Author Archives: elizabeth.turner

And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

-Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”

Hopefully you’re having a banner year – one for the books. The stars align and everything’s coming up you. Babies smile at you, old people are grateful for you, good people respect you and bad people leave you alone. You have a lot to be thankful for. Make your gratitude list, have seconds of sweet potato casserole and pause to appreciate the moment.

Everyone goes through seasons, and some seasons seem to last longer than others.

This is for the people who aren’t having a banner year.

You miscarried.

You got laid off.

You shook your fist at cancer and it didn’t matter.

You picked up your kid from the police station.

You picked up your parent from the police station.

You found that text on your spouse’s phone.

You discovered untruthful gossip following you around.

You discovered truthful gossip following you around.

You arranged a funeral for someone.

You filled an antidepressant prescription.

You should’ve filled an antidepressant prescription.

The turkey is warm, but it’s a cold and broken thanksgiving. Shards of life lie mocking on the floor in the near-shape of their original wholeness and you catch a glimpse of your fractured reflection, a distortion of what was and what should be. And when you count your blessings it’s with gritted teeth or a sense of cruel, useless irony or a numbed, deadened mimic of routine.

What happens when the Mona Lisa is torn apart and the pieces don’t fit and you’re left with a grotesque Picasso? The features are there, but out of place, misaligned, foreign, unfamiliar. Nieces and nephews will recognize you as you walk through the door, but you know, deep down, that you’re struggling to find parts of yourself that you recognize as you sort through remnants, shards, rubble.

Happy Thanksgiving.

You compare your cold and broken thanksgiving to the vast suffering of the world to try to force perspective, to resist the darkness. I have a roof. I have food. My neighbors weren’t just bombed. 

But sometimes even Aunt Bev’s homemade pie tastes stale when your heart is re-breaking every few minutes while you make small talk.

For my days vanish like smoke;
    my bones burn like glowing embers.
My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
    I forget to eat my food.
In my distress I groan aloud
    and am reduced to skin and bones.
I am like a desert owl,
    like an owl among the ruins.
I lie awake; I have become
    like a bird alone on a roof.
All day long my enemies taunt me;
    those who rail against me use my name as a curse.
For I eat ashes as my food
    and mingle my drink with tears
because of your great wrath,
    for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.
My days are like the evening shadow;
    I wither away like grass.

Let’s all go around and say what we’re thankful for…

Your year flashes in bits and pieces in front of your mind and you search for a socially appropriate response that doesn’t include “good medical attention after a miscarriage” or “pro bono lawyers” or “insightful marriage and family therapists.”

Pass the stuffing.

Because you also know by now that faith and hope and love are more than a French bistro-style inspirational poster hanging in the dining room. They’re not feelings, they’re bedrock reality that keep you sane because you know they’re more than trite platitudes.

Here I raise mine Ebenezer
Hither by thy help I’ve come
And I hope, by thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

Hither by thy help I’ve come. Here, through your help, I’ve come. Here, with your help, I’ve finally arrived. And I hope, because of your nature, to also arrive safely home.

Ebenezer: the stone of help. A memorial to overcoming by the grace of God. “A commemoration of divine assistance.”

Friend, do whatever you need to do to sit at the table, to steel your soul and give thanks. Giving thanks is a choice, whether you’re in an expensive subdivision or a soup kitchen or the smoldering ruins of your neighborhood. Wear something that makes you feel strong. Find a small phrase from a song or scripture and force it through your head. Set your phone’s alarm to go off regularly just to remind you to pray “Christ, have mercy,” or to reopen a loving email.

Put on your Superman boxers and set to work mentally constructing your memorial stone that etches onto the landscape the living reality of faith: here, in this foyer full of people, I raise a stone of commemoration. This year, by the grace of God, I made it to this foyer. By God’s help I made it to the church, which felt like a trek across a universe of pain. Here I stack my rocks that have been thrown at me, leaving me bruised and bloodied. I will stack them tall to scream at the cosmos that I’ve come this far by the goodness of God and that God willing, I’ll make it home.

It may be a cold and broken thanksgiving but it is not destroyed.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 

But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture—“I believed, and so I spoke”—we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

Eucharisteo: I give thanks. “This is my Body, broken for you for the forgiveness of sins. Eat this in remembrance of me.”

