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Ken Sehested

Invocation (on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). —“A City Under Siege,” in solidarity with Ukraine, composed by Elijah Culp, text from Psalm 31: 21-24

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In remembrance of Malcolm X
(He was assassinated on 21 February 1965.)

There was a period of years, decades ago, when I experienced a crippling sense of personal shame and social despair when realizing my own complicity in systemic racism. The shame wasn’t because I had enslaved anyone; or had committed blatant acts of racial animus.

It was because I realized how clueless I was. And if I was this clueless in this regard, chances are I was equally clueless about a whole range of other forms of unconscious bias.

Simultaneously I feared that the same applied to larger society, that we as a people were also structurally complicit, trapped in a naiveté that prevented us seeing the truth about our wounded history that continues to color current behavior.

There came a time, though, when, in quick succession, I came across quotes from three of my heroes that bore me up from the sloughs of shame and despair. Not to make me innocent, but to allow me to be responsible, able-to-respond, freed from humiliation’s disabling power to move forward with courage and perseverance for the work of repair.

The first liberating quote is from James Baldwin, writing in “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation.”

“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis
whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you.
The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean
that very seriously.  You must accept them and accept them with love.
For those innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect,
still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and
until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”

 

The second quote is from Maya Angelou.

“Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it,”
and
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Finally, one from Malcolm X himself.

“Don’t be in such a hurry to condemn a person because he doesn’t do what you do,
or think as you think. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.”

Each of these are grace notes, hopeful disclosures, stemming from the pivotal word embraced by people of faith: Repentance is not for punishment but for the power of beginning again. Not with a clean slate—we will ever bear our scars. And certainly not as a one-off occasion: Penitential living is a daily commitment and a lifelong process.

But the goodness of the Good News is that we can begin again, we can orient ourselves and our society toward the holiness which radiates neighborliness, restoring right relations and just kinship and social policies, knitting together the warp of Heaven with the woof of Earth.

Only by such grace-impelled, hope-provoked work—and it is laborious, sometimes sweaty, difficult, persevering, frustrating work—can we be saved.

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In Latin America, a common liturgical ritual is to name a salutary person who has passed but whose memory is a source of inspiration and resolve that animates the present, someone who is a guiding light and is seated among our “cloud of witnesses.”

Join me in saying Malcolm X: Presenté!

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Last week I drove several hours to attend the memorial service of a remarkable human being, one I never met. Rev. Nelson Johnson died earlier this month. His name is not listed in the familiar cast of renowned civil rights leaders. But in Greensboro, NC, and among a certain class of human rights activists, he is legendary.

The historic episode for which he is primarily known is the 3 September 1979 “Greensboro Massacre ,”a bloody confrontation between a group protesting the existence of the Ku Klux Klan. As those marchers were assembling, a gang of fully-armed Klan members arrived.

Within minutes the conflict escalated from shouting, to fist fighting, to gunfire. Five were killed and dozen others injured, including Johnson. He and his wife later founded the Beloved Community Center which, still today, engages in a wide variety of justice, peace, and human rights advocacy.

Importantly, after years of the city’s ignoring this brutal history (the police were present but did not intervene until the gunfire ended—Klan members were exonerated), Nelson formed a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to investigate the history, interviewing dozens of witnesses, and concluding that the Greensboro police bore the brunt of responsibility.

Rev. William Barber—some would say the best preacher in our country—gave the eulogy in the memorial service. It was more like a revival than a eulogy. You can watch Barber’s extraordinary homily at this link beginning at 2:32:54. I cannot commend it enough.

Join me in saying Nelson Johnson: Presenté!

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Hymn of resolve. “I only ask of God / That I am not indifferent to the pain, / That the dry death won’t find me / Empty and alone without having done enough.” —English translation, “Solo le Pido a Dios,” performed by Mercedes Sosa. Originally written and performed by Argentinian musician Leon Gieco in 1978, this song is an anthem that was widely used throughout the social and political hardships and civil wars across Latin America, particularly in Argentina and Chile.

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My Cuban friend Samuel Rodriguez Cabrera is not someone many here in the US know. And it’s a stretch for me to call him a friend; more like acquaintance, greeting each other in my several visits to Matanzas. It was 2016, after Trump was first elected as president, that he mentioned to my (very good) friend, Stan Dotson, that Trump would be our country’s chemotherapy: “Either it’s poison will kill you; or will remove the cancer with which your country suffers.” Or something close to that. With the next election, many thought, well, maybe we’re cured. But ’24 said otherwise.

Samuel was a deacon at his church, Primera Iglesia Bautista, a founding member of the Kairos Center, a ministry for the arts, liturgical renewal, and social service sponsored by the church, and served as its chief social worker in its poor neighborhood. His funeral was last week.

Join me in saying Samuel Rodriguez: “Presente!”

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Word. Before the end of Black History Month, watch “Backs Against The Wall: The Howard Thurman Story” (2019, 56-minute film).

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Call to the Table
Come now to this table, all who hunger and thirst for justice,
and all whose hungers are not so clear, but have still led you here.

Come all who weep now, as well as those who are numb and long to feel anything again.

Come all who love and trust in the goodness of God,
all who are leaning on the grace of Jesus Christ,
all who are saying a bold and willing Yes to communion in the Spirit . . .
and all those whose faith is shot through with doubt and fear and confusion.

