Author Archives: elizabeth.turner

Children Adrift: The Old Testament

Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said. – Exodus 2:1-6

I do not think I’ve ever heard someone preach on the compassion of Pharoah’s daughter. She also strikes me as a savvy woman. She came face to face with a squalling infant who was suffering because of her father’s decree to kill the Hebrew infants and toddlers who could potentially pose a future threat to the Egyptian way of life. She probably surmised precisely who the young girl was half-hidden in the reeds near the basket. She knew it was a Hebrew baby; here was a nearby young girl. Not only did Moses’ birth mother get to raise him while he was young, she was now paid to do so. Yes, Pharoah’s daughter was compassionate, and savvy.

I don’t know if she was able to intervene in the fate of other little baby boys; maybe she saved the one she could. Maybe she was haunted by the fates of the ones she couldn’t.

Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba.

When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she began to sob.

God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid;God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. – Genesis 21:14-20

Hagar didn’t ask to sleep with Abraham. She was a servant, and Sarah, impatient and distrustful of God’s promise, lent her to Abraham. But Sarah couldn’t put away her jealousy of Hagar’s son, even after having her own. She wanted Hagar to go. Hagar didn’t get autonomy over her own body, and once she had a son, the injustices continued. With no secure future, she was sent away.

Yet what a tender passage we encounter: she is sobbing, she cannot bear the notion of watching her son die. And this little slave woman and her beloved son do not escape God’s notice. What’s the matter, Hagar? Don’t be afraid.

Later, Pharoah’s daughter will hear a young one crying and feel sorry for him. Here, God hears a young one crying under a bush, and responds as well.

The king asked, “Is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?”

Ziba answered the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet.” So King David had him brought from Lo Debar, from the house of Makir son of Ammiel. When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor. David said, “Mephibosheth!” “At your service,” he replied.

“Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.” Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”

Then the king summoned Ziba, Saul’s steward, and said to him, “I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. You and your sons and your servants are to farm the land for him and bring in the crops, so that your master’s grandson may be provided for. And Mephibosheth, grandson of your master, will always eat at my table.” 

And Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, because he always ate at the king’s table; he was lame in both feet. – II Samuel 9:3-13

Mephibosheth was five years old when the news about his dad and granddad came. While David was mourning the loss of his best friend, Jonathan, Jonathan’s son was being spirited away by his nurse, to protect him in the political upheaval; but in her hurry, Mephibosheth fell and was disabled the rest of his life: the little boy’s feet would never work again. On top of the tragedy of his father dying, he would equate receiving the news with the loss of being able to properly run, jump, and play.

Mephibosheth was a child of tragedy and grief, through no fault of his own. He didn’t ask to be in the middle of political upheaval; he didn’t choose his family, he wasn’t old enough to weigh in on their decisions.

But David wants to “show God’s kindness” to any lingering survivors of Saul’s line. He restores property; he ensures income and livelihood; he bestows honor by issuing a standing invitation to supper, any time. David can’t erase Mephibosheth’s past, but he can ensure a future of dignity and safety. And he can make sure that Mephibosheth’s family is provided for.

The cries of other sons had been heard by God, had been heard by a Pharoah’s daughter. David went searching for a child whose cries had faded, if the injuries to spirit and body had not.

In a basket; under a bush; in the arms of a nurse.

The lost children of the Old Testament were not overlooked by God.

Children Adrift: The Western Hemisphere

Currently in the United States of America, immigrant parents are being separated from their children. No law requires this.

It can be difficult for American citizens with quick access to WiFi to imagine life with dubious communication connections; frequently immigrants to the United States have incomplete or inaccurate information about what lies ahead, what policies they will face, how much money they’ll have to pay to whom.

Some parents are trying to get their kids away from cartel violence, food shortages, and political upheaval. In Venezuela, children are starving to death. In Guatemala, the raid of one workplace in the U.S. can directly affect the sustenance of an entire village.

Children Adrift: A Messiah for Families

In a time when Americans often suffer compassion fatigue, seeing footage of wildfires and hurricanes, volcano eruptions and war, school shootings and tragedy, we are called to step back and reflect. Frequently in the Gospels we read of a Messiah gone AWOL: frustrated disciples search high and low, scout around town, attempting to find Jesus. In these moments, he had always withdrawn to pray in quiet away from the frequent chaos that surrounded him.

