Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-speak

speak

Sometimes a picture speaks a thousand words.

Pablo Picasso said this about pictures, “Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.” 

The same can be said about photographs.

Like this one: 

So much is communicated in this photo.

What do you see?

What do you feel?

This image has become the image of the church for me. This is what we are to be about. This is how we are to live and be in the world. This is our mission.

While there are some of us complaining about making cakes and others about what is or isn’t love, this is happening.

A visible display of God’s love, Christ’s trust, and the Spirit’s presence captured in a simple moment between 2 people.

Beautiful.

And I want you to know this:

You

                  Yes you.

                                             Stop what you’re doing for a moment.

Listen.

                  Be still.

                                             You are loved like this.

Welcome.

                  Home.

                                             Child of God, you are enough.

Christ waits for you with arms open and with a tenderness to calm your fears.

You belong.

You are loved.

You are wanted.

You are not alone.

God loves you, exactly as you are.

Look again at the photo.

If you are hurting, let us hold you.

If you are not feeling well, let us heal you.

If you are down, lets us help you up.

If you are lost, let us walk you home.

You are not alone.

You

         Are

                  Loved.

Through Stained Glass: Advent Word of the Day-Black and Beautiful

Day 16:  black and beautiful

I am black and beautiful…[Song of Songs 1.5]

Today’s words, well, they are difficult.

They are black and beautiful.

I am white.

To deny the existence of racism in the world is a troubling lie.

Race matters. No matter how hard we try to say it doesn’t, it does.

I do not know how to talk about it all, but I know I need to talk about it.

It being, racism.

A little over a year ago I moved to Lincoln. I was welcomed and continue to be loved by the greatest of people. When I came to my study the first day at the church, there was a sign that said “Welcome Adam! We Are Glad You Are Here!”

Two days ago I read a story by a black preacher and his first week in a small Midwestern town.

On his church door, there was a sign.

It was a welcome sign of sorts.

Instead of a loving reception to the community like the one I received, he arrived to his church doors with the words

“N***** get Out!”

In my studies and in my reading of scripture, I’ve come to realize that color-blindness is not an option. One of the first songs I learned in Sunday school was how God loved all children, no matter their color.

If God created with our own particularities and unique characteristics, then we need to celebrate them and not avoid engaging them because of the vulnerability it takes to do so.

Advent is about the hope for God coming into reality—a reality where all are welcomed and invited into the KIN-dom of God. 

So friends, may we recognize and value our differences; may we teach and learn about that which may make us uncomfortable; and may we take steps learning about each other’s stories by sharing in worship, sharing in meals, and sharing in life together.

May you find comfort in this poem and in the wisdom from the late, great Maya Angelou.

Through Stained Glass: Advent Word of the Day-Sees

Day 4:  El-roi [sees]

Hagar named God, “You are El-roi.” [The God who sees.]

It was my first record. Yeah, one of those big black circular things you play on a record player. I looked fervently for it.

The record I was searching for was released in 1976 by Motown recording artist Stevie Wonder. The double-sided album masterpiece was called Songs in the Key of Life, which gave a brilliant and beautiful voice to the joys and struggles of life in inner city America.

My favorite track off the album is “Village Ghetto Land.” While I was not even alive when the album came out and at times still can’t grasp the social complexity of the song, the artistry of it broke my imaginative horizons wide open. What I mean by this is how in “Village Ghetto Land,” Stevie juxtaposes disturbing images of “life the way it is” in the inner city over the serene instrumentation of a chamber quartet:

"Village Ghetto Land"

Would you like to go with me
Down my dead end street
Would you like to come with me
To Village Ghetto Land

See the people lock their doors
While robbers laugh and steal
Beggars watch and eat their meal -from garbage cans

Broken glass is everywhere
It's a bloody scene
Killing plagues the citizens
Unless they own police

Children play with rusted cars
Sores cover their hands
Politicians laugh and drink-drunk to all demands

Families buying dog food now
Starvation roams the streets
Babies die before they're born
Infected by the grief

Now some folks say that we should be
Glad for what we have
Tell me would you be happy in Village Ghetto Land

         The album was recently re-released and listening to it today, one might be tempted to celebrate just how much things have changed in so-called post-racial America, “where a black man resides with his beautiful family in the White House and projects American military power across the world stage.”[1] The opening of “Village Ghetto Land”—Would you like to go with me / down my dead end street?—still resonates today as both an accusation and an invitation:  an accusation of social blindness but also an invitation to wake up, to come and see life as it is more clearly than I have seen it before from my perspective of social particularity.

