Category: Pastor Stuff

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God, Save Us…Hosanna…Save Us…Please…

(I am not preaching on Sunday — youth pageant on Palm Sunday here — so here is my Palm Sunday “sermon” for the year.)

Every year we read the story.

Every year people shout “Hosanna!” at Jesus while he entered Jerusalem.

Every year they shout “Save me! Save us!” in the presence of their religious oppressors while their governmental oppressors bring in military enforcers to keep them under control.

Every year they have a savior to shout to, a savior to lay eyes on and touch.

“Who will save us?” I imagine they had asked this over and over again. “Who will save us? Who will end our oppression? Who will end our suffering?” I imagine the sleepless nights and anxiety-filled days just praying to God in suffering silence, longing for any relief from the harm thrust upon them.

Jesus did not hide from their oppressors. Jesus did not do his work in silence or in private. Jesus stood up, spoke out, risked his life — and ultimately gave it, though the crowds did not know that, yet — to demand change and call out the sins of the powerful.

Jesus gave them the courage to shout their prayers for deliverance, their demands for saving, their simply need to not suffer anymore. He gave them the courage to shout in the presence of their oppressors.

Following Jesus did not end their oppression. Continuing to live as his followers after his death certainly increased their suffering and oppression for a time. But following Jesus and his example gave them hope it can be better, hope we can do better, hope in a better world without oppression and exploitation.

Jesus gave them hope, gave them courage, gave them voice to shout, “Hosanna! Save me! Save us!”

Recent weeks have made me pray, “Save us…please save us…” very quietly in dark corners and late nights. We live in a time where children die and politicians use their deaths to further irrelevant political culture wars. We live in a time where politicians declare “mental health” the cause of violence while defunding mental health care, defunding schools, and stoking hatred between groups.

We live in violent, hate-filled times, and the powerful scold us and tell us to stop demanding change.

Where can we find hope? I really do not know. Some days I feel like a fraud in the pulpit because I really do wonder how to have hope when exploitation, violence, and hatred grow like an unstoppable force — and we are not an immovable object.

Even in the church, where can we find hope? Recently leaders in my denomination made a very bad decision, and their response to the backlash was an offer of self-flagellation and wanting everyone to feel better but absolute resistance to actual change in the short- or long-term. They even acknowledged that no one can truly make any changes to our long ordination process or provide any oversight to regional bodies, basically making any true reform impossible.

And this is small. Like only a very small, small number of people can possibly be affected by this. How can we envision our churches reckoning with histories of violence against the marginalized and oppressed, histories of being oppressors and exploiters, when our leaders resist confessing and correcting the harm they cause insiders training to become leaders of those churches?

How can we expect our laws and politicians to serve the most vulnerable when our churches only do the bare minimum? Why do we expect secular institutions to do better than religious institutions? Why do we expect the world to listen to prophets from hypocritical churches demanding changes the churches refuse to do?

The worst part is, when I sit in observation of what happens on a large scale, those affected continue to suffer no matter how much I see and say. LGBTQ+ folks continue to have their humanity  and rights denied, women lose the autonomy of their bodies and the right to medical care, children still violently die due to inaction, the powerful continue to use culture wars to divide us so we do not unite to demand the exploitation and oppression and violence stop, and the cries of suffering continue to fall on deaf ears.

And so, in a quiet voice, wanting change and feeling hopeless, I pray, “Hosanna…save us…please, God, save us…”

I do not believe we have a savior coming to give us courage right now. If Jesus comes again in my lifetime (and we believe that particular understanding of the “Second Coming”), I will swallow my words, but right now I think we need to do something. We cannot wait for a figurehead to sacrifice themselves to demand change and salvation.

We need to shout, “Hosanna!” now!

I need to shout, “Hosanna!” now!

Protests and direct action are good actions, political organization is good action, but we all have a way to shout even if our skills and minds lead in different directions.

(To my activist friends, please keep doing your work because I am not built for that work. To my organizing friends, I do not fit into your world but I support your efforts and will help when I can fit in.)

I have a pulpit, and I have this small blog. I have a small circle of influence I can use to call out demands and encourage votes for certain things:

  • Stop any legislation that denies the identity or humanity of LGBTQ+ folks, including children, and provide protections so everyone has the same rights to living full lives.
  • Stop trying to make the most recent (as of today) school shooting about the gender identity of the shooter. Folks that look and live like me are much more likely to do it, and you know it.
  • Start studying the causes of mass shootings in the United States and pass laws based on that research that will protect everyone but especially the most vulnerable.
  • Stop claiming mental health is the cause of mass shootings while, in the same breath, supporting politicians and legislation that defund mental health services.
  • Restore all reproductive health rights to women in all states (trans men and nonbinary folks included), including termination of pregnancy, and stop lying about the definition of abortion to weasel out of hard questions.

