On Finding And Living Our Joyful Vocations: (An Alternative Commencement Address for the Women of the Class of 2024)

To the Class of 2024, especially the women who are graduating, I would like to say this:

You may have been told some diabolical lies that your degrees, and any future titles and promotions, and your vocational hopes, dreams, and ambitions are worthless--and that your true place as a 'Christian woman' is in the home.

You may have been told these things by the same kind of people who promote White Nationalism disguised as Christianity. The kind of people who promote hate against LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities, and immigrants, and people of other religions.

These people who say these things are not the Good Shepherd, but rather thieves, who come to steal and kill and destroy. The Good Shepherd, instead, has come "so that you may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10).

If anyone is going to speak to women today about their calling and vocation as Christian women who have graduated from an institution of higher education, let it be this:

God has created you and given you a good mind and many gifts and talents for service in this world. Yes, if you find your joyful calling and vocation in raising a family and becoming a homemaker and have the significant financial means it takes to do so--then do so.

However, it is also Biblical and faithful to find your joyful calling in many vocations, whether or not you raise a family as defined in the traditional sense of biological children and marriage. Even the Benedictine Sisters, at whose college such a nonsense commencement speech was recently and unfortunately given, have themselves, by definition, found their joyful vocation in not being married and not raising biological children in a 'traditional' home. Instead, they have lived out their joyful vocation in another long-held tradition of Christian history, that of women's monasticism. Women's monasticism, of course, freed women up until this last generation to pursue vocations in multiple fields, including higher education and medicine, that were otherwise closed off to them if they had opted for marriage and raising children.

However, as most of us now know, a woman can also faithfully pursue her joyful vocation both in raising a family and also becoming highly educated and successful in her career. As most of us have heard by now, the unfortunate commencement speaker's own mother is a respected medical physicist at Emory University with multiple scientific articles published in her field.

The Bible and Church history is full of wonderful examples of women who pursued their joyful vocations with or without marrying or raising a family, and working inside or outside the home. Even Paul references Lydia as a successful businesswoman who finances his work; and his colleagues Phoebe, Priscilla, Apphia, Chloe, and Nympha, who were ministers and leaders of early congregations.

We should never mistake flawed human patriarchal fantasy for authentic scholarship in Biblical Studies or Early Church History--and this is precisely one of the reasons we need more women in higher education and religious leadership especially. God has called us and created us to have life, and live it abundantly, not fearfully.

So, to you who are graduating and seeking the next steps on your journey, I say: find your joyful calling and vocation and pursue it. My joyful calling and vocation is as a pastor and a parent; as a community organizer and a writer; as a composer and an artist; as a peacemaker and a poet. Draw on the stories of women in Scripture and in Church History, who have always had to break down barriers and contend with the patriarchy in order to live out their joyful calling and vocation in service to God and others in the community. Pay no attention to any small man who would tell you God has not made you as fully human, fully beloved, fully equal, fully gifted, and fully called to serve as anyone else--except to remind other people who are being harmed by such speech that this is not what God has called us to be.

Congratulations, Class of 2024! May you go on to find and pursue your joyful callings and vocation!

Never Give Up

 "Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up."

(Winston Churchill)

Sometimes I get discouraged

at the things I haven't accomplished yet;

at the to-do list that hardly seems to budge;

at all the writing projects yet to be published;

the music compositions yet to be polished;

the artwork I can't quite find time

to get back to the studio to finish;

the state of my house on any given day;

the never-ending dishes and laundry;

the clothes in need of mending;

the car repairs beyond my budget;

the stack of bills needing to be paid;

the long search for a full-time call

that will allow me to use my gifts,

feed my family, and also

to spend time with them;

the dreams and aspirations

on the back burner

for now.

It would be easy to look at my life and say,

'I am not a success.'

And yet,

Everything I've accomplished,

especially these last eight years:

Everything I've written,

Every community project I've done,

Every bit of progress I have made,

I did without an office of my own;

I did without even a laptop to myself;

I did without a secretary;

I did as a solo parent of 4;

I did living in or near poverty;

I did juggling multiple jobs;

I did living in low-income housing;

I did working overnights on call;

I did during a damn pandemic.

Given all that,

On the whole,

All things considered,

Things could be better;

But,

Perhaps I'm not

doing all that badly.

I know I'm doing

the best I can for now,

and yet

I look forward

to the day

when I am not held back

by so many obstacles

that shouldn't need

to be there at all.

