The fact that anyone among us feels like we should apologize is heartbreaking to me. Let me be clear, the church should be all about bringing people further and further along the arc toward justice. But the work of bringing congregations along this journey is difficult, and leadership isn’t about blindly walking into the future. An elder in the black Lutheran community once said, “If you are a leader in this church and no one is following, you are just out for a walk.” We must meet our communities where they are, but the God of Jesus of Nazareth has never shied away from the proclamation of truth. The gospel is always a call for liberation. It infects the hearts of those it has been presented to like wildfire that scorches away hatred. When did we become so damn afraid of it? Dear Church, we are cowards. — 9: 102-108
I am often asked how the church can avoid the gravity well that is the political divide in this country. I think the real question is, Do we even have to? The church is political. Feeding the homeless is radical. Marriage is radical when it’s offered to everyone and blessed by clergy. God’s justice is radical. Centering the oppressed is radical. Our task is not so much to reject politicism as it is to reject evil. The message of Jesus is radical and political. — 12: 147-150
My ordination is radical. I have a myriad of drug felonies; I spent years homeless; I received my GED in county prison. The church affirming me is a radical act. It is a way of saying that grace is real. That all of these intersecting and systemic conditions that conspired to squeeze the life out of me, combined with poor decision-making on my part, are nothing in light of God’s calling. That the Jesus we lynched rose in resurrection and redemption and offers that grace and love freely, liberally to anyone. My very existence, my next breath, my family, my freedom is proof that God is real. That grace is real. And it is also real for you. — 12: 150-154
White supremacy is the system that separates us. Take, for example, our readings of the parable of the Good Samaritan. I read it from the perspective of the one lying in the road, who has been waylaid by bandits. You see yourself as the good Samaritan. Or, best-case scenario, you wonder why you keep passing me by on the road. — 16: 212-214
This may mean that you are going to be really uncomfortable. But white discomfort is not worse than experiencing racism as a black person. This may mean that you will have to hold this church accountable to its own belief that racism is a sin. — 21: 288-289
We can queer Advent by talking about how Jesus had two mothers, one being an unwed teenager and the other being Sophia, the Holy Spirit. We can create an anti-racist Advent by describing the slaughter of the innocents as exactly what it was: ethnic cleansing by a leader who wanted to ensure his genetic line continued to rule. But if we stick to the idea that Advent is a time of darkness, midnight, blackness when we await the dawn, light, and whiteness, we are conflating whiteness with holiness—a powerful symbol whose ill effects on our community we have yet to really explore. — 56: 808-812
We have reduced the opening of God’s kingdom on earth to LGBTQIA folks to a term that in ELCA vernacular is a dog whistle: “the 2009 decision.” (I cannot help but see the irony that a church whose entire theological framework is in direct opposition to “decision theology” describes the expanding of God’s grace as a “decision.”) — 63: 903-905
We ignore Scripture like Proverbs 9:1–6: Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, “You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” — 76: 1108-1114
The power of symbols cannot be underestimated, and the fact that we have tried to remove womanhood from the divine is more a reflection of the weakness of modern manhood than anything womanhood ever was or will be. — 77: 1116-1118
Jesus Christ, by his very existence, asks of his followers to be seditious. That is the power of the gospel story: that Jesus resisted the fear-fueled instincts that led to the oppression of the marginalized. If you’re looking for revolutionary models that tackle external and internalized oppression, sit with the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts for a — 86: 1256-1259
Resist the idea that the ballot box or either party will save us. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Resist anything that doesn’t line up with the arc of the gospel; resist vehemently, as if our lives depended on it—because they do. Jesus is resistance. Dear Church, resist this corruption of life, and deny death. — 87: 1267-1269
Dear Church, truth that is not grounded in love is just brutality. — 104: 1520-1521
The twenty-first-century American church is a passion project of the creator. — 116: 1702-1703