The Body Broken will strengthen and sustain us through any and every holiday meal: the Great Thanksgiving, the Eucharist, gives us the taste of Ebenezer. Here, at this place, I take and eat, here, at this place, I taste and give thanks for a broken Savior. By your help, God, to this place I’ve come.

Taste and see that the Lord is good…

Let’s bow our heads and say grace.

Hear I raise mine Ebenezer…

“How have you been? I haven’t heard from you lately.”

I’m taking rocks that have left me stunned and broken and crafting a monument from them.

I’m glad you’re here.

So am I. By the grace of God, I’ve made it this far. And I hope by God’s good grace, safely to make it home.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Where haute couture fashion houses dominate and the Mona Lisa smiles, where the Notre Dame cathedral towers with long-held cultural memories of a famed hunchback and the Eiffel Tower beckons to retainer-wearing junior high tourists, where Rick and Ilsa looked out as the Nazis rolled in.

What is the true narrative of Paris, a very old city with a colorful history, the grand dame of Europe whose eyes twinkle as she alludes to youthful scandal?

What is the true narrative of Paris, where St. Thomas Aquinas studied, wrote and taught? The same Paris that boiled with blood during the French Revolution? The same Paris overtaken by the Third Reich? The same Paris scourged by the Black Plague? The same Paris now in a state of emergency with enforced curfew marooned in a nation whose borders have had to clang shut.

The true narrative of Paris is the narrative of any individual – at moments glorious, fallible, heartbroken, and exquisite.

Like the true narrative of Baghdad.

Or Damascus.

Recently Canon Andrew White, “the vicar of Baghdad,” alluded to his chiaroscuro life. 

They were coming for him and his people. Friends were being killed or fleeing for their lives. So Andrew White did what he always does when faced with an enemy. “I invited the leaders of Isis [Islamic State] for dinner. I am a great believer in that. I have asked some of the worst people ever to eat with me.”

This extraordinarily self-confident priest is best known as the vicar of Baghdad, leader of a church in the chaos outside the protected Green Zone. He made his offer last year as the terrorist forces threatened to take the city. Did he get a reply? 

“Isis said, ‘You can invite us to dinner, but we’ll chop your head off.’ So I didn’t invite them again!” 

And he roars with laughter, despite believing that Islamic State has put a huge price on his head, apparently willing to pay $157m (£100m) to anyone who can kill this harmless-looking eccentric. Canon White was a doctor before he became a priest and could be one still, in his colourful bow-tie and double-breasted blazer with a pocket square spilling silk. But appearances are deceptive. 

For the last two decades, he has worked as a mediator in some of the deadliest disputes on Earth, in Israel and Palestine, Iraq and Nigeria. He has sat down to eat with terrorists, extremists, warlords and the sons of Saddam Hussein, with presidents and prime ministers. 

White has been shot at and kidnapped, and was once held captive in a room littered with other people’s severed fingers and toes, until he talked his way out of it. He is an Anglican priest but was raised a Pentecostal and has that church’s gift of the gab.

Canon Andrew has served as a voice from a region that we skim over in the headlines because it troubles us. But something that troubles you will eventually force its way into your consciousness, like a lump you want to ignore or the scrabbling of a mouse across the floor in the night.

Damascus, Baghdad, Paris.

What next? Miami, Atlanta, Boston? How might the narrative of more cities morph under the influence of evil? Paris is closer to the Western world than Damascus or Baghdad are in many ways. The American Statue of Liberty was a gift from France. French thinkers and writers have influenced intellectual development over the past few centuries. Our language is dotted with vocabulary we don’t think twice about because we don’t pronounce it in proper nasal fashion, but chaperone, restaurant, coup de grace – all these illustrate the invisible ties that stretch like cords across Atlantic waves. And so we sit up and take notice when Paris is beaten up and left bloodied on the roadside more than we do when Damascus and Baghdad are kidnapped and held for ransom.

Canon Andrew does not underestimate the strength of the evil that has been brutalizing Iraqis, Syrians, and now Parisians.

So what is to be done? “We must try and continue to keep the door open. We have to show that there is a willingness to engage. There are good Sunni leaders; they are not all evil like Isis.”

