Teer Hardy's Blog, page 14

I Don't Know

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As we explore the new normal we find ourselves in during the COVID-19 pandemic, physically separated from one another, the Mount Olivet community has been sharing devotionals to keep our community connected. Here’s my offering for Monday, Wednesday, June 3, 2020, an attempt to respond to the death of George Floyd and our nation’s inability and lack of desire to address the systemic racism that has haunted our nation for over 400 years.

I don’t know where to begin. This coming Sunday Mount Olivet is celebrating it’s one-year anniversary – one year of being a reconciling congregation. Like many, the past week has been emotionally, spiritually, and physically draining. The COVID-19 pandemic was one thing, and then, the horrific death of George Floyd shifted our focus and at the same time reminded us that systemic racism, inequality, and injustice in our nation, has been with us for over 400 years. And now, I am at a loss for words. 

I don’t know what I am supposed to say or do. 

I’m not sure what is next, and we are still in the midst of a global pandemic. Over 100,000 people in The United States have died from this virus. 

The only thing I have been able to think of doing is returning to scripture, returning to Jesus. 

The writer of The Gospel of John began with, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Since the beginning of time Jesus Christ has been present.  

Jesus was present as the Spirit of God moved across the waters of creation. Jesus was there when the dry earth and the waters of the sea were gathered together. 

Jesus was present as the Law was handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai.   

Jesus was present in Mary’s womb, and as he began his ministry at the Jordan River, being baptized by his cousin John.  

Jesus was present at a wedding celebration in Cana, and at the graveside of his friend Lazarus. 

Jesus was present as his body hung on the cross, and Jesus was present on Easter morning when the Gospel Good News was proclaimed – Sin and Death would not get the last word. 

Jesus was and continues to be present. 

Mount Olivet has been repeating this truth throughout the COVID-19 pandemic but in the shadow of the horror, sadness, and anger of the past week we still must remember that Jesus is present. God has not abandoned us.  

It is easy for Christians, white Christians, to default to Jesus being like us, looking like us, mirroring the image we see in our reflection each morning as we splash water on our face and begin a new day. It is easy to assume Jesus held the same privilege we hold; he is the Son of God after all. Jesus did not hold privilege or status in his community. 

This panel featuring Howard Thurman is from the Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel at Howard University

Howard Thurman wrote, “Now Jesus was not a Roman citizen. He was not protected by the normal guarantees of citizenship – that quiet sense of security which comes from knowing that you belong and the general climate of confidence which it inspires. If a Roman soldier pushed Jesus into a ditch, he could not appeal to Caesar; he would be just another Jew in the ditch. Standing always beyond the reach of citizen security, he was perpetually exposed to all the ‘arrows of outrageous fortune,’ and there was only a gratuitous refuge – if any – within the state.” (Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited. Beacon Press, 1996.)  

Jesus never sat in a place of power in the way we often think of “power.” When push came to shove Jesus sat and ate with, ministered to, and advocated for the marginalized. Jesus never excluded those in power from his ministry, but he was clear that the Kingdom of God, his kingdom, is one where last will be first. The marginalized, forgotten and oppressed not only have a seat at His table of grace, but they are His honored guests. 

Jesus did not belong, along with not holding confidence one has belonging within a privileged class of an empire, and yet his presence in this space was not something Jesus shied away from. Jesus remained present. Jesus remains present today in the spaces where those who do not hold the confidence one has belonging within a privileged class of the empire find themselves. 

Jesus was present on the street in Minneapolis as George Floyd was pulled from the back of a police car, handcuffed. Jesus was next to George Floyd was he was choked to death with knees in neck and back.  

Jesus has been present with the grieving, the angry, and those demanding change. 

Jesus Christ is present.  

In the Barmen Declaration, Karl Barth wrote, “Jesus Christ is the one Word of God, whom we have to hear, and whom we have to obey.” 

As we move beyond Pentecost, may the Spirit of God, the same Spirit that descended on the ancient church, blow upon the saints of today. May we hear Jesus’ call to love. To, “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27, NIV)  

May the Spirit of God push us to demand equality and justice for all people, not because of a document written in 1776, rather because we have all been created equal by God. 

