Brief thoughts on the stench of death.

I’ve been reading this week’s Gospel lesson attempting to prepare a sermon for All Saints Sunday. I desperately want to talk about the promise and hope of resurrection because that is what I am to proclaim as a Christian. I find that proclamation to be difficult today because I find myself to be stuck in the tomb. There’s a stench that comes with being sealed in a tomb. There’s the physical stench, the decomposing and decay of a human body that once was. But I think there’s another stench; the social stench.

I’ve come to know experiences with death this year that I wish I didn’t. I saw my father, a man who lived life large and unapologetically, wither away to almost a skeleton covered with skin. The man who was larger than life died a death that whittled him down to skin and bones. That death took place on June 3, 2015. Today is the eve of All Hallow’s Eve. Almost five months have passed, and I realize that in some ways, I carry the social stench of my father’s death. I still grieve. My lens on how I see death and resurrection has been forever altered. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s not.

What is this social stench? I’m not entirely sure, but I can try to describe parts of it. I know that I will never be the same person after the evening of June 3, 2015. That morning, I had a father. Later that evening, I didn’t. There is a boundary line drawn on that day that cannot be erased on this side of the eschaton. I know that my mom’s life, my brother’s life, and my life will never be the same. I become emotional when I talk about my dad and the things that he enjoyed. I become emotional whenever I think about calling him. I become emotional with the realization that he never got the experience of being a grandparent. Simply put, I become emotional.

This is not to say that I have been emotional twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But that grief is beautiful and complicated and painful, and it sneaks up on me when I least expect. Sometimes it happens when I sit by myself. Sometimes it happens when I’m in conversation with someone. Sometimes it wakes me up in the middle of the night and I stare at the ceiling. It is there.

Sometimes the grief is overwhelming, I feel like I am in the clutches of grief and it will swallow me whole, devouring every sense of my being. There are other times where it is a slight pang of sadness, a gentle little wave that comes in and pools around my feet. Sometimes, I don’t even notice that it’s there. Sometimes grief feels like the stench of death is oozing out of my pores. That stench feels like the Ruth to my Naomi, and not in a good way.

I think the social stench has impacted how I am in relationship with those around me. Relationships that I had with friends that entailed long conversations into the night are now silent. Sometimes I don’t know what to say; sometimes they don’t know what to say. We stare at each other in silence across an abyss of experience and sadness. Perhaps that chasm will close as time progresses. Perhaps it won’t?

With death and decay comes something that continues to surprise me: compost. New relationships have grown out of the social stench of death. New growth has come in conversations where I was previously too meek to contribute. But honestly, I still struggle. I still have days where I seem to move through the five stages of grief multiple times a day. I still feel this ache in my heart where an emptiness now resides. 

But that’s the thing about compost... something will grow.  

Sermon for the Opening Worship for the Multicultural Youth Leadership Event (MYLE) in Detroit, MI, July 12, 2015

You’d think talking about the Gospel is an easy thing, right? Well... talking about the Gospel, well, sometimes it’s not an easy thing. Then there’s that whole thing of living out the Gospel... I think the church is entering a time where we’re going to have a lot of hard conversations about racism. About sexism. About gender orientation. About ability. There’s a lot of stuff that is uneasy to talk about in the world today, and there are issues that as a church, we will have to talk about them! I’m going to be honest, there are a lot of truths that we will have to face. We will have to face them together. Scales may fall from our eyes and we will see a new world and a new reality. We will have to learn (and maybe even relearn) how to be in community with one another. The big question comes, “How are we gonna do that?”

Let’s start with why we’re here, with our theme for MYLE. We’re have two verses from Mark’s Gospel:

                  “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and

                  with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your

                  strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor

                  as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Boom. With these two verses, I could just say sermon done, see ya. But let’s talk about love. Easy, right? I mean, it’s a four-letter word. There are so many things to be said about love, but defining this four-letter word... not so easy! A lot of times, I wonder if we know what we’re talking about when we talk about love; like, I love my family, but I love... a taco? Is that the same kind of love? Sure, we could talk about the movies we love, the music we love, the clothes we love, the games we love and do that easily... but the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, love incarnate? To tell people about something that is well, challenging and beautiful and difficult that definitely involves love... it sure isn’t easy.

I want to tell you a story about love.

I didn’t grow up in a church community; I grew up in a devout Hindu family. There isn’t anything wrong with that; I love my parents and brother (and I love them more than tacos). But either I was too Indian to be American or too American to be Indian, so I lived my life in this “in-between” space, not knowing where I belonged. I didn’t know if I had a place where I actually, really belonged, which is where church comes into my life. I started going to church when I was in college in rural South Carolina because 1) a friend invited me to go and 2) she told me there was going to be free food. My friend knew that I grew up in a Hindu family and she took a risk in inviting me. She knew I didn’t want to go to church because I was scared to hear that God didn’t love me because I was a Hindu living in the buckle of the Bible Belt. But I took a risk, too, and I took her up on her invitation. And I went back to that church week after week; it wasn’t awful! I thought I was being fed physically, but I was also being fed spiritually.