But surely there is only one logical conclusion to be drawn? He sighs, and answers slowly. “You are asking me how we can deal radically with Isis. The only answer is to radically destroy them. I don’t think we can do it by dropping bombs. We have got to bring about real change. It is a terrible thing to say as a priest. 

“You’re probably thinking, ‘So you’re telling me there should be war?’ Yes!” 

I am shocked by his answer, because this is a man who has risked his life many times to bring peace.

“It really hurts. I have tried so hard. I will do anything to save life and bring about tranquillity, and here I am forced by death and destruction to say there should be war.”

White had to be ordered to leave Baghdad at Christmas by his close friend the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby.

Evil is not the narrative of terror: terror is the narrative of evil. That which destroys for destruction’s sake; that which desecrates for desecration’s sake; that which relishes in inflicting suffering for suffering’s sake; that which forces death unannounced for death’s sake – this is the nature of evil.

And destroying for destruction’s sake, desecrating for desecration’s sake, inflicting suffering for suffering’s sake, forcing death for death’s sake – this leaves paralyzing fear in its wake, the kind of dry-mouthed, helpless terror that watches in vivid slow motion. This leaves night terror in its wake, thrashing in blankets from flashbacks. This leaves fear in its wake, the kind that bars windows and triple-checks locks, the kind that huddles in groups and squints in suspicion.

David wrote of this anguish in Psalm 22, and while it’s often read through the lens of the crucifixion of Christ, it also stands on its own, as his own distress:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest.

But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
    they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
“He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
    “let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
    since he delights in him.”

My heart has turned to wax;
    it has melted within me.
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
    you lay me in the dust of death.

Dogs surround me,
    a pack of villains encircles me.

I like my smartphone. I like Facebook (sometimes), Twitter, and email. I like accessing directions while I’m driving somewhere.

You may be different, preferring a flip phone, cork bulletin boards and stopping at a gas station for directions. I understand that. Most of us live with one foot in both worlds, enjoying crisp Christmas cards in the mailbox and photos of loved ones on social networking sites on the computer.

The same is true in the church. Your congregation likely has both a website and some kind of printed brochure or bulletin or order of worship. You may send paper and digital newsletters. Most of us know that some things can’t be reduced to zeros and ones – the binary code behind what you see on your screen right now. The difference between a crumbling, decadent chocolate cupcake in your hand and the image of one on a screen is still vast.

And in the same way that Skype is great for communicating with loved ones far away – but that physical presence is better when possible – podcasts of sermons, broadcasts of Holy Communion and digitized “giving” stations (church lobby ATMs) are good when you can’t physically engage in worship. But the rich chocolate cupcake on the screen or in the earbuds can never be replaced by the bite of fudgy goodness in your mouth.

Of course podcasts, broadcasts, emails and recorded sermons are good. They can be a means of grace, communicating grace and truth to people in your community and farther away around your state, country and world. Of course we shouldn’t shun emerging technology. Of course it should be both/and.

But it should be both/and. The Body of Christ can’t be reduced to a series of zeros and ones. This is why a nursing home resident may watch sermons on their television but still ask to be wheeled down to the weekly worship service in the multipurpose room. This is why that same resident may request that their pastor bring them communion occasionally.

This isn’t just a discussion on the digital age and screen time (Lord save us from a parenting debate on screen time). It’s about the value of physicality in worship. The Orthodox church embodies this beautifully, and let’s consider a few examples from their liturgy – which is their theology.

Visit an Orthodox church, and more even than visiting a Roman Catholic church, you will be immersed in a sensory explosion. The priest doesn’t just speak about the Holy Spirit or read about the Holy Spirit: thick incense covers your clothes, the scent lingering in your hair after you leave. When’s the last time you felt like you smelled the Spirit of God?

Visit an Orthodox church, and you will observe the importance of procession. Procession is a physical act of proclamation more than a verbal act of proclamation. We march, we parade the Gospel, we practice walking it around, we turn our bodies toward it and humble ourselves in its presence.

Visit an Orthodox church, and you will be allowed to kneel for a blessing and to receive blessed bread – not the Holy Mystery of Christ’s body and blood, but a blessed gift for visitors. The spongy bread often absorbs the heavy fragrance of incense, and again, there is rich awareness of the Spirit of God.