         Again Dr. Pramuk writes, “To say yes to the invitation is to discover that what is at stake is not strictly my grasp of ghetto life so much as the music of life itself, life in the key of humanity, black, white, brown, red, or yellow. It is about the music of human relationships, sorrowful and joyful, broken and redeemed.”[2]

If there is ever a story about brokenness and redemption, it can be found in Genesis 16 & 21.

        

This is a photo done by Luba Lukova. The title
of it is "Hagar Suffering."

Hagar’s story is one of a servant and her mistress, or in modern terms, an employer and employee. It is the story of struggle for status. It is sadly also the story of abuse and exile. While it may be easy to focus entirely on the difficulty of Hagar’s story—a story of ethnic prejudice exacerbated by economic and sexual exploitation—we don’t want to miss the important moment in Hagar’s story:  She is the first person—not the first woman, but the first person—in the Bible who is visited by a divine messenger.

Even more astonishing is that she is the only biblical character who dares to name God. Hers is the story of a woman who sees and names God and is the mother of a great nation. Hagar's story instills courage to us when we face the cruel realities of this world. We must see it and be not afraid to name it. When we confront the 'isms we face, only then will we be able to end them.

Today’s word is sees, inspired by Hagar’s naming of God—El-roi.

What Hagar’s story and Stevie Wonder’s song have in common is an invitation for us to see the pain and injustices, the hurt and the sorrow, that is unfolding in our lives, in our communities, in our own neighborhoods, right now. But an invitation not only to see it, but to respond to it with acts of love and advocacy.

If Advent is a time of hoping and dreaming, I can’t help but to ask: what will it take for us to see beyond our comfort zones and begin to build relationships with those whom conventional wisdom tells us to avoid?

Advent is a time for us to see with eyes and minds wide open the world as it is, while living the dream of another world being possible.

May we have eyes to see not only the beauty that waits, but also the pain in our neighbor’s eyes. May we have the courage to not simply see it, but to stand in solidarity with them. Then, maybe, we will see each other as God sees all of us: the beautiful children of God’s eye.

---

[1] Christopher Pramuk. “Hope Sings So Beautiful:  Graced Encounters Across the Color Lines.”  (Minnesota:  Liturgical Press, 2013.)  page 89.

[2] Ibid.

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Stir

Stir

There is a scene in the Bible — Matthew 11 — where John the Baptist sends one of his disciples to ask Jesus a question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” It is one thing to do the dirty work for a friend and ask a girl whether she thinks he is cool or whatever, but it is another thing to ask the Messiah if he really is, well, the Messiah.

Are you really the one?

Jesus turns to the poor fellow, whose knees I imagine were knocking as loud as the bass drummer in the grade school band, and says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Wait. What?

That’s it? Nothing else? No Roman Road, or long, detailed analysis of the Hebrew Scriptures? No theological declaration that articulates the Trinity?

Just “Go and tell…”

Notice how Jesus doesn’t answer the question with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.” Also, isn’t it interesting how Jesus does not proclaim himself but proclaims the reign and love of God in this interaction? Ultimately Jesus came among the people to serve them, bringing life. Instead of casting away those persons who are at the margins of society -- persons that many would want to send away and out of sight -- it is precisely to those people that the Messiah came to restore and save.

Some of us at First Presbyterian Church are reading a book titled Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation by Eboo Patel. In it, Eboo recalls a moment in his journey of faith when he ran across a guy who was always starting up new clubs at his college. When Eboo asked why he always was doing something, his colleague replied, “Because the most important thing you can learn is how to turn an idea into reality…”

So I ask you, what have you seen? If all you have seen is the ‘bad’, I invite you then to step back, take a deep breath, and listen with your eyes for the goodness of God. As you do, it is my hope you’ll recognize how Jesus comes among us in His Word and through the Spirit to stir us up, to get involved in his ministry among those who are left out, on the margins of society, and who are in need.

Our involvement need not be as extravagant and exciting as restoring sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. Rather, what God may stir up with us is to remind people of their beloved-ness, to see people as the beautiful creation they are, and to tell others about the goodness and love of God.

Chances are, this won’t answer any real questions. But it might inspire hope, bringing to fruition the very real idea that God loves the world…

So friends, tell the world what you have seen. Tell your colleagues about God’s love by exhibiting God’s love. Change the world by loving! Change the community by loving! Change yourself by loving!