And stop using the Bible to do all of this harm. It does not defend your actions, it directly preaches against harming the marginalized and vulnerable, and it certainly does not defend you against being uncomfortable or having your sins laid bare.

I still feel hopeless, I still struggle to believe we can fix the institutions with anything short of burning them to the ground, and I still do not know how to actually help, but today I say it out loud:

“Save us! Hosanna! Save us!”

Or rather,

“STOP HARMING US! STOP EXPLOITING US! STOP USING GOD TO DEFEND VIOLENCE! SAVE US INSTEAD OF HARMING US!”

But I do not want to confuse my place in this story. I belong with those who told Jesus to silence his followers. I live and work in their world. So, truly, my voice really does have a different purpose than the crowds. I do not live in that suffering, my life does not have the risks.

I see and feel the existential dread, but I know my circle contributes to the suffering. Today, then, I must demand something else of myself and my fellow church leaders:

  • Stop bowing to political leaders. Stop participating in their partisan game. Stop pretending anyone in political power is above reproach.
  • Stop refusing to confess your sins. Stop taking offense when you must face your shortcomings.
  • Stop acting to maintain an institution that harms anyone. Stop acting to protect your comfort and security by maintaining the institution.
  • Be very careful claiming your small part of the institution is safe for all. Be very careful claiming you are a safe spiritual leader for all.
  • Listen to the cries of those harmed, and stop demanding their silence or demanding they act appropriately. Provide opportunities for those harmed to have their voices heard, and do not put up roadblocks that require their participation in your system.
  • If you gain entry into a room of influence, immediately start demanding reform, even or especially if it risks your position in that room.

If we cannot make the church, the Earthly expression of the Body of Christ, the body of the strongest one who sacrificed himself for the weakest and most vulnerable, serve the most vulnerable and safe for everyone — or at least put ourselves at risk trying to make that happen — then we are false prophets demanding secular institutions do the same.

If we cannot confess our sins and repent, we are false prophets. We might as well scold those shouting, “Hosanna!” and tell them to be quiet.

The least and the lowest are crying out. The church should be crying out.

Even when we only have the smallest voice left.

God, Save Us…Hosanna…Save Us…Please…

Peace,
– Robby

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It Happened

Today concluded a weird confluence of happenings and feelings:

  1. Nora and I finally watched Bo Burnham’s Inside special, which received two comments from us: I said it definitely came from a very specific time and place, Nora said the setting looked like our living room those first few months of the pandemic. We both had feelings.
  2. The Exegesis Ordination Exam for Winter 2023 was on Judges 19, which I have not spoken publicly on because I have nothing to add that wiser voices have not already said, but today the PCC held their plenary to discuss the exam and their response to the public outcry. Listening to some of the committee members brought back all of the rage and frustration (and trauma) from my ordination process.
  3. Today the first letter I wrote to my previous congregation about the pandemic came up in my Facebook memories. I reread it this morning and realized I could see glimpses of the end of that chapter of my ministry in that first letter.

I have thought about this tweet a lot recently.

For Context, in Infinity War, Thanos snaps half of the world’s population out of existence, and then in End Game everyone comes back somehow…?…not an MCU person; I know the theory, not the practice…

After watching Inside, thinking about how that special only happens at that exact time, I said something like, “Everyone just seems to be pretending the collective trauma we went through did not happen, like none of it actually happened…” Every day it seems like we have decided collectively — including the church — to try to regain what we had before and, by going backward, make the trauma not matter anymore.

This happens a lot, I have realized, and with all kinds of trauma, collective and personal. I remember the day I finally got the magical “Rev.” behind my name. At the time I could not name it because every emotion of seven years came flowing out in my tears, but now I think to myself, “How hopelessly pointless was most of that time?”

I cannot publicly talk about what the gatekeepers said to me in meetings, how others just watched it happened and expected me to endure more than pastors endure without any sort of support (I have experienced this as an Inquirer/Candidate and as a pastor; the preparation process hurt worse and felt so much more isolating), how they justified their treatment of me and called it holy, nor how many times I prayed to God to give me a different calling so I could leave the toxicity and have my heart back. I can only say it did not serve to prepare or support me; it only served to gatekeep me and push me away — and, failing that, demand I pretend it was fine.

But that day I had the title, so I never had to deal with the process or my home presbytery again, so I needed to just move on and not live in the past.

With the pandemic, with the ordination process, with my childhood trauma, I so often just want to scream, “It happened! It was real! Stop gaslighting me in to thinking everything was okay and I didn’t experience this! And let me speak the whole truth about it!”

All of it happened. And it was all bad. Some of it threatened me, threatened God’s call for me, or threatened my marriage, and the virus took the most innocent of us.

It happened.

And your trauma happened, too.