When Jesus encountered people swept up in debate or confusion about ethics or religious laws or the will of God, he invited them into the insight and truth he centered on in those times of prayer. Often, he met their questions with stories.

“Who is my neighbor?”

“Once, a man was traveling…”

In these teaching moments, Jesus was stretching the moral imaginations of his hearers. He took them from a narrow question to a broad principle, by way of illustrating vivid characters. Jesus’ responses may as well have been prefaced with the phrase, “imagine this…”

Over on First Things, Jonathan Jones describes the strengths and virtues of moral imagination: “a uniquely human ability to conceive of fellow humanity as moral beings and as persons, not as objects whose value rests in utility or usefulness.” This is a profound challenge: to conceive of other humans as persons, not as objects useful or unuseful to us. Neighbor implies valuable personhood, not just asset or liability. To be fully human, Jones posits, is, “to embrace the duties and obligations toward a purpose of security and endurance for, first and foremost, the family and the local community.”

This personhood is woven in the most essential fabric of human existence, the family. To deny family is to deny personhood. To deny personhood is to relegate people to existence as asset or liability in a ledger. But to deny recognition of personhood to another is also to undermine our own humanity, because, as Jones asserts, moral imagination is a uniquely human ability.

Jesus was a Messiah who saw families: frantic parents like Jairus asked him to heal their children; young kids offered their fish Happy Meals to him, which he happily multiplied and fed the masses with. When the disciples tried to remind parents how important Jesus was, he stopped them, and said, “let the little kids come over.” To stuffy adults, he sternly reminded them that to enter the Kingdom of God, one had to become like a child.

Jesus constantly reframed the questions his followers threw at him. He challenged the edges of their imagination, coaxing them to a place of empathy. Imagine this, he’d say: your neighbor is the Samaritan you fear who saves you from robbers on a barren road and pays for your recovery; maybe the person you distrust will be the means of your survival. Maybe the dynamic between you will be turned upside-down and you’ll end up receiving, not just sacrificing and giving.

Today, what do we as Christians believe about who God is?

We see that God cares about moms and children who have had an unfair life and are left out in the cold without resources.

We see that God allowed a savvy, compassionate woman and a completely vulnerable infant to encounter each other in a river in ancient Egypt, restoring the baby to his worried mama and preparing him for leadership later.

We see that God intersected David’s life in such a way that David knew and trusted God’s kindness and wanted to show God’s kindness to the devastated survivors of warfare, a family ripped apart at the seams.

We see that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, valued the personhood of sons and daughters, moms and dads, and saw their lives as valuable and worth intervention.

We see that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, constantly pivoted questions away from the concerns of the asker and toward the concerns of those being asked about. Jesus Christ celebrated the humanity, the personhood, of those who were deemed a liability.

In continuity with God-who-heard-a-child-crying-under-a-bush, in continuity with God-who-made-his-way-to-the-dying-daughter-of-Jairus, today, we affirm that families matter to God; that children have personhood and value, and that to willfully separate parents from their children and children from their parents is to deface our own “uniquely human ability to conceive of fellow humanity as moral beings and as persons, not as objects whose value rests in utility or usefulness.”

We affirm the beauty of parenthood, the value of childhood, and the imperative to honor both. We appreciate the parenthood of Mary and Joseph, the childhood of the toddler Jesus, and the care Jesus extended to his mother while he was dying by crucifixion.

We grieve violence, food shortage, corruption of leaders, and lack of infrastructure that places families in the impossible scenario of weighing whether their children will be safer in their home towns or migrating to a new place. We agree with Jesus that it would be better to have a millstone around the neck and to be thrown into the sea than to deliberately hurt and harm a child.

We pray that a robust vision of the value of human life will prevail over short-term practices that separate kids from their dads and moms. We pray that a holistic value of human life will stretch from dangerous school hallways to full social services for impoverished pregnant women, from holistic crisis pregnancy centers to bleak nursing home hallways, from law enforcement encounters with people of color to immigrant detention centers.

We reject notions that ease us into giving up our moral imaginations, like the necessity of evil “for the greater good,” the necessity of social “collateral damage,” the necessity of inflicting damage on others’ families in order to prevent potential future harm on our own.

We condemn the use of human lives as pawns in political maneuvering when done by any portion of the political spectrum. We celebrate expressions of immigration policy that maintain the dignity and God-given value of every individual human life.