Our Orthodox brethren – for Protestants can at least claim Catholic and Orthodox believers as kin, even if they cannot theologically return the favor – are keenly aware of the symbolism that drenches every aspect of worship. No act is wasted or meaningless: and it’s been this way for about a thousand years.

So when you consider the relationship between worship life and technology, reflect on a few of these things.

*Is there value in physically putting money in an offering plate beyond the consumer-related act of swiping a card in a lobby? Is there value in inviting members to physically bring their offerings forward?

*Is there value in extending the Communion table, celebrating Holy Communion more regularly, and regularly sharing it with those at home, in the hospital or in care centers?

*Is there value in the senior pastor serving on the nursing home, homeless shelter or prison ministry preaching schedule, not just a staff member?

*Is there value in shaping your worship space to allow for occasional kneeling for those who are able? What is the value of physically kneeling in worship?

*Is there value in congregational standing for the reading of the Gospel? Is there value in incorporating procession in your service – whether clergy, children or choir?

In some cultures around the world, Christian worship is a very physical experience, never meant to be reduced to the act of sitting still and listening. So keep the website, the podcasts, the prayer emails, the YouTube sermons.

But remember – some parts of ministry can only ever be done one on one. And some parts of the Christian faith can never be reduced to zeros and ones. No one wants a digital potluck.

So “taste and see that the Lord is good”…

“What’s that song you’re humming?” my five-year-old asked as we sat parked in the ATM line.

“I’m gonna feast at the table of the Lord…” I sang more loudly.

“FEAST? What does THAT mean?”

“It means to eat a of really nice food as a celebration, like a party,” came my made-up-on-the-spot-parenting reply.

What does it mean to feast at the table of the Lord? A good question, really. The song has been on repeat in my head – in a good way – after hearing a soulful, throaty, acoustic rendition by a couple of talented Nashville singers/songwriters/producers on Thursday night at the second annual Seedbed New Room Conference.

I won’t hunger anymore…at your table.

There were a lot of hungry people gathered in Franklin, Tennessee last week. Some had the drawn faces of tired pilgrims – or refugees. Others surprised me with their surprise. “There are so many young people here!” I looked around. It wasn’t odd to me; I knew many of them. Others had shoulders almost visibly bowed with burdens.

In other words, you could almost see the tired prophet Elijah collapsed beneath some shrubbery, only awaking from his exhausted slumber to eat the food of angels so that he could have the strength to travel to the mountain of God.

What should I mention in a summary? Dr. Jo Anne Lyon’s spellbinding presentation on social justice and sanctification? Mike Breen’s opening talk on the power of the Wesleyan tradition illustrated by sociology of religion? Dr. Stanley John’s review of current global church dynamics and the unfolding reality that the world is in your parish?

It feels criminal to mention those without mentioning every other speaker, because what conference participants quickly discovered was that there was no filler, no weak link in the line-up. On the opening day Dr. Andrew Thompson and Dr. Kevin Watson – regular contributors to Wesleyan Accent – went back-to-back with perspectives and styles that complemented each other so well they should take it on the road. I’d never heard Lisa Yebuah before but now I want to hear everything she preaches or writes. Dr. Sandra Richter, as she so magically does, somehow combined “The Hunger Games,” the book of Isaiah and the psychology of hope. Dr. Tim Tennent revealed fascinating movements of the Wesleyan tradition around the world with statistics and charts that somehow made it seem more interesting, not less (no mean feat from an academic).

And one pastor from Cairo, bringing accounts of relief work in Iraq among ISIS survivors, of a refugee approaching him with the words, “can you explain my dream to me?” and proceeding to tell him of a dream featuring the cross, of a 15-year-old convert being pushed from a fifth floor balcony by her family.

And always, people greeting each other in hallways, seeing each other from across the room and waving, deep in tearful conversation in a quiet corner. United Methodists, Free Methodists, Wesleyans and more. (The hallway soundtrack, aside from the worship music floating out of the main gathering space, was the flow of constantly fresh hot coffee from strategically placed carafes that seemed magically to never empty. Manna indeed.)

All of this makes for a great conference, but people weren’t hungry for a great conference, refreshing as one is. They were hungry for what only God can give.