Come and draw near to One who risked drawing near to us,
despite our own mixed up motivations and simmering hostility,
and even our smug self-righteousness.

When we draw near Jesus, we draw near one another
to live in thanksgiving, and to abide in forgiveness.
—Rev. Stan Wilson, co-pastor, Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville, NC

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Benediction. “In the midst of pain, I choose love / /In the midst of pain, sorrow falling down like rain, / I await the sun again / I choose love.” —“I Choose Love,” Lindy Thompson & Mark Miller, performed by Voces Aged. The song was written in response to the 17 June 2015 mass murder at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC.

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Including 35 questions for contemplative attention

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Tempted and tried we’re oft made to wonder why it should be thus all the day long / While there are others living about us, never molested, though in the wrong. . . . / Farther along we’ll know all about it; farther along we’ll understand why / Cheer up, my brother; live in the sunshine, we’ll understand it all by and by.” —“Farther Along,” Dolly Parton

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Lent’s labor is designed as special time and attention to our own hearts and minds; to examine the work of our hands, the paths of our feet; to inquire into the ways and wherefores we give attention with our eyes and our ears; to audit our speech, whether we have been true and truthful, whether we have said too much—or too little; to scrutinize our longings and desires to see if any have breached their healthy boundaries, if some need retraining, retracting, refuting—or reviving.

But beware: Lent is not for our self-absorption or flagellation, which can be yet another form of narcissism, of pride, of conceit. The work is not a spotlight on ourselves, much less a despairing obsession with our own failings. It is the work of triangulating our attention, in alignment with and yoked to the Work of the Spirit, in a world that has forgotten its origin, its promise, its purpose.

Lenten observance is simply the recognition, followed by corrective measures, that pipes can get clogged; moving parts need lubrication; rust appear on metal; bodies, in need of medical intervention; cracks exposed and rot replaced.

Remembering that you are dust is not an insult, for such is the very stuff of the universe, ordered and animated in God’s own delight. Do not grovel! Simply allow your compass to be adjusted, as needed.

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Hymn of petition. “You who went before us, / furthest into the unease, / help us to find you, / Lord, in the darkness.” —English translation to the first stanza of the Swedish hymn, “Du som gick före oss, (Psalm 74)” performed by Voces8

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35 questions for contemplative attention

We all need helpful hints on how Lent’s labor can be carried out. There are many—none are foolproof. What follows are some suggested questions to ponder in your own solitude or in conversation with others. Asking the right question is often essential to arriving at the right answer. You may not find what you need here, but in considering them, you might formulate your own.

1. Can we be faithful without becoming arrogant
2. Can we be generous without recreating relations of control and manipulation on the one hand and dependency and servility on the other?
3. Can we be compassionate without seeking publicity?
4. Can we be patient without becoming passive?
5. Can we be angry without becoming vengeful?
6. Can we become agents of reform without becoming brokers of imposition?
7. Can we be hopeful without being sentimental?
8. Can we weep with those who weep while also rejoicing with those who rejoice
9. Can we offer mercy without ignoring the need for repairing harmed relations?
10. Can we act kindly without becoming passive aggressive?
11. Can we be prophetic without becoming merciless?
12. Can we publicly, even vociferously, demand public justice without becoming self-righteous?
13. Can we excavate the root causes of violence in the world while also doing that work in our own hearts and minds?
14. Can we be forgiving without collecting IOUs?
15. Can we perceive the connection between our efforts at disarming the nations with the work of disarming the human heart?
16. Can we be joyful without being triumphalist?
17. Can we tearfully express our grief and anguish without languishing in the solitude of lethargy and indolence?
18. Can we pledge ourselves to faithful communities without allowing such vows to be transfigured into mobbish, nativist, or insular conduct?
19. Can we recognize that in leaving “Egypt” behind, we also have to dethrone the lingering presence of “Pharaoh” within our own hearts.
20. Can we rediscover God’s passion for the flourishing of the natural world—see ourselves as located within, not dominating from without—thereby recognizing our need for repentance and turn toward repairing and protecting the created order?
21. Can we discern the different but connected needs of providing emergency aid to the suffering as well as the need for opposition to policies which make charity necessary? Engaging in the charitable work of binding wounds, providing shelter and adequate clothing and nutrition and health care—but also deconstructing and reconstructing structures and policies which are the root cause of such deprivations?
22. Can our hands and feet be deployed in the work of resistance to injustice without resorting to clinched fists or trampling boots? To guard against becoming beastly in our struggle with beasts?
23. Can we be “still”—embraced by grace that generates calmness in the midst of torrents—without becoming indifferent?
24. Can we affirm that God is more taken with the agony of the Earth than with the ecstasy of Heaven—employing that affirmation as a plumb line to appraise all that we do and say and think?
25. Can we think of ourselves less rather than thinking less of ourselves?
26. Acknowledging we all have blind spots, unexamined presumptions, privileges of which we are unaware (especially those of us in the majority caste), how can we open ourselves to experiences which might expose our privileges—not for punishment but for reparation, for the growth of our understanding and the stretching of our hearts?
27. Can we conceive of the “good life” for ourselves as that life extending to an ever-widening circle of kinship?
28. Can we imagine that in our revolt against an economic system, which centers human greed, we need to do the hard work of imagining and constructing a new system which centers human need?
29. Can we revive the conviction that faith in the Manner of Jesus entails a bet-your-assets commitment.
30. Can we get to the point of understanding there is no sacred and secular, only sacred and desecrated?
31. Do we have the needed imagination to affirm that one day all shall go out in joy and be led back in peace, the mountains bursting in song, the trees in applause? (cf. Isaiah 55:12).
32. How can we shape our communities of conviction so that pastoral work is not segregated from prophetic engagement (and vice versa)?
33. Is our faith buoyant enough to withstand squalls of doubt? (They will come.) Our hope, resilient enough to endure seasons of despair? (Those storms will arrive, sometimes without warning.) Our love, sufficiently robust to survive contagions of anger and resentment? (Infections are common.)
34. Can we be confessional without being colonial? Might digging deeper into our specific tradition of faith—its history, its language, its insights—be more successful than neutering ourselves? And can we do this without demanding that others, even our collaborators in the work toward a Beloved Community, adopt our identity?
35. How best can we adopt this pastoral advice from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. Just keep moving forward”? In the end, that all we are asked.