We know that the government of the United States is separate from any one religious body. But we pray that current and future government officials and representatives will recall the ethical principles at work in many world religions and that often guide our common life together in the public square of our democratic republic. Our grand experiment in the United States cannot succeed without a robust appreciation of individual personhood existing in the fabric of family.

And so, we stand, sit, and kneel with those who are crying for their children and their parents; we pray for peace, stability, and opportunity in their home countries; and we pray for wisdom for the leaders who have the power and the moment to create humane policies, if they will only have the imagination to do so.

It happens to all of us.

An old song or movie comes on, and somewhere, out of the depths of your dusty brain, a reflex kicks in. Before you know it, you’re singing words you didn’t know you remembered, or you’re quoting a line right before the actor says it. It’s like muscle memory, hidden deep beneath years of doctor appointments and oil changes, underneath coworker extension numbers and how far Abraham Lincoln was in the line of U.S. Presidents (he was 16th).

It’s startling to remember something you’d forgotten you knew. It comes like an unexpected flash, a glimpse into the mysterious world of the subconscious. Therapists are familiar with the phenomenon when a person accidentally spills into a verbalized assumption they’ve only ever tacitly held.

It’s amazing what our brain soaks up and “learns” even – or especially – when we’re not particularly trying to learn anything at all.

A few years back during a dark night of the soul, I rediscovered this truth. Hymns I’d long forgotten popped up unbidden in my thoughts. Scripture verses I’d forgotten I’d memorized as a child emerged out of nowhere. Prayers I’d learned, spoken by thousands of Christians over centuries, rooted my thoughts when I didn’t have the words.

I was remembering Scripture I’d forgotten I knew. To make domestic allusions, it was like finding pre-prepared dinners tucked in the bottom of the chest freezer; it was like finding a savings account put aside and forgotten; it was like finding just what you needed, right when you needed it.

These gifts of grace were just that: gifts, and grace. Teachers, VBS leaders, pastors, evangelists, my mom – they’d patiently told Bible stories, reviewed memory verses, repeated sermon texts. These were gifts to my soul, and they seeped down into my incredibly flexible, sponge-like little kid and adolescent brain. And they were grace: tokens of truth, strength, clarity, and peace, pointing to who God is, who God says we are, and how we can live on this planet. They were grace: mending broken times, calming troubled thoughts, infusing confusion with direction, sharing Divine love in human lack.

In my early years, when difficulties were relatively minor, by the grace of God and the kindness of many people, my mind was tucked with notes for later. When later came, and I didn’t have the mental energy to flip open my Bible and read for myself, Scripture was already buried deep in my mind, and it sprang up as if it had been waiting for just this moment.

Recently another Wesleyan Accent writer wrote, “Old Dogs, New Tricks: Neuroplasticity and the Renewing of Your Mind.”

Carrie Carter wrote,

Up until the 1970’s, scientists thought that certain functions in a brain were hard-wired. Any changes that occurred were the exception. However, as technology advanced and our ability increased to study areas of the body that were previously a mystery, it was discovered that our brains have the capacity to change their connections and behavior in response to new information, sensory stimulation, development, damage, or dysfunction.

So are the concepts of being “transformed by the renewing of your mind” and neuroplasticity intertwined? I think so, and here’s how: 

Paul’s exhortation is clear. After doing a quick word study on “renew,” the word means…exactly that. There are no other substitutions in the Greek for his use of “renew.”

In the culture Paul addressed – a culture fraught with immorality, the celebration of violence, and slavery, that crossed every line – how were these new Christ-followers to actually follow Christ? Up until that point, they knew no different lifestyle. How were they to change such embedded behavioral patterns and thought processes? Why would Paul even ask this of them? 

Because Paul knew it could be done. With the help of God’s brilliance in forming the brain with capacities to change, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and years of reconditioning and retraining, Paul himself was transformed by the renewing of his mind and did a 180-degree turn in his way of living.

Wow. Carter gives us hope: those times when we have energy and flexibility to engage deeply with our faith are enormously impactful. You don’t have to have a childhood in which memory verses are soaked up in order for God’s Word to work grace in your life: your brain can still adapt, refashion and reform new pathways and neural impulses that will serve you well, both now and later.

In other words, it’s never too late to reshape your thoughts; it’s never too late to memorize a passage of Scripture; you’re never too old, even if your brain feels flabby and less quick-witted than it used to.

In fact, engaging with Scripture now may be a saving grace later that you can’t imagine.