And God showed up.

How can you tell?

Well, tools and models and statistics and great public speaking skills are methods, and they’re methods the Holy Spirit can use, but they’re not identical with the methods of the Holy Spirit.

And Wesleyan Methodists from varying backgrounds experienced the methods of the Holy Spirit last week.

So what do the methods of the Holy Spirit look like? (This isn’t an exhaustive list systematically analyzed for dissertation-level profundity. It’s the result of initial reflection and anecdotal observation. I think it’ll hold water.)

1. The pronounced claim that we cannot depend on any method for our salvation or sanctification apart from the methods of the Holy Spirit. There was a resource book store, sure. I think it was maybe mentioned once or twice. But it’s not for-profit. Many conferences I’ve been to seem primarily like marketing vehicles for the publications of the featured speakers. This was not “12 Easy Steps to Revitalizing Your Ministry.” This was a searching, a recognize of our need for the Holy Spirit. Oddly enough, that’s counter to many Christian resources, which market themselves as needed for vocational success. Again, they may be great tools, but they’re not identical to the tools of the Holy Spirit. It’s a subtle distinction that ends up making an extraordinary difference (and illuminates that a great way to quench the Holy Spirit is to engage in casual simony – “the making of profit out of sacred things”).

2. People apologizing to each other. If you really want to see something odd, attend a gathering where people apologize to each other for things that were said or done years ago. When that happens, you know the Holy Spirit is teasing out the deep places of peoples’ souls. At that moment, pastors and laypeople are willing to lay aside the desire to be perceived as in the right. On an interpersonal level, this means setting aside ego (and mind you, we’re talking about a roomful of leaders, here) and extending trust.

3. A global focus. Repeatedly and deliberately the work of God around the world was celebrated, with accounts, stories and pictures from Kuwait and Egypt, from England and South Korea. This is bigger than you, it seemed to whisper. But no one is too small to be a part of it.

4. The constant return to the necessary appreciation of the inspired Word of God. Regardless of subject or denominational background, each speaker assumed that the Christian Scriptures were not an albatross around our neck making us find ways to explain away our embarrassment, but rather were beautiful, a gift, a profoundly good revelation of a good God of love.

5. A call for ongoing, honest accountability among clergy. If you want to clear a room, ask a group of church leaders to engage in the practices of historic Wesleyan classes and bands, including the uncomfortable question, “what do you wish to hide?” In the wake of Ashley Madison, this was all the more poignant. Only it didn’t clear the room. Kevin Watson held it spellbound with his quiet intensity and wry, self-deprecating humor.

6. Specifically answered prayer for qualities Scripture tells us to pray for. I wasn’t the only person present who’s been praying over specific words, phrases or challenges that have plagued my spirit for weeks, months or years. These aren’t “help my loved one’s shoulder surgery to go well” prayers. They were prayers for things like restored or refreshed perspective on God’s character. They were questions that have nagged me for months (like what’s the difference between holy discontentment and unholy discontentment?). Over and over again, in hallway conversations, break-out groups and plenary sessions, I found myself awed by the specific nature of repeatedly answered heartfelt query. And it wasn’t just me.

7. Sensitivity to the Holy Spirit beyond the printed agenda. Make no mistake, there’s no false dichotomy here: the agenda itself was flavored with prayer, anointed, set apart. Beyond that, though, leaders had made room for organic flexibility in ongoing response to the unfolding work of God.

8. A call to hard things. Not just the popularly hard things – the often overlooked hard things. The last speaker of the gathering brought his discovery and challenge to listeners in the form of a portrait of travailing prayer: the kind of prayer that contracts in birth pain, the soul crying out – the prayer that has historically gone before great awakenings. Travailing prayer isn’t cheap prayer, it’s costly prayer. And it’s a method of the Holy Spirit. These words of challenge and beauty were followed by a profound time of celebrating the Lord’s Supper and couched it in terms of Gethsemene prayer. Are you willing to travail in prayer?

Last week, Seedbed laid out the tablecloths and cups, the chipped china and wildflower centerpiece.

The result?

I won’t hunger anymore – at your table…

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

Romans 12:1, I Corinthians 12:21-23, 26-27

Bodies matter to Christians.

