Accessible Church

Posted on

Posted at Envision Access –

Hi, I’m Julie Clawson.  I’m a writer and a mom.  I’ve served as a pastor and currently help coordinate Adult and Children’s Education at my church in Austin Texas.  I was also born missing my left arm below the elbow.

I’m very involved in the emerging Church movement, and many of us in this movement like to do church a little differently.  That means our worship services are very experimental and artistic – making use of various sorts of media and hands on experiences.  As much as I appreciate these diverse ways to connect with God, I’ve seen the awkwardness they can create for people with disabilities.  Prayer stations with art or video’s with words shut of the blind in the congregation.  Body prayer exercises and juggling prayer books is difficult for me as a person with just one arm.  And the command to stand up for prayers or songs always makes my friends in wheelchairs flinch.

I recall one Good Friday service when part of the worship experience involved nailing a prayer to a wooden cross.  It was a moving activity for many, but I had to sit it out because I am unable to use a hammer.  In no way did I think the activity should not have been done simply because I could not participate, I just wished someone had been aware of my difficulty and offered to help me out.

Often what many of us with disabilities desire from the church is just an awareness of who we are.  Making worship activities inclusive of our needs would be affirming while not condescending.  Something as simple as instead of telling everyone to stand up to invite those who desire to stand up.  Or encouraging people as they start a hand-on worship experience to be there for each other and lend a hand where it is needed.  Reminders like that acknowledge that there are diverse needs in the congregation, but don’t single any one out as being too different.

Sometimes it is hard to feel like we are part of the body of Christ when those of us with disabilities are either always treated with condescending pity or alternatively have our needs ignored.  Churches are striving these days to people with different learning styles and spiritual languages.  I applaud those efforts, but also want to send a gentle reminder for churches to be aware of and include the people with disabilities in their congregation at the same time.  We want to connect with God in diverse and hands-on ways as well, we just sometimes need to church to be proactive and creative in inviting us into that space.

Read more

First Sunday of Advent 2010

Posted on

Advent. From the Latin adventus meaning “coming,” this is the church’s remembering through expectant waiting of the coming of the Lord. The incarnation. God with us. Yet often the re-living of the waiting for the advent of the Lord becomes familiar. We know how the story ends. We’ve domesticated the audacity of the Nativity story. We’ve become so used to the babe in the manger, the herald angels singing, and the visiting magi that we forget that when God shows up it is generally in the most unexpected of ways. But that truth has been recurring in my life recently, so this Advent I’ve decided to focus my reflections on examining the unexpected ways God showed up in a story that has become almost too familiar for many of us.

I think Luke perhaps suspected as he crafted his narrative of the coming of the Lord this tendency towards complacency that plagues the faithful. It is easy to get used to our habits and rituals of worship. The most devout followers of God can easily reach the point where even if they do not necessarily substitute the act of worship for actual communion with the divine, they skirt fairly close. For when our acts of Eucharist and sacrifice are generally met with only the response of the devotion they inspire we can lose sight that they are not ends in themselves but serve the ultimate purpose of divine encounter. I have to wonder if such a forgetting is at play in Luke’s opening narrative, his telling of Zechariah’s story.

The text says Zechariah was a good man, very devote. He followed all the laws and served God faithfully. Yet when his turn came to offer prayers and incense to God in the holy place in the temple, he ended up being overwhelmed with fear when God actually showed up. Granted, if a messenger of the Lord appeared before me, I would be a little freaked out, but one might think that if one is in the midst of praying to God in the holy place where God was said to dwell it wouldn’t come as that much of a surprise when God makes his presence known. Yet there was Zechariah approaching the altar of the Lord and becoming terrified because there was actually an angel there.

Part of me wonders if all the tales of God showing up unexpectedly are more the stories of how people forgot to look for God’s coming in the expected places. But whatever the reason, the appearance is still unexpected. God showed up in the holy place – in the temple – for Zechariah, and it was terrifying. Was he just so used to experiencing God in one way that he couldn’t accept a new revelation? Had he stopped looking for God or seeing the everyday incarnations around him? Had he unconsciously turned his observance of the ritual into a thing to be worshiped in itself? His story doesn’t say. All we know was that for him the encounter was unexpected – in an overwhelming and terrifying sort of way.