Jesus Christ is present with us, freeing us from division, hate, and despair, and extending an invitation to step into his grace.  

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This stained glass window in the rear of the sanctuary of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The window is affectionately called the "Wales Window" because it was given by the people of Wales after the church was attacked on Sunday, September 15, 1963, at 10:22 AM. Four girls - Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Denise McNair, and Carole Robertson - were killed during the bombing while they were attending Sunday School.

Freedom in Nothing

Jesus spent three years traveling, ministering, teaching, and healing. For three years Jesus proclaimed that in Him and through Him, the Kingdom of God had been opened for and to all people. Generations before Jesus’ ministry, a person’s ability to enter into the Kingdom of God, to be in the presence of God, their righteousness, hinged upon that person’s ability to follow, noting the dotted “i’s” and crossed “t’s,” the Law.

The Law is what made us Holy or acceptable before God. Not the Law itself but rather a person’s ability to follow the Law. All of the Law, not just the top ten etched onto tablets and brought down from Mt. Sinai by Moses. 603 additions were made and a person’s righteousness hinged upon whether not they, you, could correctly interpret, apply, and obey the top ten plus the additional 603.

James Janknegt - Pentecost Community

In Jerusalem, at Pentecost, the pilgrims gathered, the ones watching and mistaking the gathered Christians for being drunk at 9:00 AM were not present by happenstance. Pilgrims from all over the Jewish Diaspora were gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate and remember the first Passover, remembering when God gave the Law to Moses. 

Throughout his ministry, Jesus proclaimed that he had not come to destroy the Law or the teachings of the prophets as he was frequently accused of doing.[1] Jesus did not teach anything new or revolutionary, although everything he did was new and revolutionary. No, Jesus was the fulfillment, perfectly of that which we had and continued to be unable to do for ourselves. And he talked ministered, preached, and healed, for three years and still folks did not get it.

Time and time again those who heard Jesus speak continued to look at themselves rather than the One whom all the Law and prophecy hung upon. They did not get it. The disciples, the ones called and taught by Jesus still needed reminders and refreshers as to who Jesus was and what he was doing. The disciples, these guys had full access, backstage credentials with Jesus and they miss the subtle and not so subtle cues Jesus gave. 

They had been set free.

We have been set free.

The Holy Spirit descended on the Pentecost crowd and there was no mistaking to be done. The barrier was removed. The vail was torn was Christ took his last breath on Calvary.

We have failed to live up to the demands of God. We can say that we love God with all our hearts, minds, soul, and strength and that we love our neighbors as ourselves. We can say that we are doing our best to live perfectly, as God is perfect, another command given by Jesus, but trying is not perfection.[2] We are fooling ourselves if we think we can follow all of the Law - the top ten and the 603, plus a few additions made by Jesus - perfectly.

And that is where the clarity of the Gospel steps in. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ begins precisely where our faithfulness has fallen short, in our place, on our behalf, regardless if you asked for it or not. 

The Gospel Good News answers the question asked by the apostles on Pentecost when converts, who heard Peter preach (the guy who denied Jesus three times) lined up and converted.

“What must be done?” [3]

“What must they do?”

“What must we do?” 

Peter’s answer, is nothing. There is no line to read between or nonverbal nuances to pick up on. Peter did not preach a 613-step Gospel with a little bit of Jesus sprinkled on top for good measure. Peter told the new converts to trust the Gospel, to put their trust in Christ, and to trust, as Paul put it, “The Spirit has set you free from the Law…for God has done what the Law could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just demands of the Law might be fulfilled in us.”[4] 

The message of Pentecost is that everything has been done. Done for everyone. 

The Holy Spirit at Pentecost, using every language known so that there would be no mistake, no mistranslation, no nuance missed, or nonverbal misconstrued came so that those present and us today might trust, we might believe, so that we will have faith grounded in the hard to believe, impossible and yet all too real promise made by God in Jesus Christ - the perfection demanded in the Law, obedience, and perfection, has been given to you, has been given to everyone, not by what we can do but rather by what has been done. 