At one point I worked in a nursing home, where pastors rarely tread. One resident mourned her inability to simply read her own Bible: a stroke had impaired her vision, and she couldn’t turn the thin pages. When I had spare moments I would slip into her room and read to her. She was so hungry for it. I’d ask, “what would you like to hear today?” “Any of it – it’s all good,” she would mumble through her impaired speech. Tears would roll down her cheeks as she heard Scripture read to her.

On a different hallway, I once entered the room of a woman I thought was completely mentally absent. Even though I always tried to assume residents could comprehend more than they were able to communicate, I just knew this woman wasn’t communicating and was slipping into the twilight on the borders of death. But I went anyway and began to read from a Psalm.

Tears rolled down my cheeks in shock as she opened her eyes and spoke the words, long hidden in her brain, along with me. I thought I had chosen a Psalm at random. I tried to talk with her when the Psalm was done, but as soon as it was finished, she receded back into the twilight and said no more.

Have you remembered anything you forgot you knew? Has some long-buried truth emerged after years in the dark at just the right moment? It is grace. It is a gift.

The Word of God for the people of God…

Thanks be to God.

Curiosity is underrated.

In the past one hundred years, many North Americans have undergone a shift in how they’re described and in how they see themselves. We have gone from citizens to consumers. A few years back the hit drama “Mad Men” followed the lives of people in a booming advertising industry in post-World War II America. Citizens may benefit from being curious; consumers don’t need to be. After all, the product is described for you in a certain way so that you’ll see the benefits of owning it and buy it, the sooner the better.

Sometimes curiosity has been collapsed in with tired portraits of cynicism, weary portrayals of bored skepticism. Everything is spin, nothing is as it seems, the five-in-one mop you just bought will break the second time you use it, and everyone just wants something from you. This is the way of the world. The sooner you learn it, the better.

How curious, then, that our faith presents to us illustrations of a curious God; we affirm that God is all-knowing, after all, yet time and again we see Jesus showing curiosity. To affirm the ancient statements of faith means to affirm that God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit, who create, redeem, and sustain – God is omniscient. Yet it also means affirming that Christ, while fully divine, willingly put aside some of those attributes in the Incarnation when the Word Became Flesh. Fleshy God cried, wet his diaper, learned to walk, learned the skills of carpentry, and while sometimes the Spirit-anointed Jesus saw deep into people’s hearts, to read the Gospels for even a short time is to encounter the Jesus who asked questions.

Sometimes these questions were rhetorical; sometimes the questions were for the purpose of teaching or exposing something to a hearer they didn’t realize about themselves before. Sometimes – they were just questions.

Jesus saw people because he saw beyond himself, his fatigue or hunger or wishes.

Jesus was curious.

It was strange to find Jesus at age 12 in the temple teaching learned men at a stage when modern Jewish boys read from the Torah for the first time at their Bar Mitzvah. He had insight, for sure. He was different.

But if we always see his questions arising from wry divine foreknowledge, we perhaps miss the poignant cost of human interaction, and after all, we say, Christ was fully divine, fully human.

What if, when he said, “who do they say that I am?” and then, “and who do you say that I am?” he was simply asking, “tell me, how do you see me?”

What if there was urgency when he would look at someone, perceive the complex turmoil they found themselves in, and ask, “do you want to be made well?” After all, sometimes we grow comfortable with our infirmity to the point that we allow it to define us. Addicts affirm time and again that they got sober when they were ready – but not before. And so Mary’s son stood before someone and asked point-blank – “are you ready for a new life? A life of health, a life that stretches out in front of you that isn’t defined yet? Are you ready to let go of grief?”

Jesus found himself in a shoving crowd with people pressing in and quite suddenly felt power go out of him (a book in itself). He turned around (frowning?) and said, essentially, “hang on – wait a minute. Who just touched me?” And his friends replied, “um, there is a huge crowd, probably any number of people,” but Jesus knew it was different and waited until a shocked, embarrassed woman came forward and explained that her personal chronic illness had just disappeared instantaneously.

A lot of divine redemption is read into a famous exchange between Jesus and Peter, and understandably so, especially given some shifts in Greek vocabulary. But what if we peel away our hindsight-is-20-20 lenses and look at this exchange at one of its more basic layers – one friend deeply hurt by another?

“Simon – do you love me?”

“Simon – do you love me?”

