Sermon for November 27, 2016 | Advent 1

The Unexpected Hour

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. Matthew 24:36-44

When I was growing up in the 1970's and 80's, I was sure I was going to die a slow death from the fallout of a nuclear war. There were two superpowers: the Soviet Union and the United States. Both had nuclear weapons. Each nation held back from launching a nuclear holocaust because of the certain knowledge that the other superpower would launch its warheads in retaliation . . . but we feared that such restraint could not last forever. By mistake or intention, a foreign government would launch its weapons, we would strike back, and the world would end -- fire, followed by ice and the likely extinction of life on earth. My friends and I asked ourselves whether it would be better to try to survive a nuclear blast, or just be at ground zero during the attack. We decided it would be better to be near the blast, so we wouldn’t live to see the aftermath. Anxiety over the end of the world provided the backdrop to much of my childhood and adolescence.

In my college years, my fears of the end of the world paired with a fervent, Evangelical Christianity, which taught Jesus was coming again, and very soon. The narrative was fairly straightforward: We live in the End Times. Soon, on a day when the world situation is so terrible it will explode at any moment, Jesus will appear in the sky, visible only to true-believing Christians who, in an instant, will get beamed up to be with him. If you are not a true-believing Christian, you will get left behind to watch the world disintegrate. After seven years of Tribulation, with earthquakes, plagues, famines, wars and the rise of a charismatic, power-happy, and murderous Antichrist, Christ will return a second time, defeat the Antichrist, and reign over the earth for 1,000 years.

Between my fear of nuclear annihilation, and the extreme Christianity that formed my worldview, I really freaked out when I read a book that predicted the actual date of Jesus’ return. It didn't matter that people had been predicting this date, incorrectly, for centuries. This book was called 88 Reasons Why the Rapture is Coming in 1988, and it literally scared me like no tomorrow. I was 17 years old, in my first week at a small Christian college. Many students were talking about this book, which presented clear evidence that Jesus would return in October of 1988. The book sold 300,000 copies when it came out. The Trinity Broadcast Network took the author so seriously, the cable channel interrupted its regular programming to give viewers instructions on how to survive the coming tribulations. For whatever reason, I knew I wasn’t going to make it through the end times. If the book was correct, I only had a month to get my act together before the return of Jesus. And even if I was faithful enough, I was worried about friends and family whom I thought were not following God and would spend eternity treading lava in the lake of fire mentioned in the Bible. Of course, 1988 came and went with no end times. Another Doomsday of Yesteryear for the history books. However, all these years later, I still get cold sweats when someone predicts a new deadline for the return of Christ.

What about you? What worries overwhelm you? Do you ever feel lost in a past that haunts your life; lost in the present concerns that this moment brings when we are struggling to live one day at a time – when we are trying to be all things to all people; lost in worries of a future over which we have no control? Do you ever get that gut-tightening sense of anxiety when you watch the news or read the paper and realize that senseless horrors continue in our world, in our nation – even in our own backyards; that crime, and starvation, and terrorism, and war, and natural disasters abound and seem to be increasing? Has your life ever been taken over by one worry or another so that you can’t appreciate the wonderful things happening around you?

I know myself well enough to be aware when I’m focusing so much on what’s wrong in this world, I lose my sense of context. Sometimes I feel almost paralyzed by all the anger and fear. How about you? What floods you with worry and causes your stomach to twist in knots and your mind to lose perspective on the big picture?

The audience of Matthew’s Gospel had some similar struggles. When The Gospel according to Matthew was written, around 80 CE, the situation was dire. Christianity was small and fragile. There were just a few thousand Jewish citizens who identified themselves as followers of Jesus. They were overwhelmed. On one side, the Roman Government oppressed them. On the other side, the Jewish majority no longer wanted anything to do with them. On top of that, most people live in poverty under the domination of Rome, who had recently devastated the country during the Roman-Jewish War and destroyed the Temple.  People knew all about upheaval. They lived it every day.  It must have brought Jesus believers some hope to think that he would return soon, vanquish oppressors, and rescue the suffering faithful.

