At the mall. Wherever we are in our ordinary, everyday lives. Our most compelling way to grow will be in the fragrance we leave over the world and whether we have successfully befriended a world that lives in deep need of spiritual friendship. Let me make an equally bold proposition. Nothing is worse than loving in order to grow a church. Our public love must be given without expectation of return.

• A Street Meeting

Since I began serving as part-time minister six months ago, I have raised the possibility of doing a Street Meeting. I am going to begin doing something like that in January. Once a week, for an hour. Join me if you’d like. It’s going to be nothing formal. There will be a moment of silence, then walking about with God in the cold of winter to explore how to befriend and love the world. Maybe pick up trash, maybe get lost in prayer in nature, maybe talk to a local business owner about her needs, maybe hand out warm gloves to people who are homeless, maybe strike a chat with someone who looks sad. The most important thing will be being present in public and prayerfully raising the age-old Quaker question of how to walk joyfully over the world and answer that of God in everyone.

Perhaps, in the next few months, if the meeting discerns it is a good idea, we can discuss having a more official presence of Friends on the streets of Spokane. A regular Street Meeting, if you will. Or perhaps we will discover another way in which we can, together, as Friends, befriend the city of Spokane. I believe God is calling us to take our spirituality public. To create justice which, as Cornel West says, is what love looks like in public. How we do that, however, is a question we need to bring to the presence of Christ.

• Query

What is stirring you to life—and ignites your passion for justice? How, in this Advent season, in which we wait for the presence of Christ that is already here, might God be calling our meeting to demonstrate Christ’s real presence in public?

 

This message was given to Spokane Friends Meeting on Sunday, December 8, 2019 by Paul Blankenship

 

 

 

Come to Me, and Have Rest

 ²⁸ “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Matthew 11:28-30 

These words of Christ in Matthew convey the fundamental gravity of the spiritual life. By nature, we are a people whose spirits pine for the living Christ. As we gasp for air, even without knowing it, so too do we long for the presence of the one who gives us love and rest—who carries our burdens with us.

What a great relief that our teacher and friend, a Palestinian Jew who lived over two thousand years ago, is real and present amongst us now. Christ is not merely a historical memory; He is still here—loving us and teaching us how to rest and walk easy with him.

Following Christ, The Church as a Place of Rest

We do not, of course, merely rest. We are not given spiritual peace to cozy up with a warm blanket while others freeze. We are loved to love. Given warmth to provide warmth. This too is our spiritual gravity. It is why we pray. And it is why (or should be why, rather) we form churches and come to church even when we are tired and in a bad mood. At church we learn how to embody the presence of Christ, together, so that we can give others rest. So that we can learn to befriend the world. So that we can unearth Christ’s wellspring of ranging, loving waters in human hearts and set people free to love and flourish.

A Weary World, Wearied and Weighed Down with Anger 

Many of us believe that Christ is present, and that the waters of love are ever-available. But those waters can be hard to experience as real. Though we are impelled to experience them, and swim joyfully in their current, we often find ourselves stuck on the fangs of the mundane, of affliction, and of suffering. We are weighted down with the challenges of everyday life. There is a lot to do. Bills to pay. People to see. Meals to cook. Kids to watch. We also suffer. Loved ones became terminally ill. Our bodies tire and become wounded. At times, it seems like a personal and loving God simply could not exist in the universe. That the raging, loving waters have dried up.

Sometimes we also become boiling mad. Raging not with cool love but hot anger. There are times in which, because of the anger we experience, we feel far from God. We are mad at God, if God exists. We are mad at the church for being hurtful, hypocritical, and phony. We are mad, with God, for the unnecessary pain and suffering that exists in the world.

Anger, though, is good. Or it can be. It is a healthy emotion when expressed and experienced in a constructive and safe way. Anger can also be a holy feeling: an experience in which God is present and searching for form, expression. A path of divine love and friendship. We don’t need to hide our anger at God, the church, or the world. It can be something that draws us near to God and that heals the church.

The History of Anger

Our tradition is actually quite rich with the expression and embrace of spiritual anger.

In Psalm 109, for example, we see the Psalmist’s anger at people who wounded him:

Do not be silent,” he cries, “O God of my praise.
² For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me,
speaking against me with lying tongues.
³ They beset me with words of hate,
and attack me without cause.
⁴ In return for my love they accuse me,
even while I make prayer for them.^[a]
5 So they reward me evil for good,
and hatred for my love.                                                                                                        ⁶Appoint a wicked man against him;
let an accuser stand on his right.
⁷ When he is tried, let him be found guilty;
let his prayer be counted as sin.

(Yikes)

In Psalm 44, the Psalmist becomes angry at God. He says:

⁹You desert and shame us.
do not go out with our armies. . . .
¹¹You put us to flight from our enemies.
Those who hate us tear us to pieces at will.
¹²You hand us over like sheep to be devoured.
You cast us among the nations.
¹³You sell Your people for nothing.
You do not make a profit on their sale price.
¹⁴You make us an object of shame for our neighbors,
a thing of scorn and derision for those around us. . . .                                                       ²⁴Wake up!  Why do You sleep, Lord?
Arise!  Do not abandon forever!
²⁵Why do You hide Your Face?
Why do You forget our persecution and our oppression?                                                     ²⁶For our souls have been pounded into the dirt,
our stomachs are stuck to the ground.
²⁷Get up!  Help us!
Redeem us for the sake of Your gracious love.

And Jesus, too, became angry. In John 2:15, for example, we see that he made a whip of cords and drove people out of the Temple for turning God’s house into a place of monetary exploitation.

The spiritual life is not all joy, peace, and giggles. There are times that call for the expression and embrace of holy ager.

Expressing and Embracing Anger as a Form of Spiritual Friendship

We come to church, I think, to learn how to be spiritual friends. At its heart, being a spiritual friend means helping people find and experience the presence of Christ, the divine waters. That means providing spiritual care to those who are suffering. To this end, we need to learn the wounds of the world and understand what people are going through.

Today, it is clear that people in our world are suffering from the wounds of unholy, destructive anger. The wounds of unholy anger is evident all around us. It is an aching wound that permeates our culture.

At Spokane Friends, we have been having a conversation about how to provide a safe and constructive place for anger to be expressed. For the wound of unholy anger to be made well by Christ and become healed, holy. We are interested in doing that because God desires our whole selves and wants us to be free of the unhelpful anger that can bind us and prevent us from being able to love the world more effectively.

Guideless for Expressing and Embracing Anger as a Form of Spiritual Friendship

In a moment, I will offer a few queries that we can use to facilitate a process where we can express and embrace anger that we have at God, the church, and the world. Before I do, however, so as to create a sense of safety, I want to name a few guidelines.    

• The underlying reason we express holy anger is not to destroy. It is to build up, not tear down. It is to become more free to love. If you feel led, please share with that in mind.
• We are not here to gossip and name names. This is not a time to air personal grievances. We ask that you keep any expression of anger impersonal and under control. More than anything, we want people to feel safe.
• We are not going to argue with people about whether their anger is valid or not. We are just here to share, listen, and hold.
• Other suggestions?

 

Queries

Here are the queries. I encourage you to spend some time sitting with them and then, if you feel led, to express holy anger safely and constructively. You do not have to, of course; this can be done in the private space of your relationship with God. But, if it would be helpful, please speak out and share. After we have finished, I will close us in prayer.

Are you angry with God? Can you safely and constructively name that anger?

Are you angry at the church, or religion? Can you safely and constructively name that anger?

Are you angry at someone or something in the world? Without naming names, can you safely and constructively name that anger?

 

This message was given to Spokane Friends by Paul Blankenship on Sunday, November 17, 2019.

 

 

 

 

The Center isn’t Holding.

Joan Didion is a beloved American writer. She first entered the American mind through the essays she wrote in 1960s. At the time, Didion was “on the ground,” doing investigative journalism with hippies in the Haight-Ashbury District. In “Slouching Toward Bethlehem,” perhaps her most famous essay, Didion wrote about how hippies were disrupting the status quo and taking acid (“turning on,” as they said) in order to reach a higher state of consciousness and build a better social world. It rather shocked Didion, as it did most Americans, to see young adults taking the drug and going “trips.” Didion was undone with shock, however, when she saw [slow] a young child, age 5 (!), doing acid in a small San Francisco apartment. Referencing the poet W. B. Yeats, Didion wrote that the center of her social world—her social gravity, as it were, which had kept things in their safe assumed place—had lost its grip.[1] The world, it seemed, had been undone.

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The Falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart [slow]; the center [slow] cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned [pause];

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”[2]

Collapse of Trust

And so, too, does it seem for us. Our center is loose. Things can seem out of place.

Consider public trust. Only 3% (!) of Americans think our government will almost always do the right thing; 14% (!) think it will do the right thing most of the time.[3] And just a third trust the government to do what is right at all.[4]

Our trust for the media doesn’t fare much better. A recent report indicated that only 42% of Americans trust the media to report accurate and reliable information about the world.[5] Increasingly, we hear talk that the media, which without question is an indispensable pillar of a healthy democracy, is an enemy of the people and “fake news.”

It’s not just that we have less trust in government and in the media. We, as a country, are also much less trusting of each other. In 1972, the majority of Americans thought that most people can be trusted. Today, however, studies report that only 1 in 3 Americans think other people are trustworthy.[6] And that number shrinks with age. Just 19% of Millennial’s—that is, people born between 1981 and 1996—think most people can be trusted.[7]

Once upon a time, religious institutions offered a sacred center in a broken world. A place of sacred shelter amid in the ravaging storms of life. Religion once held life together when nothing else could, and like nothing else could. No more. Today, religious institutions are often experienced as trigger-factories; less safe, believable, and trustworthy than perhaps any time in United States history.[8]

Explaining Distrust

There are a number of reasons why trust is at a historical low. For one, Americans have always been a rather suspicious people. Some of our ancestors fled Europe, after all, precisely because they couldn’t trust their governments to respect their freedom. Then, with little hint of the cruel and foolish irony, they tried to create their desired freedom anew by enslaving others. Another reason: in the 1960s, when public trust began to plummet statistically, we became painfully mindful of how systematically corrupt our government is. It was then that the media discovered a revolutionary power; it could pull secret curtains back on powerful leaders and expose them as murderous frauds and fools. Another reason is rising inequality. Today we are painfully aware that a tiny fraction of the population owns the means of production—and vacations on beautiful islands they themselves own—while a near majority cannot afford a $400.00 emergency. While the rich get richer, the poor in our state need to work two full time jobs just to afford a modest apartment. Whether you are a Democratic or a Republican, an independent or an anarchist, it is hard not to see that the economy isn’t unfairly rigged against average Jane and Joe. Pastors and priests, finally—the shepherds we once entrusted our souls to—routinely exploit the vulnerable, wound innocent souls, and turn out to be wolves in sheep’s clothing. I am convinced that the 2002 exposé of the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church by the Boston Globe will be remembered as one of the most critical and damning periods in modern religious history.