His story makes me wonder if I am prepared to encounter God when God shows up. I rehearse the story of waiting for the advent, I seek the Lord in prayer, and I join in on worshiping God communally, but I don’t know if I have left any room for God in the daily rhythms of my devotion. Would I be terrified if God responded to my prayers or appeared in reply to my call of “O come, O come Emmanuel”? Am I prepared to let God into my rituals or open to letting God appear even in the holy places of my church? I don’t believe I am, nor that I will ever be. For that I find comfort in Luke opening his Gospel with the reminder that when God shows up it is always unexpected.

The advent of the Lord is a tale of God breaking into our world and demanding we pay attention. We may be so used to the tales of the coming in the Nativity that we forget to be mindful of these everyday unveilings. But God shows up no matter our complacency. God shows up unexpectedly.

Read more

Sex in the Bible

Posted on

Since starting seminary I’ve had the opportunity to read through the Old Testament in ways I haven’t done since I was in youth group at a conservative evangelical church.  While I think building biblical literacy is something evangelicals do very well, reading through these passages as an adult reminded me in a humorous way the ways my culture context back then shaped how I read the bible.  And it all had to do with sex.

If you’ve ever read through the Old Testament, you know that it’s a pretty racy text.  From rapes and seductions to concubines and harlots, it’s hard to avoid the presence of sex – often illicit sex – in the pages of scripture.  That is unless you are a teenage evangelical.  Amusingly, my most poignant memory of my years of bible studies of such passages in youth group is how hard the leaders tried to convince us that those sex passages actually had nothing to do with sex at all.

Like how when the most beautiful virgin in the land was selected to come lay with an elderly King David to keep him “warm” it had nothing to do with her trying to get him to respond sexually since in the Ancient Near East a King’s power was tied to his virility.  We were instead told that she literally was chosen to raise his body temperature since elderly people get cold often.  Or when reading how when  Rehoboem tries to assert his prowess as compared to his father Solomon and says his little finger is bigger than his fathers sexual organ (1 Kings 12), we were told that the Bible would never include something so base so therefore what he was really referring to was his fathers waist or thigh.

Whenever I heard the story of the Israelite spies’ visit to Rahab, the leaders made sure we understood that the spies only visited a prostitute because it would be a good place to gather information.  And we were told that Ruth getting under the covers with Boaz and laying at his “feet” had no sexual connotations whatsoever – she just wanted to get him to listen to her.  Other leaders even tried to tell us that Esther’s one night with the king truly was just a beauty contest and not like what typically happens when a member of the harem spends a night with the king.

Although we were told that we had to read the Bible literally – since we believed it to be inerrant – the conservative evangelical attitude towards sex (especially in regard to teenagers) forced us to read those passages as meaning the opposite of what they truly mean.  Lessons on sexual purity being the highest virtue we could strive for were drilled into us.  Any sexual deviancy was condemned in very publicly humiliating ways.  Given these strict views on sex, there was no way supposed biblical heroes could ever be seen as dallying in inappropriate sexual behavior.  Granted, sometimes it was hard to avoid the obvious stories, but those usually were directly connected to some dire consequence (as with David and Bathsheba).  As Christian teenagers our primary spiritual command was to be pure and so our study of the bible had to be just as pure – even if that meant some creative explaining away for the obvious.

 

Read more

Underwear for a Cause

Posted on

Recently I walked through downtown Austin in my underwear. Okay, so it was actually men’s boxers and an undershirt, but still, technically, underwear. As I walked with a group of similarly clad friends we chanted, “We’re good, we’re fair, we’re in our underwear.” Catchy, huh?

Now admittedly, this was in Austin, a town whose motto is “Keep Austin Weird,” so there wasn’t too much shock value in our march, but there was a good deal of interest. As we walked through a sports bazaar behind Lance Armstrong’s bike shop, the farmer’s market, a fair for designer dog houses (seriously), and the Gypsy Fair (remember this is Austin), we shared with numerous people about the reason for our march — the launch of the Good & Fair Clothing company.

