Sitting with Jesus

Over the past four years, I guess you could say I’ve been in the trenches with Jesus. I’ve scrambled. I’ve learned. I’ve done what needed doing. Greek vocabulary got memorized. Hebrew grammar got parsed. Systematics papers on atonement and forgiveness got written. Reformation history got tested. I have fought the good fight.

And then there were the internships where I learned to love beyond the limits of my own compassion. I discovered the love of God going before me and behind me and beneath me and above me. I had opportunity to practice conflict management. I mostly practiced conflict avoidance. I discovered who I was a person and as a pastor. I wrote sermons on Friday mornings. I was present on Sundays for worship and fellowship and last minute preparation and worship again. I slept late on Mondays. I went to meetings. I went to hospital bedsides. I didn’t always get it right but I showed up. I have finished the race.

But have I kept the faith? Have I kept the faith? That is the great, haunting question, after all. All I know is best said by the church father, Ireneus, who wrote: “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” I know that I have come alive over these past four years, even as pieces of me have been sloughed off like so much dead skin. The core of my humanity – body, soul, mind and spirit – are, indeed, fully alive and I have felt the glory of God in the midst of that vale of tears that was a car ride home from the hospital. And I have felt the glory of God at worship in the outdoor ampitheatres of our national parks. And I have even felt the glory of God in the study of church history, that great communion of the saints, and the task of piecing the story together in something akin to a systematic fashion. I have felt the glory of God in the words of Scripture, lifted from ancient texts by skilled hands and presented to us in breath-taking moments of “that’ll preach!” So I know beyond knowing that God has been present with me in the trenches.

I’ve been in the trenches with Jesus for four long years, even longer than that. More like a lifetime. But its only now in the lazy pace of summer that I can sit with Him for hours. I can read and pray and write and think and FEEL again. It’s a place of reacquaintance, which, I’ll grant you is strange, because we’ve never been unacquainted. God’s been with me all along but mostly in what Wendell Berry terms “the household economy” of togetherness. We’ve been together to get life done. We’ve stood together shoulder-to-shoulder (yes, I recognize the presumption of this statement. I’m sure that God has had the lion’s share in all of this and yet it feels like partnership too). And at long last, we are collapsed together onto the couch. And we are talking. And laughing. And crying. And looking back over the past four years at what we’ve accomplished, well, there’s no other way of saying it, of what we’ve accomplished together (presumption again!)

There has been much love manifested in the hard work of the trenches. Isn’t love, after all, most normally lived out in the ordinary? The mundane? The rote? The seamless union that barely requires words but moves forward upon the strength of mutual understanding?

I’ll grant, though, that in the midst of maneuvers, it is impractical to say all that may need to be said. It is in the quiet of recouperative stillness that mid-course adjustments may be broached. It is the coziest of intimacies that allows us to say to one another, “You know that thing you always do? Well I don’t know that its helping our relationship any.” And the outrageous piece of the story is that, in the quietness of recouperative stillness, I can hear these words from Jesus. And in that coziest of intimacies, I am freed to ask, “What are we going to do with me?”

And Jesus says He guesses He’ll keep loving me. And I say, Good thing. And then we sit some more.

Bridget Jones Graduates Seminary

She packed up her potential and all she had learned, grabbed a cute pair of shoes and headed out to change a few things.*

Margaret J. Jenista, M.Div

To my cheerleaders, cohorts, champions, and yes, even you lurking cynics: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Now it only remains with me to discern what comes next. No small task but God is faithful. At the same time, the details of this process are not blog-fodder so I may have to leave you in the dark for awhile yet, my dear and faithful blog-friends. However, summer is profiting me great opportunities to read, think and feel again. As a result, I feel some bloggin' coming on!

*from a graduation card from dear friend & mentor. Manifold thanks, Mary!

Numbers 6 - Club Remix

Since meeting with my spiritual director over a week ago, I've had the words of the Aaronic blessing (no, not ironic. Aaronic. Although, in some circumstances and certainly with some people, wouldn't an ironic blessing just nail it?) pulsing in my head. What do these words mean? Well, perhaps this:

The Lord bless you. . .
With courage to hold onto yourself.
With truth to feel your grief as it is.
With friendship to accompany you on the long journey home.
And the Lord keep you. . .
From believing yourself to be the sum total of all your mistakes.
From moving forward without honoring this moment's complexity.
From that particular isolation, which may eventually break the spirit.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you. . .
As a friend thowing his head back to join in your laughter.
As a mother mirrors the heart on her infant child's face.
As a lover feasts on the nuance of a grin and a wink.
And give you his smile of peace. . .
So that you may breathe again.
So that you may love with a greater portion of wisdom this time.
So that you may know yourself (with the deepest know of the deepest yourself)
to be the Beloved of God.
. . .both this day and forevermore. Amen.