The Importance of Trust

Trust, though, is vitally important. It matters whether or not we trust people and institutions. For one, trust helps us solve problems. And, indeed, we have a lot of problems: climate change, rising inequality, addiction, mental illness, domestic and foreign violence. If we do not trust each other, it is hard to solve our pressing problems. That’s pretty basic. Trust also matters because it influences our mental and emotional health. We are, by nature, radically dependent creatures. If we do not see the world outside of us as safe and trustworthy, we will feel unsafe and trust that life itself is untrustworthy. If the world outside is perceive as a threat, we cannot help but walk in the world heavy with mental and emotional armor. Trust is also vital to our spiritual lives. Distrust is a corrosive poison to the spiritual life. It is a spiritual cancer. It is a cancer precisely because it eats away at our capacity to experience and love God in all things, which is the fundamental and sacred gravity of our spiritual lives. By nature, our spirits gravitate toward each other. By nurture, we turn away from each other. God created the world good; She wanted it to radiate warmth and care. When we experience the world as unsafe and untrustworthy, it is almost impossible to experience and love God in it.

And, in a social climate of wounded trust, it is hard to be and experience friendship. The spiritual cancer of distrust has emptied the world of a basic friendliness.

On being a friend in a climate of distrust.

I think a lot about how to be a good Friend. It’s a question that animates my life and which I want to make more central in the sermons I preach from here out. I think it is an important question because it is never obvious. What it means to be a good friend in one time and place will differ somewhat from what it means to be a good friend in another time and place.

In the first part of this sermon, I suggested that our age is marked by a profound lack of trust. With and without knowing it, our spiritual lives are suspectable to the deadly spiritual cancer of distrust. Some suffer from it more than others. To be sure, a few of us are mysteriously immune from the disease—living, somehow, as the psychologist William James wrote, like there is always a bottle or two of champagne swimming pleasantly in their bloodstream. Certainly, though, being a good friend requires reckoning with this spiritual cancer that grievously wounds many people, makes it hard to love and experience God in all things, and empties the world of a basic friendliness.

On the one hand, the spiritual cancer of distrust is a deep tragedy. Anything that wounds our capacity to love and become fully alive is a great tragedy because it distorts the true nature and direction of life. We are made to love the world and need trust in order to do that. It is an oxygen of the spiritual life. On the other hand, however, the poison of distrust in our social climate presents us with a sacred and joyous opportunity. It’s not all bad news. Underneath the cries and screams and pains of distrust is a voice of Love. It is a wounded voice that calls us to care for those who are wounded by distrust. Responding to the voice of Love is an opportunity to fulfill our Christian obligation to be good friends and create a joyous present. Nothing in Jesus’s life was more beautiful, divine, and joyous than his creative care for the wounded, than his care for his friends, then when hurting people were reborn and lived abundantly.

The Heart of the Matter

Here, then, is the heart of my message. Being a good Friend in our time and place requires understanding and caring for the holy wounds of distrust that people suffer from, and which makes it appear like the safe and sacred center of reality has lost its grip. That the world is an enemy to guard against rather than a friend to love. I am convinced that one way we can care for people suffering from the spiritual cancer of distrust is to cultivate sacred friendships that might help people understand that, at the heart of all things, is the presence of a loving God who is trustworthy and safe.

Friendship. Isn’t this, after all, the heart of our faith as Quakers and, more broadly, as Christians? Is this not precisely what Jesus said in the Gospel of John, chapter 15 and verse 15, when he told his disciples that they were his friends, not his servants, and when he invited them to live that holy friendship in their everyday lives by loving the world?

Friendship. It is a beautiful calling. And a tough one. It requires regular spiritual practice.

I want to conclude this sermon by highlighting three spiritual practices we at Spokane Friends are already doing to be good friends and help heal the wounds of distrust people in our time and place are suffering from. Sometimes, I think, it’s important to sit back and bask in what we’re all doing pretty dang well rather than fret over what we need to do differently.

Rooted in Love through Silence

We cannot be good friends in the world if do not create space to experience God’s love within ourselves. Jesus told his disciples, in John 15, again, that holy friendship requires a deep and continued abiding in divine love. I see us making space to abide in God’s love through the practice of silence. In our silent togetherness, in which we create space for God to move us individually and as a group, we try to ground and surround ourselves in the real and life-giving power of divine love. That benevolent power is what frees us and inspires us to care for and remedy the wounds of distrust, and therefore help people understand that a safe and eternal power we name God—but which goes by many names—is forever and reliably present amongst us.  

Humility

Being a good friend also requires being humble. That is another thing we do well in our church. Something I really liked about Gary’s message last week is how he began. “I could be wrong,” he said, “but this is what I believe God has called me to share.” Then he gave us his somewhat controversial message. Gary told us that any preacher that tells us otherwise—that she or he has the certain answer for once and all time—is sadly mistaken. That, of course, is not just true for people who stand at a pulpit. Good friendship, which aims to restore a real and loving and trustworthy presence in the world, calls out for an understanding that we all have only a small view of the world and that we all need help seeing and responding effectively to the complex mystery of our lives.

Radical Acceptance

At our last elders meeting, Pam said something that really powerful and moving. It reminded me why I love this church and my covenant with you as part-time pastor. When I asked her how I might help nurture the elders’ vision for our church, she said that that she just really wants to see us continue to welcome people in our community so that they know there is a place where they are accepted. That’s it. It’s radical acceptance in a bitterly divided and rejecting world. It’s a dream worth living and fighting and dying for. We are all different people, formed and fashioned uniquely from the pains and pleasures of our lives. We are farmers and bankers. Professors and bakers. We are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. We businesspeople and left-wing activists. How beautiful. And how very natural that we’ll quibble with one another from time to time. Sometimes quite passionately. At the end of the day, though, I see us push passed small quibbles to the deepest truth about us: we are all friends, united in the power of God’s love for us. No matter who you are—regardless of your politics, your economic class, your sexual orientation, whatever—you are a friend of God who we care deeply about, and you are welcome here. Our new welcome statement, written by Krista, puts this very well: [read]:

Conclusion: A Query on the Already Good

These spiritual practices—silent rootedness in the power of God’s love, humility before one another, and radical acceptance—help us be good friends and care for the wounds of distrust that people suffer from. They help us minister to a present moment that is aching for a real, personal, and experiential presence that is safe, reliable, and loving. What a joy it is to befriend the world with God and to help people understand that there is a real center that will always be held strong with loving and infinitely tender hands.  

Today’s query asks us to consider how God might be inviting us to further reflect on the ways we’ve been good friends lately. Please, friends, sit with this query—and share anything that God compels you to share with the group.    

THis message was delivered to Spokane Friends Church by Paul Blankenship on November 17, 2019.

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[1] Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008), 128.

[2] W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: Woodsworth Editions, 2008),

[3] Pew Research Center, “Public Trust in Government: 1958-2019.”  https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-government-1958-2019/

[4] Uri Friedman, “Trust is Collapsing in America,” The Atlantic (January 21, 2018): https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/trust-trump-america-world/550964/

[5] Ibid.

[6] Josh Morgan, “The Decline of Trust in the United States” (May 20: 2014): https://medium.com/@monarchjogs/the-decline-of-trust-in-the-united-states-fb8ab719b82a

[7] Pew Research Center, “millennials in Adulthood”: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/03/07/millennials-in-adulthood/

[8]

At social gatherings we are sometimes asked, “So what do you do?”  I find this question a bit awkward….maybe even slightly offensive.  The question really means…”What is your current occupation or job.”  Well what if one doesn’t have a job, or is underemployed?  Or what if one has a much broader understanding of what it is “they do” which can’t be explained or summed up in a simple word or sentence.

And in my case, I often hesitate to say to someone…. “I’m a pastor.”  Or “I’m a preacher.”  Because saying this is often followed by an awkward silence, or the subject quickly changes, or maybe I might hear something ridiculous like, “Oh!  I’ll try and be on my best behavior, reverend.”

So now, when I feel so inclined to answer this question (What do you do?), I sometimes say…. “I traffic in narratives.”  A look of confusion and a moment of silence follows.  Then I hear …  “Interesting answer.  What do you mean?”  Where upon I answer…. “I’m a preacher.”   From there  the conversation gets interesting and much more entertaining.  I then have the opportunity to share about the narrative (Christian, in my case) through which I understand the world.  It can lead to deeper questions such as, What’s the narrative guides your life?  How do you see the world?  What gives your life meaning? How is your work restoring the world?   NOW THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS WE SHOULD BE ASKING EACH OTHER!  Life’s too short for superficial small talk!

My fundamental operating thesis, as I may have mentioned in previous sermons, is … “We humans live and die by the stories we tell ourselves.”  In fact, it is story, that makes us human.  Another word for story is “narrative”.

This past summer I taught Bible to older children (ages 9 – 12) for a week at one our Mennonite summer camps.  We had great conversations as we explored the meaning of foundational biblical stories.

At the evening campfires we always began the time with open questions about “God, life, and the Bible”.  On the last night one of the campers asked, “Why did God make humans?”  My initial answer was, after a pause,“I don’t know.”  But then, the next morning as we met one last time at the campfire site I said, “I thought a bit more about the question, “Why did God make humans.”  I think the answer is because God loves stories”.   And then I said, “We’ve heard a lot of stories this past week about amazing people and events in the Bible.  Those stories are about how God interacts and uses ordinary people in the world.  But here’s what you need to know…. believe it or not, God is using you to live out new stories and ways that bring love and joy and hope into the world.  God is making great stories through you, I reminded the campers ….  both in your challenges, troubles, and failures, and through your successes.  Always remember that! God is making unique and important stories that can only can be made through you!

Now you may be wondering…. How does this relate to the story of Peter and Cornelius? Remember what I said my thesis is… “we live and die through the narrative we believe.”?  Well, Peter narrative or story is being radically re-written.

In this story Peter’s narrative (and thus his understanding of reality) was expanded.  Where Peter originally understood the narrative through an outdated narrow tribal story of exclusivity and labeling…. laws and rituals…. Who’s clean and who’s not.  Who’s in and who’s out.  Who’s worthy and who’s not.  Who’s chosen and who’s not.