I think his followers began to lose heart as decades rolled by without the promised return of Jesus. They wondered, “Will Christ ever come back and save the faithful?” Could they dare to hope for an end to injustice borne of violence? Would there ever be a renewed earth where everyone has enough, where children survive, where the oppressed are set free, and the grip of evil is finally defeated? When would the poor and needy have enough? When would those on the margins of society be cared for with dignity and respect? When would foreigners and immigrants be welcomed?

Sound familiar? Sound familiar you dreamers among us, you who can see a renewed world in your mind’s eye – a word where beauty is restored, tears wiped away, and thirst satisfied at the waters of life? Sound familiar you prophets among us, you who demand that we build societies based on fairness and equality where people hunger no more? Sound familiar you fearless champions for peace among us, you who renounce violence with the embrace of love? Sound familiar you servants among us, you who put hands and feet to work to soothe and heal the pain of injustice? Sound familiar, you who are tired and weary and worn – you who are sucked down in a quicksand-world where the rich get richer, the middle class gets poorer and the poorest among us are forgotten? We are deluged with dire predictions, our imaginations stoked with images of disaster, and our minds inundated with this-or-that appeal to save ourselves from this-or-that catastrophe. We live daily in situations of "quiet apocalypse"--domestic violence, job loss, disease, addictions.  The unravelling of the world spoken about in apocalyptic texts matches the unravelling that people feel in their own lives. 

Before these predictions of the end times, Jesus tells a story – we call it the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. It is a description of two worlds. Jesus says, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him … he will gather all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” The sheep represent a world order where the hungry are fed and those who fed them are happy. There is clean water to drink, strangers are welcomed instead of mistrusted, people share clothing so all can be warm, and prisoners treated as human beings instead of commodities. Those who work for a more compassionate, humane world are ushered into an era of peace. Then there are the goats – those who fail to address the real needs of the least fortunate -- those who buy into the "rich get richer and the poor get poorer" system of the ruthless present order. Rome perfected the technique of using violence to accomplish peace. Violence is redemptive, the citizens were told. Violence saves. The goats are left in the darkness in which they left others.

Jesus puts a choice out there for those who call themselves believers: Follow Caesar, who conquers others and forces them to behave through brutal military and political power, or follow Jesus who invites believers to forge a better world through loving acts of compassion and generosity.

First Jesus asks people to choose. Only then does he talk about what it will be like when he returns like a thief in the night. In God’s new order, the ruthless masters do NOT get the last word; love gets the last word.

I choose the Jesus way. But honestly, it’s easy for me. I’m a person of privilege. I have the luxury to hope when times are hard, and rely on self-sufficiency when times are good. I can choose when to use my resources to leverage social change and when to invoke my privilege for my own comfort. In our country, people who are victimized, or persecuted; those who are treated as less because they are not white, or Christian, or heterosexual, or male, or able-bodied, or able-minded, or living below the poverty level; they don’t get a choice about how they will be treated today. I think of African-American friends who tell me about the fear they have just walking out the door each day, wondering what types of aggressions or threats they may encounter and what the appearance the face of racism will take – and that’s here in Montgomery County.

If we affirm Jesus is coming, it means Jesus is coming to be with those who need to know that their lives can be better.

Jesus comes to march with Black Lives Matter protesters who refuse to watch their sons being killed for the crime of being African American.

Jesus comes to walk alongside Syrian Muslim refugees.

Jesus comes to stand with victims of gun violence and the families who cannot get the most basic safety regulations put in place.

Jesus comes to feed the hungry, clothes the naked, and go behind bars with prisoners who serve decades of jail sentences for petty crimes in a for-profit prison system that treats human beings like capital.

Actually, Jesus is not coming. Jesus is already here. Jesus us here in you and me, in the hands, feet, and hearts of anyone who reaches out to offer even the faintest glimmer of a new world –anyone who works of compassionate justice to make our communities healthier.

Can peace really come to the earth? Can Jesus Christ come among us in some way that our minds can never imagine in a scenario that would simply erase our smug confidence about where the lines of reality are drawn?

