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Dear Folks,

Years ago I shared with you what my family came to call “Ware Do’s,” a collection of defining behaviors created over time. Pinned to the bulletin board in our kitchen and added to as needed, these admonitions became our working values, statements of hope that created us: Be kind… Finish what you start… Listen, and then respond… Feel your feelings…

I thought of those guiding principles, because this is such a challenging time to be a human being, not to mention to be a person of faith. Moreover, newcomers are asking, “What makes Redeemer different? What do you believe?” So I have gathered in one place the wisdom that shapes us. Cut them out and put them on your refrigerator! What would you add or change?

Perhaps Redeemer’s mission can be cast in these statements:

• Wherever you are on your journey of faith, you are welcome.
• Come as you are, however you are. We are all seekers here.
• We need each other… when things are going well and when things fall apart.
• God needs us, too.
• Belonging comes before believing.
• Prayer, study, and worship shape hearts, minds, and action.
• The only constant is change. We expect that each of us will grow.
• We believe all lives have meaning and are called to build one Baltimore.
• We practice radical engagement: everything centers on being in relationship.
• We see the world as it is, but strive to make it embody God’s compassion and justice.
• We organize to make change, inside and outside the church, one conversation at a time.
• We serve, in a particular way, anyone on the margins—children, teenagers, and seniors, for example, but also folks who are lost or weary or alone.
• We believe that helping someone is more important than being right.
• We do what we do, in the ways that we do it, because it seems like that’s what Jesus did.
• We strive to be regular in attendance, engaged in one or more of our ministries, and contributing financially to the mission of Redeemer.
• Our doors are wide open: we hope folks will dig in, but there’s no judgment if this isn’t the right place for you.

I’m sure there are more… There’s always more, but this is a good start. Why do you come to Redeemer? Why do you stay? And who are you inviting to join us?

Love,
David

Dear Folks,

This evening I will be interviewing Hahrie Han at the Ivy Bookstore on Falls road about her new book Undivided. Han’s compelling tale centers on the stories of four individuals, two Black and two White, two women and two men as they navigate race and racism in Cincinnati from 2015 to the present. Each of them is involved in a large evangelical church, Crossroads, as it creates a six-week anti-racism initiative called “Undivided.” The course, which is more aptly called an experience, is the brainchild of pastor Chuck, a Black leader in the majority white church who feels deeply called to convene a conversation about race in their city after the death of a Black man in police custody. Chuck preaches about the painful topic one Sunday, invites interested congregants to join him, and that week over 1000 people show up for the first session. Something very important was stirring.

There are multiple contexts for this significant work: a series of similar deaths of young Black men and women across the country, the movement of Black Lives Matter begun on social media, the explosion of young seekers who fill the theater quality seats of Crossroads for its come-as-you-are Christianity and commitment to multi-culturalism, all against the backdrop of the 2016 presidential election. The explicit question on participants’ minds was how to be Christian and committed to anti-racism; internally, many wondered if it was possible, especially given evangelicalism’s history in America.

A surprising vote in the 2016 election is what brought the work at Crossroads to the attention of Hahrie Han, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University whose research is in faith-based political organizing. In a pattern seen across the country, Trump won the largely rural state of Ohio by eight percentage points, while Clinton beat Trump in Hamilton County, a Democratic enclave within the state where Cincinnati is the county seat. Yet the same voters approved a ballot initiative to fund universal pre-school by twenty-four percent. Han writes, “a supermajority of Black and White residents passed a ballot initiative to raise their own taxes to fund universal preschool education with target resources for poor—mostly Black—communities.” How did that happen, she asks.

Han continues, “People kept telling me about one church that sent a steady stream of volunteers to support the initiative…Two young women, one White and one Black, (who) organized large, racially diverse groups of volunteers to phonebank…from a Protestant evangelical megachurch called Crossroads—technically a multiracial church, but unequivocally white dominant in both numbers and culture.” Han wonders how these church members became so animated in supporting a policy designed to benefit the Black community.

Her research leads her to the anti-racism course “Undivided,” which she encounters with a sizeable level of sobriety, if not cynicism. Academics and industry leaders believe that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are largely ineffective, so Han’s query was what made “Undivided” make such an impact on its participants’ lives. Her book tells the story of how inviting emotional vulnerability in curated multi-racial small groups engenders a process of lasting change: because they feel safe, folks will engage themselves, the issue of racism, and its implications. Further, a multi-racial group offers a context for practice. And finally, adding thoughtful “off-ramps” for continued relational work—in community organizing, housing or prison work—provides on-going accountability. Each of the three components is essential.