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Benediction. “All this pain / I wonder if I’ll ever find my way / I wonder if my life could really change at all / All this earth / Could all that is lost ever be found / Could a garden come up from this ground at all? / You make beautiful things / You make beautiful things out of the dust / You make beautiful things / You make beautiful things out of us.” —“Beautiful Things,” Gungor

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Ken Sehested

Mardi Gras processional. “Jubilee Stomp.” —Tuba Skinny

Ash Wednesday invocation. “When Love Meets Dust” —Alana Levandoski

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A couple years ago I had an email exchange with my friend, Phillip. He ended with:

And today we wear the ashes. I’m always humbled. Especially when I as pastor “impose the ashes” on people I love. (Impose? Really? Oh God)

And I replied:

Oh, great insight re. the word “imposition,” whose root meaning is “inflict, deceive.” It’s an unfortunate word to be associated with Ash Wednesday’s ritual.

Except . . . maybe . . . if the imposition is actually “the world’s” demand that we recognize the authority of and justification for crucifixion—and to be intentionally marked with ash is a sign of resistance to that imposition. It is a holy act of defiance: “I, too, am a follower of this Way! Take me if you dare, if you must; do your worst. I will not renounce. Your threat of imposition will not deter me.”

And then, in my imagination, we repeat these lines from Daniel 3, addressed to the Babylonian ruler, who threatened the non-compliant with being tossed into a fiery furnace:

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to present a defense to you in this matter [of bowing down to worship your golden statue].  If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.’”

It is the great nevertheless of faith. The defiant come-what-may. The provocative we-shall-not-be-moved. . . except when our moving is out of Pharaoh’s bondage; moving out of Herod’s reach and Caesar’s interdiction; out of step with every royal assumption; and moving on in disobedience to every hierarchy of race and class, gender and caste; ever refusing to back down in the face of these pretenders claiming divine right or historical necessity.

All of these refutations accompany the great affirmation which is Ash Wednesday’s mark of rebellion against every despot who seeks to annul Heaven’s intention for Earth’s reclamation. Such is the terror of God sounding in the tyrannical ears of all who believe death has the last word.

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Biblical anthropology

Some in the community of faith are repulsed by the Ash Wednesday smudging. It’s not hard to imagine why, as if what God demands of us is self-abasement (if not self-mutilation—do a web search for images associated with the word penitence and a great many show people literally lacerating their own bodies).

No doubt a good bit of this theological mischief is due to notions like original sin or The Fall or its escalation in the Protestant Reformation to total depravity. You would think the sola scriptura folk would reject such language since none of these words appear as such in the Bible.

The history behind original sin theologizing is a labyrinthine jumble of complex conjugations piled this way and that, abstractions galore, tortured logic and hair splitting around every corner, littered with obscure, exotic rhetoric amid a cascade of mutual condemnations between its defenders. Shakespeare himself might apply his famous line of “full of sound and fury signifying nothing” to this hot mess of specious tomfoolery.

Nevertheless, it is true that Scripture doesn’t shy away from documenting the scale of brutality humans are capable of. Sometimes in grisly detail—read the story of the unnamed concubine in Judges 19 or the petitions in Psalm 139. And in the Newer Testament, one of Jesus’ closest confidants betrays him, and another, allegedly upon whom the church is built, flagrantly denied even knowing Jesus three times before breakfast.

We are a shaky lot. Rare the exemplar, common the culprit. Our collective, bloodstained trail of infamy goes all the way back to the first family in creation, when Cain slew his brother Abel. Scripture’s opinion on humanity’s character is tangled.

For sure, on the one hand, it is recorded that “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” and “for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth” (Genesis 6:5 & 8:21). On the other hand, “God created humankind in [God’s] own image” (Genesis 1:27).

On the one hand, it says “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5).  On the other, “I praise you [O God], because I am awesomely and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).

On the one hand, “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it” (Jeremiah 17:9)? On the other, “You have made [humans] a little lower than angels, and crowned them with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5).

On the one hand, “None are righteous; no, not one” (Romans 3:10, echoing Psalm 14:3). On the other, “The Lord your God rejoices over you . . . exults over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17) and “The dwelling place of God is among humankind (Revelation 21:3).

 Therefore, how, and in what way, are we to welcome our ashen mark as the inauguration of Lent’s observance?