When We Live More Fully Into Who We Truly Are

When we live more fully into who we truly are;

When we name and claim the various aspects

of who we were called to be;

People may reject us.

They may call us crazy

Or dangerous

Or try to destroy us.

This does not change who we are.

This does not make us bad or negate our truth;

Rather, they are colliding with their own assumptions

about who we were,

and it is an uncomfortable process.

It may affect their own perceptions of their 'club;'

Trouble the foundations of 'this is who we are together.'

Stigma runs deep and has real-life consequences.

Our truth may bring up other difficult truths

in the people around us

that they are still working to hide

or leave behind.

The answer is not to become silent once again;

to pretend to be

something other than who we are;

not to hide our light under the bushel basket

any more than we may need to do to survive

for a time

until we find enough safety

to let our light shine in its fullness.

Yet we may need to let them go

so we can grow and thrive and bloom;

the seed we have planted

through our choosing to exist

may be buried deep within them

but is surely planted nonetheless;

though the soil may be rocky or dry;

though they may try to eradicate it

like a weed;

in doing so they may leave

desolation in their wake--

a sterile, barren landscape

trampled flowers

in what might have been a vibrant garden

with openness, curiosity, and nurture.

And so we may find ourselves adrift for awhile;

uprooted;

searching for a new garden, a new place

to be among those who do welcome us for who we are

and all that we are;

nurture us

prune us in the right times and in the ways

that do not leave us with jagged scars

but bring us into ever fuller bloom

And perhaps someday, too,

those who once worked so hard

to stamp out the weeds

may discover the light within

may be open to watering

and fertilization

and their garden may grow

planted with enough flowers--

not uniform rows

of a solitary species--

but wild, zany, unique

each beautiful in their own way

watered with enough welcome

with enough acceptance and understanding

with enough room for everyone

to finally thrive.

Enough

Although I'm not preaching this weekend, the Gospel story of the little boy offering up his five loaves and two fishes to feed the crowd of 5,000 has been very much on my mind lately. Let's take a moment to talk about that.

When I was a child at church camp, our pastor read this story and asked us, "What did this actually look like? Imagine this with me: did the bread and fish magically pop up out of nowhere? Where did it come from?" Then he admitted that he kept some of his favorite snack mix in his shirt pocket, where most folks wouldn't know that he had it, but it was something to tide him over if he ended up working late. He imagined that most folks in Jesus' day might not head out to the edge of town, a long walk, without also packing a little extra food along, "just in case." What if that miracle was sharing? Perhaps folks didn't want to admit they also had extra food along, since they were surrounded by a crowd that also might be hungry, and no one person could possibly have enough to go around. However, perhaps as they saw the example of this little boy, as that basket came around, perhaps many people there were inspired to share some of their extra food as well--and what little extra each person had, was really more than enough to meet the needs.

Do you ever look at the world, especially in these past few weeks, and feel overwhelmed at the needs? Topping the news has been the tens of thousands of children fleeing the violence and crushing poverty of Central America. Meanwhile, I've been learning so much about our local homeless and hungry population, and the numbers there are daunting as well: long waiting lists at each of our existing shelters, thirty families with children in just one of the elementary schools who are living in their cars, sixty or more people living under the bridge. Long lines at the food pantry, and too little food to go around.
It would be quite easy for us, either as individuals or as one congregation, to look at it all and say, "we just can't make a difference, we don't have enough in the face of all this need."

Yet I think it is so important to notice what Jesus *didn't* ask, either of the boy or of the disciples. Jesus did not ask anyone to bake all the bread and catch all the fish by themselves. Jesus did not ask anyone to go buy all of the food from the nearby village, which would have cost far too much and been too cumbersome to transport by any one person, or even all twelve disciples--who realized this as well. Jesus didn't even ask the little boy to give up all his meals forever, so that others may be fed. Instead, Jesus simply took that little bit of a snack, and blessed it. Even had there been nothing left over, the boy would have been slightly inconvenienced for a few hours at worst.

Instead of becoming overwhelmed by the sheer amount of need around us, let's just start by asking ourselves: what are our five loaves and two fish? What is something that may actually seem like a little something to us, that could be blessed by Jesus and become something so much more? What can we share in such a way that it does not diminish us, but instead inspires others around us to share as well? On our own, we can only do so much. But working together, each of us sharing our little somethings, and combining those gifts with the whole body of Christ, we may even find ourselves in the midst of miracles.