But there’s one Sunday I want to tell you about. I was minding my own business at that church in rural South Carolina on a Sunday morning at an 8:30AM service. I say this because I was an oddball at this service. Youngest person by a couple of decades. Darker skin than most people there. Oh yeah, and a Hindu. I was getting ready to stand up to sing a hymn. As everyone around me in church is singing this hymn... I’m sure God’s in church. I mean, I know, God’s supposed to be in church, right? But this was God. In church. Like God’s presence being so massive, like the presence of the Holy Spirit filling the place up, I was really thinking the roof was just going to come off the building because that church. was. full. with the Holy Spirit’s presence. I was freaking out, crying. It was at that moment that I knew I was loved. That God, by way of the Holy Spirit, was coming to me, yes, me, and letting me know, I LOVE YOU. For everything that I am. For who I was created to be. As this complete outsider on so many levels, it just didn’t make sense. But there are just some things that don’t make sense, like God’s love, grace, and mercy being extended to all of us and we don’t have to do a single thing for that. When I felt God’s presence, God’s love, and can you guess how I felt? Excited? Thrilled? Happy?

I was terrified. Scared. To. Death. Because while I was minding my own business in church singing a hymn, God comes to me and tells me that hey, I love you.  But God revealing God’s self to me in that moment wasn’t only just about God loving me. No, this is where it gets scary and complicated; if God is real and loves me, that means I’m called to love others. There’s this term called imago dei, it means the image of God, and we are all created in that image. There is no exclusion, there is no in or out crowd. God’s not just some old white dude with a long, flowing beard. God... is in the face of the person standing next to you. Really look at the people around you. You are looking at the face of God. In that moment at that church service, I realized that God loved me for being me, and in turn, God was calling me to love others as God created them to be. From that moment on, my life changed forever; I was being folded into God’s agape love story.

What is that agape love story? Agape love is the self-pouring out, the self-emptying love. The loving entirely for the neighbor. The other. Even the enemy. But I also want to be clear, this is not to be a doormat, not to be taken advantage of, not to be abused. Agape love is far from that. We have the most incredible example of agape love. Agape love is the love shown to us in Jesus Christ in his life, death, and especially his resurrection. Jesus is God made flesh, God loving us, showing us that love is more than a mere sentiment, but a way of life and of love that is open to us all. To let that agape love be genuine... and how we are called in our own ways to manifest that agape love in the world is us coming together in Detroit. To love our neighbor. To see God in the face of the person we work with. To being open to being folded into that agape love. All so that we may bring God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. That’s where Jesus’ call of “Hear, O Israel” comes into this agape love story. Our God is not an exclusionary God who says, okay, you here, but not you here. God doesn’t work like that. This is a world that desperately needs to see, experience, and feel God’s agape love, to truly know what that love does. This is a call for you and me, all who are baptized in Jesus Christ, to come together, our hands and feet and hearts and voices to live out that petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done... ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.”

So what’s love got to do with it? Well... a lot.

Out of the over 600 laws of Torah, part of the Old Testament, Jesus responded by quoting Moses, stating, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Those four, the heart, soul, mind, and strength, that is all of who you are. God loves you enough to create you to be the beautiful being you are; the entirety of who you are. But Jesus isn’t done responding to the scribe. Jesus quotes the Old Testament AGAIN, using words out of Leviticus, saying, “And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” This is a love that is expressed in action. Not just “be nice to the person sitting next to you” kind of action, but to be holy to one another, to see the face of God in one another, and to see God in yourself.  Others cannot deny your identity in the entirety of who God created you to be; others cannot deny your identity tied to the promise of resurrection and love in Christ Jesus. We are all tied together; we are accountable to one another as siblings in Christ. If our neighbor is in need, we’re called to respond to them; if our neighbor sees us in need, they’re called to respond to us.

But that love... it can be tricky. Loving someone as God loves us is not easy. Sometimes loving ourselves as God loves us sure isn’t easy. Sometimes we take a risk in our active choice to love one another, to make our neighbor holy. But we’re not the only ones to take a risk in loving one another. Our neighbor takes a risk in loving us too. What does this look like? Jesus showed us time and time again; he didn’t hang with what we would call the “popular crowd.” He loved the sick, the weak, the poor, the Samaritan. People that didn’t have power. People that were deemed as on the outside, the other.  Like “that kid.” The one who doesn’t seem to fit in; the one who is not a part of the “in-group”? That kid, who is not accepted for who they fully are. Maybe you make fun of that kid. Maybe you watch others make fun of that kid. But to take the risk, to reach out to that kid... that risk can change someone’s life, especially if you are that kid. It may be uncool. It may be unpopular. It’s a risk to do something not cool, to go against the in-crowd.