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Consider these instructions for the onset of Lent’s journey

The work of Lent involves both how we allow ourselves to be shaped by, and how we participate with, the power of the Spirit in a world that has lost its way. The Lenten season is traditionally understood as our own metaphorical venture into the wilderness of our own hearts, where we wrestle with demons, and are waited on by angels.

The journey into and through our own heart circles back into the wilderness of history’s wayward affairs as agents of healing worldly wounds and wastrel dispositions. The foretaste of Love makes us lovers, and such belovedness thereby incrementally interrupts the spirals of disdain and violence that flow from inherited trauma, affliction, and misery.

The trek through Lenten practice is not comfy and may test our limits. It is not for our affliction but to clarity our affection. Our annunciation is that of Mary’s, whose exclamation of praise doubles as a denunciation and indictment of the present world’s disorder.

Jan Richardson writes a blessing based on Jesus being baptized, hearing God call him “Beloved,” and then the Holy Spirit immediately driving him into the wilderness for forty days. In her blessing, she reminds us that during this journey, it is crucial to remember our identity as God’s Beloved:

“If you would enter into the wilderness,
do not begin without a blessing.
Do not leave without hearing who you are:
Beloved, named by the One
who has traveled this path before you.”

Add to this a primordial memory: The first doctrine of Scripture is God’s absolute delight with Creation. That original blessing has certainly been obscured the first couple’s expulsion from the Garden and history’s subsequent wreckage; but the blessing has never been retracted. We are imago dei, made in the image of God.

So, find an honored place in your soul, where you pass by frequently, to display this admonition. Put a flashing neon light as its background. Enclose this reminder as in a mezuzah on your doorpost, touching it in your goings out and your comings in. Wear it around your neck as an amulet, pressed against your skin, leaching its reminder directly into your bloodstream: fear not, fear not!

Then lace your heart with its heavy-duty boots as you venture into this wild terrain of your own soul, unvexed at the prospect of danger and fear, hunger and thirst, scorching sun and the night’s dark threat. All the while, expect that you are being tracked by the Hound of Heaven who will guide you at the edge of every precipice, who will find you, and remind you, who and Whose you are.

Live in the bare nakedness of your incompleteness, reclothed by this assurance: The Loveliest One’s own heart palpitates with delight at the very sound of your name.

So let this Word be heard among you, the Word that was present from the beginning, who now awaits to be born anew in every human heart, whose promise of deliverance stretches across the cosmos, who journeys with you in the midst of tribulation, light’s eclipse, and hope’s frailty, even to and through death’s dominion, whose demise is sure, world without end. Amen. Amen.

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Benediction. “Jesus I trust in You, / I love You, have mercy. / Deep from Your wounded heart, Pour out Your grace and mercy.” —Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles “My Mercy: A Lenten meditation”

Recessional. “God Almighty here I am / Am I where I ought to be / I’ve begun to soon descend / Like the sun into the sea / And I thank my lucky stars / From here to eternity / For the artist that you are / And the man you made of me.” —Kris Kristofferson, “Feeling Mortal”

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(or any time joy is highlighted by the day’s lection)

Ken Sehested

Processional. “Ode to Joy” (“Ode an die Freude”). —from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, flashmob performance, orchestra and choir, in a Sabadell, Spain public plaza

Invocation. “Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that come down to us from the darkness of these days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

Call to worship. “Then young women will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.” —Jeremiah 31:13

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I recently had occasion to correspond with a friend in the Republic of Georgia. Few here in the US know much about the country, on Russia’s southern border, snuggled between the Black and Caspian Sea in Caucasia. Formerly a satellite republic of the Soviet Union, declaring its independence in 1991, two of the country’s provinces have since been occupied by the Russia army since 2008 (years before Russia invaded Ukraine).

In my note, I offered an Advent benediction, wishing him “tidings of comfort and joy.”

He responded, “Unfortunately, our Advent season will not be filled with ‘tidings of joy and comfort,’ nor will Christmas, as we find ourselves engaged in an unequal struggle against the tyranny of power. Please keep us in your prayers.”

Media here rarely if ever reports the thousands of protestors nightly filling the streets for the past weeks in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, in opposition to the new prime minister (whose election is disputed), who announced the government would cease discussions of joining the European Union and instead move closer to alignment with Moscow.

Why discuss geopolitics in an article about joy?

Glad you asked.

Luke’s nativity tales squarely places Jesus’ birth in a geopolitical context: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness” (3:1-2).

Faith is mere sentiment and vacuous rhetoric if it fails to question the way things are—and is a living parable testifying to a future whose conclusion is beyond every existing premise.

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Hymn of praise. “This joy . . . this strength . . . this love . . . this peace that I have / the world didn’t give it to me / and the world can’t take it away.” —Resistance Revival Chorus, “This Joy”

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Joy is commonly associated with happiness, glee, cheeriness. And don’t we all relish these brushes with delight? (My eldest daughter’s pecan sandies are my annual Christmas season treat. When I was young, it was my Mama’s fudge.)

“What is joy when it’s not promiscuously tied to happiness, Hallmark, or hedonism?” Rose Marie Berger asked in an essay. Or elsewhere, as N.T. Wright complained, “Made for joy, we settle for pleasure.”

Consider three things about joy.

