Thoughts Along the Journey

  Where is God in the Disruption? What Response is God Creating?   Matthew 21:23-32      Proper 21, Pentecost 17      September 27, 2020 St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Williamsburg, Virginia               These are days of disruption.   Where is God, in the disruption?             COVID-19 is disrupting our lives each day.   We lament the many hundreds of thousands who have died around the world, and how many could have been prevented.   We pray for those we know who are suffering through weeks and even months of recovery.   The stress of the past seven months – with, perhaps a year more to go – is exhausting; the constant, conscious decision-making that’s necessary throughout the day.   “Have I remembered to bring my mask?”   “Should I put my mask on?”   “Is it safe to go int...

For months, we have been moving through major disruptions.  COVID-19 has disrupted our daily lives and will continue to do so for at least a year more.  George Floyd's death caused a tipping point: people of all races are disrupting political processes, demanding changes in the way Black people are treated by police.  More severe and more frequent hurricanes and wildfires are disrupting millions of lives, and only begin to point to the global disruption that climate change will cause in the years to come.  We are in the midst of the most disruptive election campaign that I have experienced during my life.  The death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg will only intensify that.   Where is God in the disruption?  How is God moving? More than six months into the pandemic, I find myself deeply lamenting all that we have lost -- not only the deaths from COVID-19, and not only the long recoveries that friends are experiencing as they come back from the infection, bu...

  Today is Holy Cross Day on the Lutheran liturgical calendar.   The cross is a complicated symbol.  I grew up with an idea of the cross as a triumphant symbol.  In fact, the Roman Catholic calendar calls this day "The Triumph of the Cross."  The theology in many Christian traditions emphasizes triumph.   There is great danger in this, especially from the perspective of Jewish and Muslim people who view the cross as a symbol of oppression, because of how the cross was carried ahead of "Christian" armies during the Crusades against Muslims, and ahead of vigilante groups of "Christians" during pogroms.  Even today, many American "Christians" consider the Jews to be Christ killers, and acts of antisemitism have been on the rise during the years of Donald Trump's cultivation of such "Christians."   Here is another dangerous way that the Biblical witness has been dismissed.  The cross has been appropriated as a symbol of military tr...

  The hymn I chose for my Morning Prayer this morning had this text by John B. Geyer, from the “Baptism” section of Evangelical Lutheran Worship :   We know that Christ is raised and dies no more. Embraced by death, he broke its fearful hold, and our despair he turned to blazing joy. Hallelujah!   We share by water in his saving death. Reborn, we share with him an Easter life, as living members of our Savior Christ. Hallelujah! The Father’s splendor clothes the Son with life. The Spirit’s fission shakes the church of God. Baptized, we live with God the Three in One. Hallelujah! A new creation comes to life and grows as Christ’s new body takes on flesh and blood. The universe restored and whole will sing: Hallelujah! Here’s a sign that God’s new creation is coming to life and growing: the increasing realization among wider populations in our nation that Black lives matter to God.   That’s because, until Black lives matter, it is not true that...