There is a difference between being “allowed” a vote and being listened to. There is a difference between being tolerated in a position, and being valued for the unique contributions to leadership only you bring.

Yet still, hard-won rights should be celebrated. This year the United States marks one hundred years since the ratification of the 19^th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote. We have more women in public office than ever before, but not enough to break the hold of patriarchy on the halls of government on all levels. My church body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is celebrating 50 years since opening ordination to women in our predecessor church bodies. The first related milestone occurred earlier this year, 50 years from when the wording was changed on official documents from “man” to “person.” Later this fall we’ll mark 50 years since the first ordination of an actual woman pastor in our church body.

Anniversaries can be both a celebration and a call to get back to work. We celebrate in the midst of tension, proclaiming in the same breath:

We have made great strides, and we are not there yet!

Any opportunity – 100 years, 50, 40, 10 – to appreciate grassroots organizers and to show others there are movements they can join in process, works for me. We have indeed come a long way on equality in leadership, but it is not because anything was “given” to us. The right to be included is always hard-won by those who made great sacrifices. Can we picture ourselves taking a stand as they did? Celebrating the “firsts” is a way of testing that out.

There is no denying that the 100 year milestone for women’s suffrage and 50 year milestone for ordination both count for white women only. My denomination is actually celebrating a 50/40/10 anniversary: 50 years since the first white Lutheran woman was ordained, 40 years since the first African-American Lutheran woman was ordained, and 10 years since the first openly LGBTQ Lutheran woman was ordained. It hasn’t been the same journey for all of us, because of all the intersecting layers of oppression, in addition to all being women.

The stares and even blurted-out questions of “What are you?!” from strangers of different ages when I visit church members in hospitals or nursing homes wearing a clergy collar or dressed normally but observed giving them communion tell me that we are not all there yet. Women have been leaders in the Jesus movement since the beginning, and we have been specifically ordained in many Protestant denominations in this country for half a century. Yet we are clearly not all there yet. There are branches of mainline denominations that still do not ordain women. Certainly this exclusion is more common in Evangelical churches, where complementarianism is official teaching.

READ: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

But we also have not arrived at equality:

—Until our minds have been renewed and adjusted enough to approach women’s leadership with hopeful questions about what the Holy Spirit might do through a woman’s perspective in the pastoral office, rather than focusing on perceived negatives . . .

—Until women’s voices are heard with authority, not talked over or only heard because a man re-presented the idea as his own . . .

—Until pastor interview committees stop asking only women candidates, “Who will take care of your children when you go to camp/attend retreats/lead worship/do a pastor’s job”. . .

—Until we discipline ourselves to stop referring to “mankind,” pretending that includes all. Until we acknowledge that language shapes us, and infiltrates our unconscious with more power than we can imagine—so we stop referring to God exclusively as Father . . .

. . . We are not there yet, because only some of us are even on this path.

Women bring the leadership the church needs now.

A humorous post made the rounds several years ago: Top Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained.

Of course, the reason it was so painfully funny was that by turning the tables, the absurdity of the arguments is exposed. How about a positive re-framing?

Top Ten Reasons You Need to Experience the Leadership of a Woman Pastor

10. Women have a depth of experience balancing multiple roles and the differing expectations of each simultaneously.

9. Jesus modeled servant leadership. Who has more practice at this than women? Think about many mothers you know.

8. A large part of ministry is emotional labor. Girls are socialized from a young age in our society to do emotional labor on behalf of those around them. That’s not necessarily a healthy pattern; but women are fully prepared for this part of ministry.

7. Many women have extensive experience navigating relationships between extended family, which is often how churches behave.

6. Remembering is key to pastoral care: remembering death anniversaries, to ask about how recovery is going, to notice the invisible labor of caregiving and stand in solidarity with those whose “work” goes unacknowledged.

5. Absolute rules must give way to the discipline and flexibility of God’s grace. Mothers especially can walk us down this path, adapting our discipline.

4. We tend to interpret Scripture and paint God in the image of those who preach for and teach us. We are missing so many of God’s mothering behaviors and other actions associated with femininity, without preachers to point them out to us.

3. Women have always tended the myriad details in church communities. It is time to pay them for it.

2. Women – perhaps especially mothers – can model a divided attention that reflects God’s attention not just for us, but for the whole world.

1. The Body of Christ, in order to act like Jesus and embody resurrection in this world, must be led by those who have been silenced and ignored.