The answer is yes, because Christ comes to us, and Christ works through us. We pray for those who cannot pray anymore. We hope for those without much hope left. And one more thing, one more tough thing. We work in the same direction as we hope, drawn forward by the magnet force of the Kingdom of God. We stand together, blessed and broken, working hard and partnering with God to be shepherds of peace. You dreamers and prophets, you servants and peacemakers, you wounded healers, go now, dry the tears and nourish the bodies of those who live in this beautiful, terrible, wonderful world.

Sources:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/2170904/terrifying-sound-heard-throughout-the-world-is-being-blamed-on-donald-trump-and-apparently-signals-the-apocalypse/
http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/2004/11/first_sunday_of.html

Sermon for November 20, 2016

Cardio Conditioning

Now you can have sincere love for each other as brothers and sisters because you were cleansed from your sins when you accepted the truth of the Good News. So see to it that you really do love each other intensely with all your hearts. 1 Peter 1:22, NLT

Tom was the general manager of a propeller repair shop in South Boston. The building smelled like hot metal and grease. Tom was smeared in dirt. His face was ragged. An inch of ashes clung impossibly to a cigarette that seemed permanently attached to the corner of his mouth. “What do you want?” He growled. “I’m here to apply for the job.” He looked me up and down, and walked away, shaking his head as if in disgust. The shop owner came out with desperate apologies. I wanted to run away at that moment, but we needed the money. So I took the job. The months ahead proved Tom to be the angriest, most foul-mouthed, insulting person I ever met. I was put in charge of grinding the welds of off newly-repaired inboard propellers. Mind you, I never touched a power tool in my life, and I was being trained to make $500.00 propellers look like new. Tom was always looking over my shoulder. My successes were not celebrated, but every failure, and there were many, was talked about for days. “How could you be so stupid? Were you born screwing things up or is it an acquired ability? Give me that grinder you moron and watch me do it again.” I spent hours looking over his shoulder in utter boredom, wondering when he would strike next. I found little consolation in the fact that he treated everyone this way. Every time Tom opened his mouth, I stood frozen like a mouse hoping to be invisible to a prowling cat. Except for one thing: I smiled. Tom would get ready for another verbal volley, and I would look him in the eyes and grin, letting his words burst upon me. I would return home at the end of the day demoralized, smeared with shaft grease and bronze dust and adding a few new phrases to my lexicon of “Profanities I Hope Never to Hear Again.”

And it wasn’t just that Tom was the meanest person I had ever met. He was sad. Empty. And his sadness was infectious. Those early days at the propeller shop broke me down.

We all know people who are, ummm … challenging. It could be a critical parent, a bossy supervisor, a relative who has you walking on eggshells, a nice-but-flaky friend, a co-worker who just doesn’t like you, a partner who won’t keep his or her agreements, or a politician you dislike. This past week, I’ve being challenged by people in Silver Spring and beyond who are committing horrible acts of hatred. I’m also upset by what’s inside of me -- my anxiety and fear, my reactivity, my willingness to label people as adversaries.

Let me share with you what happens in me during times of high stress. I get angry and I become a fixer. When I see acts of racism, sexism, homophobia and religious hatred, I’m tempted to the feel as if God has fallen asleep on the job. If no supernatural help is coming, then I’ll make it better myself. I’ll try desperately to change people and situations over which I have no control. We know how that goes, right? Anytime we try to control or persuade indifferent people, we end up failing. The more we struggle against unmanageable circumstances, the further we are from the peace we seek.

I had a great conversation with one of our church members that put me back on track -- a reminder of how much my own hurts and disappointments come from my reactions to the people in my life. She helped me remember that the past is gone and the future is not set, and we only have this moment, which always offers a gift.