“Simon – do you [even] love me [at all]? [I saw you that night, in the courtyard, and it broke my heart in ways a whiplash or nails or a spear never could, we’ve spent three years together and you pretended you’d never met me.]”

Jesus was curious.  He went to weddings, he told Zaccheus he was coming over for dinner, he ate with white collar criminals (tax collectors), he sat and talked to a woman getting water from a well in the hottest part of the day, he let himself stay up late talking to a curious religious leader who came to him in the middle of the night, he decided to send the disciples out in pairs and see how it went, he paid attention to widows and sparred with temple elites, he marveled at the faith of a pagan soldier.

And if we want to be like Jesus – if we want to be Christ-like – then we have no place in echo-chambers, cloistered off from anyone. There is no one with whom we can decide not to engage, no matter how furious their bumper sticker makes us. Because Jesus ignored the bumper sticker and saw the person. Jesus ignored the brand and saw the soul. Jesus was curious about everyone. There was no one – no one – who did not merit his time. It was Pilate who famously washed his hands of a person, not Jesus. Jesus didn’t wash his hands of anybody.

Sometimes people of faith think of faith-sharing as abusive pushiness or as a clergy specialty. But to love people is to be curious about them: to want to know more about them. Sometimes one of the most Christ-like things you can do is notice the people around you. When’s the last time you really saw somebody? When’s the last time you picked up on a casual comment and followed up on it? When’s the last time you took interest in a person no matter what bumper sticker was on their car or what social media status they last posted?

Curiosity about others, curiosity about their lives, opens us up to opportunities to acknowledge and reflect their value: they are worth noticing. In a distracted world, this is explosively powerful. If you want to revolutionize your year and quickly find areas you need to grow in, put down your phone more frequently, make eye contact more frequently, stop yourself from making snap judgments and dismissing people, and show curiosity.

And make Jesus Christ, Word Made Flesh, smile.

It’s Monday when most clergy members attempt to hide, read, or decompress. A few with churches large enough to afford a staff prefer post-game analysis on Mondays, parceling out Sabbath follow-up’s and sketching the week ahead. Many pastors enter Monday with a need to refuel – even the extroverts.

And while the calendar reads January 29th, it can feel like a year’s worth of news and activity has already taken place. Here, then, are some big-picture, faith-related news highlights from around the web to soak up as you tend to your locally spent soul.

This winter a new CBS sitcom called “Living Biblically” is premiering on Monday, February 26th. An early preview indicates that the tone will likely be similar to the popular NBC show “The Good Place,” which that network touts as “a comedy about becoming a better person – in the afterlife.”

According to CBS, “Living Biblically” “follows Chip Curry, a modern-day man at a crossroads in his life who decides to live strictly in accordance with the Bible. With the help and support of his non-believing wife Leslie, his co-worker Vince, his boss Ms. Meadows, and his self-proclaimed “God Squad” of Father Gene and Rabbi Gil, Chip will try to navigate the waters of a spiritual journey of biblical proportions.”

Executive Producer Johnny Galecki, known for his role on the hit show “The Big Bang Theory,” noted, “I’ll say there are a number of people involved with the show who are devout in their beliefs, and we do have consultants of the cloth who keep us broadly accurate. And I say ‘broadly,’ because it’s, again, so personal, and very few things mean the same thing to everyone in the Bible.”

Producer Patrick Walsh observed, “I think religious people are not given credit for having a sense of humor, and I think non-believers are not given credit for being curious about religion and wanting to know more about it. We get into some pretty interesting topics on this show, and that is a goal, to serve an underserved audience, I think.”

Facebook is changing its algorithms again, and it will affect engagement between your church page and its followers. While Mark Zuckerberg explains that the social media giant is attempting to support “meaningful interactions,” the move from less news, ads, and videos visible on a user’s newsfeed to more content from friends and family comes after an outcry about the spread of fake news on social media in the past several years. The shift is described in a New York Times article, which notes that the change “would prioritize what [users] friends and family share and comment on while de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands.”

The size of the publisher or brand doesn’t matter, however, so content coming from entities ranging from global news corporations to the Baptist church down the street will be “de-emphasized.”

Recently Christianity Today issued a helpful model for addressing this new reality with its recent boosted post to followers. Click here to see how they’re guiding followers through the transition to keep their connection strong.

