Christ our Mother: A Sermon for the Last Sunday in Easter

This sermon was given by our Micah Fellow, Tiffany Curtis, on May 12th: the Last Sunday in Easter, Mother's Day, and our last evening service together as a Chaplaincy. The readings for the day can be found here.

Today is a bit of a challenge for me in terms of preaching, because even more than usual, I am tempted to try to cover everything! I am intrigued by the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven, which the church calendar celebrated on Thursday. I am a huge fan of the English mystic Julian of Norwich, whose feast day was Wednesday. As you know, today is Mother’s Day and Bishop Tom and many people from the Diocese of Massachusetts are walked to stand publicly against gun violence in the annual Mother’s Day Walk for Peace in Dorchester this morning. And then there is that peculiar, circular, beautiful gospel reading for today--I in you & you in me & they in me... It’s a lot to cover in one sermon! And probably not wise to try, but I can’t resist. Forgive me, it's my last sermon of the year!

I don’t know if the Ascension means much to you or how you interpret it...I confess that I actually hadn't thought about it at much length before this sermon. It wasn't a theological point that really grabbed my attention, but this week it really struck me.

It says in the Acts reading from Thursday that the disciples asked Christ if it was time for the restoration of God’s Kingdom. And Jesus responds by saying that the timing of God is not for them to know, but “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Then Christ is lifted up out of their sight by a cloud, and two wise figures in white say to the crowd of disciples gathered there, “why do you keep gazing up into heaven?”

By leaving the disciples alone on earth while Christ ascends to heaven, we, as contemporary disciples, receive a charge from Christ. To be witnesses on this earth. Not to pine after heaven or ask when all things will be made right by God. But to practice the power of the Holy Spirit right here in our charge as witnesses, from our own city to the ends of the earth.

But what does a witness do? What is a witness? A witness doesn't just act mindlessly. Nor does a witness just see. Witnesses are neither passive observers nor thoughtless actors. A witness is aware. A witness sees the reality of the world, and with  thoughtfulness and compassion acts and testifies in accordance with her values. It is a sacred call that Christ gives us in the Ascension account in Acts--to be witnesses in the world--to choose awareness of reality & not to stay silent, but to speak and to act.

The truth that we know all too well is that we live in a world of brokenness and suffering, and so our sacred call to bear witness to that reality is a powerful and challenging one. It’s not easy to witness suffering, to witness violence. As witnesses, however, we are also called to witness the beauty of this world, the small flashes of compassion and peace that sometimes go unnoticed. We are called to testify to love. In this way, being a witness is a  rather maternal call, for all of us...as we are invited into the possibility of observing and acting with a tenderness, justice, and love that is grounded in reality and oneness.

Julian of Norwich, the English mystic who was commemorated this week, lived in a time of disease, violence, and societal upheaval. Millions and millions of people in Europe died during the mid to late 14th century while the plagues raged. Julian witnessed this reality, and undoubtedly suffered because of it, and yet her legacy is one of hope and love and oneness with God. She is famous for the vivid vision she received where Christ came to her and told her, “All will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things, will be well.” Julian also received visions that Christ was our Mother--a somewhat unusual theology at the time and even now. She saw the relationship between Christians and Christ as one of nurture, love, and sacrifice, and Christ literally as our mother, taking on our human nature in what Julian called “the motherhood of grace.” Julian was a witness to the oneness of humanity in Christ's motherly love, in Christ's motherhood of grace.

Taking a cue  from Julian of Norwich, let’s look at the readings for this week again: Christ, our Mother, ascends into heaven, and asks us to be her witnesses to the ends of the earth. She asks us to wait, not idly, but actively. While she is in heaven, and we are here on this imperfect earth. The disciples want to know when all will be made right, when Christ will return, and they keep gazing up at the heavens expectantly, probably impatiently, with frustration, sadness, maybe even despair. Their best friend, their brother, teacher, mother, has died unjustly, been mysteriously and miraculously raised from the dead, walked alongside them once more, and now finally leaves again as suddenly as she arose from the grave.  

But if Christ is our Mother, and leaves us as her witnesses on this earth, we know that even in our separation from Christ, there is tenderness, nurture and love--there is oneness. It can be discouraging, tragic even, to be a human being. We often long for something better than the realities of this world. We yearn for union with God. There is a temptation to believe that all things will be made right sooner rather than later, or at least to hope. We hear this desire in the reaction of the disciples to the Ascension, and it is also reflected in the reading from Revelation today:

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come."

And let everyone who hears say, "Come."

And let everyone who is thirsty come.

Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

The one who testifies to these things says, "Surely I am coming soon."

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Come! Come! There is an impatience! Come, let us drink that water of life! Let us be nurtured by the maternal milk that Christ offers us from her breast--the water of abundant life! How can we make that feeling of safety, of love, of comfort & closeness--like a child at her mother’s breast-- a reality in this world of violence and disappointments and broken hearts and empty bellies?