I want to take a step back today and rethink our new national landscape. How can we open our hearts during these strange and anxious times? When the Bible talks about the heart, it’s often used as a symbol. We tend to think of the heart as the home base of love, but in the Bible, the heart refers to our emotions, thoughts, or will. The heart is the seat of moral responsibility. If we are not careful our heart, our emotions and will, can get sick. Think of it like spiritual heart disease. Sometimes our hearts close off to others and to God. The heart can become polluted. We talk about broken hearts, fearful hearts, and angry hearts. The most common spiritual heart disease is a hard heart. Like a stone, a hard heart is dead. You can find no feeling in it. There is no consciousness in it. The problem with a hard, stony heart is that the condition can lead to a sense of brokenness and despair. A hard hard can mask itself in hatred.

People will hold on to negative emotions like hatred for such a long time. We don’t want to deal with our pain. We will hold on to hatred so that we don’t have to deal with the real pain that caused the hatred to come out.

Some of us have the habit of setting up a stone-cold barrier between ourselves and those who cause us pain. What if the people and situations on the other side do not need to be avoided or removed?  The further we push them away the more power we give them.  Our cold hearted habit may  have helped us persevere in difficult times. The more we become aware when we are closing off, the more we can practice a more heart-healthy cardio routine. At these times, I imagine God singing to me like Hank Williams Sr.:

“You’ll never know how much it hurts to see you sad and cry.
You know you need and want my love, yet you’re afraid to try.
Why do you run and hide from life, to try it just ain’t smart.
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart.”

God wants to open our hearts and awaken us to the reality of other beating hearts around us – hearts that suffer pain, just like mine; hearts who want to be happy, just like mine; hearts that want peace, just like mine; hearts that want friendship, just like mine. We tend to our hearts by opening them to others -- especially those with whom we disagree. We could call it open-heartedness, or whole-heartedness.

I don’t know if you have heard of Brene Brown. If you haven’t, you need to. Brene Brown teaches social work at the University of Houston. She began her research trying to understand what makes certain people more resilient, a quality she calls “whole-heartedness.” She concluded that what blocks whole-heartedness is shame. Shame, at its heart, is a fear that if you know the truth about me, you will reject me. Shame whispers “You are not good enough.” So we hide who we really are.

Our new cardio conditioning begins when we learn to embrace vulnerability.  It takes a lot of courage. Specifically, courage to be imperfect. Whole-hearted people believe we are more beautiful for being broken. They are kind to themselves, because they knew that we can’t be compassionate to others if we can’t treat ourselves with compassion. They are willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they are. In their vulnerability, they are willing to do things where there are no guaranteed positive outcomes. They were willing to invest in relationships that may not work out. Whole-hearted people have a strong sense of love and belonging. Brene Brown found the one variable that separated people who have a strong sense of love and belonging from people who struggle for it, was that people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging. That’s it. They believe they’re worthy.

Brown says the challenge is we cannot selectively numb emotions. Here are her words: “We cannot say, ‘Here’s the bad stuff. Here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s disappointment. I don’t want to feel these. I’m going to have a couple of beers and a banana-nut muffin. I don’t want to feel these.’ You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects or emotions. And then we are miserable and we are looking for purpose and meaning. And then we feel vulnerable so we have a couple of beers and a banana-nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.” When we numb ourselves to our vulnerability, when we numb ourselves to grief, and shame, and disappointment, we also numb ourselves to joy, and gratitude, and happiness.

There are other ways that we numb ourselves besides our addictive behaviors. We can numb ourselves by believing everything that is uncertain is certain: “I’m right, you’re wrong, shut up.” That’s part of the cycle of fear and shame and vulnerability. It begins with fear. The more afraid we are, the more vulnerable we are, and then the more afraid we are. It’s not just true in our personal relationships.  It’s true in the church. It’s true in our politics. I wonder if a lot of what is going on right now in our national political landscape is a struggle between power, vulnerability, and fear.

What might happen if we at CCC commit ourselves to whole-heartedness? We might step beyond our stone-cold walls and learn the language of vulnerability. We might connect with others across differences. Connection and relationship is the nature of our universe.

The events in our community and our nation may fall outside our experience and our understanding of how things are supposed to work. It's easy to convince ourselves that these things cannot be true so we don't have to deal with them. We can ignore them to avoid discomfort. We stop listening altogether. Whole-heartedness does the opposite. If we really want to address the pain in our community, we have to accept there are some uncomfortable truths out there. If we are going to make things better, we need to listen to these truths and accept the reality that the world if often different than we like it to be. They occur within a system of conditions and causes that can be changed. As we join together with a diverse community of people who are working actively to make the world a better place.