Now Peter has a new narrative framed by Jesus… the one who says, “You have heard it said…. but I say to you…..” love your enemy; forgive without measure; judge not others; seek fellowship amongst the outsiders; honor the poor and stand with the oppressed; give up living for money or fame and seek only God and God’s justice…..on earth as in heaven.  A NEW NARRATIVE, AND THUS A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH.

Before this epiphany from God, (even after walking with Jesus for three years) Peter’s narrative of the world was way too small.  He was still operating under a confined tribal narrative of exclusivity that perhaps provided a sense of security and identity…. but as far as God was concerned, it was way too small. Too immature.  Too out of sync with God’s larger reality of universal forgiveness, love, and salvation.

In the gospel narratives of Jesus nobody gets left out.  No body gets left behind.  Everyone counts.  We’re all members of the same tribe.  We’re all pronounced “good.”  We’re all invited to feast at the table.  We’re all connected.  We are all members of the Father’s household….even when we choose to stray and live amongst the pigs for a while.  The only question that remains is, Will we respond to the invitation? or When will we wake up to even know an invitation has been given? For the Spirit is always calling out, Behold…I stand at the door and knock!”

This new, much more interesting and much more redemptive and expansive narrative of the gospel was what Peter was being called into…. and it’s what we’re being called into today!

Now let’s fast forward to our time.  Let’s talk for moment about narrative and how it relates to another word…. “tribe”.    “Tribe” and “tribalism”….  are words we hear bandied about as of late.  As in, “we in America are fracturing into our smaller and smaller tribal groups which carry their own competing narratives… stories about how the world is, or should be.  We no longer are one America.  We are “blue and red” America.  And with each passing day and week we grow more and more estranged from one another.  Bluer and redder, and more and more confused, angry, fractured, and afraid.  It’s like we no longer even exist in the same universe.  We no longer can even seem to agree on what “reality” is even when facts present themselves to us in real time!  Probably like many of you, I’m stunned how people come to believe what they believe when we both have before us the same information and facts.

Truth…or reality…..it’s what we’re all trying to come to terms with.  At Shalom Church last Sunday someone shared how her three year old granddaughter, out of the blue, while in the back seat of the car, asked her mom, “What is reality?”  (A three year old!)  (The next question she asked, interesting enough, was “What is a bond trader?”  I’m not sure what the two questions had to do with each other, or what the context was where her little three year old brain heard these phrases, but on an adult level those are some deep questions!  (Regarding the question about bonds…. that’s a reality that is truly a mystery!)

But, whether the question is posed from a three year old child or from a full grown adult, “What is reality” is a fundamental human concern.  Like Pontius Pilate asking Jesus, “What is truth?”

Recall the story…, before being sentenced to die Jesus is standing right in front of Pilate, the holder of empirical power, and Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?” (or what is reality).  The irony of course is Jesus, the very embodiment of truth, is standing directly before Governor Pilate, the cynical holder of empirical power.  The image is one of illusionary worldly “truth” (represented by Pilate) standing before the embodied spiritual Truth (Jesus)!

“What is Truth?”  When we first heard the concept of “alternative facts,” many of us realized that we’d slipped into a new and confusing world.  A world whereby black is green, and 2 plus 2 equals 83.  A world where neo-Nazis and Black Live Matter hold equal moral weight.  A world where sexual predators can rise to high levels in politics and business.  A world in which all decisions are based, not on clear  common principles of justice and morality, but only on transaction and expediency.  Everything going to the highest bidder, or the immediate concerns of a select few, or the comforts and pleasures of this moment without concern for the sustained welfare of future generations.  A world where refugee children are forever damaged by being separated from their parents.  A world where overwhelming evidence of climate catastrophe is obfuscated for the profits of shareholders and billionaires.  “Alternative reality?”  How is this possible?

A friend of mine recently sent me this quote….

“This blows my mind every single day:  That a handful of old white men hold the fate of humankind in their hands.  And they refuse to act because they are afraid of losing their money.  It’s a lousy reason for a planet to die.”

I don’t think this is any great “news flash” but in our current historical moment, we live in a world of outrageous mendacity and criminality.  We live in times, to use the phrase of Professor Cornel West, of “spiritual blackout.”  And so it’s natural to ask….. “What strange world did we suddenly find ourselves in?”  How is it that people who claim the label of Christianity and get caught up in a personality cult that support policies and behaviors so contrary to the teachings of Jesus?  How is it that facts and compassion and reason no longer seem to matter?

Here’s my hunch …. And maybe this will be helpful in understanding differing views with family around Thanksgiving and Christmas.  This isn’t an original thought, but I’ve come to believe that it is true…. Narrative and the need for tribal belonging carry more weight than facts and reason.

Now here’s what I mean by that…   We humans are hardwired for tribalism.  We long for belonging and community. i.e. we long for a tribe.  This means, that at the most primal level, we are tribal.  We need to belong to a  group / tribe for our physical and psychological survival.  Now ask any anthropologist and they will tell you that every tribe is held together by a common mythology or narrative.   In other words, a tribal story.

On the national level, the old stories that once held our nation together….. stories of manifest destiny.  Stories of American exceptionalism.  Stories of justice and goodness and equal opportunity (despite the inconstancies of slavery, and of indigenous genocide, and of American Empire).  Stories of unfettered growth.  …. These stories around which we used to identify are now crumbling.

The neo-liberal story of economics is dying.  The story of patriarchal dominance is dying.  The story of brute force and military solutions is dying.  They don’t fit anymore.  They don’t work.  Reality is breathing down our necks. (Or maybe we should say, “Reality is calling out to us.”) The planet is in crisis… and this “crisis reality” is speaking in ways we cannot ignore.  It is calling out for us to re-assess our old, dysfunctional narratives about the earth and material reality, and replace it with a narrative that gives life to all.

(Even our old biblical narratives need to be reassessed.  For example does anyone ever really question the biblical narrative of “original sin?”  An idea suggested by St. Paul, and later given systematic credence by Augustine.  It’s an extremely destructive narrative to our Christian spirituality.  How about…. “original lost innocence.”  That seems a lot more workable! )

In short…we are at a crossroads!  And it is time to “repent” i.e. turn around…. Wake up!

In these extraordinary historical times,  we are being called to come to the same conclusion that Peter came to when he had the strange dream whereby God revealed to him that nothing God made was to be considered “unclean”.  Like Peter we are called to embrace the larger universally welcoming story of Jesus and the truth of His Resurrection.  The fundamental truth of the cross and resurrection is that you cannot kill God!  You cannot kill truth!  You cannot kill kindness and love!  Meanness, cruelty, and ignorance will never ultimately prevail!  Eternal reality, of which we are all a part, wins out!

We’re all God’s precious children.  We’re all connected.  We’re all chosen.  We’re all called.  We’re all forgiven.  We’re all saved.  We’re all invited to the Great Banquet and to know God together.  The only question is, “Will we respond to the invitation?”

So when you engage in exasperating conversations with people whom you think ought to be open to facts and reason and moral common sense, yet insist on (from your perspective, at least) unreason and denial of facts…. remember what I’m suggesting about the power of narrative and story.  Remember our primal pull toward insecurity and tribalism.  When you challenge or threaten the tribal narrative, you threaten the member of that tribe, and thus you threaten their sense of security.  That’s what’s going on.  It’s not about facts.  It’s about narratives and emotion that reinforce identity, tribal affiliation, and security.  So rather than argue facts and logic and morality….  ask instead, “What is the person’s tribal myth and what are the values that that myth speaks to?  And maybe, when common human concerns and values are discovered, maybe then a meaningful conversation can happen.  We can only hope!

Let me wrap this up.  Change is happening, and the facts are calling out to us.  We have moved as a species from clan, to tribe, to city states, to nation states, and now….. to something else.  One world?  One people?  One inter-dependent, inter-connected, yet richly diverse human family?

 

Scary?  Yeah, how that might work out scares me too.  But it is the reality we now face.  Who are we?  How will we be?  How will be live in peace?  How will we (a world of 8 billion people) survive, and hopefully thrive?  How will ecosystems and diversity of precious species continue to exist in balance?  What has to change?  What must be given up?  How will all do well, and come to know the goodness of our humanity?  Metaphorically speaking, we are all shipmates on this one precious vessel.

These are questions I don’t have easy answers for, but I know the Son of Man (the fully human one) is the One to whom I need to look.  I know Jesus points us to a new narrative.  I know the One who lived a full and complete life provides the teachings and the stories which guide me in living a full and complete life as God intends.  I know that even though these are very strange and troubling times, and even though this may, in fact, be the end of the age of humankind (what some call the era of the Anthropocene – the human era) it is through Jesus (what he taught, who he was, how he lived, and the Ultimate truth demonstrated in the cross and the resurrection) that I am able to find courage and meaning in these disturbing times.  That I am only one mysterious, momentary, and precious part of the eternal reality that is what we call “God.”

And I do confess, I sometimes despair.  But then I fall back on the belief that these are the times…. this is the place… these are the people, for whom God has called me to both celebrate (yes, celebrate)  and (yes) suffer with.  Likewise, speaking as one called to preach, I believe it is so for all of us.  That’s the “good news.” You are meant to be here.  Now.  Today.  Doing what you’re doing with all the passion, compassion, humility, integrity, and righteous indignation you can muster.  On earth as it is in heaven!

On earth as it is in heaven.  That is at the heart of the gospel narrative.  That is our Christian truth.  May you live that truth through the unique story that God is writing through you!     Amen.

 

This message was given to Spokane Friends Meeting by Gary Jewell on November 10, 2019.

Mark Hawthorn

His name was Matthew Hawthorn. He was born on September 26, 1938 in Washington, D.C. He was raised in Connecticut—a state that, you may know, gets its name from a Native American word which means “place of long tidal river.” In 1958, Mark graduated with a BA in English Literature. During his time at UCONN, he was the managing editor of the school paper, The Daily Campus.

In the early 1960s, Mark worked as an intelligence officer for the United States Air Force. He got his call to duty during the Cuban Missile Crisis—when, in the middle of watching a film with his sister, as she recalls, anyway, he abruptly got up and ran off to fight for a cause greater than himself. After serving in the air force, during which time he was stationed in Morocco, Mark joined the Peace Corps.

When he returned home from the Peace Corps, Mark got a job at The New York Times. He began at The Times as a copy boy but, with hard work, and little sleep, he proved his stripes as a reporter. And, as a reporter at one of America’s finest newspapers, Mark fell in love. He married. By the 1970s, he, by many cultural accounts, had it all. The American Dream.

Mark got burnt out, though, trying to climb the ladder of success. The dream didn’t hold steady. Mark quit his job. And that’s when tragedy struck. By sheer dumb luck, he got hit by a city bus in New York City. Mark spent the next year in and out of a hospital with a shattered hip. For reasons unclear to me, Mark also lost his wife during the time of the shattered hip. In 1969, hoping to find a path of light out of the darkness that became his life, Mark relocated to Berkeley, California. He found something of a home on UC Berkeley’s countercultural campus where he’d dress in women’s skirts and dance in the fountain for coins.