It is well past time to truly value and seek out the God-given leadership gifts and calling to leadership of women pastors. And to be transformed by them!

First, a word about what I will not be saying—what should not be said about this story—because it would be a distortion: To those who are currently showing symptoms of COVID-19, you may indeed be praying for this cup to pass from you, but you are not Jesus in the Garden, and it is not God’s will that you suffer in this way. If anybody’s “helpful” comments start to stray in that direction, stop listening. The Gospel-writers tell of Jesus’ last days like this so that people would believe he was fully human yet fully God. And even though those things conflicted inside of him, he submitted to follow the path that led to self-sacrifice, defeating death for humankind with God’s overpowering love for us. You are not asked to do that. You do not need to plead with God for your survival or submit to this disease, because it is not God’s will that you be sick. No way. God loves you so very much and doesn’t want you to suffer. 

The message I would like to share is for the ones surrounding those who are suffering, like my cousin, whose husband is sick. Your loved ones have COVID-19, so not only might you have it too, but you are deep in fear and worry for the ones you love. Like Jesus’ disciples on the night they prayed in the Garden, you are carrying the mental, emotional and spiritual anguish of what is already in motion. Jesus’ life is at stake, and maybe so are the disciples’ lives for being associated with him. What does Jesus ask of them? To watch and pray. Instead, they sleep. And I cannot blame them.

Look, it is physically and emotionally exhausting to be this worried—for our loved ones and for ourselves. To have no idea what is going to happen, not only in the long-term, but in the near-term. I know you are worn out. Your brain is foggy. You have no filter. You do not have the capacity to deal with people who send you a nasty e-mail or burst out in anger because you came into contact with them last week, before you knew. So don’t open those messages. Block the trolls indefinitely, because—God knows—all you can handle right now is to watch and pray. God knows that, and God holds you too, along with your beloved one who is suffering. The Spirit intercedes for us, with sighs too deep for words to express (Romans 8:26). That is a promise of love. Let the Spirit do her work; we can only do these two things right now, if even that: watch and pray.  

Now I realize that Jesus sounds supremely frustrated when he repeatedly finds the disciples asleep while he’s pouring his heart out to God. “Could you not keep awake one hour?” he says, “Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Well, that’s the voice we are hearing in our heads right now. You who maybe are not facing the threat directly, why can’t you get it together and do what needs doing? Rise to the challenge! Be the one Jesus can lean on!

READ: Crying In the Crisis

When the reality is that our strength right now is severely limited by grief and fear. This moment in Scripture foreshadows the rest of the Jesus Movement. All God has for spreading the good news—that God who is for us even when everyone else is against us—are human beings who are going to mess it up a lot. We cannot even manage to stay awake, to watch and pray. Yet somehow, God will work. Through all the tiny things one or the other of us manages to do right in the coming days, God will work.

Through supporting and listening to those like medical and public health professionals who have trained for this. By sticking to the two things we can (maybe) manage: watch and pray. We deserve the rebukes, certainly, but also know that Jesus is going to keep coming back for wake-up calls. He’s going to keep checking in, like we are trying to do right now for the people we know who are scared and maybe symptomatic or worried that they might be. It may indeed be frustrating, and we keep speaking sternly to our elders telling them to stay home, for heaven’s sake. But like Jesus, we keep circling back out of love. We are all trying to navigate this fear and sadness and uncertainty together. And God is with us. God hears you and holds you, while you watch and pray.

We will watch and pray with you.     

Watch the video for this sermon here. 

From whom do we get our news, and what is the authority of that source?

When should we allow our views to be influenced and changed by expert testimony, and when should we confidently rebel against a wrong interpretation?

If we do not want to be manipulated away from living out our faith, we cannot underestimate the importance of checking our sources in this volatile political and social climate.

Lately, I am leaning on my tradition’s approach to interpreting scripture to help me sift through all the voices vying for my attention in each news cycle. One of the key principles of the Lutheran Reformation was that lay people should be able to read and interpret the Bible for ourselves, not depending on a clergy class that read Latin. Yet, understanding the scriptures requires discernment. We humbly acknowledge that everyone who reads also interprets what they are reading. And not every line preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther described the Bible as the swaddling clothes and manger in which the Christ Child is laid. We follow and worship Christ, not individual verses of scripture or even the Bible as an idol itself. Yet, we look to the scripture accounts in order to get to know Christ; he is our non-negotiable as we discern what God must be saying through scripture and our life experiences. If somebody’s take on scripture does not reveal the unconditional love and forgiveness of Christ for all of God’s children, then we must learn to distinguish that interpretation as separate from the gospel.