The antidote to numb, stony hearts is warm connection with other people. Let our open hearts notice all the ways that we build walls of hate, or arrogance, or envy within ourselves.

Let our open hearts create something new -- something made with honesty, humility, acceptance, forgiveness, self-responsibility, compassion, understanding, co-operation, service, and patience.

Let the power of our open hearts open other hearts that are afraid of losing something.

Let us be open to a more peaceful and enjoyable way to be.

Let us come together as a whole broken-hearted nation to create connections. Let us dance those connections – and sing those connections – and pray those connections – and march those connections – and legislate those connections.  Let us speak those connections – and teach those connections – and write those connections – and paint those connections – and yes, let us fund those connections!

Let us notice and admire the beauty of those connections in each other as we express them and lift each other up.

I have a postscript to the boat propeller repair shop story. Tom and I became friends. All I can say is I never followed through on my revenge fantasies. I just kept smiling that silly smile of mine. Every morning I would go to work and say, “Hi, how are ya’?” After a year or so, Tom’s defenses began to fall. He even began to smile back as he called me a moron.

One could say that to live a life of faithfulness to Christ is to experience the hurt and pain of our connections; to lament in grief and sorrow over the world’s sad state of affairs. Out of that vulnerability comes an openness to building others up. When we see a world that rejects and denies the power of love, we can be living reminders of what it looks like to believe we are worthy. Do you know whom God loves? The rejected and despised, the prejudiced and those who challenge our prejudices, the disappointed, the insecure and the lonely, the violent and the hate-filled people of the world. Do you know whom God loves? Us – every one of us. We all belong to God. We find ways to encourage and build others up because God’s love never gives up. Not on you. Not on anybody

So, here’s the new cardio plan for an open heart: smile upon others, and encourage others, and love the person who is a pain in the neck. Remember that the people who are causing pain and destruction might be wounded at their very core. You never know. Your smile, your kind words, your acts of compassionate justice, might bring some healing. And you might find that as you show compassion, even as you seek to confront the world’s evils and right the world’s wrongs, your heart will remember that all are worthy. All are worthy.

Sermon for November 13, 2016

Sometimes I wonder what God is up to.

Leading up to the general election on Nov. 8, I heard people calling it the “hate election” because so many voters claimed to hate both candidates. It turned out to be the hate election because of the hatefulness of the electorate. Now, in less than a week, many of us are bracing ourselves for violence and anger. We are already seeing public racism, sexism, suspicion of immigrants, and the targeting of Muslims. We are experiencing the As columnist Neal Gabler wrote, we are bracing ourselves for, “the white sense of grievance that will undoubtedly be unleashed now that we have destroyed the values that have bound us.”

Five and half years ago, when my family and I moved to Montgomery County, we were so impressed with the diversity and inclusion we saw. I remember when I was being interviewed to be your Sr, Minister. We were sitting by the fountain in downtown Silver Spring on a sunny October morning, watching diverse people of all ages, races, cultures, and physical abilities interacting with each other. Smiling. Playing. Helping each other out. It seemed so unreal to us, we jokingly accused the search committee of staging the whole event. Since then, we have seen it to be mostly true. Our strength as a community is in our diversity, and I am blessed to stand here each week to rehearse and remind us that we, as a faith community, welcome people of all races, cultures, ages, abilities, and sexual orientations.

This week I saw another side of our community, and in our country. It was there the whole time. Just under the surface. It took some scratching to find it. And it turns out, we did not have to scratch too deeply. In this past week, I heard about swastikas being drawn on the walls of a county Middle School. Right before the election, I heard another report that swastikas were burned into a football field in Potomac. In a third story, just before the election another Middle School had swastikas painted on a banner.