Today’s Mother's Day Walk for Peace in Dorchester is one beautiful example. Not because the walk itself is going to end gun violence in our city. Not because any public protests or actions can make decisive, instant change in our society. But our gospel reading for today reveals to us what is powerful about this kind of action:  it creates oneness, in the way that the gospel of John describes. Coming together in common cause for good with people with whom we wouldn’t necessarily come together otherwise is undeniably powerful. Jesus says in this passage, “God, I am in you, and you are in me,  and as such, the people are in me so that they can know you.” It is through our oneness in Christ's spirit that we have connection to God, that we have union with love, and that we have the possibility of changing the world through our powerful role as witnesses. An action like the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace is a beautiful example of what witness and oneness look like, calling mothers and others into unity in a message of peace: We see our children shot down on our own streets, we witness that truth, and we speak to it--we bear witness & testify together.

As human beings who have had the experience of holding another human being within their bodies, mothers seem particularly aware of the need to care for others, of the lack of separation between individual people--the fundamental unity of humanity. Mothers can relate to what Christ says in the gospel today: “I am in you and you are in me.” Mothers have literally held their children within them. But even for those of us who have never been mothers, or perhaps never will be--by choice, circumstance, biology--we can learn from the power of a mother's witness. The capacity for humans to hold other humans within us is not limited to the physicality of motherhood. By holding one another in love, we become part of a web of connection that binds us to the Holy, and that expands our sense of compassion and justice out beyond our own self-interest. By holding one another in love, we live into our maternal capacity for witness and oneness.

Julian tells us “all will be well, all will be well,” and perhaps her vision could become a reality in this world. Maybe not as quickly as we'd like, but if we all held the people of our communities and families and world a little closer to us, and if we all understood this oneness as a clarion call to courageous compassion--to witness to peace, maybe then all would be well. 

This call to witness to peace is not a passive call, but a call to activity. Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice. Peace is not gazing up at the sky, focused on heaven. As witnesses and peacemakers we are called to active awareness of the world around us and courage to face it with that fierce maternal love within us all--that love that our Mother Christ gives to us. The power of the Holy Spirit has come upon us and does come upon and will come upon us so that we can be courageous in our witness and our love, from those most intimate to us, to the ends of the Earth! As Christ says today, “so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." So that the young people who are shot on our streets each and every day may be in us, so that the civilians who are wounded and killed by bombs every day in Afghanistan may be in us, so that the mothers whose milk--whose water of life--is dried within their breasts by hunger every day may be in us--so that Love may call us into witness and oneness. Amen.

From our Micah Fellow: Compassion

I was honored to be invited to speak at a conference on compassion at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The organizers read about HIPE in the Crimson, and contacted Hilly Haber and me to ask if one of us might be willing to speak about our experience of practicing compassion in a prison context. I said yes, and got to present on the opening night along with some diverse and dynamic speakers. There will be a video forthcoming, I am told. In the meantime, I wanted to share the text that I wrote up to prepare for my comments at the conference.

Be well,
Tiffany

--------

There are two basic emotions: love and fear. Every feeling in between is a variation on one of those fundamental impulses. When we talk about compassion we are talking about love. We are talking about a particular kind of love that is grounded, open, & present. Cornell West is famous for saying that “Justice is what Love looks like in public,” and I think compassion is what love looks like without fear.

We live in a society based on fear. And particularly when it comes to our system of crime and punishment the model is fear & control.

The first time I visited a prison, I was afraid. I was afraid because I thought there were people there who could hurt me. People who had committed crimes, and people who guarded them, who had guns and watched my every move. I was afraid when they asked me to go through security checkpoints where they looked inside my mouth, under my hair, at the bottoms of my feet...my body was controlled, watched. And I walked into a visiting room to visit someone I didn’t know, a man who had been in prison for over 20 years.

But even while I was afraid, I felt a sense of love in my heart, a sense of compassion. I knew that I was reaching out to someone who felt isolated, and who had applied to participate in this mentoring program as part of his efforts to secure his college degree while incarcerated. I knew this was someone who wanted connection and transformation.

What is powerful about the work I have been able to participate in as a volunteer visiting prisons is that unlikely sense of connection: a connection that provides an alternative to the fear-based system. By visiting imprisoned men and women and developing relationships with them we volunteers are embracing a compassion model. A love model, rather than a fear model.

Showing compassion is one way to help another person to flourish by creating the conditions that evoke the best in us as humans. Love and fear are both natural. But fear is closed, it is clenched, protective. Compassion is open & bold, and leaves space for creativity, growth, and change.

Along with the rest of my team, I currently visit a man named Ron who is in prison in Norfolk, Mass. He is an amazingly compassionate and articulate man, and I wish he were presenting here on this panel. Since he can’t be here, I want to share directly from him. He and I had a conversation that really moved me, and that I have been thinking about ever since. He told me about a program that he had seen on television about doctors and nurses who were treating people with benign facial tumors who had been abandoned by social stigma for their condition, kicked out of their homes and forced to forage for food in the trash at night. A nurse who they interviewed for the program described the feeling of reaching out to these individuals and simply expressing “I see you”--she wept and said that this moment of human connection was the beginning of the healing, before any actual treatment. Ron wept, too, when he saw this, and felt how much he related to a sense of being an outsider, of being marginalized by social stigma. He felt such compassion for the suffering he saw on the television, and it brought home for him how much he wants to work to touch those who are the margins: to be able to “see them” and embrace them in their humanity. As he wrote in one of his letters: “My entire desire is to be able to touch those society turns its back on, such as the homeless, ex-prisoners, the elderly shut away in awful nursing homes with no family, kids in foster care... I know what it is to lose everything and have no one...However, now I see my reason for living is to impact people’s lives.”