We may similarly evaluate what we hear about current events alongside what we know from key documents such as the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, or even the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, if we are not going to dig in deeply to research these primary sources ourselves, then we need to be clear about the intentions of those we rely on to interpret them for us, and those experts’ level of integrity or reliability.

Heather Cox Richardson‘s summaries of everyday news are keeping me connected without becoming overwhelmed these days. For a preacher or Bible teacher, we would want to ask if they keep the grace of Jesus Christ and his resurrection at the center. Our first step in choosing which news sources to trust should also be identifying their biases. Nobody is completely objective in presenting the facts about current events, but some come much closer than others. So we must ask:

• What is their agenda?
• Who is funding them?
• Do they represent one political party exclusively?
• Can we distinguish what is a presentation of facts from what is commentary?
• What are the commentator’s credentials?
• How can we hear broader perspectives that do not just confirm our own biases?

The Bible is not one book, but a library that includes multiple genres of writing, and different kinds of writing are meant to do different things to the reader. For example, a creation story, a history of ancestors in the faith, apocalyptic literature, and epistles (letters) to a specific audience all have different aims and should be read in the way they are intended, if we can figure that out. Is a creation story meant to be read as a science textbook? Is a letter to an ancient church meant to dictate women’s societal roles in the 21st century? We not only hold our readings of scripture up to Christ, but also identify where they came from, and for what purpose they were written.

Why should we not also evaluate the knowledge base, funders, history, and agenda of the media sources we consult? There are way more genres of “news” out there besides objective reporting of facts. Surely, the only qualification for sharing a story is not that it reinforces our own opinions.

Is a particular segment or article meant to be presenting unbiased facts, or is it “commentary”? If it is commentary, what are the credentials of the commentator? What effect does the way they present the story have on us? Just like it is not fair to read metaphor as a literal description, or poetry as a newspaper account, sometimes it is unfaithful to accept two sides of an issue as if they are equally valid.

For example, should the media coverage of a human rights issue give equal air time to those who would dehumanize an entire group of people, denying the image of God living in them? I’ll answer my own rhetorical question, in case there is any doubt: No. It is NOT a valid position to espouse that other people do not have a right to exist, free from oppression.

Interpreting current events, especially identifying biases and navigating when we should be questioning or pushing back against a particular interpretation, is best done in community. Not in an echo chamber of like-minded folks, but in a community we can trust to stretch us while remaining faithful to Christ, the center of our faith.

But what about this approach? Christians are called to be conservationists, because we know the work intimately. It is our same gospel work. Is that not a calling: When a dire need of God’s beloved creation meets our practiced skills, abilities, and determined hope?

When I stepped outside my normal head space for a workshop run by National Geographic Fellow Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant on inclusion in conservation, the similarities between our fields struck me with force. Those who are called to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the world use the same skills, cultivated determination, and relational strategies as conservation field workers, and vice versa. Our efforts are based in the same indefatigable hope and trust in resurrection.

Who makes conservation science happen? There are the PhD’s, certainly. But Dr. Wynn-Grant directed our gaze toward the people who are invisible when we sketch a scientist’s “professional network” —  the local drivers, women park rangers, girls who learn to educate their own communities about how to live beside wild animals without fearing and killing them, or those who care for children so that ecologists can spend extended periods of time in field research. Scientific breakthroughs and gains in conservation do not happen without these unseen contributors.

The early adopters in conservation are likely to be those who know their place in power structures are precarious. Every family of ranchers that signed on to restore habitat and migration pathways for large predators during the American Prairie Reserve‘s first phase (Dr. Wynn-Grant’s current focus), were families of Native American descent. Does everyone remember who were the first to experience and share the resurrection news, because they went to the tomb early on the third day to tend Jesus’ body? The women, of course. Or who tipped off Naaman the Syrian commander that there was healing to be found from the Lord’s prophet Elisha? It was a Jewish servant girl, trafficked in battle in 2 Kings 5. The Word of God would never have spread without these vulnerable messengers. But first, we must see and value everybody who contributes.