I’m told that the number of calls to suicide hot lines from gay and trans youth is up. By Thursday afternoon, one San Francisco hotline received 542 calls. Only 187 of those calls could be answered due to the volume and lack of staff. Trans people are worried about discrimination and violence, not being able to change identity documents to reflect their gender, and concerns about affordable health care under a new administration. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline saw two-and-a-half times as many calls from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, when the outcome of the presidential election seemed clear.

I'm hearing reports such as: a Muslim woman on the street had her hijab ripped off, and was told to strangle herself with it; dozens of boys reportedly grabbed girls' between the legs at schools, saying, "If the President can do it, so can I;" students and adults, in many different parts of the country, yelled at Latinos to "go home to Mexico, we're getting that wall now."

I read a story from a network of adoptive parents, someone Chris Braddock is connected with. This comes from a mother, who is white, with a Black child. The mother wrote, “I picked [my child] up from school early her asthma was acting up. We were at a stop light when we saw many officers chasing a man with their guns/tasers drawn. It was surreal. Cars stopped everywhere. I pulled through a gas station to get around the stopped traffic. There was a man standing outside his car watching. About 70 maybe. Nice car, dressed well. I rolled down my window and said sir do you know what happened? He said, ‘Well the cops were chasing some N*****." I saw red. [My child] is in the back seat. I yelled, ‘Excuse me!!! My black child is sitting in the back and that is not ok. AT ALL.’ He said, ‘Well you asked what happened.’ I started to drive off as [my child] burst into tears in the back. I stopped, held her hand and circled around to his car. I rolled the window down and said, ‘You look at my baby right now and apologize. You should be ashamed of yourself.’  He looked at her sobbing and said, ‘I'm sorry. I am sorry.’”The mother then wrote, “How am I going to do this? How?”

If there is a single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power?

The desecration of our Black Lives Banner is so emblematic of this behavior to me. When I was notified on Wednesday morning that the banner had been destroyed yet again, my heart sank. I hoped it was just the wind from the night before. It was definitely intentional. The word “Black” was cut out of the banner. Again. We expect the vandalism at this point. It’s not a question of whether the banner gets destroyed, but how long it stays up before someone destroys it. This time, the banner was up for about 5 or 6 weeks. For me, to see it destroyed on election night, though, was so emblematic of the lack of civility, the racism, and the anger simmering around us.

We should have known. We should have known these hatreds lurked under the thinnest veneer of civility. It’s too easy to fool ourselves that because we live in a place like Silver Spring, these things don’t happen. But scratch the surface, and hatred was there the whole time, just waiting for the opening to come out. The cavity and respect we thought we had is eroding. Perhaps we had been living in a fool’s paradise. Now we aren’t.

I wonder what God is up to. Are human flourishing and liberation all but impossible? Will the forces inertia and apathy prevail over our struggles for justice?

I wonder what God is up to. I don’t think God controls elections. I don’t think God ordained the current President-Elect for us.  I don’t think God validates violence. In fact, I think God is up to something else.

In the past, I;ve told people that id you want to know what God is up to, look for the places God is at work, and go there. I have believed God is working among the poor, among those who are in pain, among people who feel lost and alone, among those who have lost their voice and their power. I have told people that if we want to know God, then we need to know those who are among the least. The assumption is that if you can see Christ in the very least of these, you can better experience God.

This week I’m beginning to realize that we need to do more than that. Just seeing Christ in others still keeps us at a safe distance. We feel sympathy for the experience of those who are on the margins, but we still don’t become aware that we may have some responsibility for their marginalization. If we want to heal the expressions of hatred around us, we need to begin by holding ourselves accountable. I think the most significant healing begins with white America’s benign neglect of racial problems. White America, what, in the name of God, have we done? We spend millions on anti-poverty programs and billions on prisons. In fact, we haven’t even apologized. It’s much easier for someone to forgive you when you’ve had the courtesy to apologize, and much easier for them to get over it if you’ve had the decency to fix the problem. It’s interesting that we even use the phrase “race relations.” The relationship between blacks and whites as groups in America is dysfunctional, to say the least.  Until this is dealt with on the level of the cause and not just effects, we will continue to play out over and over again the cycle of violence at its core.