By the time he died, in 2017, at the age of 80, Mark had become a local and international celebrity. In Berkeley, where he had been living homeless for decades, he was known as “The Hate Man” or “The Hate Evangelist.” Some, like one of his old disciples, Krash, who I met one night over dinner at a professor’s house, called him “Hate” for short.    

Hate in Berkeley

Berkeley is a wonderful city. When it is not burning in California flames, it is a gorgeous place to move through tall trees and climb a hillside to watch the sun set—in pink and purple and red—over the Golden Gate Bridge. Berkeley is home to one of the best universities in the world and a sacred site for progressive history in the United States – a ground zero for the Free Speech and Civil Rights movements. Berkeley is also thoroughly strange and eclectic. It is a city full of unusual characters. Hate Man is one striking example.

If you’ve ever walked the streets of Berkeley, or driven through its downtown, or wandered up its hills, you are likely to have encountered The Hate Evangelist. He often stood on a street corner saying to people who passed him, and with his middle finger waving at them, “I hate you.” He greeted friends and strangers not with “hello, how are you?” but “I hate you” and “f you” (said without the sermon censor, of course). In fact, Hate Man said he wouldn’t trust a person who didn’t tell him that he hated him. 

Hate Man preached a Gospel of Hate. He was an evangelist for hate. He thought himself a lot like Jesus, actually—except, rather than dispense miracles and positive care, he’d say, he’d dispense cigarettes and negative care.

What Hate preached wasn’t a willy-nilly expression of angst or anger at mankind-a kind of broken man’s song of uncritical discontent. Hate, actually, was a complex philosophy he worked out over decades. It won him disciples. Regularly he was featured in local papers in the Bay Area. Once a film company from Japan came to town and made a documentary about his life. It was far from a pleasant life—the life Hate found himself living when the cruel hand of disaster shattered not just his hip but also his spirit. Through the unpleasantness, however, Hate dug for and found gems of wisdom and healing that he worked out and made real on the streets of Berkeley.

On why love is not loving

In effect, Hate Man thought that the religion of love, which we are all swimming and maybe drowning in, often fails to be loving. It fails to be loving, he thought, because it is often dishonest and manipulative. It fails to be loving moreover, because it doesn’t know what string to strum to soothe our lesser angels; to deal productively, in other words, with our shadows.

Beneath a Christian’s claim to love, Hate taught, is a toxic brew of resentment seeking power through coercion. Love, as it has come to be understood and practiced in our culture, leads many people to think they have to be positive and kind all of the time – and render an unfettered compassion to every person they meet. Hate said that’s rubbish. And he said the devil is in the details. The religion of positive care, he said, of pretending we can love all of the time, and of really trying to force people to go our own way, hasn’t worked. He said it’s been disastrous. It makes people dishonest and confused. A number of brilliant philosophers and writers have agreed with him. His insights weren’t exactly novel. It is why Freud and Nietzsche argued passionate that Christianity is a destructive ruse that renders people disempowered and crazy rather than healthy and fulfilled. That, ultimately, it is weak before the great power of human destruction.

Hate as spiritual care

Hate Man did not preach an entirely destructive message. That wasn’t the real point of his gospel. True to the meaning Gospel, he thought that the power of negative care, of so-called hate, would bring good news. In the heart of his gospel was the beat of compassion and kindness—wit and satire. At stake for him was the human family dealing with their demons, out in the open, so that they’d stay together rather than break apart. He wanted to care for the soul and create genuine peace in the world. It’s all very Quaker.

You see, Hate taught that the expression of hate got our destructive feelings out in the open; that it made people unstuck and free. That’s why he’d say “I hate you,” it’s why he flipped people off. What he aimed to do was to help people safely, consensually, and respectfully express the negative forces that we are all subject to. Hate hated, we could say, to love. In my view, it is a brilliant form of spiritual care.

Now, I won’t suggest that we become hate evangelists. I am not advocating that we include the word “hate” in our new welcome statement or that we rebrand ourselves Spokane Haters. But I think Hate Man has a point that we can learn from and give a Quaker spin to.

Born to Love

Most Christians agree on a central truth. We are beloved: created with care, woven with artistry; intricately and personally made in the image of God, and made into the living God, to be loved and loving—to experience the divine embrace and, from this embrace, love the world.

So we are loved. And we are here to love. The 2,000-year-old Christian story is a long and broken and beautiful love story.

While we probably agree on this point—about the centrality of love—Christians throughout space and time disagree on what love is. And how to find the path to get there. And fiercely so. Probably that’s why we are in this church and not another one. Probably that’s why you consider yourself one kind of Christian and not another kind. The meaning of love possesses almost infinite variance. Not all love, we could say, is loving. We, as a culture, are duking it out to decide what love is.

Many early Christians thought love demanded leaving the empire to live in the desert alone or among friends—to purify themselves from the proverbial demons of secular politics, lust, and greed. In the medieval period especially, many Christians thought love of God demanded whipping oneself with cords to become pure of sin. Since then, Christians have become convinced that they could find the path of love through mysticism, higher education, and the pursuit of social justice. Today many Christians justify horrific political decisions on the basis of Christian love. Unlike our early desert mothers and fathers, many Christians today want to move toward the center of political power rather than away from it.

Love: questions and postures

Given the variance of love, it is important that we always remain humble. That love always be a query that we explore together.

Love is a question, not an answer. We fool ourselves when we think we have the answer—or even the question—of love. We may get small answers to the question of love, but we never get the answer. That is part and parcel of our human condition.

So, love is a question. And it is a question that requires a posture of humility. The question of love, I am suggesting, can only be answered in relationship with each other. One reason for this is because we are easily seduced by whatever physiological or cultural fad is going around. We want constructs and categories to explain our problems and give us tools to solve them, but we forget that reality is more cryptic and complex than our categories and constructs. Ultimately, people won’t fit into the theory of the week.

Love is a question that requires a posture of humility. It also requires the posture of honesty. The purpose of prayer, the theologian Bernard Lonergan said, is to have a long, loving look at the real. It is to place us, with as clear eyes as possible, before the mystery of our lives. It should help us see what is there, what is true. And what do we get when we walk the path of honesty and truth? It’s not all roses. We see some pretty ugly things in front of us, and in the mirror. We see the human drive not just for love but for power and hatred and blood. We see brokenness. We see a center that doesn’t seem to hold.

I hate to admit it. I really do. I love love, but Hate Man is right. We are full of destructive emotion. Though we as a species are made in the image of God to love, we are also terribly hateful. It’s just the truth. Look around. Turn on the news. We abuse the poor, the environment, each other, and ourselves. We are callous and insensitive. We are master manipulators.

Christians have developed diverse ways of dealing with our dark side—with our drive for destruction, that is. That, for example, is where the deep symbol of sin comes from. It is where the profoundly mistaken theology of a violent atonement is born. We have told people that they will go to hell if they veer from the straight and narrow path of our salvation. We tell people to pray away what we don’t like about them; what threatens us and makes us afraid. We call the poor lazy rather than wounded, the rich blessed rather than lucky.

The Anger of God and the Anger at God

Still our world is mad. It is hurting. Because it is hurting, it is hateful. It is important that we be honest: that we see the real darkness in each other and in ourselves. That’s one key to what I am trying to say. We can’t let our gospel of therapeutic love and positive care seduce us into thinking that everything is okay and that people aren’t boiling with anger and rage. Everything is not okay and people are boiling with anger and rage. It is also important that we, like Hate Man, develop spiritual practices that help us safely and respectfully express the pain inside of us. Inside of our culture. Otherwise hate will take over our personalities and make a permanent home in our political houses. That’s the second key to what I am trying to say. I love that we share our joys and concerns and that we talk about how beautiful it is to be together and how amazing it is to be created in the image of God, but I sometimes fear that those things do not adequately allow us to express the destructive emotions we experience.

A Spirituality of Hate

Let me conclude by giving four reasons why it’s important to express our destructive emotions. Let me, that is, lay a kind of groundwork for a spirituality of negative care. Or a spirituality of hate, perhaps. After that, I will propose that we create a practice, together, at Spokane Friends, that can help people in our community express their destructive selves through a spiritual practice in our humble church.

First. We don’t need to be afraid to get angry. Why? Because Jesus. Jesus, our teacher, our beloved, our God, got angry. Let’s not forget: Jesus got pissed. He got pissed, for example, that people made his father’s house a den of thieves and robbers. That the poor were being exploited and extorted in the name of religion. John 2 give us a different image of Jesus than gentle one we often imagine:

15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 

16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 

Second. We don’t need to need to be afraid to express our anger because God already knowns our hearts and loves everything about it. He loves all of our heart beats, whether positive or negative. There is no place inside of you that God doesn’t gaze into with tender acceptance. Being open about our dark side will not be news to God. It, rather, will be an honest confession. Let’s remember Psalm 139:

You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
    and you lay your hand upon me.

Third. Being angry and negative invites a spirituality of sincerity and honesty; it is an invitation to a more intimate relationship with God, with the holy. By expressing our negative emotions and thoughts, we invite a more authentic and vulnerable relationship with God. Is that not precisely what God wants from us? Not just our Sunday selves and our kind selves but our whole selves—every part of us? Let me tell you a story. One day, when I began my research in Seattle, I was sitting in a Cathedral. A seemingly homeless woman got up from the pews, walked to the center of the Cathedral and, before leaving, looked up and cursed God. Precisely because it was honest and real, it struck me as one of the holiest moments I ever experienced. I know that God loved her in that moment because I felt God’s love burning side of me. God loved that she expressed her whole self in a sacred place.

Fourth. Here is the most important reason it’s important to allow ourselves to be transparent before God—with all our pounds and pimples and all our anger and rage. When we give our whole selves to God, we are empowered to be more loving in the world. We get release from the destructive side. We get catharsis from what’s inhibiting our drive to love. Hate Man is right on this point. The expression of our negative energy, done safely and in a way that is meant to be constructive and create peace, can be a form of spiritual care. The book of Psalms is full of laments—of real and raging and broken honesty before God. Somehow, we have forgotten how to bring our whole selves, together, before God.  

This week’s query is intended to be personal. I am going to invite us to reflect on how the Spirit might be inviting us to safely explore any destructive emotion that we are experiencing today. Are you mad at God? At others? At yourself? Do you feel hurt and betrayed? In the quiet place of your heart, I encourage you to reflect on that—knowing, again, that a compassionate God who does not Hate is with you, not critiquing you but inviting you to express yourself so that you can grow in love and care for others. That it’s okay to feel as you feel. If someone is impelled to speak before the group, then we will trust the Spirit in them. But I’d like to suggest that this time be personal and quiet, between us and God.