Blessed are the marginalized — women, black, indigenous, people of color, those in economic distress — who give all they have to save those more vulnerable than themselves. The work of conservation (like spreading the gospel) relies heavily on talking to people in ways they can actually hear, so that they can weave it into their own self-understanding. The message needs to not only matter in general, but specifically to me, for me to change any behaviors as a result of any claims presented.

Conservationists and Christians are about relational work, planting trust, then seeds of hope. Although science or theology may be bodies of knowledge one can study and learn to articulate, the field work for both is building trust, which we do through the painstaking investment of our own time and effort on behalf of the earth and/or God.

Knowing about animals or plants or the health of the soil does not change how we are living, but being in healing relationship with them — chasing resurrection — could.

Dr. Wynn-Grant and her team with the American Prairie Reserve spend a lot of time at kitchen tables. So do Christians who actually intend to share our faith. Like mothers who show up day in and day out without anybody noticing to tend to the needs of their children, the endless listening builds trust, cultivating fertile soil for a commitment to grow. A relational faith, and certainly a commitment to conserve Creation in all her glory, in the end comes down to the mysterious work of changing hearts and minds that Christians associate with the Holy Spirit. Those with power (and therefore access to major grant money) cannot achieve this on their own without the persistent work of those who are rarely seen, named, or praised in the field.

We evangelize when we have witnessed the possibility of resurrection and are driven to help it along in any way we can. The Serengeti Rules (a 2018 documentary and earlier book) testifies to possibilities for resurrection in conservation ecology. Entire habitats flourish once a “keystone species” is returned and the entire eco-system can rebound. A Christian cannot help but call this resurrection and those who observed, experimented, and produced enough evidence to make it happen are in service to that new life in God’s creation.

What could it mean to environmental scientists and Christians that we engage in the same work, trudging toward resurrection through repetitive tending of relationships by those in the field? We have more in common than anyone thinks. We have much to learn from each other, and in this grim time for the earth and humankind, we need people absolutely committed to hope and resurrection against all odds to dig into conservation work.

Christians have a responsibility to “go get our people” and bring them to invest in conservation of the earth, plants, animals, land, and seas. We who can recognize the gospel pattern of God bringing resurrection after destruction must all become fierce advocates of environmental conservation.

It is gospel work. It is the work of Christians.

For white Christians in the U.S. to acknowledge and turn away from our complicity in racism, how many prophets do we need? Lenny Duncan’s answer in Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S. is “all of us.” Jemar Tisby’s is “the collective witness of 400 years of American history,” meticulously documented in The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism.

I believe them both.

Amidst the ongoing racist comments and actions of the current president, the temptation grows to define racism as only overtly discriminatory or hateful acts based on race. Indeed, that virulent racism is deadly, like when a white supremacist murdered nine Black church members at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, NC. (Duncan’s book has a chapter referring to this hateful act, titled “Dylann Roof and I Are Lutheran.”) Yet what white Christians and white churches must come to grips with are not the blatant acts, but the insidious forms of racism that are embedded in both our history and how we do church today.

Duncan and Tisby both prove, from their own perspectives, that personal relationships with a “Black friend” are not enough to stop or to divert systemic racism and our complicity in it.

With degrees and expertise in history and theology, Jemar Tisby puts his finger on potential turning point after point in American history when churches could have stood up for the Gospel of Jesus Christ — that people of every race are siblings of Christ, beloved children of God, inherently worthy of the dignity of those made in the image of God. Yet time and time again, churches instead collaborated with the slave trade and its legacy, stayed silent on lynching, then battered their theology into a shape that sealed a lid on top of their racism.

New denominations were formed to protect slaveholders in their ranks. Tisby’s focus is on evangelical churches, which exploded with political power in the form of the Christian Right, a movement galvanized by the defense of segregated “Christian academies” during the 1960s. Yet the chapter on “Remembering the Complicity in the North” jolts readers with the reality that it is not just The South or evangelicals who perpetuate systemic racism in their churches or culture at large. The rise of Fundamentalism was laced with a racialized understanding of theology which “dissuaded other Christians from certain forms of political involvement and encouraged them instead to focus on personal holiness and evangelism” (Tisby, p. 116) and has certainly seeped out into our society as a whole.