Sandra, Jess, Chuck, and Grant invited Han into their messy stories of transformation, ordinary folks committed to the extraordinary work of racial healing, “at the edge of social change.” It’s there that light breaks through, Han writes, “at the seams between the world as we have it and the world we are hoping to create.”

Join us tonight from 6:00-7:30 pm at The Ivy Bookstore, 5928 Falls Road.

Love,
David

While I am not a sailor myself, I’ve spent enough time sailing on boats with experienced sailors to know and understand a few things.

Like how important it is to keep the deck clean and clear.

And how you need to take good care of ropes and lines, keeping them untangled and sorted.

And how it’s critical to be paying attention and be prepared to move and act at a given moment, in order to catch the wind just right, so you can ride it when she blows!

I find sailing to be a helpful metaphor when thinking about grace. While we are not the Source of Grace, we can choose to cooperate with Grace when She appears. We can choose to do our part in being ready to act, to move in a specific direction, to make a certain decision that helps to bring about more healing, more wholeness, in ourselves and in our communities. Or not.

From my own experience, taking intentional, regular time to reflect and evaluate is part of “cooperating with Grace”. My work with BUILD and learning the disciplines of community organizing have been particularly helpful in developing a regular practice of reflecting and evaluating.

After every event or action, as leaders we huddle up and take the time to ask and answer, “In one word, how do you feel?” “In one sentence, what worked well?” “What could have been improved?” “Did we get the ‘reaction’ we were intending, with this ‘action’? If so, why? If not, why not?”

Just like a good team meets in the locker room or on the field with their coach to reflect on the game they just played, so too can we as members of “Team Jesus” be intentional about incorporating the regular practice of self- and group-reflection, in order to be better prepared to “catch the wind” and “cooperate with Grace” the next time She appears; the next time we have the opportunity to be agents of healing and Shalom.

So my invitation for you today is to choose to cooperate with Grace by taking some intentional time to reflect on and evaluate a recent occurrence in your life, that presents the opportunity to learn and grow.

May you be prepared to ride that wind the next time she blows!

Love,
Cristina

Why do you come to church?

Do you come for the music? To hear an inspiring word? To find comfort? Peace? To not feel alone?

Why do you come to church?

When I was a child growing up in Timonium, I went to church because it’s what we did as a family, every Sunday. My family attended The Church of the Nativity, in the days before it became the Roman Catholic “megachurch” it is today. I liked the sermons Fr. Coulson preached; even as a child, I felt like he was talking to me, his sermons were so clear, grounded and accessible. I loved the ritual and the singing, and how we all prayed the “Our Father” together. I loved looking around at all the people and families who sat around us, and how they often sat in the same pew Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. (For any who might remember Mark Belanger, the Orioles’ shortstop in the 1970’s, he and his family often sat in the pew right in front of us; his sons were as tall and slim as he was!) I loved when it was time to go up for communion and receive a wafer.

And I really loved how each Sunday after church, I would find Fr. Meisel standing by one of the front glass doors, waiting to greet and talk with people. He would always talk with me, Sunday after Sunday, month after month, year after year after year; wanting to know how I was, how school was going, how my family was doing. He had a dry sense of humor, deep voice, big heart, and lots of plain old common sense. I loved that, and I loved him.

As an adult and an Episcopal priest now for 14 years, I still come to church for many of the same reasons I did as a child. I still love looking around and seeing everyone in the pews, and how people often like to sit in the same pew Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. I still love communion. And I still love the sense of knowing and being known; of loving and being loved — by people in the church, and by something bigger that some of us call “God”.

But there is more, now, that draws me to church. I come to cry, to laugh, to sing, to pray alongside others who are doing their best to navigate this thing called “life” and “being human”, just like me. I come to listen to ancient stories of hope and healing, suffering and redemption, perseverance and faith; and to those stories about Jesus of Nazareth that my mind-body-soul have come to rely on like a thirsty pilgrim traveling on a desert road.

And … to be honest … I come to be changed, to be transformed, knowing and believing that who I am today — much as I have grown — is still shy of the fullness of Who God Created Me to Be. I come to be part of the transformation of our community, our city, our nation, and yes, our world, that the glory of God may be made more fully manifest throughout all of God’s creation.

So that’s just some of why I come to church.

What about you? Why do you come?

(And if you simply need an invitation to come, you’ve just been invited!)

Love,
Cristina

What do you think of this gospel story? Would you include it in Jesus’s greatest hits?