Over the last few years my friend Shelton Green has had his world turned upside down. Stories of oppression, human trafficking, and unfair labor practices entered his world and changed it forever. He started advocating for justice, doing whatever he could to raise awareness about injustice in our world and what we can do to fight it. But he wanted to do more than just use his voice to help; he wanted to help create alternative systems that subvert oppressive economic systems. Out of that passion was born Good & Fair Clothing.

Shelton created a clothing company to produce basic clothing — underwear, t-shirts — that was both good and fair. He had found a number of companies that made fair or organic specialty clothing, mostly for women, but few that supplied the everyday necessities. He wanted to produce clothing that was good and fair from the ground up. From the growing of the cotton, to the milling, to the sewing — the earth must be treated sustainably and the people who worked in the process had to be treated and paid fairly. His dream is to create clothing that doesn’t hurt anyone and to give consumers total confidence that their clothing is made by hands that are treated fairly. To do so, he partners with various fair trade companies in India.

It was in traveling to India this past summer to visit these companies that his intellectual passion for fair trade took on human form. He quickly abandoned any notion that fair trade grants workers the same life of ease and comfort that most of us enjoy in the states. He saw instead that fair trade is the lifeline out of extreme poverty and allows people to live without fear of whether their families will survive until the next day. He met with the workers who produced the clothes for his company and entered into their lives. Being good and fair moved from being an ideal to the very least consumers could be doing to treat people with respect and dignity. It isn’t charity or a path to riches; it is simply meeting the basic ethical standard for our interaction with other human beings.

Hearing the people’s stories and seeing the basic way fair trade systems affect people’s lives confirmed for Shelton that participating in good and fair economic systems has to be a core part of his faith. The trip to India convinced him that “the systems of our world ought to reflect the ideals of our faith; that being, to love and respect the people who grow our food, make our clothes, and work in so many different ways to provide us the things and services we use every day.” To be Christian is to care, to stand up for ensuring these basic standards for all the people our daily consumer habits bring us in contact with — to put our money where our heart is and shop in good and fair ways.

As Shelton commented, “We are their voice. We are the voice that demands fair and equitable standards from the brands and companies we support with our pocket book. Yes, it is massively inconvenient, hard, time consuming and doesn’t fit with the pace of life in the west, to make ‘buying’ decisions according to this new matrix; a matrix where the treatment and wages of the producers is weighted heavily and given greater importance than simply the cost of goods. How else can we bring about the kind of changed needed to improve the lives of people in our own communities and across the world?”

To support a passion and a calling like that, I had no problem giving a Saturday morning to walk around town in underwear to help get the word out about Good & Fair Clothing. Shelton is helping me put faces to the ideas of justice and giving us all tangible ways to seek justice with something as simple as the underwear we buy.

Read more

Dignity at the Airport

Posted on

as posted at the Christian Century blog –

When I flew home this past weekend, I got to see the new TSA screening measures in action. The tiny airport I flew out of didn’t have the new backscatter machines, but TSA agents were selecting passengers to receive the full-body pat-downs. I watched as a very elderly man was pulled to the side and patted down head to toe, the agent’s hands rubbing all over his chest and touching his rear end and groin. The man’s wife stood by looking helpless.

I was appalled by the intrusive nature of the pat-down but even more horrified by how unaccommodating the agents were to the man’s age and frailty. He had to hold his arms out to the side for a significant amount of time. My elementary school teachers used this as punishment, until the district made them stop because it was cruel and unusual. Yet this elderly gentleman was forced to do so to the point of physical strain–I saw him shaking–in the name of national security.

I’ve seen the YouTube videos of young children being stripped searched, of sexual assault victims sobbing because they’ve been touched in ways that resurface terrifying memories. I’ve read conflicting reports as to whether the backscatter machine’s radiation is harmful. I have friends who, when the TSA asks for their cloak, plan to shame the shamers by giving them their tunic too. I’m having a hard time discerning if I am outraged or simply heartbroken.

As more and more people protest this invasion of their bodies, the TSA agents who bear the brunt of the anger have complained to their union, asking for more protection from upset passengers. They don’t like being shoved or called molesters, and they want to be able to do their job professionally without interference. Part of me wants to respond with incredulity–how it is okay for a stranger to touch my breasts but not okay for me to feel violated by that? But I feel for the agents and the difficult position they are in.