As a nation, we imprison over 6 million people, more people than any other country in the world. Our incarceration system is based on fear and isolation, and does not lead to change. 63% of those who are released from prison eventually commit another crime and return to the prison system. Partakers, the organization that I work with as a prison volunteer, has been working with Massachusetts prisons for 15 years, and in that time, only 2 individuals in the program have returned to prison. The power of compassion is at the heart of that striking difference.

When I entered the prison for the first time, I was afraid. In many ways, I still am. And yet it is compassion which draws me back time after time. Compassion is bold and courageous. It pushes us out of our protective fear, and into an openness to the world. I show up time after time to do the unglamorous work of sitting and talking with an incarcerated stranger in hard plastic chairs in a prison visiting room. And yet the results are powerful. Ronald recently wrote to me: “I am beyond grateful for your sacrifice and empathy and it is of more value to me than 5 million dollars. After having my life twice ripped apart...and over decades losing everything and everyone I ever cared about, your act of kindness restores and creates anew a belief that the imprint of God’s goodness and love resides in us all. So, thank you.”

Although Ron is thanking me in this letter, this is not because of me, or anything special that I do. It’s also not only about the specificity of prison. Ron’s statement is about the power of human connection, a power that we all have for one another, and which is alive in the act of loving. Compassion is practicing love without fear, reaching across that which divides us in society. There are so many ways in which we separate ourselves from others, choosing fear over love, but we are all innately capable of fearlessness, of courage. How do you show compassion in your lives? How do you show up with courage? Where is love calling you?

From our Micah Fellow: A Poem for the Week

This week our Micah Fellow, Tiffany Curtis, invites you to reflect on a poem she was recently reminded of; she found it especially relevant as she reflected on our responses to violence in the Easter season, and as she looks forward to Climate Revival in Copley Square this coming Saturday.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more 
of everything ready-made. Be afraid 
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head. 
Not even your future will be a mystery 
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card 
and shut away in a little drawer. 

When they want you to buy something 
they will call you. When they want you 
to die for profit they will let you know. 
So, friends, every day do something 
that won't compute. Love the Lord. 
Love the world. Work for nothing. 
Take all that you have and be poor. 
Love someone who does not deserve it. 

Denounce the government and embrace 
the flag. Hope to live in that free 
republic for which it stands. 
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man 
has not encountered he has not destroyed. 

Ask the questions that have no answers. 
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias. 
Say that your main crop is the forest 
that you did not plant, 
that you will not live to harvest. 

Say that the leaves are harvested 
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. 
Put your faith in the two inches of humus 
that will build under the trees 
every thousand years. 

Listen to carrion -- put your ear 
close, and hear the faint chattering 
of the songs that are to come. 
Expect the end of the world. Laugh. 
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful 
though you have considered all the facts. 
So long as women do not go cheap 
for power, please women more than men. 

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy 
a woman satisfied to bear a child? 
Will this disturb the sleep 
of a woman near to giving birth? 

Go with your love to the fields. 
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head 
in her lap. Swear allegiance 
to what is nighest your thoughts. 

As soon as the generals and the politicos 
can predict the motions of your mind, 
lose it. Leave it as a sign 
to mark the false trail, the way 
you didn't go. 

Be like the fox 
who makes more tracks than necessary, 
some in the wrong direction. 
Practice resurrection.

Our Own Weapons

 My dad wrote me an email a few days ago telling me about this new dramatized series on the Bible that is running on the History Channel. Growing up in a fairly devout Christian household, I have always had a bit of a soft spot for Bible stories. I remember watching biblical cartoons on the Evangelical television network, and I even had a biblical "barbie" of Ruth--she wore a red robe with a brown sash, had sensible flat feet, and came with a cassette tape of the story of Ruth. Childhood stories aside, I am intrigued by this new series, although I actually don't watch television so I have yet to see any of it. (Why do biblical dramatizations so often use British accents for the biblical people?!) But I did watch a few clips where Sojourners' Jim Wallis reviews some of his favorite moments from the series. One of them is this one, about David & Goliath. It's a classic story, of course, and an inspiring one to those of us who may think of ourselves as the "little guy" in the world--the one who is ignored, who isn't strong, who doesn't have much money or prestige, the lone activist crying out in the wilderness. Apparently it's one of Jim Wallis' favorite stories, and he uses it to make a simple yet important point: David doesn't fight Goliath with spears or swords--the weapons of the strong and militarily mighty. Rather, David uses that which he knows, that which is his unique gift. And he is successful. He defeats the tyrant. I wonder: what are our unique gifts, our weapons of choice against injustice? How are we called to reverse the weapons of the powerful?