Peace,
Le Anne

Youth Moment: On Baptism and Sand Castles

The second weekend in December seems like a funny time to talk about being at the beach, and actually, the snow is piling up outside our windows.  But, have you ever gone to the beach and built a sandcastle?  Have you ever worked really hard on it for a long time?  It's really neat what you can do with just water, and sand.

from raisinggreatkidsblog.com

Now, have you ever gone back the next day?  Was the sand castle still there?  Usually not, though sometimes there's a few traces left behind.  Sand castles don't keep, except for the memories or if you take a picture, and then you have to begin the next time all over again and build another one.

I like to think of building sand castles on the beach when I think of what it means to live out our baptisms. Our baptisms are eternal--just as God is eternal, and how very much the sand and water at a beach appear eternal to us.  We are God's children forever, whatever we may do in this life.  But building sand castles is a little like the daily practice of living out our baptisms--we respond to others in acts of love, to make our world a better place.  Sometimes the good we do is preserved in the memories of ourselves and those around us; but really, each day, we get to begin again by loving people all over again--especially the people who are hurting and need extra love to heal those hurts.

Now, this can be a lot of work, really.  But, we shouldn't be discouraged, and we don't have to do it alone, because we know God is always with us, and because we have each other to support one another.  Even in those times when it seems like all the good we may do just gets washed away in this world, we can and should still do beautiful things whenever we can, acts of love...and, like sand castles, we may even have some fun doing it.  Thanks be to God for sand and water, the world around us, and the daily opportunity to live out our baptisms by loving one another!

Credo: This I Believe

Recently a seminary classmate from my home presbytery was called to a church nearby and mentioned that he had liked my Statement of Faith which I prepared for ordination. I was touched by this, and thought it might be time to go find it again amidst all my ministry papers, and I share it with you here:

Credo

I cling to the church reformed

        And always, still, needing to be reformed

                    Fallible, broken, but worthy of change

                                God alone may be capable of perfection

                                                                    But we are not all for lost.

I believe Holy Scripture is the Word and Event of God in our lives

        Also broken by human doing, despite our best doing

                    Sometimes contradictory and not always clear

                                But also, by and through and with and in God

                                                                                Complete and whole.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

        The Lord, the Giver of Life

                    That she does, indeed, give Life

                                And breath; that she stirs to life

                                            That which seems beyond all hope of being stirred.

I believe in Christ, who came not only to save, despite death

                    But also came to teach us, in life, how to go on living

                                                                    And this, in its own way, also saves.

I believe in Christ

        Speaking truth as well as reconciliation

                    Justice as well as peace

                                Disrupting human convention

                                            Crucified for his ‘sins’

                                                        Would Christ be welcome in our churches today?

I believe in Christ

        Incarnate among us

                    As a human, still facing human shortcomings

                                Foreign women taught him love of neighbor

                                            Perhaps having other things to learn

                                                        By becoming fully us

                                                                    Yet also intimately God

I believe that in worship we encounter the Holy;

        In water, wine, and bread, God touches us still.

                                Here Christ holds us and heals us;

                                            Here the Spirit reconciles us to one another

                                                        In the midst of bitter church conflicts, remember:

                                                                                We are all still standing on holy ground.

I believe in God who created heavens and the earth

All that is, though seen and unseen

        Though heard and unheard, powerful and vulnerable

I believe that God did not walk off

        Leaving us to our own devices

                    That God knew we couldn’t make it on our own

                                And stayed with us, creating, redeeming, sustaining

I believe God is still speaking

        Moving, changing, inspiring

                    Beyond class, race, or gender

                                God calls whom God wills.

I believe God wills for God’s people—

        All God’s people—

                    Justice, freedom, and wholeness

                                That the world alone cannot provide, and often works against

                                            That the church alone cannot provide, and often works against

                                                        God has not yet given up, despite us.

I believe God is not done with us yet,

        Even when life be too painful for words;

                    That in this world we can choose to go on living

                                Or to go on dying

                                            In that desolation God is there

                                                        Even when no one else is

                                                                    And I believe that even when

                                                                                we cannot see the path ahead,                                            

                                                                                                                    There is one.

I do not need to believe

        That God is all-powerful,

                    or all-good

                                or all-just

                                            or all-knowing

                                                        to believe in God.

In truth, I need only to believe that God is Greater.