Why do we allow the world, society, and especially the church to demand we swallow our trauma and never speak of it, and especially never name names or specifics of what happened? I get why we do not say it out loud — trust me when I say I get it — but why do we continue to allow the church, a place instructed by Christ to reveal our fullness with the completeness of surgical lights instead of hiding in the shadows of denial and falsehood, demand we swallow our trauma if others do not want to help us bear it and find it too heavy for polite company?

Or, if we have a bit more fire in our bellies, why do we keep calling institutions that prop up that attitude “the church” and “The Body of Christ” instead of calling them the social clubs and

It happened. It happened to me, and it happened to you. May we find the spaces that will allow us to say “It happened…” and to say exactly what “it” is* for each of us.

And maybe someday our churches will always serve as that space for everyone within its walls.

Peace,
– Robby

* Yes, I know this brings up Bill Clinton vibes; sorry…

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Why Confess? (An Ash Wednesday Reflection)

Every Sunday, immediately after the first hymn, I invite a group of people to join me in a prayer to confess our brokenness. I invite them to publicly pray for forgiveness (more on this in a second) and to publicly call themselves sinners.

Every Sunday we read a bit of a psalm together, sing a song together, and then get sad about how terrible we are — publicly and together.

Kinda.

I have heard this criticism of Christian worship before, and I think it bears responding to honestly. I have sat in worship services where the liturgy has called me to confession, a thing I find important and healing, and found the Prayer of Confession had less to do with my actual sin and more to do my audacity to live and believe differently than the pastor or congregation or wider church. I know my LGBTQ+ beloveds have experienced this 100-fold in most of the worship services that happen every Sunday.

The confession in many churches serves a cruel purpose of making you feel shame for existing in a way that contrasts with the specific church and specific pastor — and that contrast does not even need to conflict with the beliefs and teachings of the church for condemnation to rain down.

If your experience of Christian worship matches this description, you find yourself in good company. Many wise, loving, and thoughtful people have validly risen this concern, and I cannot just pretend they do not have a point.

Why, then, do I still lead a confession every Sunday? And why do I suggest my parishioners spend the next 46 days focusing inwardly on their brokenness and sin? Why do any of us spend all this time making ourselves feel bad about ourselves?

To answer this, we first need to agree on a rough definition of sin. The legalists and the “It makes me uncomfortable, and I’m a good Christian, so it must be bad because whatever makes me uncomfortable must be bad, right?” folks tend to have lists and rules to define sin. “This is sin!” “That is sin!” “I don’t like that, so it must be sin!”

But if we define sin not by action but by intent of action, which I think we can easily and correctly do, then it becomes more convicting but also more welcoming.

If we take the greatest commandments — “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind.’…‘You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.’” (Matthew 23:37, 39 CEB) — and invert them them, we get a fairly robust definition of sin: anything that denies complete love to God or your neighbor (which is everyone, according to The Good Samaritan).

Love to God is a sticky wicket I will not try to parse out here, but everyone should quickly agree and understand love of neighbor. We can get into questions about the minutia or ethics and morals (i.e. the Trolley Problem or how much inaction is an action), but ultimately we pretty universally can agree in philosophy with this.

And, we can look honestly at ourselves, we know when we withhold love and chose our own selfish desires over the needs of others.

So, sin is withholding complete love. Our confession has an obvious goal — forgiveness, which again, I will address in a minute — but also has an equally important goal: repentance.

To repent is to confess and to turn away. You confess so you can stop committing the sin, stop withholding love. You acknowledge where you have fallen short — sometimes with gentle and not-so-gentle suggestions from the person who wrote the corporate prayer — so you know how to turn away from withholding love and toward using your time, talents, and treasure to promote love, your ballot to demand love from our elected leaders, and your heart and voice for compassionately showing love.

Repentance is good and necessary. I stand up and preach a convicting message so the people who hear will turn away from their sin and do better. Prophets, modern and Biblical, preach so everyone can see their sin and learn to turn away from it.

But what about forgiveness? I struggle to even include forgiveness in my confessions because, as a good Presbyterian, I believe forgiveness happened at the cross and our prayers have no influence on if God forgives us or not.

But why confess if we do not get some sort of punch on our heaven admittance card? Why make ourselves feel bad and focus on the “bad” in us?

For this, instead of leaning on scripture, I will quote Augustine:

“Confess. Let all the pus come out and flow away in your confession; then dance for joy and be glad.”

Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in Psalmos 66.7

Basically, confession lets you get rid of the infection of sin. It lets you release it, stop letting it weigh you down and poison you.

You confess for healing. You confess for forgiveness of self. Neither really takes if you do not also repent in response to your confession, but holding onto past sins, allowing them to weigh you down and make you sick, helps no one — including those whom you wronged.