Please Forgive Me

A Sermon Preached at St. James's Episcopal Church, Cambridge for Ash Wednesday
Tiffany Curtis
February 13, 2013


Joel 2:12-16

¹² Yet even now, says the Lord,
   return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
¹³ rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
   for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
   and relents from punishing.
¹⁴ Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
   and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain-offering and a drink-offering
   for the Lord, your God? 

¹⁵ Blow the trumpet in Zion;
   sanctify a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
¹⁶ gather the people.
Sanctify the congregation;
   assemble the aged;
gather the children,
   even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
   and the bride her canopy. 

Edwin [Rev. Edwin Johnson, Assistant Rector at St. James] often refers to what he likes to call the “side hustle”-- a job you do on the side to generate income or just out of pure passion. As you probably know, Edwin himself has a few side hustles, teaching dance, for one. I guess you could say that I have a side hustle, too--as an anthropologist. It doesn’t bring in much in the way of cash, but it does make for a lot of unique experiences, like two years ago when my side hustle brought me to an Eastern Orthodox Christian community to journey throughout the holy season that they call the Great Lent.

Rather than Ash Wednesday, the Great Lent began with a service called the Forgiveness Vespers: It consists of a dramatic series of chanting, censing, praying, removing all the vestments from the altar, the lights dimming slowly to black, all leading up to the heart of the service.

Slowly, one by one, we began to form a large circle around the sanctuary, prostrating ourselves in front of one another, our bodies flat on the ground, our faces in the dust. When we came before each person, we said to each other: “Please forgive me” or “Sister, forgive my sins” crossing ourselves and pressing ourselves downward, the crowns of our heads often almost touching as we placed our foreheads on the ground. As we rose, we embraced and said to one another “God forgives. And so do I.” During this time, the choir was chanting softly. They were the last to line up for this ritual, the room finally going completely silent. After every single person in the room had bowed down and forgiven every single other person, the lights turned back on, waking me up out of the intimate darkness and dull pain in my body from having done hundreds of prostrations.

I don’t think I need to tell you that this was a powerful invitation into Lent--it was incredibly moving and humbling to be reminded so viscerally that our sins are not against some disappointed God in heaven, but against one another. That which I have done or failed to do to my neighbor, to my partner, to my friend, to a person I don’t even know, clumsily bowing in front of me, I have done or not done to each and every person in this room.

Today on Ash Wednesday and throughout the season of Lent, we are not asking for God-our-Powerful-Father to forgive us our appalling sins, seen only by His penetrating gaze. Rather, we are asking forgiveness for the ways in which we hurt one another, we are addressing that vulnerable divinity that was born to us so recently in our Church calendar--the infant God within us, the baby Christ--the God incarnate in our fragile bodies.

We ask forgiveness because we are heavy with shame and guilt and disappointment because we mess up all the time, failing each other in profound ways, violating that tender divinity within each of us rather than honoring and kindling that sacred spark.

We cling to petty bitterness, we develop self-indulgences and self-loathing, we get lost in waves of ennui in the face of injustice. We are caught up in systems of oppression beyond our own doing; we are overwhelmed by the dire environmental crisis, by the inequity of distribution of food, wealth, power, by the ways that people are systematically and personally denied the opportunity to flourish and live into their truest selves. Our own choices and the choices that seem to be made for us elude us, and we become frustrated, too afraid to take responsibility for our mistakes, for our failures, for our fear and clinging.

If Advent and Christmas are about the miracle of incarnation...Lent is an exploration of its challenges. Living a human life is hard. It is full of suffering, pain, temptation, and death. We sit with this discomfort for the next 40 days, mirroring the story of Jesus in the desert for 40 days, which in turn echoes the Israelites wandering for 40 years in the desert. Jesus went alone into the harsh wilderness, whereas the Israelites went together, and in a way, we do both.

This time is a time of personal introspection and it is also communal. On silent meditation retreats I have often heard that we are practicing being “alone together”--and Lent provides just such an opportunity: to pray, to meditate, to fast, to contemplate...alone-together. We reconnect with our vulnerability and our failures so that when Holy Week comes and we follow Jesus on his journey into Jerusalem, into his death, and into his miraculous and history-making triumph over death, we might better understand the power of the Christian witness--what it means to have the hope of resurrection in the midst of the desert journey, in the midst even of death.

In the reading from the book of Joel we heard the exhortation to call a solemn assembly, to gather all the people, the whole congregation from oldest to youngest, to drop everything to return to God in weeping, and mourning, with this stunning image to rend our hearts--to tear them open.

Like the Forgiveness Vespers I experienced, Joel asks the people to gather together to weep and pray. We are not isolated in this 40-day journey we are entering, we are a solemn assembly of fellow travelers, bowing our heads in prayer, humbling ourselves before God and one another and asking for grace, asking that our hearts be transformed to love.

With these ashes we affirm our rootedness in the earth, and we reject the narratives of scarcity, distrust, and fear that permeate our world. When we remember where we come from and where we are going (from ashes to ashes, dust to dust), we remember our finitude and our beauty as human creatures, we remember our connectedness.