But perhaps not only this. What would you say?

Yes, Yes, I Know. . .

Where have I been all your lives (since February 14)?

The question is. . .around. Mostly. Being uninspired and, I fear, uninspiring. But the malaise of February has passed and I have begun to hope for spring. First things first, though, a Hebrew quiz beckons.

In the meantime, here's some Meg writing to tide you over since, presumptious though it may be, I assume that's why you've bothered to travel all this way through the blogosphere. Please o please don't say otherwise.

You Say It Best When You Say It In 6-Words or Less

So, I'm trying to finish a really exciting paper on Christians & contraception. (please note that "really exciting" is not intended as sarcasm.) I'm totally excited about my research, challenged to keep thinking and discerning, etc. (please further note that this topic has no particular exigency to my current life circumstances [this note is for you - mom, dad, future calling church.]) But there is one book that I need and do not have in order to pull it all together, to bring it home, to facilitate the altar call and save souls for Jesus. It is this book by this woman.

So, instead of reading Jenell's book, I read her blog. Well, not all of it but enough to know that, aside from her ethical rubric of shalom for moral decision-making regarding contracepetion, she is also a delightful and engaging wit. Her latest blog post is exactly what I needed to hear and assimilate into my life.

But now I fear I am on a strange dead-ahead course toward sychophantism so I will hang a sharp detour here to one last Jenell-ian blog post. She proposes:

6-Word (or less) Titles for My Autobiography.

Here are a few of mine:
Detours are My Road Through Life.
I Got Screwed By Joshua Harris.
Seduced by John Calvin's Sexy Theology.
Hey, This Wasn't My Idea.
Always the Officiant, Never the Bride.

Now, what are a few of yours?

Sunday Addendum to Saturday's Thoughts

Sometimes, when you go the church, the Pastor manages to say just exactly the right thing. Sometimes the pastor leads you to the threshhold of the place where God manages to say just exactly the right thing.

This morning's Scripture text was Mark 8:34-37 "Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?"

I probably don't need to mention in this company the many ways that this verse has been misused. The abused wife is told that she is to go home and "bear her cross." She is told not to concern herself with saving her life, for that is God's job. Her job is to deny herself. This, I am afraid there is no pleasant way to say it, is bull-$#%!. Most of us recognize that much.

But, in more subtle forms, the idea of self-denial is often used to persuade women to give up dreams that float too far adrift from womanly limitations. In fact, Elisabeth Elliot prescribes, "So the woman who accepts the limitations of womanhood finds in those very limitations her gifts, her special calling - wings, in fact, which bear her up into perfect freedom, into the will of God." (Let Me Be a Woman, 32.)

In reference to my post of yesterday afternoon, though, I got to thinking. The purpose of self-denial is Christ and the Gospel. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, "let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily ensnares and let us run with perseverence the race marked out for us."

What if self-denial isn't about "amputating the parts of ourselves that don't quite fit" into the glorious story, as told by Elisabeth Elliot, of womanhood as limitation?
What if self-denial is about perservering long and hard after God and denying that voice that tells us to quit, to give in, to fit in and just do the traditional thing?
What if self-denial is about choosing to set aside that inner-voice that wants, so desperately needs, to be like and affirmed, even if that means resignation to the popular Christian gender sterotypes around us?

The word translated life in verses 35-36 may also be rendered "spirit." So many women walk through life looking to save their spirits by offering themselves to anyone or anything that promises restoration and healing.
"I'll cut an edge off my spirit here, if you'll accept me and tell me I'm a good Christian woman."
"I'll hand over my spirit to your safekeeping with the very tenuous promise given that you will respect me in the morning."
Other women, following hard after God's unique call of their whole person, find their spirit broken, wounded by the Christian world's tsk-tsking. Perhaps it is for us, dear sisters, that this verse speaks.