Racism absolutely adapts, and one of the best ways it has adapted is through coded language and policies that cannot be traced back to race without a little work, baptized as they are in “American” values of individualism and private consumerism. Interpreting a verbatim quote of Lee Atwater in a 1983 interview, Tisby says:

Atwater articulated what has become known as ‘color-blind conservatism.’ By excising explicitly racial terms like ‘black,’ ‘white,’ or ‘n*****’ from their language, practitioners can claim they ‘don’t see color.’ As a result, people can hold positions on social and political issues that disproportionately and adversely harm racial and ethnic minorities, but they can still proclaim their own racial ignorance. As Atwater articulated, it is clear that the switch from racial language to supposedly color-blind discourse was once a conscious and deliberate choice. Today, it has become second nature – and the unconscious practice of many American Christians. (p. 153)

Church, if we do not know our history, it is even more difficult to repent in the present. We got here gradually, one compromise at a time, over centuries of convincing ourselves that the economics of slavery and racism are somehow separate from our faith. The Color of Compromise concludes with a remarkable chapter of actionable items (some of which are repeated in Dear Church), but I wouldn’t skip to the end. We ought to feel the weight of all those eschewed opportunities to stop this sin, and the risk to our future if American churches and Christians do not outright oppose racism in the present.

Lenny Duncan takes a completely different approach in his book Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S., to get us to recognize our complicity with racism. From the “big picture” view of Tisby’s work, Dear Church zooms in, until it seems like the author is sitting in our own nearly empty, echoing sanctuary. As the subtitle suggests, this book is aimed at Duncan’s specific denomination and mine, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, but believe me, there are many, many things in here for every kind of Christian.

Duncan gives specific examples of how churches reinforce racism, sometimes subtly or unconsciously, often coded as something else: that “traditional” picture of white Jesus hanging in the nursery; the persistent “light and darkness” themes of church seasons; the punitive assimilation of leaders, who can only get a job when they act white enough to be acceptable. It is really our lack of action, our silent complicity with racism, that keeps such churches so white. Yet, everything Duncan writes clearly comes from a place of love. His personal stories throughout, about how he was accepted and welcomed just as he was by congregations within this whitest denomination, testify to potential for faithful change and its fruits.

Not so tied to the chronology of historical events, Dear Church can veer off to explore the boundaries of white supremacy, exposing the ties between racism and capitalism, toxic masculinity, and nationalism. Basically, everything is an opportunity to talk about and repent of our complicity with racism. And bringing it out into the open air is the only action that is likely to heal that festering wound, but it is going to hurt first. Lenny Duncan also gives advice – deeply faithful, hard-earned advice aware of the consequences.

Dear Church, truth that is not grounded in love is just brutality. You are that love, and you can convey that truth. Be the line in the sand; say that you will no longer allow a false gospel narrative – based on fear and a lack of understanding of the deep wells of mercy and grace that God offers – to be sold as ‘church.’ Assert that this is the generation when it stops, and you are the people who will turn the tide. We will never see this change if we aren’t committed to seeing this through (Duncan, p. 133).

White American Christians, these prophetic voices are calling for our repentance and re-directed commitment to God’s anti-racism work in our time. The historical account bathed in theological understanding AND the personalized memoir and pastoral guidance are epistles to the Church of our day to convince us of the forces of white supremacy ripping apart our witness.

Whoever writes about this next, I want the Holy Spirit to put me on their mailing list. Pentecostals, maybe? We may be different across denominations in many ways, but we are woefully similar in perpetuating a culture of white supremacy. It is past time to listen to the prophets and repent!

Although I also grew up in one of those relatively liberal Protestant denominations, spent some limited time co-mingling with evangelicals because of their fervor, and attended a Lutheran college, I did none of those things while carrying the identity of an LGBTQ person. Author Emmy Kegler admitted on Twitter what she unwittingly discovered at her book launch event: This faith memoir is really for her 17-year-old self.

One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins is full of longing, a desire to embrace and be embraced by God and the Church — all through the witness of faithful people like those found in the Bible. For young adults searching out their footing as queer people of faith, it could serve as both a road map and a tangible sign of solidarity.

Rev. Emmy Kegler loves Jesus and church and words. She also loves women. All of these loves are abundantly apparent in the way she uses her words: Kegler coins evocative phrases like “a spiritual allergy to the word ‘sin.’ She debunks some of the common LGBTQ “clobber verses” in the Bible. She distinguishes between “real” and “true” — although I think I have usually understood those terms in the opposite way from how she describes them in Chapter 1. Kegler shows her relief at identifying with the suffering of Christ, because although it is horrific, it is the experience of a marginalized person revealing who they really are.