I would also like to propose that we consider have a service in December devoted to expressing anger at God and the world—safe and respectfully, of course. I imagine a line our sign our front: “Mad at God? Let Him have it. Broken and confused? Come share with us.” If we are interested in this, and perhaps we won’t be, there are a number of resources that can assist us in creating a safe and healthy place for people in our community to express the negative emotions they are suffering from. That’s something I think Friends need to think more about. I think we need to care for people who are boiling with rage and anger. I think we need to help become become more free to love.

Query:  Is God inviting you to express a seemingly negative emotion you experience? In the private space of your silence before God, can you name what that emotion is and ask God to help learn how to express it safely and respectfully?  

This message was delivered to Spokane Friends Church by Paul Blankenship on November 3, 2019.

I’d  like to try a little exercise.  I’m going to read off some derogatory names for some groups of people and ask you to stick up a hand if you’ve heard these terms before and know what group they are referring to.  I’ll tell you right off that my hand would be up for every one of them, since I did not include any terms I didn’t know myself.  Here we go. [Pause after each to let people raise hands and look around at others]

Chink …..Dago…..Kraut ….. Spic …… Gook….. Jap ….. Wetback ….. Hun …..Sven …..Pollack ….. Coon ….. Kike …. Paki ……Jungle Bunny ….. Hunkie ….. Mick ….. Injun …..Tar Baby ….. …..Cracker….. Trailer Trash ….. Hillbilly ….. Tonk

“Tonk” is a term used for illegal Mexican immigrants.  It is the sound that is made when the illegals are hit over the head with the large flashlights/batons that the US border patrolmen carry.

Spic came from Spigotty which is a shortened form of “no-speeka-de-English.

Thank you – you have just acknowledged that you, just like me, have been racially acculturated by the dominant culture of white supremacy.  

How many of you were taught these words by your parents as part of your education?  (Pause for community response]   So — many of you are just like me – I did not learn them from my parents, just as I did not learn swear words or “dirty” words from my parents.  Growing up, I never would have identified my parents as racist, and I would have been punished had I used certain words at home.   And this is another evidence that we have been conditioned by our society.  Like fish are not aware of the water they live in, we are not truly aware of the culture we live in – it isn’t noticeable to us because it is so, well, normal.  

It’s always good to define our terms, so here in church when we talk about racism, what do we mean?  Well, we could look at two definitions of racism.  The first we could call the Dictionary Definition –a person is a racist if they have a personal prejudice about another group of people that are not like them in several physical attributes.  That’s how most people use that word.

But this is a very narrow, thin definition, and maybe not the best definition.  Another possibility is the Sociological Definition and its harder to nail down because you can’t see it, it’s not tangible.  This racism is systemic – it is the way racism has structured our society.  It is not natural, it is constructed by us.  And with this definition, we can see more –it’s broader.  We are all participating in a racialized system.

Here’s an illustration – I am having coffee with my African-American friend (because of course I am not a racist) and I pick up my McDonald’s cup and I say “Here’s how I think about the problem of racism.   See this cup?  I can see my side of the cup, but I can’t see your side – and vice versa.  So if I can tell you what my side of the cup looks like, and you can tell me what your side looks like and that way we can understand each other.  But my friend smiles and says “Well, it’s not quite like that.  True, you don’t know anything about my side of the cup, but I already know all about your side of the cup. I have been living on your side of the cup all my life.”

What does our side of the cup look like?  Our white churches, white schools, white neighborhoods, white book clubs, white sports, (oh, yes plenty of African Americans play in professional athletics, but they are playing in OUR cultural game – so much OURS that when one of them wants to do something to represent his own culture, we are outraged by it and the story takes on national proportions, it’s front page news, people get fired.)  We have white furniture stores and white grocery stores.  Wait a minute –almost everything in the grocery store is just normal food. . . . Whereas the food of other cultures are in the “ethnic foods” section — they may get about half of one side of an aisle.  White supremacy is so dominant – and we can’t see it because there is nothing cultural about a grocery store – it’s just a normal grocery store.  In a school where children from other cultures were asked to tell the class about their foods and their games and their clothes, one white child went home and said, “I wish I had a culture.”  Our culture is not conscious, and when it is not conscious, it can be imposed on others.

Now we can and do work on overcoming the first type of racism, the person-to-person one – and we may even participate in group-to-group learning about prejudices of individuals. We can participate in a joint choir, exchange pastors with a black church, have potlucks and dinner parties, and live in mixed neighborhoods.    But the second type of racism that is embedded in our policies and institutions -–THAT is a very complex problem.  Take education for example – white schools are overfunded, black schools are underfunded.  In our justice system, we have mass incarceration of black people.  White teens get notoriously lower sentences for similar crimes.  A white teen comes from a good family, they can afford a lawyer, we don’t want to ruin his life an after all “boys will be boys” and they will grow up some day.  Let’s give him community service.  But the black teen is incarcerated because he is probably a gang member and he comes from a poor, single-parent family, and what else can you expect from kids living in that part of town?   We’d be afraid to go there at night. (Incidentally, research shows that majority black neighborhoods do NOT have more crime than white neighborhoods, but we don’t really believe it)

We see no problem with living in segregated neighborhoods.  In fact, most white people living in mixed neighborhoods move out as soon as they can afford to. (This is known as “white flight”.  That is why we all have great respect for Kent and LaVerne – because they deliberately chose to locate their business in a poor, even dangerous, neighborhood, the very opposite of “white flight”. )

A very interesting experiment was done in the 1940’s – the Clark “doll experiment”.  Black children were taken individually into a room and shown two dolls, one black and one white.  They were asked which doll was the good doll and which one was the bad one.  Which one was pretty, which was ugly.  Overwhelmingly the black children said the white doll was the good one, the pretty one.  Then they were asked “which one looks like you?”.  They all picked the black doll   They have just identified the ugly bad doll with themselves.  They clearly understood the racial hierarchy:  “white is right, pure, best, good, beaufiful.”  They have internalized the dominant racist ideology.  When I read things like this, I can’t in good faith deny that the term “white supremacy” fits our society.

Well, you might say, that was last century, what about now?  The experiment was repeated in 2016 and the results were the same. 

Many black people have given up on talking to white people about race.  White people do NOT want to talk about race.  They use MANY ways to shut down the conversation.  “I’m colorblind”  “I don’t see color”. Simply not true.  They say “ I have black friends”. ” I marched in the 60’s” “I heard MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Washington Monument”– some of you have heard me say that.  “My parent taught me not to be racist”  If we can tell ourselves that we are not racist, then we don’t have to engage the true situation. 

And we have one clever way to shut down conversation – it’s called scapegoating. Putting the blame on someone else and casting them out from among us along with our own sins.  Here’s how it works: We polarize racism – either you are racist or you are not racist.  They are widely separated, and down at that end is the worst ignorant bigoted racist you know.  Bad, bad racist.  We are certainly not like that.  We are good people, so we cannot be racist.  We ignore this whole spectrum in between which represents varying degrees of racism, including us.  But the “bad racist” is so bad, we cannot allow ourselves to be put in the same class as him.  With that binary configuration, we must be “not racist.”  And if someone asks us to recognize that we are, even though we can’t help it, we insist that we are NOT racist, and that ends the conversation.   This is the meaning of “white fragility” – we refuse to talk about racism,  we are offended, so we shut down the conversation.  We say things like

“How can you say I’m racist? You don’t even know me.”   

“It’s racist to generalize about people based on race.”

“It’s focusing on race that divides us.”

And my all-time favorite “It’s white men that are the most discriminated against”

So we go to meetings in our workplace to find out what we do that made someone think we are racist.  IF we can find someone who dares to tell us.  And when they do, we say “That isn’t what I meant”.  “You took that the wrong way.”  “Let me tell you why you are wrong, wrong, wrong in your assessment of me.”  That is to say, we take over the conversation, we storm out of the room, or – worst of all, we cry.  Yes, ladies, we cry.  We are so hurt, so guilty, so arrogant.  Ah, see how that works?  Now the conversation is about me.  My friends rush to comfort me – we hate to see someone cry.  They try to tell the speaker how unfair they were to judge me, a nice white person.  Do you see what is happening here?  I got upset because someone told me what was racist about my behavior IN A MEETING CALLED TO TELL ME ABOUT MY RACIAL BEHAVIOR.  And suddenly I am the focus of everyone’s concern and the the black person speaking to us is forgotten about and left sitting there all alone.  I have successfully made the meeting all about me and my feelings,  because my feelings are the important ones, not hers.  It’s the classic “splinter in your eye, log in my own eye”  Now who was it that talked about that?  Oh, yes, it was Jesus, whose servant I claim to be.  Is he here wiping away my tears?  No, he is out there eating and drinking with the dregs of society, those prostitutes, sick people, those TAX collectors — and maybe now we begin to notice the entanglement of the church with white supremacy – how we have created a “white Jesus.”   

The very radical early Christian church lasted about through the first 5 chapters of Acts.  Then in Chapter 6, racism rears its ugly head.  The Greek widows and orphans are not getting their fair share of the food distribution. 

How do you become white in America?  It’s called assimilation.  All ethnic groups arriving from elsewhere were discriminated against if they were not northern European.  Those racial slurs we all recognize – those people spoke their own language and lived in their own communities. THEN they became upwardly mobile as they learned the language and the customs of their new country.  They tried to lose their accents.  They learned how to dress, they emphasized education, and now they check “white” as their race on surveys.  The Irish had a particularly hard time when they came to America.  So did every other cultural minority until they were assimilated.  And could now look down on the latest group of immigrants from , say, Japan. 

But then, minorities started hanging onto their own culture.  We have gone to a salad bowl analogy rather than a melting pot.  What is that all about?  They had better learn English or go back home.

So what are we to do?  We should continue to find ways to interact with those of other ethnicities.  But we need to realize that the real problem is the systemic racism built into our culture and that we are advantaged by it.  Be curious about the structures and institutions that preserve white supremacy.  There are already groups working to dismantle this culture – find them and join one.  And don’t start your own group – we whites like to do that, because we can do it better and we can continue to make the important decisions. Join a group whose leadership is black and take your marching orders from them.  Harden your heart so you don’t collapse in hurt and self-pity when someone tries to tell you what is racist about your behavior.  Use your white privilege for good. 