Icon - Pentecost

The outpouring of the power of God will touch everyone and there is nothing we can do to stop this. Try as we might to sell Jesus flavored Law - be a good person and do your best to do good things - doing our best to hide our tells behind masks of unwritten or rewritten church law, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost tells us something else.

New life for everything and everyone is present in Jesus Christ. The one who while ascended and seated at the right hand of God promises to never abandon or forsake. The burden on us is not to control others or even the Holy Spirit as we share this news. Our task is not greatness. Our task, given by Jesus, reiterated at Pentecost so that all can hear and believes is to do just that: believe. To trust in, to have faith that the One who overcame the power of sin and death can and will do the same for you and through you.

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[1] Matthew 5:17

[2] Matthew 5:48

[3] Acts 2:37, NRSV

[4] Romans 8

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Political Theology

“The Gospel is not an answer to questions produced by human anxiety but a proclamation of a fact.”

In the latest installment of YANA, we discuss Stanley’s essay, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology,” from his book Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence.

Before you listen, do us a solid and help out the podcast.

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Polishing Your Stones

When I was a kid, like many of my friends, I was the proud owner of a rock tumbler. A rock tumbler allowed us to take a variety of rocks we found in the neighborhood and polish them to the point that the rocks were like gems. As a kid, all we needed were a few rocks from the neighbor’s driveway, some polishing grit, and a little bit of patience. This recipe for success allowed us to (at least in our minds) print money. We would load up our rock tumblers and let them run for a few days and after we washed away the polishing grit, we believed we had diamonds and rubies in our hands.

If our parents had only seen the potential in our childhood get rich quick scheme, maybe they could have retired early and today I would be the founder and CEO of Polished Rocks Inc., you’re one-stop-shop for fine polished driveway stones.

There are few passages in the New Testament that pull us in with rich metaphorical language like our reading today. God’s grace and our election through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ grab our attention, revealing that not only are we freed from the bonds of sin and Death through Christ’s Easter victory but now we are included, because of Christ’s faithfulness, in the household of God. Those who have felt as though they were not welcomed or told they were not accepted before God now breathe a sigh of relief and then step forward and into a new home, a new grounding, with Christ as the cornerstone of the new Temple. The grounding we rely on for our faith is found in the sureness of Christ as our cornerstone. 

All other stones in this new structure will be shaped and set by the Cornerstone, the ultimate reference point determining the position of the entire structure. God chose Jesus Christ as our Cornerstone, a living stone – a living hope for all of creation and the living Word of God.

Christ, the living Cornerstone would be rejected, the Psalmist and the prophet Isaiah foretold of these events. The Psalmist wrote, “The stone rejected by the builders is now the main foundation stone!”[1] Throughout his ministry Jesus was despised by the religious elite of the day and then Jesus was ultimately rejected on Good Friday as the crowds in Jerusalem – the home of the Temple, the place where it was believed God resided – shouted: “Crucify!”

Yet, rejection was not enough and Jesus Christ, then and today is the Living Cornerstone of the Church. The Living Cornerstone is not only drawing us closer to God, Christ is building us, refining us into a spiritual temple. We are brought into new life in Christ as we are joined with other imperfect stones into “God’s household.”[2]

We all have had too much time on and temptation on our hands over the past nine weeks to consider a new hobby to make our COVID time a “success.” Many of us are achievers and see time at home as an opportunity to organize, clean, rearrange, or remodel. Some have taken up sewing to help make masks for those of us who either do not own a sewing machine or possess the skill set necessary for the task. We have challenged ourselves to read more or learn to play a musical instrument – to the band, don’t worry, I’ve been practicing.

Even before COVID turned our world upside down, the stillness was not applauded, and busyness was considered a sign of determination and grit. The same is true in the church. We fill our calendar with programming in hopes that we, all by ourselves, can build up Christ’s body for the transformation of the world. We do and we go, believing that if we just go and do enough rather than residing in stillness, our faith will grow, we will become closer to God and more sanctified in the process.