But then, God took the biggest risk in loving us.

Risking God’s own son.

Risking life.

Risking our rejection.

But that is how much God loves us, to risk the possibility that we will reject God’s suffering and ultimate sacrifice. But God does it freely anyway because God loves us. That is what love does, it uses its freedom love our neighbor, to risk for our neighbor, and to be open enough for our neighbor to risk for us, including risking loss and rejection.

God so loves us that God sent Jesus, God’s beloved Son.

                                                      

God’s love for us is so incredible, so unfathomable, that God’s love was nailed to a cross and resurrected on the third day so that we may live... and love.

God so loves us that God created us in God’s image. How radical is that, that we all resemble an amazing and diverse God?  

God love for us is so amazing and so radical, it comes to us in these words at the altar at our churches, “This is my body, broken FOR YOU. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed FOR YOU.” That’s one of the best parts of being Lutheran; God meets is in ways we can actually experience. God loves us so much that God comes to us in ways we can hear, see, taste, touch; through communion, through baptism, through the Living Word. God comes to us in the means of grace we can grasp on to so we can feel and experience God’s presence with and among us. 

        

When our hearts are broken, when we are discouraged, we come to the altar time and time and time again to become whole again, to be restored, to be in relationship with God and one another, being in communion with one another. We do this with the recognition that we are loved by God, and our broken hearts are mended to take the risk to love neighbors, to be loved by our neighbors, and to love ourselves... By living out this agape love for God, for one another, and for ourselves, the world will know we are one in Christ. This is living into God’s agape love story.

So... what’s love got to do with it?

If love is about our relationship with God and each other, it’s everything.

In love, let us take a moment of silence for those we take a risk on loving in God’s image…

In love, let us take a moment of silence for those who risk loving us seeing us as created in God’s image...

In love, let us take a moment of silence for those who have gone before us, for our ancestors, for those who have risked everything before us (even their lives) so that we can be here today, for the communion of saints that uphold us and uplift us for the work we need to do as Christ’s hands and feet in the world today...

Amen. 

Let me tell you about "Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer"

* I received the book for free for review purposes from Wipf & Stock.

This is not quite a book review. Nor is it a book report. But I really want to tell you about my experience reading A Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer by L. Callid Keefe-Perry.

I don’t find it to be a coincidence that I ran across a quote from Toni Morrison this week. In Beloved, she wrote, “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” This quote, as well as a litany of verses from scripture and hymnody flowed through my head as I read Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer by L. Callid Keefe-Perry. Morrison’s quote from Beloved came to mind (and while formulating this review) as I was curious about how Callid would define theopoetics. Through Callid’s extensive writing and exploration, I found that theopoetics cannot be limited to a confined prosaic definition. Theopoetics is not something to be hoarded by the academic; it is instead a field that calls for creation and (re)creation within an active community of faith.

And that’s when I head the voice of Jedi master Yoda in my head: “You must unlearn what you have learned” (If you read Way to Water, I hope you hear Yoda’s voice, too. And God’s.). I went to graduate school to study rhetoric and professional communication. I then converted to Christianity from Hinduism. I then went to a non-denominational seminary and a Lutheran seminary to study theology. I then became a parish pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I would like to think of myself as a learned person, which is why unlearning is a terrifying concept for me. Because of my life experiences, I’m very interested in how people talk about God and contextual theology. But I’ve also used my studies in rhetoric as a binky of sorts; it’s one of the many shields I’ve hid behind in explaining theology to others and relying on the confines of definitions. Heaven forbid we place God in a box, yet I’ve inadvertently done that on many an occasion. But an exciting aspect of unlearning is relearning.

In Way to Water, I was reminded that I’ve been living a half-life of sorts within boxes and confines, and that experiencing God in our lives is something much more than needing an explanation. A reliance on concrete definitions. A reliance on needed tidy answers and conclusions. A delusion of grandeur that as a “theologian in residence” of sorts in a parish, I know more (well, I don’t). That the ways we talk about God can become our own idols and golden calves that we hold near and dear. Through Way to Water, I’m (re)learning that it’s more about exploring the work of a living and resurrected God in the world with others. I had a St. Paul the Apostle moment when scales fell from my eyes (see Acts 9:18-19, “And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength”) and I could imagine seeing the God-created world differently. Reading this primer has opened my eyes not just to how people talk about God, but taking conversations further in how people share with on another how they experience an experiential God.