The phrase “Kesha at the Grammys” isn’t one you’d normally find in a news roundup for pastors, but bear with me. Last night when pastors were waking up from post-preaching afternoon naps, the Grammys aired on CBS. Of the many (hit and miss) performances by musicians, one stood out.

In the wake of the #metoo and #timesup movement, which has seen a cascading avalanche of fallout in every profession (including ministry), the singer’s personal anthem of grieving her experience of sexual assault was charged from the moment she walked on stage. Sometimes a pop culture moment crystallizes the mood of a movement or culture; that’s what happened last night when Kesha was joined by other famous vocalists in a moving rendition of her song “Praying.”

For the many pastors dealing with double or triple the normal number of counseling appointments; for congregations dealing with the loss of clergy leaders who abused their positions; and, most of all, for church members who have carried around hidden trauma for far too long, this is a vital moment.

On a different note, a variety of seminaries, publishers, and pastors have come out swinging after recent remarks by American Calvinist theologian John Piper about women in ministry – and the academy. 

Wesley Seminary in Marion, Indiana, Tweeted, “Wesley Seminary celebrates the Lord’s call to vocational ministry on the life of women as well as men. Women are welcome in every program we offer, including our MDiv and DMin, and we embrace women in leadership in all areas including our administration, faculty, and staff.”

Asbury Theological Seminary quickly jumped in as well on Twitter, asserting, “All degrees at Asbury Seminary, including M.Div., are open to men & women. We encourage men & women to live, learn, worship & preach, affirming full participation in pastoral leadership, scholarship, & ministry. Share the female leaders, teachers & pastors who shaped you.”

Missio Alliance has posted Rev. Dennis R. Edwards’ response to Piper’s statements, called “Why I Needed Women Seminary Professors: A Response to John Piper.”

Finally, amid the more explicitly faith-based tv shows emerging on the classic networks, a popular book by a famed Christian thinker and author is making the transition to the big screen this spring. Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” hits theaters March 9th. Directed by “Selma” director Ava DuVernay, the film includes familiar faces cast as the mysterious figures Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Who.

You can read Madeleine L’Engle’s reflection on faith and the arts in, “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art.”

Now is the time to sit down and read (or re-read) the classic novel for yourself or with kids before the movie comes out.

We’ll conclude our varied, though not exhaustive, lap around the web here.

As you prepare for the awkward juxtaposition of sacred and secular coming up – Ash Wednesday/Valentine’s Day and Easter Sunday/April Fool’s, let us know in the comments what creative maneuvers your church is taking this year.

It is the time of year when resolutions abound. Or if not resolutions, goals. Maybe goals are too weighty a burden: maybe wishes.

It is the time of year when wishes abound. Despite the popularity of making “New Year’s Resolutions” – and despite the popularity of articles detailing how to make resolutions “stick” – most people know that lasting life change isn’t found on the heels of New Year’s Day. Resolutions melt away along with the winter snow drifts, and if one thinks about resolutions at all mid-July, it is often accompanied by reflections on exactly when or how they crumbled and disappeared.

Yet “resolutions” are really a misnomer. If you are resolute, you are “single-minded,” “firm,” and “unswerving.” If a person resolves to do something, that person has decided to do it. The person has resolve. There is strength, and because of that, follow through. A resolution isn’t a goal; a resolution is a decision. In that sense, goals are mile-markers; resolution is the direction you are running.

It may be a short-lived New Year’s goal to drink less, but it takes real resolve to drive to an AA meeting and walk in the door. It may be a futile goal to go to the expensive gym you joined; but it takes real resolve to value your body, your health, and your future, and to examine why you may devalue any of those things.

Where goals may gather around what you want to do or quit doing, how you want to look or where you want to go, being resolute may have more to do with what kind of person you want to become.

And here we arrive at shibboleths. 

What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of culture and society would you like to take part in? Because right now, dear North America, we are addicted to shibboleths.

If the word sounds familiar but just out of memory’s reach, it is a cultural reference, yet originates – as so many cultural references do – from the Bible. In Judges 12, the Gileadites are aware that their enemies the Ephraimites may be trying to cross a stream, posing as Gileadites. But the Gileadites are also aware that the Ephraimites have a small verbal giveaway – a difference in pronunciation of a word. (Think of how the pronunciation of certain English words give away whether you’re from the North or the South of the United States.) So if an enemy is trying to sneak by, just have them say a word – one single word – that will betray their association. If said incorrectly, the speaker dies.