Life matters to Christians: even Christians who believe in just war, who believe in the occasional necessary use of violence, should and often do consider the matter with grave sobriety, aware of the sacred worth of human beings. Christianity is not the only religion to value human life, but it is one of them.

Recently I witnessed Christians – including some clergy – marching with signs and posters and placards bearing giant words: “I can’t breathe.” “Jesus can’t breathe.” It has become apparent to most North Americans that sometimes Black deaths are more easily accepted than White deaths, that sometimes to live as a Black person means something quite different than to live as a White person.

Bodies matter to Christians: something that has bearing on theologically orthodox or traditional views of human sexuality. As sexual beings, what we do with our bodies, with whom we do it, and when, all matter.

(Incidentally, Christians, while showing tender kindness and acceptance to all persons, may also want to think about how we can sensitively encourage each other to embrace emotional and psychological healing that will allow us all to live more mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy lives, as good stewards of our health for our own sake, our family’s sake, and our faith community and our world’s sake. What does it mean to be a well-rounded, healthy person? Pastor?)

Yes, life matters to Christians, including those in the Wesleyan-Methodist tradition, even if we do have some semi-benign inconsistencies to work out (like driving with a pro-life bumper sticker on our way to engage in belt-popping gluttony at an all-you-can-eat buffet after church).

And if #Jesuscantbreathe when a Black man suffocates at the hands of White law enforcement officers, then #Jesuscantlive when physicians inject a needle through a woman’s abdomen to stop a growing baby’s heart so that it’s easier to remove in pieces from the uterus.

It is a hard subject to face, as so many subjects have been in the past few years. I have written before about the need for followers of Christ to acknowledge evil without flinching. It’s often a difficult subject for men to discuss, especially pro-women, egalitarian, pro-life men who celebrate women’s accomplishments, encourage their flourishing, and grieve the reality of abortion in our country. It is painful for me to address because I have spent time as a pastor – and simply as a woman – and I know and love and value women who, for one reason or another, have had abortions. I never want to speak or write words that demean them or obstruct their full experience of God’s grace and love.

As a follower of Jesus, I believe that the Truth will set us free: the truth of the world we live in will set us free to confront evil where we find it, and the Person who is Truth will set us free when we follow him. As a theologian, as a pastor, as a woman, as a Mama, as a friend, then, I encourage us to quiet our rants for a moment – whatever opinions they express – and listen to the voice of God.

Are we willing to present our bodies as a living sacrifice? To discover what it means to live in the freedom of holy sexuality? To fight for our cardiovascular health so we can continue to be Christ’s hands and feet to others? To step out in deep courage and faith and bear a child we may raise or may put in the care of someone else to raise when the pregnancy represented chaos or uncertainty or crisis? To swab the inside of a cheek so that we’re entered in a database of potential bone marrow donors? To experience painful shots and immunizations, exhausting jet lag, bug bites and strange tastes while serving on a medical mission trip or sweating through building projects?

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 

Presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice means more than walking down an aisle during an altar call – though sometimes that’s included.

The members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

When a nurse checks pieces of a small body to make sure all are present and there is nothing accidentally left in the womb – when, as the Planned Parenthood website describes, the “uterus is emptied” – has something beautiful occurred? Has something merciful taken place?  No.

And the apostle Paul, when writing about spiritual gifts and the community of faith, likely didn’t picture his words describing infants in the context of modern-day abortion. But as a Christian – regardless of the legality or medical ethics of the situation – when I hear the loss of life of the innocent young described in ways that emphasize how to take life without destroying certain organs – when I hear words of crushing and dismemberment, my mind can’t help but go to the verses of scripture that celebrate all the different members of the Body of Christ. How precious was the earthly, physical arms and legs and head and torso of Jesus, as a hiccuping baby, as a wobbly toddler, as an awkward youth, as a growing man. How telling were the moments when the resurrected Jesus ate fish, dared Thomas to feel his wounds, tore bread with stunned disciples hungry after a walk.

Flesh matters: the Word became Flesh. The Word redeemed flesh. And we celebrate the Word-Become-Flesh and the redemption of our bodies, not the mutilation or dismemberment of them. There is no freedom, no liberation, in attempting to change our gender or rid our body of a baby: those are pathways of loss. Not irredeemable, but empty, ultimately unfulfilling in themselves.