As an ordained Lutheran pastor, I deeply resonated with theopoetics being more that just flourishing language to talk about God. In reading Way to Water, I felt in my bones the need to realize that God’s Word is the Living Word, the Word made Flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. It’s lovely and amazing to re-encounter the Living Word in a new area. Christianity is meant to be lived and experienced; otherwise, why would God come to us in the person of Christ if God didn’t want to truly know and live our experiences? Words can communicate, but learning through experience and lived-ness... interwoven with words can be profound.  Way to Water also made me realize that theologians have a particular vocabulary (click here to see what I'm talking about), and that how we communicate our experiences with God and with one another can be exclusive. If we are to share our experiences of God with one another (laity, ordained, seeker, conversation partner...), we must not be afraid to stumble where words might not be able to contain such an experience, because we just might find the words, the expressions, the experience of God alive, and perhaps God anew. Way to Water also brought me back in touch with my experiences with the Living and Loving God and made me excited about hearing and sharing with people on their experiences of God in their lives.

Reading Way to Water led to new discoveries in how I think about experiencing God, inviting conversation about how others experience God, and forming the words of those shared experiences into a holy and communal place. As Callid’s work is a primer, it whets my appetite for more conversation and more dialogue. As an ordained minister who is a woman of color in a predominately white denomination, I would love to see dialogue between theopoetics and the embodiment of race in theology. I appreciate Callid’s emphasis on safe spaces and hospitality in the area of theopoetics, but as a woman of color who’s pretty good at identifying as “other,” I wonder about how invitations are extended? Who extends such invitations? How are spaces deemed as “safe”? Who works to make such spaces “safe”? How can we work with concepts of hospitality, especially in a time when people feel they may be encountering inhospitable environments? As for a fleshy incarnational embodied experience, I also wonder how theopoetics will be in conversation with social media?

After reading Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer, it feels fitting to have questions on conversation.

Review of Way To Water: A Theopoetics Primer, by Callid Keefe-Perry, is published by Cascade Books. More reviews of this book will be published here, this coming week: http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2015/02/25/theopoetics-book-blog-tour/ 

 

Wilderness

Ash Wednesday was hard.

I had a hard time looking at my Facebook feed, seeing smiling selfies with the imposition of ashes upon many a forehead. Looking at those pictures, I found myself wanting to scream at the computer screen. I wanted to tell my friends and colleagues, "This is absurd! You have the markings of ashes on your forehead, yet you look so damned happy."

Then I had to stop and think, "Okay, Tuhina, what is going on?"

I didn't observe Ash Wednesday this year. Or maybe I did, but not in a traditional setting. I spent most of Ash Wednesday in bed. I wasn't going to church for a multitude of reasons. Some of those reasons were:

• I'm currently about 3,000 miles away from the parish where I serve;
• I was sick due to an overly generous visit from the snot fairy;
• I wasn't prepared to drive a car not familiar to me in the aftermath of an ice storm in the South; yet most of all...
• I wasn't ready to have ashes placed on my forehead and I wasn't ready to hear the words pronounced to me, "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

I'll admit, I find myself in a wilderness of sorts. Death lurks around the corner in this wilderness. I vacillate between the cool calmness of logic and the tempest whirlwind of emotion. Logically, I think I understand that my father is dying from cancer. This cancer defies logic, though. This cancer is vicious; the man who was a force to be reckoned with is still incredibly sharp in mind, but cruelly trapped in a body that is failing him. Emotionally... well, my emotions are encased in the shiny silver ball ricocheting all over the pinball machine of the classic five stages of loss and grief. My pastoral colleagues tell me this is normal; if I'm going to be entirely honest, I don't know what normal is anymore.

Ash Wednesday is particularly difficult this year because I'm not ready to hear the words, "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I'm not ready to hear those words this Lent because my father wishes to be cremated when he dies. He wishes to truly return to that form of ashes whence we came, from the adamah from which we have been formed. And this year, on Ash Wednesday, to have the imposition of the ashes on my forehead felt too real, too close to my father's mortality, too close to the tactile nature of adamah.

As a Lutheran, I am grateful for the sacraments, especially for their tactile nature. I am grateful for the bread and the wine that are Christ's body and blood, that feed me and sustain me and keep me connected to the body of Christ. I am grateful for the water that has led to my own death and rebirth. But it's the tactile nature of ashes pressed to living skin that I had a hard time with this year. The ashes of my personal Ash Wednesday were not the burned up palm leaves from last year's Palm Sunday. My ashes were instead were the particles of dust flying around as I sorted through the items that accumulated throughout the course of my parents' marriage. This Ash Wednesday, I think I get it.

"For you are dust, and to dust you shall return."