We all need healing and to let go of shame. I will not speak of justice and consequence here — much wiser folks have and will continue to work the limits and boundaries of that out — but we, in our hearts, need to let our confession excise our sin from our hearts and stop allowing it to poison us, both through shame and continuing to sin.

Confess for healing and forgiveness, not in some future after death but here and now. That is why we confess.

Peace,
– Robby

P.S.: Side note I may expound upon later: love is not affection (physical or otherwise), and complete love does not require nor demand continued relationship.

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I Will Try

I regularly see clergy memes1 expressing a desire for the marginalized to feel loved. These memes include promises to speak for racial justice, perform services for the LGBTQ+ community, and answer the phone in a mental health crisis. They promise to undo years…decades…centuries…millennia of damage and harm the Church did to the marginalized (incidentally the exact folks Jesus shows the most compassion to).

I understand the motivation and find myself tempted to post them, too. We should absolutely stand up and make it well known and public our policies on showing love to God’s creation and our attempts to remove the limits to showing love and compassion within the Church. We must speak out against injustice and proclaim love, even and especially when showing love comes at a risk and a cost.

And for people to find the safe spaces that will welcome them, they need to hear and see the invitations.

But every time I find myself tempted to post one of those memes proclaiming my willingness and ability to show love on that level, I stop. I know the height of my willingness, but my ability to love nonjudgmentally, freely, and in a way that centers the recipient of love and not me has never had to stand up to a test.

I even question wearing my “This Pastor Loves You” shirt in public despite knowing that I do.

I would have left this in the realm of my crippling self-doubt and silent questioning the motives of other pastors (my confession) if two things had not happened, and in such short time that I had to link them.

First, an LGBTQ+ friend who has worked to make their denomination much more inclusive to the LGBTQ+ community from however inside they can get themselves posted an admonition to church people proclaiming inclusivity without have the scriptural knowledge to back it up nor the awareness of their own communities the know when they worship and live in an unsafe community for LGBTQ+ people. I (silently) cheered his admonition, thinking I had already heeded this admonition while patting myself on the back.2

Second, I offhandedly mentioned something about weddings and “serve your husbands” and “head of the household” to my newish barber, and he started going on about how “that’s what scripture says” and “isn’t it a bigger ask to love your wife than to serve your husband?”

And I could not respond. I will not apologize for how I think — I do not typically debate because I think slow, long, and methodical — but I opened the door, thinking he would feel the way I did and clearly did not, and he preached circles around me in that moment. In normal circumstances I would have grabbed a Bible, a few books, read and read until I had a response ready, but in the moment, I just started shutting down while the wave of knowing guilt and shame started washing over me.

I confess I failed, I confess I judged a whole lot of people for sins I commit, and I confess that I love judging other clergy.

In the time since that haircut, I started to think about what makes me question the posting of those memes by clergy and why I never post them. Occasionally my self-doubt comes from a place of truth, and, truthfully, I am an inadequate ally in every way (if I even deserve the title of “ally”). I still do not have a good queer or inclusive understanding Ephesians 5:22-28 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ephesians+5%3A22-28&version=CEB) even despite knowing unintentionally bringing up that passage made me more harmful to the LGBTQ+ community and CISHET females than just remaining silent. I have failed in the past, I failed that day, and I will continue to fail.

If I do not center myself in expressions of PRIDE, racial equalities movements, or social justice efforts in general, then I have no reason to publicly proclaim, without any sort of real risk or demand for proof, how great of an ally I am. I can just try and, when the opportunity presents itself, love fully and inclusively.

I will try. I will fail, but I will do better today than yesterday and tomorrow than today. I will try to love you fully and inclusively, and I invite you to admonish me when I fail to do so.

Because I really do love you.

Peace,
– Robby

1 I really hate that every imaged posted gets called a meme now, but also we do not really have a better word, so I will just sit here and stew about it while I used it.

2 I anonymized this person, but I’m not sure it was the right decision. It may change after I post it (or if they happen to read it and want credit).

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Calls for Justice are not “Political”

Over the past two days I have struggled to find words about the leaked Supreme Court decision over Roe v Wade, wondering how to properly address the incredibly sensitive subject of abortion and simultaneously addressing the not sensitive but incredibly charged issues of clear violations of precedent and threats to other established rights and privacies. I do not have those words and changing my profile picture to other’s words would change nothing.

I noticed a post this morning, though, that sent me back to a past version of myself: reducing this decision, and the decisions that will certainly follow it, to nothing more than “political gamesmanship” and making jokes about the hysterical people getting angry and judgmental over “politics.”

First, I will say this: if this decision delights you, instead of making jokes and subtly denigrating the fears of others related to this decision without actually saying you agree with the decision, have the confidence to publicly state your agreement and accept that people will emotionally disagree with you. If you find great a great moral victory here, shout it from the rooftops instead of hiding in fear.