And down in that dust, our faces flat on the floor in regret, we hear a voice, then another--ours and our neighbor’s, and they say softly: God forgives, and so do I.

We offer these ashes as a tangible reminder of this grace: a love that holds us all, no matter who we are.

More HIPE!

As I have written about before, we recently founded the Harvard Interfaith Prison Education project (HIPE), and I am so excited about all that has happened so far, and the promise of more to come. In particular, I am thinking today about the event we will be hosting tomorrow--a conversation with Dr. Kaia Stern, Co-Founder and Director of the Prison Studies Program, visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, and an ordained interfaith minister. Prof. Stern's talk will be accompanied by group discussion about goals for the semester and the meaning of interfaith prison work. She is a leading thinker and doer in this area, and we are thrilled that she has graciously offered her time and expertise to us. I look forward to sharing more about this event after tomorrow! 

In case you aren't familiar with HIPE, here is some background information I wrote earlier today:

Founded in November 2012, Harvard Interfaith Prison Education (HIPE) was jointly organized by the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard and Harvard Hillel. HIPE is an interfaith coalition of Harvard graduate and undergraduate students committed to mentoring incarcerated women and men who are working towards their bachelor degrees through Partakers and Boston University's "College Behind Bars" program. HIPE currently has 21 members from the College, the Graduate School of Education, Hillel staff, Episcopal Chaplaincy staff, the Divinity School, the School of Public Health, and the Law School. Although started by Episcopal and Jewish student communities, HIPE is very multi-religious, and its current members self-identify as Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist. These members are divided into 3 interfaith and inter-school teams, each assigned to a different incarcerated mentee. 

HIPE was founded by Hilly Haber (HDS '12) and me, growing out of a brainstorming conversation we had at a coffee shop in Harvard Square early this fall. Hilly and I are both working in campus ministries at Harvard this year -- me at the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard as the Micah Fellow for Social Justice, and Hilly at Harvard Hillel as Coordinator for Graduate Student Programming -- and so we were excited to find ways to do interfaith work together. Remembering a shared experience as members of Harvard Divinity School's prison mentoring team, we hatched the idea to form a similar interfaith prison team open to participants throughout the University, with intentional interfaith reflection built in to the model. We are now coordinating the HIPE team together and providing opportunities for theological reflection and support for team-members--like tomorrow night's event! 

Our team is one of 26 teams throughout Massachusetts that Partakers has connected with incarcerated students in the College Behind Bars program. We follow the protocol that Partakers has laid out for visits, and we had Arthur Bembury, the Executive Director of Partakers, come and do an orientation with our teams about visiting policy, expectations, and procedures. Members visit Norfolk prison in pairs  (2 visitors allowed per prisoner at a time), and the travel time provides a perfect opportunity for reflection on the experience, which we hope will be used for interfaith dialogue and make the project one of true praxis--action/reflection. In between visits, team members also write letters to their mentee, primarily to coordinate visits. Letters are the main form of communication we have with the prisoners, so we need to coordinate visits well in advance. The letters are also important for catching up about different aspects of their education. Sometimes they will send an essay they wrote for class, or ask us to find some information for them for a project.  

When we do visit the prison, we go to the visiting room in the prison as normal social visitors, and basically just have a conversation. For many of the folks in the program, this is one of the only contacts they have with the outside world, so they love the opportunity to have someone to talk to, especially someone who is passionate about education and is encouraging them in a very difficult endeavor of pursuing a college degree while incarcerated. We provide support and a listening ear about the papers they are writing, the projects they are working on, the ideas that are intriguing right now, their plans for classes for the next semester, and so forth. Topics of spirituality and life's meaning and big questions tend to come up, too, and for me, it has been a great experience to have those conversations, especially across divides of religion, class, race...
The act of accompaniment in spiritual and educational journeys is truly prophetic, and one that we are excited to be engaging across lines of separation in our society. 

Messiah!

This past weekend I was blessed to attend a Handel's Messiah performance by the Handel and Haydn Society at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was conducted by Harry Christophers, and featured some incredible soloists, such as the countertenor Daniel Taylor. 

To say that I was moved by the experience would certainly be an understatement. The swells of sound, the staccato of the violins, the voices pure and clear, the electric conducting of Mr. Christophers...sent chills down my spine, brought me to tears, and moved me to want to stand up and shout: "AMEN!!!" many times. The three-hour piece is pure inspiration from Baroque composer George Frideric Handel. Handel selected many biblical passages (particularly from Isaiah and Corinthians) and put them to soaring music in a theological narrative that begins with anticipation of the birth of Christ, rejoices in the incarnation, laments the sorrows and suffering of an embodied existence, and then finally celebrates the ultimate triumph over death through the promise of the resurrection. It is a powerful, powerful piece of music, and one I have long loved. 

Something about the amazing energy of this particular performance of the Messiah really resonated deeply within me, and played a theological chord in my heart in a way that only soul-stirring music can. What I found myself feeling, in my bones and flesh and tears, was the sheer improbability and pathos of the incarnation, which I explore in three phrases from the Messiah that particularly stayed with me. 