And let us be more serious about following our leader, Jesus.  He was not upwardly mobile, he did not use his race to elevate his status; instead he went down, down, down to serve the lowest, the least, the lost, and  the losers.  He took grace and truth with him. We can also live lives of grace and be true to what the Holy Spirit reveals to us as we continue to be open, to learn, and to  grow into our true selves.  

This message was given by Lois Kieffaber at Spokane Friends Church on  Sunday, October 20, 2019.

These thoughts are shaped by events at National Older Adult Camp in North Carolina, sponsored by our sister Peace Church, The Chuch of the Brethren, which I attended last month in order to see all my siblings at the same time (AND . .  without any kids!)  Two of the five major addresses were given by black pastors.  More recently I also picked up a book called White Fragility, which was highly recommended by Charlene Cox when we were deciding what book we wanted to read together this summer.  I found that wherever I opened it up and started reading, I almost couldn’t put it down again.  So that’s why this topic has been on my mind.

Resources:  Dennis Webb, Robin Robin diAngelo

Moving Fast     As I get a bit older, I am developing a greater appreciation for life’s simple things. Like, for example, the simple beauty of sitting down. Of sitting down, that is, and being quiet. No TV on, no music playing, no chatter, no nothing. Just a jolly time of good old sitting down.

Maybe it’s a bit silly, but that’s one of the things I love most about our Sunday mornings. I love that we sit down together in the quiet beauty of our togetherness. It’s a privilege, really, if you think about it. Because of sickness, disability, finances, or imprisonment—whether just or unjust—many people aren’t able to come here and, as the song goes, take a load off Annie.

I also love that, in beauty of our quiet togetherness, we make it a point to quiet more than our mouths. We also quiet our minds—or we try to. It’s an intentional thing—a spiritual practice that doesn’t grow old. By quieting our mouths and our minds we create space inside of us—and inside of our meeting—for the living and loving God to speak. For the divine fire to kindle and rekindle the wick in our souls—the little fire inside of us that too often grows faint and weary.

It may not seem like it, sitting here as we do in the quiet, but we are actually being hurled through space. Right now, Earth, the planet we call home, is like a spaceship moving through the universe at a phenomenal speed. If my research is correct—and perhaps Lois can correct me if it isn’t—Earth is traveling at about 67,000 miles per hour in its orbit around the sun. The reason we don’t feel how fast we are moving is because our speed is constant. It’s like being in a car—when we drive at a regular speed on the freeway, for example, it doesn’t really feel like we’re moving at all.

How funny, I think, that we are moving so fast without really realizing it.

Of course, it’s not just our little spaceship that’s moving fast. We do, too. I don’t know if, as a species, we’ve ever been so busy. The alarm goes off and then boom—it’s like someone waves a checkered flag and we are off to the races. Feed the dogs. The cats. The chickens. The kids. Water the plants. Take out the trash. Take a shower … maybe. Get dressed—and try not to look too shabby. Make breakfast, … maybe. Better, perhaps, to grab a protein bar and drive to work. Work until the sun goes down. Work until you’re exhausted, until you can barely stand up. Then drive home. Or maybe the gym. Turn on the radio. Learn about a new cure, a new disease, a new scandal, a new promise. Listen, maybe, to a new song. Honk at a slow poke. Wave at a neighbor. Get home. Make dinner. Make plans. If you’re lucky, make love. Lay down and, if you can stop your mind from obsessing about the next day, go to sleep. That too, for an increasing number of people, is lucky. We are a people who need an electronic devise to wake up and, increasingly, to fall asleep. Like robots, we are always plugged in to something. Maybe we modern people are moving even faster than our spaceship traveling around the sun.

Moving Fast—for a Purpose     So, our world moves fast. And we do. Everyday life is a struggle to keep up. But it’s not just that we move fast. We also move with intention—with purpose.

What is our purpose? Let’s say, what is the purpose of our culture? Of our country. The Earth moves as fast as it does to orbit the sun because the sun’s gravity pulls at it.  What pulls us?

[Pause for community response]

It’s an important question—and there are many answers. One, certainly, is that we need to get up and keep up in order to get by. We are pulled by the demands of life. That’s our gravity. Bills have to be paid; bellies have to be filled. Simple as that.

That’s not the only gravitational pull we feel, however—and, I think, it’s far from the strongest one.  We are pulled to win. To dominate. To be the best. Look at how we raise children. We want them to win the spelling bee, to get the best grades, to get into the best school, to win the race. We may not say we really want these things but, as a culture, it sure seems like we do. It’s evident in how we reward winners and punish losers. Winners get the financial, psychological, and social goods—and often losers don’t. Look, also, at our government. It tells us that we need the best military, the best technology, the best prisons, the best economy, the best Olympic teams, the best education system, the best health care. I think we say we want these things not because, deep down, we are bad people but because we want a good life. And because, really, we are afraid what will happen if we don’t have power and control.

The struggle to be the best, however, is quite tragic. Not everyone can be the best. No one person or people group can have all the power. Power is fleeting; it rises and then falls like the leaves outside. The struggle for power creates a lot of powerless creatures.

Still, we compete against each other—we fight over scarce resources and awards. We push people away to step in the spotlight. And we admire—sometimes with real respect and sometimes with hidden envy—those who found the spotlight and the cushy seat of power. I think our culture trains us to want what they have and be who they are and think rather sideways about ourselves if we don’t and we’re not.

The point I am making is that we all struggle for power to get by and become someone worth admiring. Control and power are gravitational forces that pull us into being the people we are.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer     Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906—in Breslau, Germany. He was one of eight children—he had a twin, actually, named Sabine. Dietrich’s father was a neurologist—and his mother, who likely worked harder than her husband to care for the large family—was the daughter of a preacher.

His parents imagined that Dietrich would become a musician because of his skill at piano. They weren’t particularly happy with him when, at the age of 14, he told them that he’d grow up to become a minister and a theologian.

Dietrich did, indeed, became a minister and a theologian. One of the finest the world has ever seen, I think. He also, because of one of the darkest chapters in world history, became a Nazi resister. Though he was a pacifist for most of his life, Dietrich could not justify his pacifist stance when Hitler rose to power and began brutalizing the Jews. As a result, Dietrich became a double-agent and affiliated himself with groups plotting to assassinate Hitler. In 1943, his gig was up. Two Nazis arrived in a black Mercedes and took Dietrich to Tegel prison. After two years in prison, and just one month before Germany surrendered, Dietrich was hung with six other resisters.

During his two years in prison, Dietrich wrote several letters and short theological essays. A central theme of that writing concerns Christianity’s place in the world today—what it means, that is, to bring the Good News of Christ to the world in our unique and peculiar time.

Interestingly, Dietrich believed that the future world would be religionless; that the message of Christ would need to be translated in a secular and nonreligious way in order for it to be life-giving and effective. In prison, he began working on a theology he called “religionless Christianity.”

Dietrich also thought that God had let the world push Him out of it—and onto the cross.   Here is a paragraph from a letter he wrote to a friend from his prison cell:

“God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.” “He is weak and powerless in the world,  and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. [The Bible] … makes quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering … The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help.”[1]

It is a striking note on the theological piano: “Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.” “Only the suffering God can help.”

I confess before you that Dietrich’s words cause me great concern. I am not particularly comforted by them—at first, anyway. I do not want a powerless God who suffers; I want a powerful God who conquers. The more I think about it, however, the more I am pulled in, as if by a spiritual gravity, to the idea of a powerless God.

Henri Nouwen     Henri Nouwen was born in 1932—in the Netherlands. He was one of four children. His mother worked as a bookkeeper in the family business and his father was a tax lawyer.

In 1957, after six years of study, Henri became a priest. In 1966, after several more years of study, Henri got a job as a professor at the University of Notre Dame. Then he got hired at Yale and then Harvard—during which time he published several influential books. Quite a career! After almost two decades working at some of the top institutions in the world, however, Henri felt completely unfulfilled. He said his success led to a desert of spiritual death. By God’s grace, Henri responded to a life-giving call to work with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities at an organization called L’Arche in Ontario, Canada.

In his book, In the Name of Jesus, Henri penned his thoughts about what kind of leadership is required of Christians today. In the following sentence from that book, Henri sounds a lot like Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“I am deeply convinced,” Henri writes, “that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God’s Word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.”[2]

“The leaders of the future,” Henri continues, “will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows them to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success, and to bring the light of Jesus there.”[3]

Jesus     I don’t know about you, but what Dietrich and Henri are getting at strike me as counterintuitive. Against a culture that calls us upward, they are calling us downward. The gravitational pull of Christ, they seem to be saying, is not toward power but powerlessness.

Their message, however, counterintuitive and seemingly crazy, is not their own. It is rooted in the life and ministry of Jesus. Let me read the passage Pam read to us to begin our service from Matthew 18:

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’

He called a little child and had him stand among them. [What a sight to imagine, by the way—Jesus calling a child who, by social standards of the time, represented powerlessness itself—in front of the disciples]. “And he said: ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, [and here is the critical part], whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.”

Lessons of Powerlessness    What the heck, Jesus? What are you saying?

Jesus is not calling his followers to be weak. He is not telling us to be lazy. He is not asking that we welcome abuse and make ourselves doormats. What Jesus is asking us is to stop trying to dominate. To let go of the maddening pursuit of power. To be humble. To release control.

Jesus is asking us to function in the world like children: with a sense of openness, trust, and faith.   In giving up power, we recognize our limits to bring about the end that we seek. We recognize that we need God, a power that is within us but that is not ours. Let me try to put this in a Quaker way. We are a light but we are not THE light. We are candles that God lovingly lights, we are not the fire that lights us. Our burning is a burning of divine fire. We are dependent on God to be godly—to be friends who walk joyfully over the world.

The gravitation pull of Christ calls us downward. To places of powerlessness. To sit beside the orphan and the widow in their trouble.

Powerlessness, friends, enables presence. That, I think, is the real point. It helps us stop moving. It makes us still. It sits us down. It closes our eyes and opens our ears so that we can hear God speak and feel God move. It kindles and rekindles our wick so that we can burn more fiercely with God’s good fire and, in so doing, light the world aflame with his love and compassion and peace. Ultimately, we do not seek powerlessness for the sake of powerlessness. We seek is so that God can become powerful—and, as his human and nonhuman instruments—make all things new.

Query    May we be grateful, friends, as we sit together in the quiet beauty of our togetherness. May we reflect on what it means to be a friend of Jesus today as the Spirit moves each one of us. If it is helpful to your reflection before Christ, I humbly suggest this query:

in what specific way might God be calling me to give up power in order to make room for the presence of Christ?