But, in thinking about the flippancy that some people treat the humanity of others and my lack of words to directly address the present situation, I found myself wondering about the term “political” and how it gets used (especially surrounding preaching and churches).

While thinking about this, I realized I need to define “political,” a task that necessitates evaluating common usages of the word.

I get advised not infrequently to “not be political” to ensure my success in ministry, and I find this a curious piece of advice given the nature of our faith. We proclaim that our God came to Earth almost specifically to get murdered for speaking against the political and religious establishment, publicly and loudly admonishing them for their treatment of the poor, the marginalized, the systemically outcast, and the sick. Clearly our God got involved in politics by way of speaking truth to political power and casting moral judgement on their actions.

Jesus was “political.” You cannot read the gospels and come to any other conclusion. Period.

When I receive this advice, though, people actually mean “partisan” when they say “political.” The advice really means, “Do not speak against my chosen political party,” (or “any political party” if we receive the advice more charitably than I usually do). And, if we believe in the united Body of Christ and that God weeps when we fracture ourselves for personal gain, then the advice rings true; we should abhor adversarial politics and artificial divisions. Christians (especially Christian leaders) should not speak against good-faith disagreements on how to achieve justice for all and should voice their disagreement from a personal position stance instead of a moral one.

These usages leave us with two definitions of “political”: the partisan difference of how to accomplish a goal and our alignment with a partisan group, and the demanding actions of our governments and speaking judgements toward our systems (and churches).

Whenever someone tells you to not be “political,” they are using the first definition of the word.

(Note: the “demands” of the second definition need not be morally upstanding; demanding the government act in a way that concentrates wealth upward is not partisan despite clearly being “political.” This just means you demand something of the system without regard to political party or power system.)

I could demand everyone in the world stop using the word “political” when they truly mean “partisan,” but I would get nowhere. Instead, then, whenever we use the word “political” or hear the word “political,” we need to name the usage so we can properly address it.

I regularly preach from a “political” standpoint in the sense that I demand justice for the least and lowest. I call for every Child of God to have the same right to life as any other and for us to fix the systems and attitudes that cause people of color to die more frequently and more violently than white people (nonetheless LGBTQ+ people, poor people, and people with mental illness). I call for us to love our neighbors in a sacrificial way, giving up our comforts to the needs of others (including safety). I call for Christians to give up their comforts for the needs of others. And I regularly call people to hold their chosen political leaders accountable to these basic scriptural ideals.

Not one thing I said above has any partisan bent to it. I literally just acknowledged statistics and applied scriptural teachings. Love your neighbor as yourself, admit when some of your neighbors do not receive the same love as you, and hold your leaders — the ones you voted for and align with — to that standard.

Now I must ask you to have some honesty with yourself. When you read all of that, did you read partisanship in it? Did you feel attacked, or did you read an attack on your political party?

That has nothing to do with me or what I wrote. I spoke basic gospel truths and basic practical truths. It certainly had “political” overtones to it because I demanded action of our system and of the Body of Christ, but it does not have a “political (partisan)” bent to it because I demanded it of all and admonish everyone (myself included) who fails to live up to the gospel call.

(And, again, I find adversarial politics abhorrent and contraindicated to scripture.)

You may find yourself tempted to list the ways what I wrote disagrees with your “political (partisan)” leaning, and you absolutely could find a multitude of ways that what I wrote admonishes your chosen political leaders (and you would not be the first). I will not pretend what I wrote will not offend “political (partisan)” sensibilities, but, if what I wrote offends your “political (partisan)” sensibilities, the gospel offends your “political (partisan)” sensibilities. Simply declaring yourself a Christian does not make your personal values inherently holy and absolve you from admonishment and questioning; for your values to be inherently Christian, they must align with the life and teachings of Christ attested to in scripture, not your personal comforts and feelings.

“I don’t like it!” coming from the mouth of Christians has no bearing on the holiness of the thing in question, especially politics. I like a lot of things contraindicated to scripture: judging people, self-righteousness, financial comfort, gluttony, and many others. My like of them does not make them holy, even as a clergy person, because they are contraindicated with scripture, specifically with the life and teachings of Jesus.

So, if you hear a call for justice — a demand to acknowledge the full humanity of every person; a demand to protect the physical life of every breathing person and work to create equality in safety; a demand to care for people after their birth and provide for their food, shelter, and health; a demand to allow women to make healthcare decisions about their body including but well beyond the present discussion — know those calls for justice are not “political (partisan)” despite being clearly and unapologetically “political” in their demands of the system.

Reasonable, faithful people can disagree with the nuance of a situation or the correct course of action to provide justice, but not the call for justice. If the call for justice rings as “political (partisan)” in your ears, ask yourself why. And if you want to denigrate the anger and fears of those denied justice as “political (partisan)” and hysterical, ask yourself why.