At the same time that she identifies with Christ, Kegler admits that her story is not as traumatic as members of her LGBTQ family like Matthew Shepard, who was killed the year before she realized she was gay. Her privilege is apparent in thinking that people who hated and wanted to hurt LGBTQ folx did not even live where she lived. It is perhaps a slower read at points because of her safety — not that a reader would wish any added oppression — as she struggles primarily with this one trait among the intersectional oppressions faced by others in the LGBTQ community, including economic instability, alienation from family support systems, and marginalization of people of color. On the other hand, maybe this is what makes it more accessible to those from a similar white, middle-class, suburban background.

For the faithful who really like to get into theology, Kegler picks apart why different approaches to interpreting homosexuality in scripture ultimately left her unsatisfied, landing on the most pithy and meaningful theology of the entire book: “a hermeneutic of the hip” from the story of Jacob who wrestles with God until God blesses him and leaves the encounter limping.

This must be the hallmark of a truly worthwhile memoir: I am not the intended audience, yet I still found it insightful and applicable, not only as a “window into her world” but in my own faith journey.

Emmy Kegler’s hard-won love of scripture is such a struggle because of us. We, who do not include ourselves in the circle of her queer family members for whom this memoir is written, need this book to tell the truth about ourselves. She writes: “The brutality of others’ silence and apathy is a test to my faith far more than my mental illness has ever been.”

Readers cannot escape how depression and anxiety are intertwined with Kegler’s identity throughout. There is a much higher suicide rate among teens and young adults who identify as LGBTQ, but there is nothing like a meticulous personal description of the effects of mental illness and social triggers over time to put flesh on those statistics. One Coin Found repeatedly emphasizes how differently scripture sounds in the ears of those who have been pushed to the margins.

I will admit I appreciated reading and having the type of church I belong to characterized in this way:

This was the danger and blessing of my liberal mainline upbringing: I was not raised to be afraid of God. I was not taught to be too scared to question. All of my models for living, from my mother to my storybook heroines to the faithful women of the Scriptures, told the same story: we are a people who push back.

Maybe you find yourself in a progressive faith community now and this makes you feel a little smug as well. But that smugness must confront the reality that however accessible our theology, many people like Kegler are drawn to join worshiping communities like the evangelical one that would ultimately condemn her sexuality, primarily because of the lack of enthusiasm for faith and spiritual life among their peers in the congregations of their upbringing.

Even if we do not readily identify with the lost coin, the lost sheep, or the lost sons on different sides of the door to home, we are beloved by a God who will put down everything to search for the ones whom we have pushed to the margins. That tells me something significant about who I am, too.

For centuries, Christians have observed Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, but fewer and fewer of us voluntarily gather for the somber truth-telling of those difficult days. Easter Sunday will arrive and with it the good news that God’s love for Christ and for us triumphs over death. But Thursday, Friday, and even the silence of Saturday (before the Easter Vigil) tell the truth about us, and we do not want to face it. The self-preservation responses of the disciples as Jesus is arrested and condemned are both convicting and repellent.

Sadness over the suffering of Jesus, the tragedy and injustice of it all, is not really the problem. Instead, I find myself trying to avoid taking in what his “followers” are doing, as the creeping feeling of familiarity touches the corners of my memory.

The betrayal of Judas is the most blatant sin, such that we rarely identify with him. I’m much more often in the camp of everybody else around the Maundy Thursday table wondering if or arguing that it couldn’t possibly be me who will betray Jesus (knowing full well that any one of us is indeed capable of it). It is that constant, low-level denial of how low I might actually sink, when my neglect to stop injustice could turn into a death sentence itself. I do not want to think about it. But that does not mean it isn’t there.

Somewhere between my joyful hosannas at God’s presence among us and the empty tomb there is also my significant potential to betray — not only to not prevent death of God’s beloved, but to let it happen by underestimating the impact of my actions or inaction. I know I deny my own power to prevent or impact climate change, mass incarceration, inhumane immigration policies and so many more injustices. But as long as I am not Judas initiating the betrayal, I’m good, right?

I identify with the napping disciples, the ones so weary that they physically shut down and go to sleep while Jesus is praying for his life in the Garden of Gethsemane. I do not want to examine all the times I have shut down from compassion fatigue. What impending violence — to the earth or humankind — have I ignored in order to be able to sleep at night? About whom have I told myself: Their problems are not mine, so I cannot do anything about it?