For unto us, a child is born... (Isaiah 9:6)

What struck me this time when I heard this oft-repeated refrain was the "us." For unto us a child is born.  We are all waiting, like Mary, as eager parents, ready to receive this new life in the world. But we aren't just waiting for something we hope will happen. We are waiting for something that is inevitable and already-done. God is already with us. God is coming to us. God will come again to us. 

The kingdom of the earth is become the kingdom of our Lord (Revelation 11:15)

In the famous Hallelujah Chorus, this line is particularly memorable. The potential for transforming the suffering in this world is so rich, because through the incarnation, the sacred and the profane are brought together, the kingdom of earth becomes the kingdom of God. We have the potential to bring about divine love and justice in this broken place, because God came in a broken body to bring good news to us. This world that we live in is sacred, already blessed, and yet aching for healing through the further flowering of God's love made flesh. 

And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. (1 Corinthians 15:20)

In God's decision to come as a human being to this world we are all redeemed and blessed in our own bodies ("...and the Word was made flesh.") Our bodies are no less human (worms will still destroy our dead flesh buried in the dark earth), and yet in their very human-ness they are capable of seeing God. This means that each movement of our limbs, each neuron firing in our brains, each breath...has the capacity to be a prayer. When we move we move in God, when we breathe we breathe in God. This incarnation has already happened. We have been granted this amazing gift and we await its coming again, within ourselves. We are already blessed. We await Christ's coming as a human child Advent after Advent, day after day, breath after breath.

"A Very Human Book": Hannah's Song and Reading the Bible

This sermon was delivered on 18 November 2012 by our Micah Fellow, Tiffany Curtis. The readings for the day are available here. 

 

In our readings today we hear Hannah struggle with her sense of anguish and distress over her lot in life. She is irritated, provoked, weeping, praying. She won’t eat. She is so immersed in her grief that Eli believes her to be drunk. 15But Hannah answers, ‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.’ Eli tells her that she should go in peace, for God will grant her petition. Hannah indeed becomes pregnant—the desire of her heart, according to the scriptures—and she gives birth to the prophet Samuel.

Then come the famous words of the Song of Hannah, echoed in the gospel of Luke in the Song of Mary. Hannah sings a song primarily of joy. It is triumphant, and also full of energy and complex images and emotions. It speaks of justice for those who have been forgotten, neglected, marginalized. It gives glory to God for lifting up the oppressed. And it also states clearly that this joy and justice is in opposition to others, that it is defined by its opposite…

Hannah says: my mouth derides my enemies, their bows are broken, they are without jobs or food, they are forlorn. Those who were full of food will go hungry, the rich will be poor. The wicked shall be cut off in darkness, and God’s adversaries shattered…This is not just some feel-good love song to God. This is a complicated text, and like much of scripture, we are invited to sort out what it might mean for us in our lives.

Particularly thinking about the experience many of us have just had, of working together with other people of faith so that the hungry might be fed, these texts sound a little incongruent to my ear. I just worked for 2 hours side-by-side with people of many nations, skin colors, faiths--including a faith in reason and humanity rather than a faith in God. And now I come to church and I hear that those who are not like me, those who in biblical times might even have been called my enemies--deserve my scorn and the wrath of the Lord.

We have a few options. We can accept this book as the literal Word of God, including the parts we don’t like, and perhaps dig in and explore some of the darker aspects of God as portrayed in scripture. I think this merits much more reflection than it is ever given in more liberal Christian contexts, where the love of God is emphasized above all else. But that’s not what I am going to explore tonight. We can also spiritualize this kind of thing and view it metaphorically: crushing our enemies can mean the enemy forces within us, the complexities and darkness that we find within ourselves, those tendencies that threaten to pull us away from our truest selves, from our faith. An internal struggle. This sort of allegorical reading of the Bible can be extremely beneficial, and has a noble history in Christianity, particularly pre-Enlightenment. But I am not going to go into that approach either.

What I do want to talk about is something that has been so present in my heart since one of the brothers at the Society of Saint John the Evangelist preached last month on the psalms. He said that the psalms are powerful because they hold the full range of human emotions, including joy and including murderous rage. And that by delving into the psalms together we are acknowledging the breadth of human experience, and honoring emotions that might not be our own. This resonated with me so much because one of things I have always loved about the Bible is how darn contradictory it is. It offers different accounts of stories side-by-side, and shows us the lives of faithful heroes and moral idiots alike, sometimes in the same person. The Bible has always seemed like a very human book to me, and that’s much of what makes it holy for me. We humans have been struggling to relate to the divine and to each other for millennia, and much of that struggle is depicted so colorfully and beautifully in our scriptures. That means that we find parts of the Bible that can be hard to swallow, mixed right in with incredibly moving images of Godly and human justice and compassion. We find the deliciously erotic love poetry of the Song of Songs in the same book that we find stories of mass rape and murder, of men betraying their own brothers.

In our world, too, in a single moment you can observe a couple hand in hand in Harvard Square, obviously rapturously in love, and then almost trip over someone who has lost a limb, whose face is red and blotchy from exposure to sun and cold, and whose hand is outstretched, a thin paper cup held between nicotine-stained fingers, and whose defeated eyes look at you imploringly. This is the nature of reality. The complexity, the contrast, the both/and is what it means to be a human being!