1. If joy is subsumed as pleasure, and happiness as secure bounty, the rich would have cornered the market. My experience is just the opposite: the most truly joyful people and communities I know are those whose pleasures are nominal, whose security is frequently at risk. Joy is available to those whose hands are empty of things that can be purchased or produced (or stolen).
2. The capacity to risk much in devotion to the Beloved Community does not come from moral heroism. Beauty, not duty, is what sustains our efforts in the face of adversity. By beauty, I mean a beatific vision, a foreshadowed glimpse of what the psalmist mentions, “I believe that I shall see the goodness of God in the land of the living (27:13); of the day when wolf and lamb will lie together peacefully (Isaiah 11:6); when swords will be forged into plowshares (Micah 4:3); when outcasts are gathered (Zephaniah 3:19); when the hungry have plenty to eat and the land itself rejoices (Joel 2:19-26); when all tears will be dried and death comes undone (Isaiah 25:8, Revelation 21:4).

As Richard Foster insisted, “Joy, not grit, is the hallmark of holy obedience.” Likewise, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin asserted, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.” Joy creates and sustains the capacity to face the squall of sorrow’s assault without being crushed by it.

3. Joy is the acknowledgment that our struggles and sorrows are seen by God; that history, in the end, conspires but fails in its purpose to give us over to the invisibility of fate and certain destruction. And we humans participate in that godly work when we accompany those in desperate straits.

Our congregation is partnered with one in the small village of Oliva, Cuba. For months a group has been planning a January visit. Not as patrons (or any of the many forms of colonizing impulses) but as friends. But given what we know of the dire conditions there—severe shortages of food, electricity, gasoline, even potable water—we asked if we should reconsider, lest we be a burden. “No,” was the emphatic response from the pastor. “We need the encouragement you bring with your presence.” No doubt our takeaway will be, in the lines of that old hymn, “And the joy we share as we tarry there / None other has ever known.”

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Hymn of resolve. “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart.” —“Joy,” Latifah Phillips, in a moderated and minor keyed praise song, adds a new refrain, and splices “It Is Well With My Soul” as a coda

Word. “It’s the Joy, my friends. Our Holy Practice. That Practice of the Holy in a crazy world that doesn’t realize its own holiness.” –Marc Mullinax in a “faith story” during a Circle of Mercy Congregation service

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I responded to my Georgian friend, saying “Be assured of our vigilant intercessions; and we ask for yours, on our behalf, as well.” And continued, saying “The fruit of the poet’s ‘tidings’ is not cheeriness, but blossoms as enduring resolve to not grow weary in the face of duress and persistent threat. It is joy’s provision that keeps the heart alive, the resolve vigorous, when everywhere there is spiritual famine.” And the accompanying social disruption thereby caused.

Joy Sunday in Advent is smack dab in the middle between the season’s first Sunday and Christmas Day. It serves as a reprieve from the gravity of a dangerous birth, pagan dignitaries and field hands visits, the desperate migration of a campesino family, amid the outbreak of political intrigue and terrorism. But more than a reprieve—joy is the hinge upon which gnarled and contentious history swings: afflicted, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Corinthians 8-9). Joy calls our attention to the holiness that still persists, and enlarges our horizon to the approach of an unclouded day, when all shall reside “under their own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid” (Micah 4:4).

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Benediction. “Maybe more than anything else, to be a saint is to know joy. Not happiness that comes and goes with the moments that occasion it, but joy that is always there like an underground spring no matter how dark and terrible the night. To be a saint is to be a little out of one’s mind, which is a very good thing to be a little out of from time to time. It is to live a life that is always giving itself away and yet is always full.” —Frederick Buechner

Recessional. “After all / after all / after everything I’ve seen / thank God I still have joy. / Through the storm / And the rain / Through heartaches and pain / Thank God I still, still, still have joy.” —“I Still Have Joy,” Reverend Freakchild

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Ken Sehested

Every lit and lively season (Christmas, especially) comes, for some, with heartache, usually over the absence of a beloved whose remembrance still cuts to the quick and pickles the heart. In addition, Nativity’s season unfolded with ancient Palestine’s writhing under the oppressive heel of Rome’s imperial boot. The poem below is set in these parallel moods.

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Do not fear grief. She comes, unbidden, with a word hard
but essential. The rocks beneath your feet are bruising and
unrelenting. The wind, sharp as a razor. The moon casts
threatening shadows, each a hissing dragon or fearsome
reaper’s scythe.

The dark throws its spell and bids you to bow and shiver.
Neither bow nor quake. Let every weak knee be steeled; every
back, steadied; every mind, restored; every tongue, loosed;
every arm declaring its strength. Say to the rocks: Do you best!
Speak to the dark: Take me, if you dare. Say to the moon:

Your light is for lovers, not thieves. To the meadows and
mounts that witness this interrogation, say: Speak the truth.
To the streams and rivers who run, say: Your wet wonder
precedes all living. To the friends who scatter, say: Be gone.
To those who linger, say: Give me your blessing. For under grief’s

skirt are angels who say: You are enough. Who say: You have
what is needed. Who say: The years lost to the locusts will be
restored. Who say: Weeping endures for the night, but joy
comes in the morning. The Promise and Presence of such joy,
sustained by the One who can neither be named nor tamed,

runs deeper, farther, surer than every sorrow-sullied current
or casting wave. Give yourself to the bewildering news of Earth’s
upside-down, inside-out future and the begetting power of the
bewilding Spirit, alternately comforting and afflicting in
accordance to the terms of the reconfiguring covenant uplifting

the lowly and toppling the pretentious. Stake your life in this
Promise. Abide in this Presence. Align your attention with this
Purpose. Join the caroling community whose anthems of praise
—in the face of threat—disclaim every tear’s stain and death’s
reign, world without end. Amen.