It was simple but effective. Long before taking off your shoes at airport security or full-body scanners, one man looked at another and said, “really? Then say shibboleth for me.”

Since then, as Rice University points out, if something is said to be a shibboleth, it is used in a way similar to a “litmus test” (a phrase lifted from one context – the science lab – into another context – a cultural standard applied for the use of making a judgment).

A shibboleth is a kind of linguistic password: A way of speaking (a pronunciation, or the use of a particular expression) that is used by one set of people to identify another person as a member, or a non-member, of a particular group. The group making the identification has some kind of social power to set the standards for who belongs to their group: who is “in” and who is “out.”

The purpose of a shibboleth is exclusionary as much as inclusionary: A person whose way of speaking violates a shibboleth is identified as an outsider and thereby excluded by the group. This phenomenon is part of the universal use of language for distinguishing social groups. It is also one example of a general phenomenon of observing a superficial characteristic of members of a group, such as a way of speaking, and judging that characteristic as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, depending on how much the observers like the people who have that characteristic.

And as we sit down and pen our resolutions – or our goals – or our half-hearted dreams – it is worthwhile to take a moment and consider our addiction to shibboleths. How do we employ shibboleths to decide who we listen to on – anything?

Doing away with the usage of shibboleths doesn’t mean throwing away core principles or values: it does have to do with preserving personhood, no matter who is crossing whom’s river. Using a litmus test to decide whether or not to pay someone basic common respect isn’t a value of Jesus Christ.

So the problem isn’t an inherent issue with a system in which someone is “in” or “out” – that’s necessary, just like standards for making it to the big leagues or getting into Harvard or joining the local VFW. The problem isn’t with having group boundaries; the problem is how we treat people no matter which side of the boundary they’re on. And often, when we unconsciously use a shibboleth, we’re giving ourselves permission to treat people as less than. 

Every group has its favorite shibboleths. 

Did you just use a male pronoun to refer to God? Violation! Shibboleth. I don’t have to listen to the rest of your sermon now.

Did you just use the phrase “climate change” in a way that suggests you’re concerned about it? Violation! Shibboleth. I know all your other beliefs now and can dismiss you out of hand.

Did you just use the word “orthodox”? By that, didn’t you mean “power play by males to keep authority by ruling what everyone had to believe?” Violation! Shibboleth. Obviously, you’re stuck in a literal interpretation of faith and haven’t accepted it as myth yet.

Did you just say you’re “cisgender”? I don’t even know what that means but I know what everyone believes who says that kind of thing. Violation! Shibboleth. There’s no point getting to know you.

Did you just say you’re for women’s rights but you’re also pro-life? You can’t be, I say so. Violation! Shibboleth. We can’t ever work together for anything and I don’t have to think about your point now.

This is what happens when we employ shibboleths. We don’t engage in critical thinking, we don’t assume the value of the other person, and we don’t speak with kindness to or about those outside the boundaries of our groups. You have spoken a shibboleth: that, we say, is all we need to know. We reduce every complex particularity of a person made in the image of God to how they pronounce shibboleth, and if they say it wrong, we take their personhood from them and move on, leaving a bleeding corpse in our wake. They revealed themselves for what they were. It was a pity, but it had to be done. We were justified.

Do you have a goal to abstain from social media drive-by’s this year? Do you wish that other people weren’t so obnoxious about differences?

Or are you resolved to put shibboleths to death? To maintain your integrity, principles, and values, and yet not to give in to the wily notion that your integrity demands that you dehumanize the people on the other side of the boundary? On the contrary – your integrity demands that you raise up, elevate, and protect the humanity and value of the person across from you who is trembling as they utter the word, wondering if you will see them – the real them – or whether you will draw your sword?

Debate where it’s needed; argue when necessary. Stand confident in your principles. And yet, while you debate, while you argue, while you stand confident –

And yet I will show you a still more excellent way…

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

May 2018 find love shaping the sound of our every word.

In the Christmas stillness, there is hurry.

In the Christmas stillness, there is distraction.

In the Christmas stillness, there is worry.

It is tempting to say, “In the Christmas hurry, there is stillness; in the Christmas distraction, there is stillness; in the Christmas worry, there is stillness.” We wish to take people from their likely experience – bustle, activity, news reports, fear, concern – and remind them of deep, quiet peace.