Broken, Re-shapen: Counting the Cost

Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33

(Look these up at bible.oremus.org)

In the Scriptures today we have the prophet Jeremiah going down to the potter’s house to see how clay can be shaped into one thing, then broken down and re-shaped into another--a metaphor for our own lives; we have the Psalm which reminds us how God has knit us together in the womb and knows much more about ourselves than we ever will; we have the letter to Philemon in which Paul asks for the freedom of the slave Onesimus, in order to return to Paul as a servant of his own free will.  And then we have a Gospel which says we must hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and yes, even life itself, if we are to be Jesus’ disciples.

First of all, I would completely understand anybody who said they didn’t like these passages about Jeremiah and Jesus, or talk about them like everything that’s wrong in the Christian church as we know it.  Neither of these sound like the gentle, loving Jesus or God we might prefer.  So I think it’s worth addressing what these passages might really mean.

To Hate, Or Simply Dismiss?

Let’s start with the Gospel and especially at that word, “hate.”  The root word is probably better understood as to ‘disregard, or dismiss.’  That’s a little more comforting than ‘hate,’ but still, it doesn’t sound all that comforting.  It wasn’t comforting back in the day either, when family was absolutely central to one’s life and livelihood.  People didn’t just go gallivanting off for any reason besides to try to earn a living in times of crisis--certainly not to fulfill individual curiosity.  Even adult children were expected to stay home and work the family business.

What if a situation arose where you had to disregard your family’s wishes, though?  There might be times--what if everyone in your family was racist or homophobic, or what if everyone you knew supported a war that you did not, and you had to say, “I just don’t think that’s right?”  It takes a lot of guts to stand up to the people you love, and Jesus was asking that crowd, which probably included a lot of people from good Jewish families--to probably upset their families quite a bit.  If they did become disciples, their families probably wondered what they did wrong, how their loved one could betray them like this, embarrass them in front of everyone like this, they probably prayed for their mortal souls and hoped that someday they’d finally see the light.

Yes, Jesus had a reason for such hyperbole.  Jesus was not asking them to simply show up once a week for sixty minutes, sing three hymns and listen to a sermon.  Jesus was not even just asking them to help out at a food pantry now and then.  Jesus was asking them to turn their entire lives around, to break down the status quo and social custom, in order to practice barrier-breaking love.  Everybody they knew was probably going to hate them for this.  They might be disowned and lose everything they had.  And they might very well get themselves killed for doing so.  Perhaps the closest thing in recent history we have to compare to this is getting on the bus and heading south to de-segregate lunch counters in the Civil Rights era.

And as was wisely observed by our friend Aaron this week,* Jesus would likely not be welcome in most of our churches today.  He would look funny and possibly smell funny; he would have radical ideas that would disrupt the status quo; Jesus in fact has a history of being kicked out of congregations. He was a radical, counter-cultural prophet.  Discipleship had a high cost, Jesus didn’t want people entering into it lightly--and so you might say if you became a disciple, to turn against your loved ones, pick up your cross, and part with all your possessions, then you, my friend, were about to hit rock bottom.

Well, what would you be willing to give everything for?

When you join the military--that’s a situation where you really go all in: you have to decide that you are willing to part with your life or limbs or health.  Sure, there are folks who never see combat or come out just fine; many others are just not so lucky.  I do sympathize with all the young people who signed up prior to September 11th, 2001, and thought it was just a good way to pay for school.  Many have paid with their lives.

Some people do give everything to take a courageous, even if unpopular stand.

I’ll tell you the story of a man who gave pretty close to everything for what he believed, and many rejected him for it.  Recently, Veterans for Peace held their national gathering in Madison and my husband had a chance to meet S. Brian Willson.  Brian grew up by all accounts as a good son and good citizen who went to serve in the Viet Nam War; when he returned, he joined other veterans who went on to protest nuclear arms and all manner of warfare.  As a trained lawyer, he documented the consequences of U.S. foreign policy throughout Central America and other countries.  In 1987, while sitting on the railroad tracks to protest a Navy train carrying munitions, for which he fully expected to be arrested.  Instead, the train sped up and ran him over.  He lost his legs and a part of his brain.  An ambulance nearby even refused to help, because of the stand he had been taking. Later, he would learn that although he had never used violence against the government, the FBI had labeled him a "terrorist," and the train had been directed not to stop.  However, even after a lengthy recovery, Brian has never stopped protesting war.  Now, when he attends protests, even on prosthetic legs, he dances. You can learn more about the story here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Willson

Broken Down and Re-Shapen

Let’s go back to talking about Jeremiah for a moment:  the audience was the Israelites: God’s chosen people.  They believed that because they were God’s chosen people, they couldn’t possibly be wrong.  They’d gotten comfortable in ways of exploiting the vulnerable and currying favor with the powerful.     Systems and structures of unjust power were about to be broken down as a natural consequence of their corrupted ways. During the time of Jeremiah, the Israelites would go from complacent prosperity, to the fall of Jerusalem, to being captive to Babylon, to exile in Egypt.  However, like clay, they weren’t simply discarded; God was still with them, even in exile.