The simple ways of reading the texts of our lives, of reading the holy texts we have been given by our ancestors, is usually not the most compelling. It’s not compelling because it flattens an inherently bumpy topography. It ignores shadows and wrinkles and scars. It refuses to see reality as it really is.

This week I was at dinner with a really fascinating group of women, including two psychologists. Pam, who does mindfulness work as part of her psychotherapy practice, shared that a psychologist had done a study on survivors of the Holocaust who had thrived in their lives even after surviving death camps. This researcher wanted to know what traits these survivors shared that made this possible. According to Pam, what she found was that they all saw reality as it was. In other words, they were clear-eyed about reality.

I wonder if engaging fully with scripture as it really is can help us practice engaging life as it really is, including the things that we don’t like, including the most painful traumas of our lives. Scripture reflects the complexity of the human experience, and reading it with clear eyes might just help us to be clear-eyed as we move about our society, as well.

In the gospel reading for today, the disciples ask Jesus about how they will know that “things are about to be accomplished.” His response is that they should be wary of people who claim to be him, and to not be alarmed by the news of famines, wars, earthquakes, because these are just the beginning of the birth pangs of what is to come. Once again, this isn’t a Jesus-loves-me-this-I-know Jesus, but a more intense Jesus, warning against people who will lead his disciples astray, warning of catastrophes and tragedies. Following this theme of clear-eyed vision of complex reality, Jesus is essentially telling his disciples just that. He is saying, accept reality as it is, be alert to the complexity of these times. Jesus is saying that God is somehow mysteriously present even in earthquakes and famine and war.

Indeed, somehow God is present in this mad swirling mass of humanity and chaos and stars and dark matter and fish and trees and roaring waters and loneliness. God defies our expectations. God defies our knowing. God defies our sense of time and place and order.

And in that dizzying sense of life’s complexity, in the ways it is reflected in the scriptures, in our friends and family, in our intimate relationships, in our yearning to do good in this world…we have the invitation to accept reality as it is, which includes the possibility of what it could be. Reality as it is includes hope. We have the capacity to come together—hundreds of people in a university hall operating an interfaith assembly line to feed folks, knowing that we are only making a small difference in people’s lives—just one meal, and yet that is a sign of hope!

As the poet Emily Dickinson says, “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”  If we can stop one heart from breaking. If we can feed one family in Boston. We shall not live in vain. No matter how great the problems of this world, no matter how complex our human experience, no matter how dark our scriptures, if we have enough love for life to see it as it really is, we have enough to hope. We are not living in vain. We have cause to sing alongside Hannah: My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God!

"She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly."

On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; but to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb. Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year after year; as often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her.

Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. Her husband Elkanah said to her, ‘Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?’

After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly. She made this vow: ‘O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants,  and no razor shall touch his head.’

As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, ‘How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.’ But Hannah answered, ‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.’ Then Eli answered, ‘Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.’ And she said, ‘Let your servant find favour in your sight.’ Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.

They rose early in the morning and worshipped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, ‘I have asked him of the Lord.’

-1 Samuel 1:4-20

She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly.
For women around the world who daily endure trauma of all kinds: rape, war, systematic violence, miscarriage, the death of children, the inability to bear children, poverty, domestic abuse, intimidation…weeping should not be seen as a sign of weakness, but rather of strength. Likewise, weeping is not merely a personal emotional outpouring, but also a potent vehicle for social and spiritual transformation—as seemingly impassive or tyrannical human beings and even God are moved by tears. Weeping itself becomes a form of discourse—one that resists easy answers and demands solidarity. In the uncertain space of overwhelming sorrow and injustice, when God and humanity may seem callous or absent, tears can invoke God’s presence and mercy, whether in the form of a “supernatural” miracle like the conception of Samuel, or in a miraculous flowering of human solidarity, courage, and compassion.

In an essay on gendered emotional expression in the United States, anthropologist Catherine Lutz points to the complexity of emotion, arguing that it is not just an internal feeling, but also a social discourse with gendered dimensions. Catherine Lutz even argues, “Any discourse on emotion is also, at least implicitly, a discourse on gender.”[1]  She looks specifically at the question of emotional control, writing, “Talk about emotional control in and by women, in other words, is talk about power and its exercise.”[2] Performing socially in a way that is “out of control” (weeping bitterly, as Hannah does) is a show of power, even if the weeper is simultaneously regarded as weak and imbalanced, as the notion of uncontrolled, messy emotions is one that seems to incite fear.  Indeed, Catherine Lutz notes that “Western discourse on emotions constitutes them as paradoxical entities that are both a sign of weakness and a powerful force.”[3] This is particularly true for women, who have so often been seen as dangerous and volatile when emotional.[4]

Kimberley Patton and J.S. Hawley write in the introduction to Holy Tears, “weeping can evoke divine response, especially compassion or mercy, where none had previously been forthcoming.”[5] Weeping seems to be a way to connect with and struggle with God that is sometimes deeper or more effective than verbal prayer and intercession. When Hannah cries out bitterly in her sorrowful prayer at Shiloh, God seems to listen in a way that Hannah had not experienced previously in her grieving over her “closed womb.”