What is at stake is human dignity of passenger and agent alike. There’s no dignity in being inspected like an animal–nor in performing the inspection. Ironically, our fear of terrorism has led us to toss aside this dignity.

These security measures are meant to build a safer community for us to live in, but there can be no community when there is no respect for the dignity of other people. When the government mandates acts that in any other situation would get someone fired for harassment or arrested for assault, we have to ask if we have sacrificed the freedoms and community that we’re trying to protect.

Read more

Barna and the New Calvinists

Posted on

As posted at the Christian Century blog –

In a new study on the influence of the NeoReformed or “New Calvinist” movement on the church, the Barna Group concludes that “there is no discernible evidence from this research that there is a Reformed shift among U.S. congregation leaders over the last decade.” A number of evangelical Christian leaders (such as Skye Jethani and Ed Stetzer) maintain that the study seems to contradict their on-the-ground experience. With the growing popularity of New Calvinist books and conferences, and with leaders like Mark Driscoll and John Piper becoming the secular media’s go-to Christian voices, the NeoReformed movement appears to truly be the next new evangelical thing. Yet according to Barna, there are no more pastors who identity as Reformed today than there were ten years ago.

I’ve frequently questioned Barna’s methods and conclusions. Here I wonder if the researchers are forgetting the ways in which perception is often reality. A culture or subculture’s zeitgeist is not easy to measure. The influence of the NeoReformed crowd–often evidenced through hyper-Calvinist theology, strict gender roles and belief in penal substitutionary atonement as the litmus test for one’s faith–goes beyond pastors or even church members self-identifying as Reformed.

I’ve been shocked recently to discover the stealth influence the movement has had on evangelical friends and family. When I was attending a conservative evangelical Bible church some 12-15 years ago, the church believed in a free-will theology and mocked people who followed a human like Calvin instead of following only the Bible. These days, the same friends still think following Calvin is wrong, yet their theology is pure Calvinism. They truly believe that their theology comes from a plain reading of scripture, and they become really confused when I point out how their “biblical” theology has shifted. They never call themselves Reformed, but for all practical purposes, that is what they are.

I see a comparable influence at work in the church I currently attend. The church is very much an emerging church–we are postmodern, the leaders read all the emerging authors–yet we do not call ourselves emerging. In fact, most of the people at the church have no idea what the emerging church is. But we are influenced by the movement.

So I would not dismiss the influence of the NeoReformed crowd simply because it cannot be easily measured. Minds are being changed (whether they realize it or not) through books, radio shows, magazines and conferences. Ideas have power. And for those of us who worry about what the influence of the NeoReformed message means for the church–especially for women in the church–I don’t think we should let this study convince us to stop being watchful.

Read more

Sermon for Christ the King

Posted on

My sermon for Christ the King Sunday yesterday.

Lectionary Readings – Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:11-20 and Luke 1:68-79

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 68-79

God has raised up for us a might savior in the house of his servant David. On this Christ the King Sunday we are reminded that the gospels announced the kingship and reign of Christ through this connection to David. For even amidst all his foibles and flaws David defined for Israel what it means to have a leader who serves the people not just in the name of God but in the way of God. We understand David through the ideal image of the king God called him to be, and we have access to what it means for Christ to be our king through the narratives told about David.

And amidst those stories of kingship that reveal to us what it means to be a king we find a somewhat surprising thread running throughout – that to be a king is to be a healer. Yes, some kings rule or conquer, but in the biblical text a king after God’s own heart is a king who heals.

Now if you are an extreme sci-fi/fantasy geek like me this idea that kings are by nature healers will come as no surprise to you. Just read some of the medieval legends or the Arthurian tales and you will repeatedly encounter the theme that the health of the people and the land depends on the king. If the king is wounded or not serving the land as needed, his country becomes a wasteland that can only be healed by the king choosing the right path.