Jesus lifted those who were denied justice and spoke truth against those who denied it. Which group do you lift and support?

Peace,
– Robby

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The Nothingness/Everythingness of Holy Saturday

I do not often spend time with Holy Saturday. One might call it a professional hazard — sermons never come out before Saturday afternoon, even if I dedicate multiple timeslots to it during the week — but Holy Saturday feels like another Saturday of me begging the Holy Spirit to make my disparate and diasporic thoughts about the sermon passage into something coherent while I stare at the blinking curser, only with the added pressure of Easter and needing the sermon to either hit all the right chords. (No, I never struggle with debilitating perfectionism with my preaching; why do you ask?)

But I have spent a lot of time this year, a weird year where I had the first month of Lent off after a very painful two years of ministry, sitting with a quote from Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens For A Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved (and complaining about the very same thing):

“Everyone is trying to Easter the crap out of my Lent.”

I have never shied away from sitting in the darkness of Lent, always intentionally letting the melancholy and depression of this darkest liturgical season wash over me and resonate with my internal heart song. Lent does not serve the purpose of “Pre-Easter Warmups” and building happy anticipation for candy, bunnies, and flowers for me.

But Holy Saturday, arguably the deepest pit of despair for those who showed their love for Christ most at the end, just kind of means nothing to me. But if I demand that we sit in Lent for all 40+6 Days of Lent, then I need to not just zoom past Day 40.

Scripture gives us painfully little about the day (which probably influences our complete lack of acknowledging it) except the Pharisees begging the Romans to post guards at the tomb to ensure the poor followers of Jesus could not just roll the stone away and steal the body to claim he had risen. I think we can make some educated guesses, though. The men ran away from Golgotha (except John if you trust the account of the guy who made sure to tell you he won the “First Annual Easter Footrace”) and they sat hiding behind locked doors after the Sabbath, so we can assume they ran away from Golgotha and immediately started hiding behind the locked doors.

But the women followed Jesus to Golgotha, they heard the nails enter the wood and the anguished cries, they stood witness to his final breath, they followed him to the tomb, and they prepared their herbs to prepare his body for his final rest. I think we can assume some things about the women and their 36 hours of waiting.

We all know that walk when leaving your beloved after their death; most of us know that walk when leaving a beloved after a sudden, unexpected death, and just how much the suddenness amplifies the nothingness and everythingness of that walk.

You have to consciously think about walking. You have not consciously thought through stepping, even in dangerous or “extreme” situations, more than you do when you leave that hospital room. You have no other conscious thoughts but how to make one foot step in front of the other.

Then you feel all the feelings. Guilt, shame, sadness, anger, frustration, more sadness, laughter and guilt from feeling laughter. It washes over you and you have no conscious thoughts but you feel everything and cannot untangle it.

Then you feel nothing, think nothing, and just float down the hallway. You push a button in the elevator, maybe the right button, and get to the lobby. Then you try to figure out how to get to the parking lot, but you get lost even in the simplest and most well-marked hospital lobby trying to just get outside.

Suddenly you have your keys looking at your ignition. No idea how we got to the car, but suddenly every feeling comes back — or nothing, like God has removed the very heart from your chest. You look at your keys and wonder how you turn the car on, or how you insert the key-fob into your pushbutton-start car.

You start driving home on autopilot. About half-way home the funeral director calls; she cannot meet you tomorrow, but the next day she can. She tells you to find a bunch of things to bring with you: documents, stories, an outfit. So you go home, you get the things together that they need, wondering if you got everything, and then you feel exhausted.

You stare at the ceiling, begging God for sleep. Maybe you do get an hour or two — or sleep fifteen hours and then cannot remove yourself from the bed. You wail at times, feeling so deeply the hurt and pain of the loss that you cannot even move; your wails come from deep within and make your whole body convulse. Then you find yourself staring into space on the couch or into the open refrigerator for minutes that feel like seconds and hours at the same time; maybe you start walking circles around your house in a way you never have before and never will again. You feel and think nothing, not out of numbness but because you cannot process the emotional shitstorm you presently find yourself in the middle of, so your brain chooses nothing over anything.

You do this all day. You swing from wailing to anger to nothing to laughter to guilt to wailing again to saying “At least they didn’t suffer long” to nothing to fury to mania and back again to wailing. You do this dance between nothing and everything all day because you have nothing else to do; you cannot help your friend enter their final rest until tomorrow.

And then you sleep. Or count bumps in the popcorn ceiling they hated and gave you grief about.

That is Holy Saturday. No wonder we do not spend any time on it. But without Holy Saturday, Easter means nothing.

Holy Saturday is nothingness and everythingness, a pendulum of detachment and devastating pain for those who followed Jesus to Golgotha, to the tomb, and promised to prepare him for his final rest.

Will you run and hide, or choose to be with him at his end?

