We’re in a strange moment of the Christian year; this 10 days before Pentecost. Tradition has it that Jesus ascended 40 days after the resurrection, which was last Thursday, and now, we’re in a sort of waiting period before the traditional celebration of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, coming to dwell among humanity and in human hearts, which happens on Pentecost.

Part of this wonky moment has to do with the theological assertion that joy and light and life and God overcomes, swallows up, and more than cancels out evil, and death, and darkness. Lent, that time leading up to Easter, when we have a moment to dwell and slow down in our somberness, to feel and reflect and repent of selfish, destructive habits, is 40 days long. So in answer to that, the season of Easter, celebrating God’s victory over sin, death, and the devil, is fittingly 50 days long.

But the point here is not about math or dates or even about traditions and holy days. I want to stay for a few minutes in the awkward, transitional space that we’re invited to experience in this in between time after Jesus has ascended and before the Holy Spirit comes. Have you ever been in an awkward, transitional place in your life? Maybe you’re even in one right now, whether you realize it or not. We often resist change because it’s uncomfortable and unpredictable and unknown, but change happens to us anyway, whether we want it, or admit it, or try to close the door on it. Continue reading →

These women got up before daybreak, they gathered together the spices and salts they could find in order to tend the body of their beloved teacher, unjustly killed three days before. They did not deny the harsh reality that faced them; their lives looked very different without their Jesus at the helm, and yet in spite of their grief, perhaps because of their grief, they kept putting one foot in front of the other. They did not quit, or refuse to move, they plodded along, they lugged the heavy baskets of spices with them to do for Jesus’ body the same thing they’d done for their parents and friends, their neighbors and relatives, when they had each breathed their last.

Their actions were ordinary, everyday rituals. Theirs was a world full of death, where illnesses and accidents abound, the frailty of human life obvious at every turn. Their beloved teacher’s death was a tragic one, and all the more infuriating for its injustice, for he had done nothing wrong. Their response to this harrowing ordeal was to enact the same ritual they’d done countless times before, the same habit that their mothers had taught them; they came to tend the body.

Women, even today, are given special authority over the bodies of loved ones. Moms feed families and friends with produce from the fridge and stove — maybe even produce from the backyard or an urban chicken coop. Daughters are more often the children at parents’ deathbeds; mothers grow and birth children from their very own bodies, nourish them with water made milk from their own bodies; nurses are more often women, and in medicine, nurses are the front line of ailing bodies. The women who love Jesus show their devotion in the tending of his body, even after death, even in numbing grief, even in grave injustice. Continue reading →

I don’t need to give y’all a history lesson; you know full-well that in the ancient world, women’s words weren’t worth the breath used to speak them.

Even in our own country, women were only granted the right to vote less than 100 years ago. My own great-grandmother, after whom I’m named and who I grew up spending time with, was born before women were allowed to vote in this country. Continue reading →

preached at St. Augustine’s Oak Cliff, March 18, 2018

“Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” a thoroughly American motto, is a concept deeply-woven into our collective understanding. “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is a testimony of what it means to be a successful person and a responsible member of our society. “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” has a long and honored history in our culture. It’s a point of pride, it tells us something about who Americans believe themselves to be, and what it is we believe we’re capable of. “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is about working hard, it’s about earning your wages by the sweat of your brow. “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” tells us that we have all that we need to be successful inside of us, if we would only use it, only tap into it. “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” believes that success or failure, our fate and destiny, the place we end up and the place where we are right now, is all in our own hands. We can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We are our own saviors. Continue reading →

“Take me past the outer courts, into the holy place, Lord I hunger and thirst for your righteousness but it’s only found one place, take me into the Holy of Holies, take me in by the blood of the Lamb, take me into the Holy of Holies, take the coal, cleanse my lips, here I am.”

That’s one of the worship songs that I grew up with, and I remember it being one of my favorites. It seems especially appropriate for this time of year with its haunting minor chords and earnest longing for transformation.

But I’ve started to wonder whether those words are true. Do we really want to go deep with God? Have we really invited him into the deepest, darkest points of our lives and asked him to cleanse us? Continue reading →