How can we live and celebrate the reality that Jesus took on flesh to redeem it and set it motion the ultimate redemption of all Creation? Where in your thoughts, your attitudes, your actions, have you undervalued life? The body? This created existence?

How can you live as a testimony to the redemption of flesh and blood? What is keeping you from living a full, healthy life?

Are there areas in which you live inconsistently with your value of life?

If Jesus physically died and was physically resurrected, how does that challenge your notions of your own body and its value?

When you take communion, what does the ritual communicate to you about the promise of the redemption and resurrection of all Creation?

What should be our response to a culture of death? This is not a challenge to post Bible verses on your Facebook page. No – what should our community of faith do to confront our culture of death with a whole, healthy, beautiful, fulfilled picture of life? Practically speaking, how might congregations engage in activities that value life and show its beauty?

Let’s live lives that ardently pursue true happiness, beauty, and fulfillment. Let’s live out our calling to show in a million ways that life is beautiful.

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.

I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you. Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the LORD. Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. – Psalm 32

A little over a year ago, one of the most famous people in the world was interviewed a few hours from here at Austin’s SXSW festival. He was only able to be present on a screen.

Edward Snowden lives in Russia. Just a couple of years ago, he was an anonymous computer geek working for the National Security Agency. There are very different opinions on this young man in our nation: was he a traitor or a whistleblower? Did he put operations at risk or did he uncover harmful practices?

Either way, his revelations started a national conversation on transparency, a conversation driven by several basic questions:

-what is known?

-is what is known accurate – real, representative of reality?

-is accountability possible when things are hidden or secret?

These questions, so loaded and complex in a technologically interwoven world, are some of the most important questions any believer can ask themselves.

Another word for this is simply confession.

Cover-up is a basic, ancient human instinct. “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” In Genesis we read of Adam and Eve’s attempt to hide and cover themselves. A little later we come to this: “Now Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let’s go out to the field.’ While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ The Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.'”

It is human instinct to hide not just the things we’ve done, but the areas where we fall short, as we read in the parable of the talents. Did we waste resource or fail to celebrate gifts out of inertia or fear, then attempt to bury this reality, “safe” and out of sight?

What is known, what is real, what is accurate?

Confession is good for the soul. After all, “while I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” Carrying a burden alone – and knowledge of wrongdoing is heavy; guilt is heavy; regret is heavy – carrying a burden alone will affect your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health, your spiritual health. It will sap your joy and drain your energy.

“Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide what I did wrong; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the guilt of my sin.” Children of attentive parents will remember the odd relief that comes with spilling the beans on the truth of a situation – even when it seems your parent mysteriously already suspects the truth. There is a clearing of the air, a load lifted, even if unpleasant consequences are coming your way.

In the end, the only real safety comes in disclosure. “Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.” When nothing stands between our heart and God’s heart, God can become our hiding place rather than the One from whom we hide. Instead of being a small child hiding behind a couch after blatant wrongdoing, we are the child running to a parent, hiding our faces in their clothes, seeking refuge from fear or pain or danger or confusion.

The guy who started the Methodist movement (along with his brother and a few friends), John Wesley, instructed early members of the Methodist movement to meet regularly in small groups.

Listen to the startling questions that our early Methodist sisters and brother asked each other:

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?

2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?

3. Do I confidentially pass on to others what has been said to me in confidence?

4. Can I be trusted?

5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work or habits? – (that is, addictions)

6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?

7. Did the Bible live in me today?

8. Do I give the Bible time to speak to me every day?

9. Am I enjoying prayer?

10. When did I last speak to someone else of my faith?

11. Do I pray about the money I spend?

12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?

13. Do I disobey God in anything?

14. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?

15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?

16. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy or distrustful?

17. How do I spend my spare time?

18. Am I proud?

19. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?

20. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I doing about it?

21. Do I grumble or complain constantly?

22. Is Christ real to me?

Whoa. Many North Americans today would respond that those answers are none of your business; we are private individuals with the freedom to do what we like.

And yet – the purpose of these questions isn’t to make you feel defeated about your life.

The purpose of these questions is to live the reality that every part of our life is open to God and to others – transparency.

“Happy are those in whose spirit there is no deceit…”