Peace,
– Robby

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Silence About the Hardest Problems

Something has bothered me a lot recently. Think about the hardest things in your life — the things that cause you the most pain, wound you the deepest, and you cannot fix on your own — and think about how little you feel you can talk about them.

  • Maybe your thing involves a beloved person who wounded you, so you cannot share for fear of turning others against you.
  • Maybe your thing involves a powerful person who failed you but still retains power and influence over you, so you cannot share for fear of them turning further against you.
  • Maybe your thing involves something difficult to sit with and feels like you cannot burden anyone else with it, so you cannot share for fear of others abandoning you.
  • Maybe your thing involves your past failures and needing help but the people who can help you refuse and/or decide shaming you will help you, so you cannot share for fear of a greater burden of shame than you already feel.

Maybe your story involves all of them, or some other reason you society/church/family has conditioned you not to talk about, so you just cannot share.

It bothers me that, when we need the most help and we suffer the most, we cannot ask for help. The hardest problems of this world should not leave us abandoned like Christ at his end. We should not have to filter, modify, or remain silent in our pain to not embarrass someone else or cause them discomfort. We should not have to feel shame for past failures when we try to restore and improve. We should not have to suffer medical diagnoses and mental health problems alone because no one else has the strength to sit with us (or at least we have received that message).

I cannot speak to your family systems nor have the wisdom to speak about how the wider society should change, but I can say the church should not enable, enforce, nor encourage hiding our wounds and pains for the comfort of others. If anything, the church should encourage opening up, enable honest disclosure, and enforce safety to find healing for our wounds — especially those wounds caused by and in the church.

Before you ask, yeah, I hold on to some of this, and not just from the past/long enough ago that I should just “get over it.” If Christ heals like a physician, and if followers of Christ are the Body of Christ on Earth, we cannot receive healing from the great physician if we cannot share our wounds in the doctor’s office; trust me when I say I know this for certain.

We need to create church where all of our wounds have space to heal, not just the easy wound and not just the wounds of those who already have the most comfort.

Peace,
– Robby

P.S.: I cannot create that space specifically for you if you do not live in my sphere of influence, but I would like to create that space for myself and other clergy who lack it. If you are a clergy person who does not have space to name your wounds and seek healing in community (or know that clergy person), please reach out. I do not know what that space looks like, but I know I need that space and cannot imagine I am all alone.

I mean, I can imagine and most of the time believe that, but logically it makes no sense.

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I Am Thankful for You

Every day I scroll my Facebook feed, seeing faces and memories of times past. I see people who altered the direction of my life, brightened the path when I could not see it, and reminded me why I traveled that path. I see people who made me laugh. I see the poor folks who I feel madly in unrequited love with (and probably have some who did the same with me).

I see you all, and I almost daily grow more thankful for your presence in my life.

  • Some of you have grown in different ways than me and we no longer see eye-to-eye.
  • Some of you I now see eye-to-eye with but our friendships faded away too long ago to reconcile that now.
  • Some of you crossed my path for a brief moment yet we knew each other deeply.
  • Some of you I grew up with and yet never really knew you (96% chance that’s my fault).
  • Some of our friendships ended because they caused me too much pain and I had to draw a boundary for my health, but they existed for a reason and I mourn their ending.
  • Some of you I miss every day and wonder why I could not keep connected to you (again, still awkward, nervous, and anxious).

I wish I had less anxiety to reach out to each one of you and tell you how you brightened my life, but somehow seminary, marriage, pastoral ministry, ordination, and time did not make me less awkward, nervous, and anxious.

I am thankful for you. Even if our friendship/relationship/whatever ended in anger and fury, I am thankful for you. I am who I am today — wounds, pains, strengths, direction — because of every person who has entered my life.

I am thankful for you.

Love,
– Robby

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A Late Reflection for 9/11

Here’s my note: I’m tired, I should be getting ready for bed, and as of this moment I have no idea what is going to be written below.

Every year I struggle with this day of remembrance.

Every year I think about standing, waiting for the bus, not really knowing what happened and really not understanding what it meant. Every year I think about sitting in line at the gas station, filling our tanks with elevated priced gasoline because someone will always make a buck on a tragedy. Every year I remember visiting ground zero the week we declared war on Iraq — we listened to the announcement on the charter bus to New York — and just being struck by how it looked like an unremarkable pile of rubble.

Every year I remember, everything year I search for the words I can put into the universe to maybe add to the healing, but I always struggle to know what to say.

I have seen a post this year about “I missed 9/12” and how we all came together, and truly we did. Blood banks had an excess of blood, people prayed and gathered like they never had before, and we saw some of the best in each other.

But this year I have a reflection of my own: that day, and our collective response to that day, amplified my racism and made me so much more hateful than I had been before. It took well over a decade for my level of hatred of the other to return to its pre-9/11 level.