This is all to say, I’m feeling a little less proud of getting to play the role of hero and savior, and I’m spending more time recognizing the times I have played persecutor.  

I wonder what God is up to, and I hear a question back, coming from the depths of my spirit. “Are you willing to risk opening yourself up to the possibility of receiving grace and love from the very people you have marginalized?”

Let’s talk about safety pins for a moment. By fastening a safety pin to their clothing, people are declaring themselves allies to groups who have been maligned by the President-elect, to show that they stand in solidarity with anyone who might be afraid. I like the idea. A lot. So do others. I read that on Saturday, local hardware stores and several craft stores across the country began selling out of safety pin packs. And we want to hand out safety pins today for those who would like to make a statement. But these safety pins come with some warnings.

Let’s not wear safety pins if it means we get to feel good about being allies in the struggle for justice, but do absolutely nothing to help. The first thing we have to do is make it clear that racism, discrimination, and intolerance will not be tolerated. That means confronting people for behaving in ways that do harm. Wearing that safety pin means you will be asked to stand up against friends, relatives, and even strangers when you hear them saying things that denigrate others.

If you wear that safety pin, you are going to encounter some opinions that will upset you. They will come from people who have been hurt by good intentions with no action. They will be suspicious of your willingness to put ourselves on the line. If we wear that pin, then we must lean into our discomfort and resist the urge to feel offended if someone questions our motives.  If we are going to be allies, we have to recognize we are all capable of actions that marginalize others.

If we wear this pin, we signal that we are safe people and a safe church. It is a visible, tangible announcement of your commitment to defend the rights and dignity of your fellow human. By wearing the safety pin, we make a public pledge to be a walking, talking safe space for the marginalized. All of the marginalized. We don’t get to pick and choose. We can’t protect Jewish people but ignore the Muslim woman who needs help. You can’t stand for Black people who are dealing with racial slurs but ignore the disabled person who is dealing with a physical attack. This is all or nothing. If we aren’t willing or able to stand up for everyone, then let’s not wear the pin. There is no shame in not taking a safety pin.

I want to be able say to those in our community that we at CCC wear that safety pin because we are a safe place. We’ve got your back.

To the African American community who feels attacked and upset when a Black Lives Matter banner is destroyed, we’ve got your back. We are going to confront racism when we see it. We are going to dismantle racist structures. We are going to keep exploring our own complicity in racism, and work to root it out.

To our Muslim neighbors, and other non-Christians who feel unsafe right now, we’ve got your back. We will work for religious freedom and tolerance, lending our voice and position to make sure you get to enjoy the religious freedom that we do.

To women who feel denigrated and objectified, we’ve got your back. We take a stand against misogyny and rape culture, and we will do the work to dismantle organizational sexism, starting with us. We will be involved in Women’s March on Washington in January to demand womens’ safety and health in a time when our country is making sexual assault an electable and forgiveable norm.

To immigrants and dreamers who don’t know what the future holds, we’ve got your back.

I am working with someone to have CCC host a panel of immigration lawyers who will give advice to immigrants who need to know their rights, and the legal resources available to them.

To the LBGBTQ? Community, we’ve got your back. Especially to students, and to those who were coming out of the closet and feel forced back in, there are some real challenges ahead. We are here to keep advocating. We will go to pride parades and trans celebrations. But more than that, we will keep providing space where you get to worship in full community and know experience the reality that God loves you and you are created in God’s image.

That’s what God is doing – reminding us to activate. I like how Annie Dillard puts it. “There is no one but us. There is no one to send, not a clean hand or a pure heart on the face of the earth or in the earth --- only us … unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and uninvolved. But there is no one but us. There has never been.” Many years from now, future generations will need to know what happened to us and how it happened. They will need to know how disgruntled white Americans, full of self-righteous indignation, found a way to take back a country they felt they were entitled to and which they believed had been lost. They will need to know about the ugliness that sought to destroy us. They will need to know there were people in our faith communities who kept our common values alive – values like respect, love, inclusion, dignity, diversity, and compassion. They will need to know that while there was not much to hope for, that hope did not die.