One of the things I learned using a rock tumbler is that it did not matter what I did after I put the rocks and polishing grit into the tumbler. When I plugged the black power cable into the outlet and switched the machine on, I had to rely on and trust that the tumbler would do what the box said it would do, trusting that the little work I did was enough for the outcome I desired.

Our Living Hope, the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ is building us up. Jesus Christ has built you up and will continue building. The Cornerstone that was rejected is now placing each of us, building His Church so that we can bear His amazing Light into the dark corners of our community and world. 

It can feel as though we have to go, go, go, and do, do, do and because of where many of us live, just a stone throw from the Nation’s Capital this has been our normal for as long as we can remember. It can feel like we have to go, and we have to do, but the honing, shaping, and building is not our work to do. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ made nobodies into a royal priesthood, taking those who had and continue to be cast aside or told they need to go and do before God will respond, making them and us, everyone into living stones.

We have been out of the physical church building for nine weeks, a building with a physical cornerstone and our hub for ministry in our corner of the world. Because we have been out of the physical church building for so long it can seem as though our stillness, as the world continues to move (at a slower pace) is a lack of faithfulness to the One who calls, shapes, and sends us. On the contrary, Christ is still honing, shaping, and building up the Church, even while we are not physically together.

The power of Christ’s Resurrection ensures that we are all, all of creation is held together, we are grounded in His Grace through the love of our Creator and the power of God’s Spirit.

All of this is God’s doing.

The salvation we receive by Grace comes to us from Jesus Christ, the Cornerstone, who is calling and building each us so that we might bear this Good News to all of the world, that all may know of God’s mercy.

[1] Psalm 118:22, CEB

[2] 1 Peter 4:17, NIV

The Power of Christian Nationalists in Trump's America

Our guest this week is Katherine Stewart, a journalist at the New York Times. Katherine's investigative work has focused on the Religious Right and Christian Nationalism. She talks with us about the influence they have had on the Trump White House, their hostility to science, and how it has impacted the response to the coronavirus pandemic. Most recently, she is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.

Before you listen, do us a solid and help out the podcast.

Click over to http://www.crackersandgrapejuice.com. Click on “Support the Show.” Become a patron.

For peanuts you can help us out....we appreciate it more than you can imagine.

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Mystical Body

Are you feeling disconnected while grounded at home by COVID-19?

I want to invite you to join me and the Crackers and Grape Juice podcast team for an intentional time to reconnect, to reground ourselves while we’re grounded at home. To help us out, we’ve invited friend of the pod, Brian Zahnd to lead us in a virtual pubcast. Think of it like a live podcast recording done in the cloud, with cheaper drinks.

This is a free event but you do need a ticket.

Grab a ticket, pour yourself a drink, and let’s find our grounding while we’re the Mystical Body of Christ.

.

Practicing Patients

Johanna and the boys sat down to talk about ‘Practicing Patience: How Christians Should Be Sick,’ co-authored by Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches. The essay was originally published in Christian Bioethics (1996, Vol. 2, No.2,).

From Stanley:

“While medicine usually gives us birth and surrounds us as we die, it does not form or mold us in the time in between. Indeed, when we meet medicine full in the face it comes to us as we or those we love are sick or dying. If therefore medicine attempts to form us into virtuous people on its own turf it will be too little too late…To be patient when we are sick requires first that we learn how to practice patience when we are not sick. God has given us ample resources for recovering the practicing of patience.”

Before you listen, do us a solid and help out the podcast.

Click over to http://www.crackersandgrapejuice.com. Click on “Support the Show.” Become a patron.

For peanuts you can help us out....we appreciate it more than you can imagine.

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Hope Soap

My wife is an artist. When we began dating one of the many ways I wooed her was to sneak into the art department after hours, while she was burning the midnight oil in the graphic design studio, bringing her snacks. For most of the people in my life, the way to their heart is through their stomach. I would bring Allison an Arizona iced tea and some form of salty snack. We’d sit for a few moments and when it was painfully obvious I was irritating more than I was wooing I would leave, head back to my dorm, and go to sleep. Artists work at all hours of the day because like writing a sermon the creative juices will begin flowing and there’s little the artist (preacher) can do but create.      