There are other ways of being broken down, and re-shapen.  Recently I had the opportunity to see a video, Loving Someone With an Addiction, which talked about the point at which families would realize that they weren’t helping matters by paying the legal bills, the bail, the rent, while their loved one kept spending all their own money on drugs, or kept getting into trouble.  At some point, they realized if their loved one was going to get better, they would have to let them face the natural consequences of their addiction, even though it hurt to see.  It wouldn’t be until they hit their own rock bottom, when the consequences became costly enough, that they might actually be able to be receptive to recovery.

From Useless to Useful

Let’s talk about another guy that was close to rock-bottom.  Back in the Greco-Roman world of Paul, anybody could get into debt or trouble, and be sold as a slave into someone’s household.  Onesimus was a runaway slave, and he was in big trouble; a wanted man.  His owner, Philemon, had the right to punish him severely, including killing the man.  Somehow, Onesimus runs into Paul, who is in prison, and when you were in prison like Paul, you needed helpers to get your messages back and forth, and even to bring you food and clothing and medicine.  And oddly enough, Paul knows Philemon--he’s one of the leaders in the church at Colossae, which “meets in his house.”  Paul didn’t just keep him.  Paul sent this man back to face the potential consequences, but also offered another, more constructive path forward. However, Paul asks that this “useless” person be returned to Paul, since he was indeed ‘useful’ in his employ.  it’s a play on words, as the very name Onesimus means, “useful.”  He becomes quite useful indeed, later on, as we believe he is one of the first bishops of the new Christian movement.  His life and his world of being a slave is broken down, and re-shaped into service for God.

Asking For the Terms of Peace

There’s one more thing I want to talk about, since it comes up in the Gospel text as well as in our current events, as we hear about rulers counting the cost of going to war, and I think it’s a very appropriate question to ask, whether we can truly afford a military solution in Syria.  The heads of churches in Syria and the Middle East, and the heads of churches in this country as well, ask us to pray for peace and to not support the use of such violent means as missile strikes, because they will simply lead to more killing.  I think we may also have to be prepared that if we bomb, others might bomb us back.  I think we have to be prepared that if we use a military solution, even if we say we’re just making a quick strike, that it will become another ten years or more before we’ve seen the end of things.  There are so many options on the spectrum between bombing and doing nothing, and somehow we always manage to overlook them all.  My entire life, we have been tangled up in Afghanistan and Iraq--going back to the 70s and 80s, and we might well be for the rest of my life--we sell weapons to one side and then the other, and we use them ourselves.  It’s brought nothing but grief to us and to them.  Granted, you don’t make a lot of money by not selling weapons to warring countries, or by using weapons ourselves, but the cost of war is so much higher than the price of a real peace, built on truth and reconciliation.

So yes.  As a nation, then or now; or as a people; or even as just our own selves, it is possible to hit rock bottom for any number of reasons.  Everything we thought we knew might come smashing down around us.  And yet, there is good news, even in these painful moments.  As long as we are living, we are never completely destroyed; we may just be knocked down into our bare substance.  No matter what we do or what happens to us, God has known us in our inmost being; God knows our substance; God will even be with us as we take courageous stands; as we struggle to find God’s path for us, to follow in the footsteps of Christ.  By God’s grace, we are being re-shapen into something new.

Thanks be to God!

*Several people have indeed noted this wisely, but most recently this was mentioned by Aaron Bates.  Thanks for the good point!

More on Philemon: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1767

More on Jeremiah: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1767

Prayers This Week:

All who are struggling with serious or long-term illness in body, mind, or soul

All who wrestle with chemical dependency

For the people of Syria, that true peace may come through truly peaceful means; and that we be moved with compassion to feed, shelter, and welcome the many refugees

For the safety of all participants in our local area “Iron Man” competition this weekend

All who are wrestling with discord in their families and homes.