I think the story of king as healer is probably most well known as it is presented in the Lord of the Rings through the tale of Elessar. It’s a story that I found so meaningful that I actually gave my son the middle name Elessar (I did mention that I am a huge fantasy geek, right?). If you don’t remember the story, in Middle Earth during the period the books describe there was no king of men and the land around Gondor had become a wasteland. Aragorn was the rightful heir to that throne and the tale is in part about the return of the king to heal the land. Interestingly, all throughout the stories we see Aragorn healing others. He has knowledge of herbs for healing, and constantly presses people to restore the use of the lost healing herb (the aptly named) Kingsfoil. It is in fact his use of this herb in the houses of healing that allows the old and the wise people of the land to recognize that the king has in fact returned. It is simply part of his nature to heal. To that end the elves in the world gave him the name Elessar, which is also the name he uses once he becomes King. The term elessar actually refers to a green jewel (in a ring of course) that contained the light of the sun. Anyone who looked through the stone would see things that were withered or burned healed again, and anyone who wore it would bring healing to whatever they touched. The person who had the right to wear the stone is also referred to as the elessar – in other words, a healer. But the idea behind this type of healer is not just one who can heal physical wounds, but one who can look at any person or situation and see the good underneath. The healing occurs by the elessar being able to see things as they should be (not as they are) and bring forth that inherent good in people and in the world. I personally loved that concept and so gave my son that name, praying that he could be (to use another Lord of the Rings quote) one of those people who see that “there’s good in this world and it’s worth fighting for.”

But this concept of the king as the one who heals the world has its roots in the biblical conception of King. The world is not as it should be and it is to the king that one should look to make things right. In the tales of David we often hear of him presented as one who has the ability to heal troubled situations and calm tormented hearts. As a young man he was the one called into play the lyre for King Saul whenever Saul was troubled – David’s presence and song would bring healing.

It was this memory of a good king being one who can heal that prompted people when they encountered Jesus to refer to his position as an heir of David when they came to him for healing. For instance, once when Jesus was leaving Jericho two blind men shouted out to him “Have mercy on us, Lord, Son of David” and Jesus healed them. Or when the Canaanite woman approached Jesus to beg him to deliver her daughter from a demon she too asked “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.” The people knew that to be a king in the royal line of David was to be a healer.

The passage in Jeremiah today states, “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” Jesus was the ideal king that David served as prototype for. I think though we can often get bogged down in trying to understand our idea of a king as one who rules and dominates alongside our other conceptions of Jesus as one who brings love and justice. For me though it is in remembering that to be a king is to be a healer that helps reconcile the two. For what our hurting world needs now is not fear and dominion, but healing. When people in Haiti are still living in tent cities amidst the rubble of the earthquake, being flooded by recent storms, starving because they have no food, and falling ill to cholera – there is serious healing that needs to be done.

To celebrate the reign of Christ means to embrace the mission of Christ our King to heal the world. It means not being afraid to put an end to injustice no matter how uncomfortable or counter-cultural it may feel. It means letting Christ reign in our hearts in ways that push us out beyond ourselves into the place where we are full of compassion for others. It means ensuring that the world around us is not a wasteland plagued with the horrors of sex trafficking, or child labor, or abusive sweatshops, or environmental degradation. It means joining in on this work of healing – of recognizing that there is some good in this world and it is worth fighting for.

It means being like the people at International Justice Mission who not only rescue women and children out of slavery and bonded labor, but who work to help them build new lives. They heal the whole person. It means being like the groups that instead of seeing immigration as a divisive wedge, see it as an opportunity to help people by eliminating the need for people to flee to another country so that they can help their family survive. So they start fair trade companies that treat people with dignity and respect and allow them to live with their families farming their own lands. They heal the root causes not just the symptoms. It means responding to places in this world where fear and extremism have taken hold, not with more fear and extremism, but with offers of healing. With microloans that help people provide for their families and schools for children so that people will no longer have to turn to just the extremist for the basic necessities of life. We can choose to heal a culture instead of destroy it. We can join in with the work of the king who executes justice in the land through these healing acts.

Christ the King is a healer. To be part of his kingdom where all things are being reconciled through him is an invitation to join in on this work of healing the world. So as we acknowledge the reign of Christ today, I encourage you to reflect on what it means to serve not a king who dominates or conquers, but a king whose heart yearns for the healing of the land and who desires us as faithful subjects of his kingdom to join in on that mission. For in acknowledging the reign of Christ our healer we can help justice flow out to all.