One of the earliest memories I have of observing Allison’s art-making was a bottle of hand soap she drew using Adobe Illustrator. Students were not permitted to import a photograph and then trace the photograph using computer software. From scratch, turning straight-boxy lines into the curves of a soap dispenser, students had to recreate the object. One night, after driving to the nearby convenience store and getting Allison’s wooing juice I sat next to Allison in the graphic design studio as she was working.

“What in the world are you making,” I blurted out.

“What are you talking about, the bottle is sitting right there,” Allison responded.

Knowing I was in it now and hoping the wooing juice I had procured before arriving would do its job I responded, “That doesn’t much look like a bottle of soap.” 

“It’s a bottle of hand soap,” Allison calmingly but obviously irritated responded.

“I guess I just don’t see it,” I said.

At that point I knew I had overstayed my welcome as her classmates were beginning to look at us, a few with eyes piercing through my soul and others with a sympathetic “at least you tried” glance.

James Janknegt - Road to Emmaus

Hours after Mary discovered the empty tomb and rushed to tell the other disciples two followers of Jesus – Cleopas and an unnamed man – were traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus.

Exhausted and weary after the highs and lows of Holy Week – Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and the sorrow of the cross – these men were headed home.

They weren’t unaware of what had occurred. They spoke to one another about everything that had transpired and when they were joined by a stranger, they told the stranger everything they had experienced. 

They told the stranger events of the past week with detail. They looked back and told the stranger about the one whom they had been following. The disciples shared the Easter news yet it was not enough to convince them to stay. Even in their description of who Jesus was to the mystery traveler, they let out key details. The details the disciples omitted make the Easter news Good News for those who were hoping that Jesus of Nazareth would be the one to rescue and redeem Israel. A mentor of mine points out that what the disciples said to the stranger was true but not entirely sufficient.

Icon of the Road to Emmaus

“Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God,” they told the stranger. True enough, but not sufficient. 

“We had hoped he would be the one to liberate Israel,” they told  the stranger, “we had hoped he was the revolutionary who would finally free us from our oppressors.” Again, true enough, but not sufficient. 

Their answers aren’t wrong; their answers just weren’t big enough.

It was not until the stranger gave them an impromptu Bible study, the Bible study to end all Bible studies – connecting and interpreting all things about the stranger (Jesus himself) to the “scriptures, starting with Moses and going through all the Prophets,”[1] and then joined them at the table, “took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him”[2]

The next evening, after I had time to remove my uncultured foot from my mouth, I again snuck into the West Virginia Wesleyan Art Department and to deliver Allison’s wooing juice. The bottle of soap looked like what it was supposed to look like. 

“How’d you do that,” I asked her. “Just last night it looked nothing like that. 

“Last night I was working on the bubbles. I was zoomed in,” Allison replied with a snide smirk.

The portion of the illustration Allison was working on the prior night had been zoomed in. Allison was working on the details, the parts of a piece of art I overlook today when we are at the Hirschhorn or National Gallery, only to notice them after Allison points them out to Camden.

James Janknegt - Road to Emmaus

For the two disciples traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus, it was not until the wholeness of Christ was revealed to them, right in front of their face that they knew who was standing before them.

In the middle of the night, the two men ran back to Jerusalem, seven miles in the direction they had just come from and declare to the disciples who remained in the city they had seen Jesus.

When they arrived in Jerusalem they didn’t refer to Jesus as a prophet. 

They didn’t rush back to Jerusalem to report “God has raised Jesus, the prophet, from the dead.”

They didn’t call Jesus a liberator or revolutionary. 

They didn’t even call him a savior or a substitute. 

They didn’t rush back to Jerusalem to report, “The Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world has come back.”

Instead, after the Risen Jesus interprets Moses and the prophets for them (ie, the Old Testament; ie, the only Bible they knew) they took off to herald the return of Jesus the Kurios. 