There are a lot of excuses we could offer to get Jesus off the hook in the dialogue between him and the Syro-Phoenician woman: maybe he’s tired, maybe he’s on vacation, maybe he’s joking, and the church over the centuries has turned itself inside out over the seventh chapter of Mark. But I think our call to mutual respect and reconciliation is furthered if we let Jesus’s words here sound as bad as they sound. A Gentile woman whose daughter was ill came before him, begging him to cast out the demon that possessed her. Jesus memorably says to the woman, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And Jesus responds, “For saying that, you may go. The demon has left your daughter.”

Jesus’s first response is uniquely harsh; no other suppliant in the gospel is treated with such rudeness. Why does he initially deny her request for healing? And no matter how you look at it, the term dog is an insult. Virtually every interpreter agrees. Scholars list several Hebrew Bible and New Testament references to dogs, none of which are flattering. Dogs in this culture were regarded as unclean. Even in the broader Mediterranean context, dogs were considered scavengers, like rats to an American or European, and not as domestic pets.

To match the phrase “little daughter,” the story teller uses a diminutive form, saying “little dog,” and some ambitious apologists suggest that Jesus is only having a bit of fun here. “He’s just calling her a puppy,” says one writer and “she should get the joke.” But how many of us have successfully called a stranger a derogatory name, who by the way is a different ethnicity and gender from yours, and had that “playfulness” go well?

Barbara Brown Taylor suggests Jesus is worn out. He has just come from his home town, where his friends and family have doubted his authority. He has received word that John the Baptist has lost his head, in a frivolous party game at the court of the king. He has pulled away from it all, but the crowds followed him, and he fed them with five loaves and two fish. And then there was a storm at sea. Everywhere Jesus turns, there are people and their needs, and frustrating confusion about who he really is. He is at the end of his rope, all but used up. When the Syro-Phoenician woman comes to him, he draws a hurtful, insulting line. “The doctor is out,” says the sign on the door. “Closed for the weekend.”

But the woman will not stay on her side of the line. “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” she counters.

Now most of us have trouble changing our minds when we hear a perspective contrary to our own, but that’s a lonely ghetto that serves neither us nor the common good. Even Jesus is guilty of drawing a line and refusing to cross over it… In a sense, he has his fingers in his ears as the story opens in today’s gospel. Yet the Syro-Phoenician woman will have none of that, and with quiet dignity and a sense of humor that embraces both herself and the man speaking to her, she helps Jesus take his hands from his ears and open up his eyes. And I believe that’s why this stirring drama is included in the scripture: the soul of the woman helps us expand our vision of God and of what’s possible for each of us.

Every human being is sacred and precious, no matter where they come from, what they look like, how they worship, or who they love. The poor, foreign, single mother with a sick daughter is the hero here, not Jesus, at least not until he changes his mind. She says to him, “I’m here and I matter. There is food and grace for each of us. God’s heart is bigger than anyone imagined, and there’s room in there for me and my little girl.” And with that, the line that religion so often draws between those within and those outside disappears.

“The limits he placed on himself vanish, and you can almost hear the huge wheel of history turning, as Jesus comes to a new understanding of who he is,” who we are, and what he has been called to do. “God’s purpose for him is bigger than he had imagined. There is enough of him to go around! And there is no going back to the limits he observed even a moment ago.” The old boundaries, of religion and God and humankind, will not contain this new vision. And Jesus will rub them out and draw them bigger, to include this foreign woman and her daughter today, and who knows who else tomorrow. (paraphrase of Barbara Brown Taylor)

So, although you might not have considered it earlier, I think this story should be on our list of greatest hits, and maybe it ought to be at the very top. This woman and her conversation with Jesus changes everything. It makes all the difference, because it tells us that every death-dealing boundary between people needs to be erased, every wall we have built over time or just this morning, needs to be taken down, stone by hurtful stone. Engaging her, respecting her, including her becomes the very reason for the Jesus movement, because any religious way that doesn’t center folks like her and her daughter is not worth following or standing for.

A group of women I know, in a church somewhat south of Baltimore, were talking one Sunday about this reading from Mark. “That man Jesus was sure enough tired that day, and he said something he shouldn’t have,” one began. “That’s alright, I guess,” said another, “but that sister sure set him straight.” A third offered, “She wasn’t mean at all; she just stood her ground and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She was strong, Jesus listened, and he changed for the better, too.” After a pause, the first woman wondered aloud, “You think my husband has heard this story?” Why don’t we make sure that everyone has?

And you know what? If Jesus’s vision and heart can grow bigger and more loving, like it does in this gospel, then maybe ours can, too.

Love,
David