Devotion to saints and spiritual ancestors like Hannah or others who cry can also be part of a communal practice of “transpersonal” weeping.  Womanist ethicist Emilie Townes emphasizes the theological and social importance of communal lament, arguing that the ritual of lament to God publically articulates problems, and thus has the power to help the community understand the crisis as more “bearable and manageable,”[6] perhaps thereby facilitating its resolution. While weeping is obviously often nonverbal, communal weeping seems to serve a similar theological and social role to what Townes identifies in verbal ritual lament, perhaps taking communities to the places too deep and dark even for words, and expressing that which cannot be said otherwise. Public lamentation and weeping are not just theological practices of crying out for God’s mercy, but are also forms of social protest, as they break the silences around suffering and injustice.

(1) Lutz, Catherine. “Engendered emotion: gender, power, and the rhetoric of emotional control in American discourse,” in Language and the Politics of Emotion, ed. Catherine Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)

(2) Lutz, “Engendered emotion”

(3) Lutz, “Engendered emotion”

(4) See Tom Lutz, “Men and Women, Infants and Children” in Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1999)

(5) Kimberley Patton and John Stratton Hawley, ed., Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 2

(6) Emilie M. Townes, Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care (New York: Continuum, 1998), 23

A Prophetic Witness to Intimate Partner Violence

(Image credit)

by Tiffany Curtis, the Chaplaincy's Micah Fellow 

This month we began a new practice of selecting a monthly theme towards which to specially direct our prayer and offering. This has taken shape by adding a line to our weekly prayers of intercession about this month's issue of concern, and by giving our collection from the weekly Eucharist service to a specific organization that works to address said concern. 

In October, we focused on the theme of domestic violence (October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month), and will be contributing to Safe Havens, "an interfaith partnership against domestic violence" founded in 1991 "in response to all the families and youth who reach out to their faith leaders for help."

This organization works in faith communities to help train lay and clergy leaders around the particular needs of people who experience family, relationship, intimate, and sexual violence, including children, men, women, the elderly, couples and families, believing that "it is critical that faith community leaders engage in prevention, earlier intervention, accountability, and social change."

Too often abuse and violence have been wittingly or unwittingly perpetuated in faith communities. Clergy abuse people in their communities or fail to adequately support those who find themselves in abusive relationships. Intimate violence in churches, homes, schools, and workplaces affects everyone, regardless of gender, socioeconomic background, income, race, ability, age or sexual expression. As people of faith we are called to stand with those who are made vulnerable by their circumstances. Those people who are most vulnerable and hurting are sometimes ourselves or our dearest companions, family, and friends. The type of relationality that is modeled by the traditions of Christianity is a mutual, life-giving love, not one of violence, cohersion, dehumanization, or power. 

These are the words we have been lifting up together this month, and we invite you into this prayer with us: 

Comfort and strengthen especially those who find themselves in relationships that are unsafe, lack respect, or are marked by abuse of any kind; surround them with your loving care, and protect them from every danger.

"Remember those who are in prison"

Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.

Hebrews 13:3 

Hi Everyone!

I wanted to share with you all about an exciting new project that I am launching with the Chaplaincy!

Here is the concept:
Harvard Interfaith Prison Education (HIPE)
a faith-based service coalition

Our mission:
Harvard Interfaith Prison Education (HIPE) is an interfaith coalition of Harvard chaplaincy graduate and undergraduate students committed to mentoring incarcerated women and men who are working towards their bachelor degrees through Partakers and Boston University's "College Behind Bars" program.

How to become involved:

• Pray for our new ministry!
• Come to the orientation required for all new team members, Nov. 7, 7-8:30 pm at Beren Hall at Harvard Hillel (52 Mt. Auburn Street). The orientation will be presented by Arthur Bembury, the Director of Partakers, and snacks will be provided! (You are also welcome to dine on delicious Kosher eats beforehand at Hillel's dining hall, included in your Harvard meal plan, or $5 for graduate students) 

Background & Contact:  

A collaborative effort of Harvard Hillel and the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard. 

Contact the Episcopal Chaplaincy's Micah Fellow, Tiffany Curtis at tcurtis@mail.harvard.edu, or Hillel Coordinator of Graduate Student Programs Hilly Haber at hhaber@mail.harvard.edu. 

Tiffany and Hilly worked together on Harvard Divinity School's Harvard Prison Education Project team, mentoring men incarcerated at Norfolk during their time at the Divinity School. They will be coordinating the HIPE team and providing theological reflection and support for team-members.

There will be 1 or more teams of 6-8 students from across the University chaplaincies, and students will commit to 1-2 visits to the prison per semester.  HIPE will structure interfaith teams and help coordinate rotations for visits, as well as reimburse students for Zipcar rentals to visit the prison, provide structure and opportunity for intentional theological reflection across faith traditions, and host a gathering each semester of all team members for fun and fellowship.

 "...I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Matthew 25:36