Yet that order is backward, because Christmas stillness is the underlying reality; all else is dispensable. Hurry, distraction, and worry may seem like the reality through which we approach a hay-filled manger, attempting to drag along our dawdling, freshly-bathed minds in their best new Christmas clothes, lining up our thoughts in front of Mary and Joseph for a meaningful Christmas photo that will remind us later of What’s Really Important in Life.

Or even if we approach Christmas through a lens of gritty realism – the contractions of a young woman, afterbirth on the floor of a cave, a crying, hungry member of the Trinity nursing a few feet away from farm animals, interruptions by a bunch of men claiming to have seen angels a few hilltops over while they were out with their sheep – we can ignore the deep well of stillness that abides in the Incarnation.

Christmas stillness isn’t rosy sentiment: “the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” It isn’t pious sermonizing about the reason for the season while the turkey grows cold and little eyes urgently scan a hill of presents for their names.

Christmas stillness is the Real, and hurry, distraction, and worry are lying imposters tricking our senses into believing that our immediate experiences are the only genuine reality from which we attempt to operate. Hurry, distraction, and worry slyly whisper to us that we are indispensable; that we should quickly react to the “tyranny of the urgent;” that the Word Made Flesh is something we can successfully attempt to control for the ends that we want. These imposters tell us that mindfulness and slowness are inadequate (or even lazy); that focus and vision are unrealistic; and that peace comes from a completed to-do list or a five-minute devotional squeezed in while we’re stuck in traffic.

The days between Christmas and New Year’s Day may hold urgent care visits for inconvenient flu; they may include church services or watchnight vigils; they may hold travel, overdrawn bank accounts, long work days, or visits to a jail or prison; they may include tense exchanges of children with an ex-spouse, or overdoses, or depressed hours of loneliness and despair. And while some Protestant denominations mark the 12 days of Christmas (not the song) stretching from Christmas Day to the Feast of Epiphany which marks the arrival of the magi, others may schedule only a Christmas Eve service with thin hopes for church attendance around the holidays.  But the days between Christmas and New Year’s or Christmas and Epiphany a few days later – these days are an opportunity, not just for visiting family or corralling school children on break, but for sinking into Christmas stillness and retraining our thoughts to see hurry, distraction, and worry as the lying, conniving King Herods of our hours and days, bent on doing what we wish to Jesus Christ – anything rather than submitting to and worshiping him.

Christmas stillness doesn’t come from respite stolen while kids are distracted by a new toy (though it can be found there under the surface). Christmas stillness is deep, underlying peace that bookends our days, whether they are good or bad, joyful or tragic. It is captured in words like Job’s: “the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away: blessed be the name of the Lord.”  It is captured in poetry like the words of Isaiah,

The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
    on them light has shined.

and

For a child has been born for us,
    a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
    and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Christmas stillness cleaves discouraged deception in half when old Simeon, guided by the Spirit, comes to the Temple and lays eyes on the Consolation of Israel – all six or seven pounds of him.

Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
    according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
    and for glory to your people Israel.

Christmas stillness delves deep into the soul when elderly prophet Anna fulfills her long years at the temple by seeing a small newborn and recognizing the Kingdom of God in her midst, beginning to, “praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”

Are you walking aware that the steps you took in darkness are now flooded in great light? Are you dismissed from the long days of your life in peace, having seen the salvation of God? Are you making decisions based on the near reality of Jesus Christ, Prince, not of building a name for himself or an army for himself or a global economy for himself, but of – Peace? That “peace that transcends all understanding”? (One might say, peace that surpasses common sense.)

Watching and searching for the Consolation of Israel is activity that flows quietly from Christmas stillness. Being distracted by the goodness of God that brought light into the world flows quietly from Christmas stillness. Making the choice to submit to God who gives and God who takes away – as Mary did when an angel appeared to her as a personified, supernatural positive pregnancy test, and as Mary did, when her little boy was betrayed and beaten up and publicly executed – this flows quietly from Christmas stillness.

Are you ready to let stillness interrupt your hurry, distraction, and worry? Are you ready to let Christmas stillness define your self-imposed frenzy, your to-do list, your temporary and long-term fears? Are you ready to let deep, abiding stillness define the curves of your day? Are you ready to let the steady heartbeat of the innermost Trinity quiet your cries, your protests, your words? Are you ready to become like a peaceful, satisfied baby against its mother’s chest, contented and soothed?

Are you ready to let stillness resound?