Read more

On not growing in faith and knowledge

Posted on

(As posted at The Christian Century blog)

In recent conversations with my seminary classmates, we’ve
been lamenting the state of Christian education. In many churches it is evident
that the average member hasn’t grown in religious or biblical knowledge since he
or she heard moralistic tales of Noah, Esther or Daniel as a child. Some even resist
pastoral attempts to expand their Christian knowledge, and they simply refuse
to learn about other
religions. As seminarians, we are struggling with how to respond to this.

It’s a significant problem because it affects not only the
faith of the communal body of Christ but also how we live in a pluralistic
society. Religious identity matters, now more than ever. Our globalized age has
seen increased secularization and indifference to the particularities of
religion-but this doesn’t lead to a society where religion doesn’t matter. It
leads to misunderstanding about the other, with sometimes dire consequences.

A poor understanding of our religious self fails both the
body of Christ and the needs of our global society. For society to be healthy
we must do the hard work of understanding ourselves as religious creatures as
well as opening ourselves up to learning about the religious other. I
appreciate this comment from Tom Greggs:

Far from being a distant (and
perhaps unimportant) figure, the religious other has become in recent times a
real person who affects the communities and the world to which each of us
belong.

We are interconnected with people of all religions whether
we like it or not. A lack of understanding places us in a position of judgment
of other faith systems’ validity. It also fuels the paranoia of fundamentalist
factions within them. When the interconnected world asserts that
fundamentalists’ faith is too irrelevant to be understood, this confirms their
worst fears–and fear can spur violent reaction.

Living in a pluralistic world requires respect, which in
turn requires knowledge and understanding. The question for current and future
clergy is this: how can we initiate and shepherd this process in our churches?

Read more

Harry Potter and Social Justice

Posted on

Seeking justice for the oppressed. Working to end the connection of child slavery to chocolate. Helping heal a devastated Haiti. Mobilizing young people to respond to a story of redemption by imaginatively working to build a better world. I think many of us Christians would hope that those words were describing the work of the body of Christ intent on following the path of Jesus Christ in this world. In this case, they are actually descriptions of the Harry Potter Alliance. That’s right – the Harry Potter Alliance.

Since 2005 the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) has existed as a non-profit organization intent on using the weapon of love (and a common affinity for Harry Potter) to combat the dark arts of our world. As their mission statement states, they use “parallels from the Harry Potter books to educate and mobilize young people across the world toward issues of literacy, equality, and human rights. Our mission is to empower our members to act like the heroes that they love by acting for a better world.” And it’s working. With over 100,000 members and nearly 60 chapters worldwide, this real world gathering of Dumbledore’s Army is making a difference.

Like in the case of chocolate’s connections to child slavery and unfair wages. In the Harry Potter books Hermione Granger discovers that the food served at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is made by house elves (unpaid servants) and so she organizes a campaign for their fair treatment. The HPA responded similarly by asking Time Warner, the parent company that markets all Harry Potter merchandise, to switch the chocolate used in that merchandise to Fair Trade Chocolate. They want no chocolate made in the name of the boy who used love to save the world to support systems of injustice like child slavery.

Then between November 2010 and July 2011 (the time between the release of parts 1 and 2 of the final movie, the group is launching the Deathly Hallows Campaign. During that time in the films Harry will be seeking to destroy horcruxes (objects of dark magic representing evil and death) and so as a group the HPA is campaigning to put an end to 7 real world horcruxes (injustices). The destruction of the “Starvation Wages Horcrux” which is the injustice related to the production of chocolate is their first mission.

I personally find this endeavor fascinating. I applaud the mobilization of young people to acts of justice. The political climate in America these days is eerily similar to the totalitarian government J.K. Rowling presents in some of her books. Harry knows there is evil out there in the world and does whatever he can to raise awareness about it and do what he can to fight it. Yet the government power structures, the media, and even teachers mock him for his passion and punish him for trying to build a better world. They say he is the real problem – stirring up fear and trouble when if he would just accept the status quo all would be well. Harry, thankfully, never listened to such lies, so I am encouraged that the HPA is following in Harry’s footsteps by not being frightened away from seeking justice by similar groups in our world.