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Ken Sehested

¶ Processional. “Who then shall stir in this darkness, / prepare for joy in the winter night. / Mortal in darkness we lie down blindhearted, / seeing no light. / Lord, give us grace to awake us, / to see the branch that begins to bloom; / in great humility is hid all heaven / in a little room.” —“What Is the Crying at Jordan,” The Miserable Offenders

¶ Invocation. “Let us consider how to incite one another to love and good works . . . encouraging one another. . . .” —Hebrews 10:24-25

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I can think of no better set of New Year’s resolutions than this trilogy:

1. Resolve to be a minister of encouragement.

The ministry of encouragement is the most overlooked, least expensive and most effective thing we can do for each other. It takes no special training, no claim to authority or office, no brilliance of mind or eloquence of speech. Only an awareness that courage is contagious.

In particular though—if you are a member of a congregation whose pastor(s) is a source of nurture, send them a note of encouragement. Being a clergyperson has always been a challenge, but even more so in this cultural context. Here’s a note we just sent to our pastors:

“In case you don’t hear this enough: We are deeply grateful for the many ways you each bring insight, comfort, and inspiration—week after week, through the text and to the world, in both high holy and ordinary days, in spoken words, sung lyrics, prayerful invocation, and shared engagement—not to mention the innumerable hours you spend orchestrating the gifts of others in the Circle who also have testimony and discernment and energy with which to animate our little flock of Jesus.”

[For more see “The ministry of encouragement”.]

2. Resolve to keep seek opportunities to actively resist the marketers of fear and to be an advocate for public justice—in whatever ways those engagements cross your path, and however daunting the steep climb needed for a flourishing community, in ways bold and bodacious or incremental and behind the scenes. Yes, ours is a threatening age, given the prospect of climate collapse, the implosion of democratic institutions, the continuing scourge of racial animus and economic inequality, to name just a few. But despair is often a disguised form of narcissism. Get over yourself, and give in to something bigger, more grand than consumer indulgence and entertainment.

And in so doing, consider this invitation from Rivera Sun, novelist, activist, trainer in nonviolent social change: “There is a place between passivity and violence. I’ll meet you there.”

3. Resolve to be an intercessor. If that sounds overly pious, that’s because our language has been hijacked. Here’s how New Testament scholar and activist Walter Wink speaks of such work:

“Intercessory prayer is spiritual defiance of what is in the way of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current forces. History belongs to the intercessors. . . . By means of our intercessions we veritably cast fire upon the earth and trumpet the future into being.”

It is primarily in our communal worship—however formal or folksy, however clearly defined or fluid the membership—that we practice such imagination. It is from others that we receive crucial information about who we are, the contour of our gifts, and when and where to practice them. We are not autonomous, self-made, solitaries or sovereigns, but rather are built for relation and communion. Not even the dirt is self-made: A single gram of forest soil can contain as many as a billion bacteria, up to a million fungi, hundreds of thousands of protozoans, and nearly a thousand roundworms.

It is no cause for qualm that we are each such small creatures in the scheme of things. Rather, it is a wondrous revelation that we are part of such a colossal unfolding of spirit into flesh, flesh into spirit. Reweaving the torn and mangled parts, however anear or afar, is our joyful calling.

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Hymn of resolve. “I Wanna Be Ready,” Amos Machanic.

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             3.5. Finally, the point-five: Instead of a fourth recommendation, because this one is neither the same
as the third nor is it separate, unmoored, or optional.

In the course of our intercessions, concrete possibilities for interdiction will open, when we actively, in sometimes granular detail, and fearlessly work to forestall the powers of shaming and maiming and nudge, however incrementally, beggarly life toward its promised flourishing, when “each will sit ‘neath their own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid” (Micah 4:4).

It is an exculpatory illusion to say “I love everybody.” Nobody loves everybody. You can only love this one, that one, the other one. Love requires the expenditure of assets—time, attention, security, reputation—and (I say with constant regret) we all have limits.

We each invest our paltry assets as best we know how, and make adjustments or redirection as circumstances indicate. The goal remains: that, someday, scarcity gives way to bounty, sorrow gives way to rejoicing, the hungry are fed and suppressive thrones will tumble. Our primordial mothers—Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-10) and Mary (Luke 1:46-53)—testify to this uprising of Heaven’s intent for Earth’s reconstitution.