They confess their faith in Jesus as Kurios.

“The Kurios,” the returning disciples proclaim to Peter, “is risen indeed!”. 

Kurios, Lord. 

The culmination of the Emmaus story is found in the disciples being able to see the Risen Lord in the breaking of bread, but they are unable to see the Risen Lord without Jesus’ Bible study to end all Bible studies – explaining how the entire Old Testament is actually about him. For us, as followers of Christ, we believe God’s Plan A has always been Jesus and the revelation of the coming Messiah, now present in our Risen Lord, is everywhere in the Old Testament.

Jesus as Lord is the Big Picture we miss when we, like the disciples on their way to Emmaus, hone in on a detail of the story and when that detail does not suffice we, as a failing art critic would attempt to do, make sense of the story of the person of Jesus that fails to show the bigger picture – that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ Sin and Death no longer hold their boot to the throat of what God created and Jesus reigns over.

While we may be hunkered down, like a teenager grounded and unable to leave the house, and wondering what we are supposed to do or where God is this Emmaus story, the entire story – not just the disciples’ failure to see Jesus, the breaking of bread, or their rush back to Jerusalem – shows us that not only is Jesus at work but that he’s been at work since the beginning.

Before Moses, way back when the Word was God and the Word was with God, God has been present, and God is present with us now. God is reigning now.

While we may be grounded at home and feel as though our grounding is shifting, Christ remains the same. Christ - the One the scriptures were pointing to, the one who overcame the power of Sind and Death, and the one who continues to reign as Lord over all of creation – is our grounding, our sure foundation.

Our Risen Lord is among us. He is present when we pray when we study when we break bread, but more importantly, he has always been present, he has always been Lord.

[1] Luke 24:27, CEB

[2] Luke 24:30-31, CEB

The Innocence Files

For this special episode, we talked with friends of the podcast Brian Stolarz and Dewayne Brown about their new documentary film on Netflix, The Innocence Files. The documentary tells the story of Dewayne’s wrongful conviction for a cop-killing in Houston, his ten plus years on death row, and Brian’s legal struggle to free him. I’m fortunate to have these two as friends, and I hope you will check out their film.

From Netflix:

This docuseries celebrates the essential work done by The Innocence Project to exonerate prisoners wrongly convicted of crimes by recounting the stories of eight men who served a collective 159 years in prison before being cleared of their crimes.

If you would like to help Dewayne while he awaits compensation from the State of Texas, HERE is the Go Fund Me to do so.

Before you listen, do us a solid and help out the podcast.

Click over to http://www.crackersandgrapejuice.com. Click on “Support the Show.” Become a patron.

For peanuts you can help us out....we appreciate it more than you can imagine.

https://crackersandgrapejuice.com/show/youre-not-accepted/

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Staying Grounded

One of my favorite ways to feel grounded in my community is to visit the local barbershop. When COVID-19 closures began I snagged one of the last appointments at The Neighborhood Barbershop. As the clippers stopped buzzing the owner and staff were getting ready to shut down.

When I asked Dustin how long they’d be shut down, he was hopefully optimistic but the quiver in his voice hinted at more fear than optimism.

Yes, I have (had) great hair.

Yes, the barbershop is a place where I can connect with others, and get a read on what’s happening in the community. It’s been almost 7 weeks since I was last at the barbershop. That is about 4 weeks longer than usual, for me.

I am beginning to feel disconnected from the world around me. I am more connected than ever to my family - my wife and our kids - but the world around me seems further and further away.

Are you feeling disconnected while grounded at home by COVID-19?

I want to invite you to join me and the Crackers and Grape Juice podcast team for an intentional time to reconnect, to reground ourselves while we’re grounded at home. To help us out, we’ve invited friend of the pod, Diana Butler Bass to lead us in a virtual pubcast. Think of it like a live podcast recording done in the cloud, with cheaper drinks.

This is a free event but you do need a ticket.

Grab a ticket, pour yourself a drink, and let’s find our grounding while we’re grounded.

www.crackersandgrapejuice.com/stayinggrounded