This message was given by Paul Blankenship to Spokane Friends during Sunday worship on September 29, 2019

 

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letter and Papers from Prison (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967), __. Originally retrieved from the following website: https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/martyrs/dietrich-bonhoeffer.html

[2] Henri Nouwen, In the name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002), 29-31.

[3] Ibid., 35.

Spokane Friends, thank you for inviting Tim and me to be among you. It has been a gift on so many levels:

* It’s been an opportunity to re-connect with so many we haven’t seen for a long time…        * as well as an incredible joy to meet the many of you who have become part of this                 beloved community in  recent years.

It’s so clear that the Spirit is at work among you … and I am thankful.

It has also been a huge blessing to learn from and journey with Paul Blankenship. He is not only a teacher  who can invite us into theological reflection – but he also has the spiritual gift of “shepherd” or “pastor” – encouraging us while also challenging us to follow Jesus in the ways of grace, love, discipleship and compassion.

Paul [interim part-time pastor] and I had a chance to share  over coffee last week. We talked about many things including what we each thought were some of the unique gifts that Friends can offer the world today. That conversation inspired me to think more deeply about why – as I seek to follow Jesus – I choose to remain among Friends. After all, we know that Quakerism has its “issues”. We know that there have been ugly fights and squabbles among the wider body of Friends. We know that Quakers do not have any corner on God or truth or peace-making.  Yet … here we are, right?

My guess is that each of you probably could name your own reasons for being a Friend today. To stimulate that conversation, I’d like to share with you some of my reasons. Borrowing Gregg Koskela’s creative format – I give you the Top Ten Reasons Why I Am a Quaker Today.

#10.  I love the Quaker emphasis on the inward experience of the Divine. When I was 14 years old, I was water baptized by a lovely Jewish-Christian-Baptist minister in the cold waters of Lake Michigan. My baptism was (and continues to be) a very meaningful experience. And when I worship in other faith traditions, I love taking communion with the outward symbols of wine and bread. At the same time, I am deeply appreciative of our Quaker witness that the outward signs are not necessary to have an inward experience of the Holy. And I believe it’s important that the Religious Society of Friends offers a place where outward rituals are not required, nor expected. So #10 – I am a Quaker because of the emphasis on the inward experience of the Living Christ.

#9 –  All Christian denominations emphasize living out one’s faith.  As Friends,  we talk about it in terms of Testimonies rather than creeds, dogmas or rules of behavior. As the saying goes: we are called to “Let our Life Speak.” That means I am challenged:

*to consider what it means to live simply

*to become (in the words of Jesus) a peace-maker,

*to act with integrity even and especially when it’s hard,

*to cherish the gift of community – again, even and especially when it’s hard. (And being part of authentic community is naturally going to be hard at times…)

*And finally as a Friend I am asked to: work for the equal treatment of all peoples. So our traditional testimonies are: simplicity, peace, integrity, community and equality. In recent years – we’ve also added stewardship of our beloved earth which is desperately needed today.  #9 – I am a Quaker because the testimonies challenge me to walk my talk…

#8  Sometimes Quaker Meeting for business drives me nuts; it can be slow, difficult, and on occasion it can get hijacked. I also believe it is incredibly powerful when done in the spirit of love, grace and worship. While voting certainly gets things done much more quickly, voting can also leave us with “winners and losers”. Ideally in our Meetings for Worship for the Purpose of Business – we are listening for the Holy Spirit to speak to us as we are carefully listening to one another. As a result, I’ve often seen Friends do gracious work together. Sometimes the outcome is a surprise because as we have waited in worship, a third way has arisen.

Let me also add a caveat.  Our business process simply drives some people (maybe some here) crazy. Trust me: You can still be a Friend, active in Meeting, and you can skip the business meeting. But it’s good to first give it a try. So #8 I am a Quaker because I appreciate our prayerful process for conducting business.

#7. In the words of one of our founders George Fox:  “There is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition.” In other words, we can each have a direct experience with the Divine. No intermediary needed.

And since we each can hear the voice of Christ, #6: all of us are ministers. That theology (what Martin Luther called the universal priesthood of all believers)  is obviously not unique to Friends – but I love how Quakers live that out through our recording process. We don’t ordain our ministers …rather we simply record individuals’ gifts for public ministry. So for instance, pastors have no more authority than anyone else in the room; a pastor is simply a “released minister”. Released, because by paying a salary, ministers are freed up (whether that be full or part time) to focus on ministry.  And that’s why as Quaker pastors, we don’t go by Reverend, most holy one (smile) or any other title.

#5  I am Quaker because we take the Bible very seriously but not always literally, for we do not want to make an idol out of Scripture.  Instead we acknowledge that Scripture can simply be words on a page until we read it in the Spirit with which it was given. And then – and then – the Bible becomes the Living Word – powerful and active among us.  I imagine many of you might relate to a time when a biblical passage (thanks to the Holy Spirit) suddenly became alive and formative for you.

#4 One of the primary reasons I am a Friend is because silence does NOT come easily or naturally for me. And yet it is in the stillness, in the quiet of waiting worship where Christ often speaks to me, heals my wounds, and calls me forward. It makes all the sense in the world to me, that if I want to hear the Voice of God, it is helpful to first quiet myself and listen. #4 – I am a Quaker because this extrovert needs help practicing stillness, and prayerful listening.

#3 Friends take seriously Jesus’ words that the Kingdom of God has drawn near … that the kingdom is both here and yet not fully here. It’s a paradox, right? So as Friends we don’t spend a lot of time focusing on Jesus’ “next coming” but rather we acknowledge that Christ is present and active among us right here and right now– calling us to do the work and witness of Christ’s love and justice.

#2  I am grateful that Friends, along with many other faith traditions, affirm continuing revelation. Or (borrowing from our UCC friends) I quote Gracie Allen:  “Never put a period where God has put a comma.”

For instance, in the early 1800’s because God was still speaking and because people within the church were still listening, many Christians (including Friends) led the abolitionist movement, and later some of these same faith groups also joined the suffrage movement. Continuing revelation. While some churches still aren’t quite there – most today now encourage women to not only speak in the church but to lead as well. Same thing for those who have experienced a divorce – which is another change in the wider church world. Continuing revelation.

Because God is still speaking and because we are still listening – we now understand addiction issues differently rather than simply naming them as “sin.” And we are now seeking to be good stewards of the earth rather than having “dominion” over it.  And in the last number of years we have been seeking to welcome the LGBTQ community into the life of the church in new and loving ways. And I could go on … but my #2 reason I am a Friend is because we seek to keep listening with open hearts and minds to what the Spirit is saying to the church today.

#1: I am a Quaker because I believe there is that of God in every person.  Sometimes that seed of Christ is incredibly well hidden/ but it is there. And if I truly believe that, it impacts how I speak about others, how I treat and pray for others. It’s a beautiful, powerful, and incredibly challenging truth —  one that thankfully calls me to see the world through a lens of enduring faith, hope and love.

So while Friends are only one small voice in the larger community of faith,  it is the particular place I call home. And yes, the  Religious Society of Friends can be incredibly messy and flawed. But that’s also what makes Quakerism a rather perfect home for messy, flawed and very imperfect people like me.

And Friends, I believe that in this moment in time, the Spirit continues to call Spokane Friends to be a voice and a witness in this community. So as Jesus taught us: may you all continue to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  And may you Love your neighbor (right here in this room and beyond) just as you are also called to Love yourself.  Amen.

Query: what does being a Friend means to you?

This message was given at Spokane Friends Church on Sunday, September 22, 2019, by Deborah Suess.

 

 

 

News headlines

“At least 50 dead and 1,300 listed as missing nearly two weeks after hurricane Dorian hit Bahamas.”

“Beto O’Rourke on gun control following record number of mass shootings in the United States: ‘hell yes we’re going to take your AK47.’ Come and try, a concerned citizen retorts.”

“Megachurch pastor who was an advocate for mental health kills himself.”

“Leading Psychologist has found that depression rates rose by more than 60 percent among children age 14-17 and 47% among those age 12-13. Between 2007 and 2015, children and teenagers seen in hospitals for suicidal thoughts or attempted suicide have doubled.”

“Microsoft President Brad Smith Says Our Democracy is at risk, Government Needs to Step in and Regulate Big Tech.”

“Climate Change is Already Displacing Millions of People—It’s our Responsibility to Help Them.”

“Jerry Falwell, Jr. Faces Backlash Over Emails. The Liberty University President, who is one of the most influential Christian leaders in the United States, sent emails where he allegedly belittled students and staff during the past decade.”

“Vandals Deface British WWII Graves in the Netherlands.”

“NFL star accused of raping his former athletic trainer.”

“Tearful Felicity Hoffman gets 14 days in prison, $30,000 fine in college admission’s scandal.”

“Economic Forces Are Killing the American Dream. Reporter traces the nation’s deterioration from an equitable country to a more unjust one.”

The Difference it Makes on Our Imaginations    I just read several popular news headlines from the past week. The news headlines I read come from many different news outlets. As a general practice, I do my best to read news, everyday, that comes from different perspectives—news from the right, the left, and the shrinking in between—in order to develop a good enough understanding of how different people make sense of the world. I do that because I am ultimately interested in how people act and because how people act is related to how they make sense of the world. Seeing is doing. One point I want to make today is that the way we see the world matters because it shapes how we act in the world. Seeing breeds action.

The reason a sermon about seeing and doing matters, I will say, is because Friends of Jesus are called to a particular and actually quite radical kind of seeing and doing in the world. And since for the most part we see and do naturally (that is, without thinking twice about it), it is important to create space—sacred space, space where we gather before our God of peace, love, and joy—to step back and reflect on how we actually see and do in the world in order to ask whether we’re doing all of that as Jesus might.

That is because, after all, Jesus remains our teacher—he teaches us how to see and do.

Let me first step back and ask a question. Did you notice a theme in the news headlines from the past week that I just read? I’m really asking. What do you think is something that all of the headlines have in common?

In my mind, the theme that is most salient is suffering. Radical suffering. Overwhelming suffering. Suffering everywhere. Scary suffering. Maddening suffering. Rageful suffering.

Natural disasters are killing and displacing people. Mass shootings are murdering people—and eliciting powerful emotions about the government’s role in shaping our lives. Our children are suffering from mental health issues—and dying from suicide—in record numbers. Our democracy is sick, and at great risk. Our climate, the womb of God we all live and breathe and have our being in, is being destroyed—unnecessarily. Religious leaders are treating people they are called to love with hate. They are acting like abusive shepherds, not at all like the Good Shepherd. People are profaning the sacred—disrespecting war heroes, for example. Our sports stars are committed acts of war on bodies they claim to love in their own homes. Movie stars are trying to rig the system—the rich are teaching their children to cheat their way to top of our social hierarchy. The American Dream—which is really about a dream we all need to dream for a good life—is being murdered.