So we live, as best we can and with all our imperfections, as if this truth is even now springing from the ground. And we pray: Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

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Benediction. “A prayer for the New Year.” (2:30 video)

Recessional. “Benedictus.” —Karl Jenkins from “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace,” performed by Hauser with the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir Zvjezdice  of Zagreb, Croatia

[For more on the topic of new year’s resolutions, see “New Year’s Resolutions: Promise-making in response to the Word of God”]

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Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza

Ken Sehested

“For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you shall
burst into song, the trees in applause.”
—Isaiah 55:12

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Prelude. “I don’t know how my mother walked her trouble down / I don’t know how my father stood his ground / I don’t know how my people survive slavery / I do remember, that’s why I believe. . . . / My God calls to me in the morning dew / The power of the universe, It knows my name / Gave me a song to sing and sent me on my way / I raise my voice for justice, I believe…” —“I Remember, I Believe,” Sweet Honey In the Rock

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One of the great misfortunes in believing communities is the segregation of pastoral and prophetic vocations. As if you have to choose; as if, for pastors, you want to keep your job. As if being civil (“friendly”) is the highest Christian virtue.

It is certainly true that it is difficult to affect people’s attitudes and behaviors if you do not love them, if you are unavailable in moments of crisis (and celebration). And many of those moments, especially the unpleasant ones, do not occur in timely sequence or on orderly schedule.

Being call “prophetic” may seem complimentary; but it often is a polite way of saying “you make me uncomfortable.” And making people uncomfortable, is . . . well . . . pretty close to uncivil and unfriendly. You may get some begrudging admiration; but it doesn’t make people want to hang out with you.

When I was an organizer on justice and peace matters, a pastor asked me to preach while he was away. It was a complement, his church being a prominent one. But he ended his note of invitation saying “you can come stir things up and I’ll return to settle them down.”

Or earlier, when my focus was on the scourge of world hunger and food insecurity, I was asked to spend a weekend with a congregation, doing training and then preach on Sunday morning. The training was focused on helping a small group in the congregation find “handles” to get involved in their own location. (See “Pastoral Principles for Prophetic People.”)

Building on strategies for actual engagements with impoverished communities (theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez once commented: “So you love the poor? Name them.”), we explored the necessity for setting one’s local situation with larger national and international institutions, policies, and practices. Doing analysis is important: comprehending the structural forces which create poverty is essential if we are to move beyond charity to the work of justice.

I had several good conversations with the family who housed and fed me during this weekend. So much so that near the end of our time together, the wife admitted she was very nervous about what meals to prepare.

“I wondered if you subsisted on bean sprouts and tofu.”

Laughing, I said “No, locusts and honey.”

I doubt John the Baptizer got many guest preacher invitations; even fewer invites to Sunday dinner.

As the popular aphorism says, if you give a person a fish, they can eat for a day; but if you show them how to fish, they will eat for a lifetime. Which isn’t true: To flourish, they need fishing gear; transportation to a market; regulatory enforcement so that buyers do not exploit those who provide commodities; plus a trade network, with fair wages and just profits, to bring goods to a larger public, thus providing a reliable and sustainable circuit of production and consumption.

Then, of course, the training involved sitting these engagements and analysis within our spiritual tradition. There are some 2,000 biblical texts that insist on God’s special concern for the poor, the marginalized, those with no seat at the table of Creation’s bounty—a reality which God has promised to abolish. The point is, we undertake this advocacy not because we’re committed liberals but because this work is rooted in God’s pathos which, according to Scripture, is to be reflected in those walking in the Way of Jesus. Or as St. Augustine said so concisely, “We imitate whom we adore.”

I’m not keen on the framework of “inner” and “outer” when it comes to personal and public spirituality. But I can’t think of an alternative. The one sense in which I am still an evangelical—the one and only sense—is my conviction that human hearts must be disarmed as well as nations. Decisions about “horses” and “houses” (biblical metaphors for war and wealth) are deeply rooted in the human hearts. (See “Horses, housing, and human hearts: Giving your heart to Jesus will make you odd.”)

Spiritual formation is a lifelong process. Among my favorite quotes is from the legendary migrant labor organizer and proponent of nonviolent struggle, Cesar Chavez, who wrote, “I am a violent man learning to be nonviolent.”

The pastoral vocation, if it is to be effective, entails the need for prophetic disclosure, which is often discomfiting, even controversial. The prophetic vocation, to be efficacious, must include attention to the pastoral needs of its constituency—and the refusal to demonize opponents.

Early on in my organizing career (later confirmed in my role as a local church pastor), I learned that helping people find needed resources in pursuit of their gospel passions, helping them connect with others who share their convictions, was laying the groundwork for a larger mobilization designed to thwart the rule of public corruption and exploitive policies. Such work requires much patience and perseverance. You never know in advance when the “ripe” moment arrives for large scale change. And most do not live to experience that breakthrough.

This is pastoral work, and the vast majority of my time (in addition to funding a nonprofit) was consumed with this work. This work creates the building blocks which are ready, when the moment arrives, to mobilize in publicly dramatic ways.

Likely the least remembered quote from Dr. King is among his best insights: “Our most powerful nonviolent weapon is, as would be expected, also our most demanding, that is organization. To produce change, people must be organized to work together in units of power.”

It’s true that the strategies and tactics of pastoral work differ from those of prophetic work. And some people are better at one than the other. But it is essential that we build communities who know and understand that to meet the challenges we face, both of these practices must be engaged, must work in tandem, must discern at any given moment what is the timely need and emphasis and focus.

Of course, conflictive encounters arise both in interpersonal and in highly public encounters. A modern framing of the older construct contrasting pastoral and prophetic work in this regard is referred to (particularly in feminist and anti-racist training) as “calling in” and “calling out.” (See “Calling In and Calling Out Guide.”)  There are times that conflict should be dealt with, at least initially, one-on-one or in small groups; other times, what’s called for is a very public form of reprimand. Both methodologies have risks. Discerning which to do when isn’t always simple or easy.