I remember learning all the lies about Muslim people and committing them to my heart and soul as moral truth. I remember celebrating war and death. I remember jokes about GI’s not having beautiful women to sleep with in this war like they did in other wars — and legal brothels offering to make up for it. I remember celebrating war, defending violence, and have no sympathy of the innocents who died in the ensuing conflicts.

I remember being given a pork sandwich to celebrate Osama bin Laden’s death and eating it because I didn’t have the strength to say, “No, I am not celebrating death, even the death of an enemy.”

I remember all of it, and I mourn. I mourn for our nation, believing we have done more damage to ourselves and torn ourselves apart more than any terrorist attack ever could. I mourn for the person I was, so shamed of the hatred I spewed and deaths I celebrated. I mourn for the people I ostracized and judged — the relationships I never built — because I believed in my righteous hatred of another. I mourn for all who suffering violence born out of hatred and bigotry in this country.

That day we saw bravery we will hopefully never have the opportunity to see again.

Shortly after, more innocent people died in our attempt to gain justice and rout terrorism — and the results of our troop withdraw from Afghanistan has shown the futileness of most of the actions.

When I reflect on this day, I long for a world that heals its wounds, not causes more wounds. I long for a world that chooses love over hatred. I long for a world that values life and doesn’t dismiss the deaths of those out of sight and out of mind.

I long for a better world.

I will remember this day by praying for peace for all. I will remember this day by praying for the fulfillment of Isaiah 2:4

4 God will judge between the nations,
    and settle disputes of mighty nations.
Then they will beat their swords into iron plows
    and their spears into pruning tools.
Nation will not take up sword against nation;
    they will no longer learn how to make war. (Isaiah 2:4 CEB)

Goodnight.
– Robby

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Boring Truth Versus Charismatic Lies

I think having to treat deliberate misinformation and outright lies with the same weight and veracity of verifiable facts in discussions around protocols and safety – especially in our community and religious gatherings – ranks second in the most exhausting parts of the pandemic. Trying to lead a congregation through the difficult, painful, and heated discussions around safety protocols and protecting the least and the lowest while misinformation took an equal breath to – or greater breath than – truth simply amplified an already difficult and painful situation and made it unnecessarily worse.

Truth is cold, boring, flat, emotionless. It does not care about your desires or wants. It has no interest in your partisan leanings or political aspirations – only your acceptance and transmission of truth do. Truth does not care if you like it or not; in the wise words of Gloria Steinem, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”

Misinformation, deception, and lies, though, are anything but cold, boring, flat, or emotionless. It works by using the things that make you want to look away from truth – discomfort, sadness, weariness. The bad actors who create and spread misinformation, the deceivers, say truth and truthtellers take good and holy things away from you – like community, corporate worship, closeness in this season – and tell you believing and following their lies will give those things back.

Truth has no charisma, and truthtellers do not have the benefit of having something people want to hear; they have to make truth understandable, digestible, and attractive because truth provides none of those things. Deceivers, though, can create a product with inherent understandability, digestibility, and attractiveness to their intended targets, and they do not have any rules to follow but to make something people want to hear.

Truth also suffers from how humans understand truth. Truth is truth but our understanding of truth – especially in a rapidly developing health crisis like a pandemic – is somewhat of a moving target due to our learning and inability to just inherently know things. Truthtellers have to correct and adjust their telling of truth in response to changing understanding – even if our understanding conflicts with previous understanding – and do so in humility. Deceivers use this to make their message of lies more attractive, attacking the truth on the contradictions raised by changing understanding of truth despite regularly conflicting with previous lies and changing to make their deception more attractive.

Neither truth nor lies care about you; care can only come from people, not statements. Truthtellers care about you, knowing truth will set you free, protect you, and make this world better; deceivers care only about themselves, often personally acting in ways that betray the lies they tell because following their lies harms the follower. Truthtellers will act in your best interest and the best interest of all, especially if you dislike it; deceivers will tell you what you want to hear and convince you they act in your best interest despite always acting in their own self-interest.

How do you tell the difference? Truthtellers sacrifice their own safety, security, and comfort to tell the truth – and almost universally speak truth that will help the least and the lowest while asking much of the enriched and elevated; deceivers sacrifice nothing of themselves and benefit greatly from you believing their lies – economically, politically, and personally – while the least and the lowest often suffer for those benefits.

Masks work, the vaccine is safe and effective against serious illness, and lockdowns saved lives and prevented suffering; early reversals of mask mandates and lockdowns caused suffering and death, and vaccine refusal combined with not wearing masks and participation in congregate settings further causes unnecessary suffering and death. Your personal, anecdotal experiences do not negative or even conflict with those truths.

How long, O Lord, will you children accept deception and reject truth? How long will they choose temporary comfort leading to long-term suffering? How long, O Lord?

– Robby