Little wonder I find myself reluctant to turn on the news in the morning. NPR is tempting to turn on in the car, but a good song just feels better. Like medicine. It’s hard to connect to the radical suffering spilling out of the radio and filling our minds with the horrible things happening in the world.

The Gift of Our Imagination    Friends, God has given us many wonderful gifts. Certainly, one of those gifts is our imagination. Our imagination is like a canvas our spirits get to create on. It is a place of endless potential and beauty. With our imaginations we create the most beautiful art. Yesterday I spend some time at St. Al’s Church at Gonzaga: the stain glass windows, the candles, the wood carvings—the beauty of it wood me into an experience of God and made me supremely grateful for the artistic hands that create. Maybe, I thought, our artists are the greatest theologians of our time. Anyway. Our imaginations also create the most beautiful music. It is a wonder to me how Lois and Polina can touch a few keys on the piano and then, boom: almost like magic, our atmosphere is full of sensory goodness; our worried minds can rest on the keys they play effortlessly. Our imaginations create stories—stories that put our children to sleep and encourage them dream big and become whatever their hearts encourage them to become. Though I read it for the first time as a child, I still dream about C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan still fills my heart with the fierce, fiery mercy of God.

Wounded by Radical Suffering     The amount of suffering we are aware of today, I am afraid, friends, is negatively impacting our imaginations. Don’t get me wrong. It is good that we can learn about misfortunate. Learning about the plight of another person from across the world can help us ease that plight, that suffering. Being exposed to so much suffering, however, is too much for some of us. Our imaginations feel assaulted. We are being wounded by a wounded world. The suffering in the world is wounding our capacity to see and respond to the world as friends of Jesus. That is the point I want to make. And today, I want to talk about three ways the radical suffering in our world is wounding us.

First, being exposed to radical suffering on a regular basis is just plain hurtful. Most of us cannot help but  feel the pain that we are being exposed to. Learning about so many people suffering so intensely is like being repeatedly punched in the face. Except the pain of seeing others suffer so deeply is not just bodily; it is also spiritual. Radical suffering causes us to feel pain in our most intimate and sacred spaces; in the internal waters we run to when our spirits are faint, bruised, parched.

Second, our exposure to radical suffering engenders hopelessness. It’s not rocket science. Seeing so much suffering leads many people in our world to cry out: what is the purpose of this existence? Is suffering all there is? Where is the good, the true, and the beautiful? Has God abandoned us? Are we fooling ourselves when we think that a good and loving God is alive and ultimately steering our ship-like-universe to a shore of forever goodness? Is our world just a faucet of pain and suffering? Why can’t we turn it off? Radical suffering leads to despondency, despair. And some of us—the most vulnerable amongst us—are more sensitive to that than others. So suffering is unevenly distributed.

Here is a third consequence of our exposure to radical suffering. We turn on one another. We blame one another. It’s a terribly unfortunate truth: when we are wounded, we are likely to wound. Suffering is an infectious disease that becomes deadly unless it finds escape. So, we often see radical suffering with eyes that look for a culprit to punish and imprison. The philosopher René Girard observed that the desire to blame is a human universal. He saw it in every culture—throughout history. Suffering makes us thirsty for blood. Bloodthirsty, we search for a scapegoat to take the blame and ease the pain.  Wrongly, and without really knowing it, we think that blaming others will cure our wounds.

Jesus’ Way of Seeing the World      Our Scripture reading for the day comes from Matthew 9:35-38. Jesus’ sacred words—his sacred words of healing, of life—come at the end of his having conducted a series of healings. It’s a remarkable time for our healer—and actually only a snapshot of his healing ministry. He healed a leaper suffering from a terrible disease, a centurion’s servant who was paralyzed, Peter’s mother-in-law who was ill with a fever, men who were experiencing some kind of demonic possession, another paralyzed man, a young girl who was dead, a woman suffering from hemorrhages, two blind men—and a person who was mute. Wow.

³⁵ Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. ³⁶ When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; ³⁸ therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

I want to point out four things that happen in this passage—that, actually, we are invited to make happen again. Again and again and again. We are called to make Jesus feel real and alive to others again and again and again.

First, Jesus is, like we are today, surrounded by incalculable suffering. By radical suffering. Suffering everywhere. Rageful, destructive suffering is the air in Jesus’ human lungs. Second, Jesus looked at what was there. He did not turn away. He did not become despondent. He did not district himself. He saw the world—that is, what was before him—honestly and courageously. Third, Jesus responded with compassion. He saw that people were overwhelmed with suffering. That, like a big snake with a weapon-tongue to a nasty mouse, suffering was swallowing people. Real suffering. Suffering in bodies, in mouths, in minds, in spirits. Suffering killing friends and families and sacred communities. The suffering people before him, Jesus said, were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus did more than say something, though. Words, in the end, are a poor cure for pain. Jesus felt them; he suffered with them, not just on the cross but in the awful everydayness of their lives. Compassion is an interesting word. In Scripture, it means something womb-like. Jesus’ compassion is likened to the way a mother feels the pain of a child in her womb. A kick inside the belly. The word is a way of saying: God feels your pain like you are in Her womb. Like a mother, then—not a violent father with a paddle and a lecture— Jesus responds.

And that is the next thing Jesus did. He responded. He healed. How he healed is a great mystery to us, but I trust that many of us trust that God has the power to heal people who are suffering in ways that strike us as mysterious.

There is one last thing that I want to point out which Jesus did. He told his disciples that “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” And then he told them something else: to pray to God that more people would get to work of the fields of pain and suffering so that God’s healing love might transform wounded lives.

 How we do that     I submit to you, friends, that we are the living, embodied answers to that prayer of Jesus, that prayer of Jesus’ disciples. Or we should be.

In Friends for 350 Years: The History and Beliefs of the Society of Friends Since George Fox Started the Quaker Movement, Howard Brinton remarks that Quakerism is fundamentally a method. That is, being a Quaker is, at its heart, about helping people have a spiritual experience of God so that they can be loving people in the world. Still, Quakers try to live out George Fox’s encouragement to his friends, and to us Friends: to answer the call of God in everyone and to walk cheerfully over the world.

Ah. To walk cheerfully over the world. That speaks to me. It’s a good song. It’s the song I want to put on when I listen to the news. To walk cheerfully over a world that is experiencing radical suffering. Can we still—in our age, which may be closer than any other age to the end of all ages, whether by nuclear war or climate change—still walk cheerfully over the world?

The Quaker Question for Our Time     The question for our lives, the question for our meeting, I believe, is precisely this: how do we walk joyfully over a world that is aching from the wounds of radical suffering and that is wounding us with its wounds. Wounds that are harassing people, making them feel helpless and wandering in the world like sheep without a shepherd.

I want to reference Howard Brinton’s wonderful book, 350 Years of Friendship, again. He writes that the method of Quakerism is not just about how to have personal experience of God in the quiet space of our togetherness. Ultimately, it is about making a difference in the world. We gather to feel the warm waters of the Holy Spirit, sure, but we don’t stay in the hot tub of our silence with a cocktail while the world outside struggles to find clean water. The point of the Quaker church—or of any church regardless of denomination or religion—is forming communities that exemplify the love of God. Communities, that is, which, like Jesus, see the suffering of the world and respond with compassion.

Seeing and doing like Jesus is hard. Unless we see that happen in the real world—in communities like ours—we won’t be able to do it. Seeing—alas—at least sometimes, is believing. That’s why churches like ours remain vital to our world and to cities like Spokane. We are laboratories of compassion the world needs to see in order to believe there is more to this life than suffering.

Seeing compassionately—healing the wounds.     So, this is how Friends see the world. We do what Jesus told his friends to do. We see that people are suffering and we respond to them with passion. It’s hard—but also remarkably, and thankfully—quite simple. Not just in our minds to people on the news in extraordinary circumstances, by the way. No. People in our midst, in our very meeting. People walking down the street begging for spare change. People in line at Starbucks—taking too damn long to order a Frappuccino with whipped cream and cinnamon and chocolate sprinkles and a rainbow cookie and a paper straw. People driving big trucks, farmers working for their harvest, corporate executives on Wall Street making more money than God. People in evangelical churches that we may disagree with, people in public office causing us and the world so much pain.

No one escapes the fangs of suffering in our world. We are all vulnerable to the brutalizing bite.

The fundamental power that we need to respond to suffering is faith. The cure for radical suffering is the faith of Christ: faith, that is, in the living and loving goodness in all things now and even more things to come. A faith, by the way, that we need Jesus’ faith to have faith in. Lord I believe, I think we often cry, but help my unbelief.

So, we do not respond to a suffering world with pitch forks. We do not threaten the world with eternal flames of hell. We do not respond to the suffering in our world and in ourselves with blame. We do not respond with gossip or backbiting. Friends of Jesus respond to the suffering in the world and in themselves with water in a bowl. Like our teacher—our beloved, our Mother, our Father, our Brother—we kneel at the feet of the suffering people in our midst and wash them. We wash dirty, smelly, bloodied feet. Friends wash suffering feet—the feet even, and perhaps especially, of those who cause us suffering. For what kind of love do we have for the world if we can only love those who are nice to us and do not hurt us?

Foot washing. It’s probably not a job that will make you 6 figures. But it is a job that will save your soul. It’s a job that will truly transform lives and set people free to be the people God has called them to be.

Wounded Healers     So far I have said that friends of Jesus see and do in the world in a particular way. We see that people are suffering and we respond with compassion. Of course, I am not suggesting that we must feel responsible to see and cure every pain in the world. That would lead to madness. We trust God to communicate with us about the little ways we can love everyday—little ways, though, that create big waves.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize a critical part of what it takes to respond to a hurting world with compassion. What I want to say is this. We cannot respond to the world with compassion unless we respond to ourselves with compassion. The psychologist Carl Jung had a helpful term for this. “The Wounded Healer.” Basically, Jung said that all people who try to be healers in the world should know that they are wounded and that their power to heal comes from their woundedness. It’s a backwards but true way of thinking. Our wounds—the places in us which we may be ashamed of, afraid of, and angry at—are sources of healing. Our wounds are sacred centers of holy power. Our wounds are places that we can love in the silence where God speaks, and that will help us be loving.

Friends, seeing suffering and doing compassion requires seeing the suffering within ourselves—and responding compassionately. Our wounds are not pretty sight—but the healing compassion of God is pretty amazing.

Query. Might God be inviting you to respond to your wounds with compassion—so that you can respond to the wounds of others with compassion?

 

This message was given by Paul Blankenship on September 12, 2019,  We apologize that is hastaking so long to pusoting