Nevertheless, be clear about this, as South African Bishop Desmond Tutu insisted: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

§  §  §

What stimulated the essay above was the desire to post two very different pieces of writing.

The first one—“Buttered hot biscuits,” a riff on Romans 12:9-21—is a litany composed for use as the call to worship in my congregation.

The second is an excerpt from a stunning essay by Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American historian, one of the world’s leading authorities on Holocaust studies who is also a veteran of the Israeli Defense Force. One long paragraph in his article—“As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel”—is a stark, utterly discomfiting summary of the impunity of ranking Israeli politicians regarding the war in Gaza.

These two pieces couldn’t be more different. But both speak to the questions of who we are? What time is this? Why we are needed? And for what and where?

[As a reminder of that war’s present casualties: More than 40,000 Gazans killed, more than 16,000 of them children; nearly 100,000 injured; at least 10,000 missing. Israeli citizens and soldiers killed: 335. Israelis injured: 6,465.}

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Buttered hot biscuits
Inspired by Romans 12:9-21

Sisters and brothers: Before we get down to business, wrestling with what the Spirit has to say today, let’s do some stretching exercises. Don’t want any muscle strains in the house of the Beloved. Easy does it—bend and stretch and tip-toe fetch.

• Love from your devotion, not from your ambition.
• Be quick to praise, slow to blame.
• Don’t quit in hard times. Show what you’re made of.
• Practice hospitality—without issuing debt.
• Laugh ‘til you cry with friends in their rejoicing; cry ‘til you laugh with those doubled in grief.
• Don’t wrestle with pigs. It only makes them mad and makes you muddy.
• Be relentless in prayer, patient in pardoning, quick to encourage, and urgent to amend.
• Don’t fight fire with fire—let your baptismal waters do their work.
• Settle old scores with buttered hot biscuits.

Now the warm-ups are over. Ready to break a sweat?

Descend, Holy Spirit. Take us to the mat.

—Ken Sehested

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“Two days after the [7 October 2023] Hamas attack, defence minister Yoav Gallant declared, ‘We are fighting human animals, and we must act accordingly,’ later adding that Israel would ‘break apart one neighbourhood after another in Gaza’. Former prime minister Naftali Bennett confirmed: ‘We are fighting Nazis.’ Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu exhorted Israelis to ‘remember what Amalek has done to you’, alluding to the biblical call to exterminate Amalek’s ‘men and women, children and infants’. [See 1 Samuel 5:1-3, where Samuel tells King Saul that God has ordered the extermination of the Amalekites, men, women, children, even animals.] In a radio interview, he said about Hamas: ‘I don’t call them human animals because that would be insulting to animals.’ Deputy Knesset speaker Nissim Vaturi wrote on X that Israel’s goal should be ‘erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth’. On Israeli TV he stated, ‘There are no uninvolved people … we must go in there and kill, kill, kill. We must kill them before they kill us.’ Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich stressed in a speech, ‘The work must be completed … Total destruction. Blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.’ Avi Dichter, agriculture minister and former head of the Shin Bet intelligence service, spoke about ‘rolling out the Gaza Nakba’. [In 1948 over 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes, or fled for their lives, from the land that is now the Nation of Israel]. One Israeli 95-year-old military veteran, whose motivational speech to IDF troops preparing for the invasion of Gaza exhorted them to ‘wipe out their memory, their families, mothers and children’, was given a certificate of honour by Israeli president Herzog for ‘providing a wonderful example to generations of soldiers’. No wonder that there have been innumerable social media posts by IDF troops in Gaza calling to ‘kill the Arabs’, ‘burn their mothers” and ‘flatten’ Gaza.”—The Guardian

 

[See also my own recent conclusion, “When discussing the war in Gaza, we must ask the question about genocide.”]

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Benediction

Our journey with the Spirit leads us into the Earth’s pathos, reflecting that same pathos which afflicts Heaven. But all is not suffering. In the cracks and crevices springs Resurrection Day’s promise of joy. Of wonderment and reverential awe. An alleluia! sounds as signal that, finally, death shall not have the last word; that the meek will be the true inheritors of the earth; that the day hastens when enmity (including its eventual blossom as war) will no longer be learned or celebrated or calibrated. We find ways, however modestly or dramatically, to locate ourselves in compassionate proximity to those who most fervently longing for that sound. The very hills signal the advance of that Great Coming, with the trees breaking forth in applause. On that Bright Morning all tears will be dried; mourning will dissipate; and death will be no more in the boundaries of the new heaven and the new earth. (See Revelation 21:1-4)

We ourselves may not live to see that day. (See Hebrews 11:39) But in no way is our labor in vain, for in the midst of this present tribulation, joy girds our loins, shores wobbly knees, restores weak arms, and renews weary feet. For this is the buoyant, persevering, unquenchable resolve of God’s love.

In the immortal words of Stephen Stills: “Carry on; love is coming. Love is coming for us all.”

§  §  §

Postlude. “Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet, / which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace. / Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat; / to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease. / In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears; / nor let his eye see sin, but through my tears.” —“Drop, Drop, Slow Tears,” Orlando Gibbons, Tennebrae Choir

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