At the same time, it would be dishonest if I didn’t mention that as a Christian I didn’t know how to respond to this group at first. Not that I in any way oppose their purpose or am one of those people who think Harry Potter is satanic or something. But Harry Potter is a story of redemption, skirting close to even being a Christian allegory (I won’t include spoilers here, but I posted about it here — On Sacrifice, Repentance, and King’s Cross Station). I seek social justice because I believe in the sacrificial act of love Jesus displayed on the cross. God loves the world enough to redeem us through that love and I cannot help by responding by joining in on that never-ending project of reconciliation. This response to sacrificial love by seeking a better world is exactly what the HPA is doing.

When I first encountered them, I momentarily wondered why they just weren’t Christians since they seem to be responding to a re-telling of the Christian story. But then I realize that I was acting just like Voldemort (or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named) in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when he dismissed the muggle children celebrating Halloween as being caught up in the “trappings of a world in which they do not believe.” I had sadly slipped into the totalizing stance of thinking that everyone should think like me. But I believe in the good of redemption and reconciliation in whatever form it takes. Justice is justice and good is good wherever it may be found. The more people that can use love to seek a better world the better. Call ourselves the DA (Dumbledore’s Army) or the citizens of the Kingdom; we are working for the same goal.

I love the Harry Potter books. They are fantastic storytelling and one of our few modern myths. I can think of no better legacy for this story than this mobilization for justice. In truth we have no weapon but love and as we all know – in the end, love wins.

Read more

Experiencing Eucharist

Posted on

 

as written for the Christian Century Blog –

I grew up attending Bible and Baptist churches; now I generally identify with the emerging church. So I’ve had quite a learning curve at the Episcopal seminary where I’m studying. Between balancing prayer books and hymnals and crash courses in chanting, I’ve frequently felt like a stranger in a strange land.

I am open to learning this new rhythm of worship, however foreign it feels at times. But I am discovering that I struggle with the observance of the Eucharist. My issue isn’t theology but method: as I pray the same words each time I partake, I feel constrained and long for something more. I’m not bored or looking to be entertained, I just feel the need for our remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice to reflect the infinite diversity of the body of Christ.

I didn’t grow up with diversity in eucharistic practice. On the first Sunday of the month we were instructed to search our hearts, confess our sins and then grab an oyster cracker and a plastic shot glass full of juice (always juice). Only in the last few years has the act of taking the bread and cup moved me to accept the call to live eucharistically in the world. This happened only when I saw the Eucharist set free from its traditional rituals.

In the house church I helped lead for a time, we closed with the Eucharist every week. In that small setting, the way we transitioned into sharing the bread and juice (yes, still juice) depended on the day’s lesson. If we had explored the stories of Jesus’ healings, our breaking of the bread would point us to how we could share our resources to help heal the body of Christ. In weeks where we talked about community, we would sit at a table and together mix the dough to bake our own bread.

We were the body of Christ, and the act of Eucharist became the vehicle through which we understood our role in that body. Breaking the bread and sharing the cup changed week to week–it assumed the role of shaping us into who we were called to be.

The church I attend now similarly re-imagines what it means to take and eat in remembrance of Jesus. In discussing Jesus’ encounter with the disciples on the beach before the ascension, we partook of a communion of fish tacos–pushing us to reflect on the disciples’ experience. In a recent new leaders’ meeting, we were charged to humbly accept our call to serve the church through an invitation to partake in a humble communion of pretzel snack packs and juice boxes.

A recent worship gathering focused on us all being members of the body who have something to give. We were invited to an empty table. There the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 was told, with the interpretation that the miracle was that after seeing the boy’s gift of bread and fish, the people shared what they had brought until they all had resources in abundance. So we were asked to share whatever we had with us–gum, granola bars, soft drinks, Goldfish, Altoids. The table overflowed with abundance, which we served to each other.

Eucharist pulls me into these moments of remembering what it means to be a disciple. It is ever evolving as it speaks to a church that is always advancing the kingdom of God. I know the stories I’ve told here may be offensive to some, and I respect the traditions that find meaning in engaging Eucharist in one set way. But I’ve seen a world of meaning open up when the Eucharist is allowed to be as dynamic and diverse as our creative and infinite God–the God I respond to in remembrance when I take and eat.

Read more