"For whoever wants to save HER SPIRIT will lose it, but whoever loses HER SPIRIT for me and for the Gospel will save it. What good is it for a WOMAN to gain the whole world'S APPROVAL, yet forfeit her SPIRIT? For what can a WOMAN give in exchange for HER SPIRIT?"

Go now in peace, knowing that your Spirit is of infinite worth to God, the God whom Isaiah promises: "gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. . .But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength (their spirits?) They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

(cheeky aside: Mark tells us that God renews our spirits. Isaiah tells us that God gives us strength to soar with eagles wings. Elisabeth Elliot tells us that accepting our womanly limitation is the source of our winged freedom. Looks like someone forgot to use her God-active language. . .)

Sometimes I think God Made Me Wrong.

In 1963, Betty Friedan wrote, “There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform, the image that I came to call the feminine mystique.” Friedan’s revolutionary research is the underpinning of the 1960s and 70s feminist movement, the aims of which have, in many ways, supplanted the so-called feminine mystique as the operational norm of gender stereotype and feminine self-understanding in broader culture.

However, in the church, the feminine mystique is still the prescribed script for gender stereotype and feminine self-understanding. A look at the titles on the shelf of the "Women's Interest" section of your local Family Christian bookstore serves as evidence that we mostly still accept a one-size-fits-all mentality of Christian womanhood.

There is a dominant story being told in our Christian churches about what it means to be a woman. In reality, there are a lucky few women who naturally fit into this story. Some women subconsciously adopt this narrative, pretending it is there own, amputating the parts of themselves that don't quite fit between the covers of the storybook beign read to them. Most women I know are partial-resisters of the story, timidly struggling against but ultimately bowing to the societal hand-slap that comes along with trying to tell the pieces of your truth that don't fit well in the plotline of the dominant narrative. There are some women out there who just flat out resist the story being told about them. I would very much like to meet these women.

I suppose there are folks out there who might assume I'm a no-holds-barred resister. In my own defense and in anticipation of hearing echoes of this truth from others, I tell this story about my own timid struggle.

Before taking my first preaching class at Calvin Theological Seminary, I prayed
that I would be horrible at it. I prayed that there would be unanimous confirmation that, certainly, this is NOT how God had gifted me and that I ought to consider doing something else with my life. If I couldn’t preach, you seen, then I was off the hook and could go back to my regularly scheduled life – a life that did not include rocking the boat. I didn’t have some radical agenda. I wasn’t looking to prove anything. That's not quite true. I was looking to prove that I didn't ahve some radical agenda.

At the same time, I knew myself well enough to guess this was going to be one of those unsatisfactorily answered prayers. And, frankly, I was mad at God for the umpteeth time in my life because God made me in such a way that God's people didn't know what to do with me.

So I preached and, it turns out, I preached pretty well. It also turned out that I loved doing it. So then I felt trapped by this call to ministry that was going to make my life difficult. Even after resigning myself too it, I was, simultaneously, ashamed of it. Once, preaching in front of my mentor, she stopped me and asked, “Why are you standing there with one leg wrapped around the other? You look like you’re nervous or that you’re trying not to take up too much room. What’s that about?” Before I could even think, I said: “Its okay if I preach but if I’m too good at it or confident, it’ll make the boys feel bad.” Both of our eyes turned round as saucers. I clamped a hand over my mouth. We both stood there. I felt like I was going to cry. “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

It sometimes feels, to me, that people assume my decision to pursue preaching and ordination was somehow cavalierly and easily made. Even though I know that I have been called to this. That fact is obvious to me after several internships and plenty of pulpit supply. Even though I know God is calling me to do this, I still find it difficult to feel the entirety of God’s delight because I know that this calling comes with the mixed reviews of God’s church.

I remember a more conservative time in my life when I assumed that women preachers were all New-Age goddess-worshippers who cut up Scripture to their own liking. That's another story I'm timidly struggling against. But, within the past week, I've had professors, collegues and long-ago friends remind me that resisting the church's dominent narrative is still a hand-slappable offense. Somedays I have the gumption to keep on keeping on. Other days, I'm just tired.
And on those days,I secretly suspect God just made me wrong.
And on those days, being the person God has called me to be, following hard after God's will seem like so much work compared to the tidy little story God's people want to cram me into.
And on those days, I just wish I was one of those lucky few women who naturally fit into the story of the Christian feminine mystique.