Then sometimes when I am jolted back to reality, I react like the disciple who cuts off the ear of one of the ones that came to arrest Jesus. The question he asks: “Lord, should we strike with the sword?” is more for the speaker’s benefit than actually seeking permission. What he is actually saying is, “Look at me, how responsive I am (now that I’m awake, overcompensating for earlier) and ready to enter the fray on your behalf. Aren’t I so loyal, so responsive?”

I cringe, but I recognize that guy, and feel the sting of Jesus’ rebuke: “No more of this!”

I used to feel a little smug at Peter’s three denials in the courtyard outside the high priest’s house. Was he really not that self-aware — to promise one thing to Jesus when they were among friends and another among strangers? Without the accountability of those who knew him for sure, did he not still have a sense of responsibility? Or was it just self-preservation we all do, thinking we can be whoever we need to be to get by, and switch back when the crowd shifts? This, too, is uncomfortably familiar.

Yet the thing the disciples do that cuts most deeply is standing at a distance as Jesus dies. “But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things” (Luke 23:49). I do not want to identify with that sense of watching from a distance, not doing anything — either because I cannot or I am choosing not to. But sometimes going to church during Holy Week or at other times feels like exactly that.

If I am reading the stories, praying, singing, discussing, but not also organizing against the powers that execute God’s beloved ones, then what am I doing? I do not want to see myself there. Holy Week can be convicting in the best possible way, enough for us to emerge from it determined to insist on the good news of resurrection for all God’s beloved.

I had been standing in the back of the room with my toddler daughter, because I saw the call on Facebook to “pack the hearing” with opposition to state legislation that would make it illegal to protest. Then they called my name to testify.

In early 2017, I was still new to activism and thought that showing up was about the least that I could do, but RSVP-ing “yes” had put my name on the list to speak. So I put my babe on my hip and hauled her up to the microphone.

“I did not take my kids with me to the Women’s March,” I said, “because I had heard how protesters were treated at Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and because I am white, I feel like I have an option to shield them from such things. I didn’t know it would be thousands of white suburban moms, who are treated so differently than activists of color. We cannot criminalize the right to speak out for justice, because the burden will fall unfairly on activists of color.”

I’m sure my testimony is more eloquent in hindsight than it was in reality, but the photo spoke volumes.

The recent image of a smirking teenage boy in front of an Indigenous elder in D.C. evoked many strong reactions in my circles, but a notable one was, “WHERE were their parents or chaperones?” The implied answer, of course, is behind that kind of confrontation. Our parenting determines what face our children show in public.

Optics may be my greatest value at public actions, showing that a pretty mundane-looking white mom cares about such things (so you who resemble me could too!). Otherwise, my kids’ presence makes me pretty distracted and more likely to opt out if the atmosphere shifts. But I want to make this clear: my activism as a parent doesn’t end — or begin— at mass actions.

All of the most terrifying issues that make us take to the streets or hearing rooms are things we address at home, by how we are raising our kids. On all of these issues, we advocate more often than we recognize, to shape the influences on our kids and their peers. Parenting can be activism, and it needs to be said for the benefit of two very different groups of people: parents (who underestimate ourselves) and the activist community (who underestimate or completely ignore the demographic of parents).

In Jesus’ time, children were undervalued, largely because their life expectancy was not very good. If children made it into adulthood, they became of greater value, supporting their parents as they aged. Yet Jesus famously dismissed his disciples’ screening process of deflecting children with their parents, declaring, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs” (Matthew 19:14).

Christian activists and parents, take note. The greatest Activist, embodying justice on our behalf, called the children and parents to himself. It doesn’t always fit the mold of our various movements to gather close those who need more accommodation, will be less predictable, and definitely have to put the cause second. But consider what we have to gain by investing in parents’ activism.

To my fellow parents, especially the stay-at-home types: You are not just changing diapers, reading stories, and answering the question: “What is ________?”  ad nauseum. You are defining the terms by which their generation will view the world. You set an expectation of race-consciousness, teach your children your values about guns, create a culture of consent in how you talk about who and how anybody touches your child’s body, and explain where the garbage and recycling trucks take our refuse, and how that impacts our earth. Most importantly, you teach your children that they are not isolated, that how they live affects so many others, so we need to help others to feel loved too. Books, podcasts, websites, and social media groups are here to help.

Parents are on the front lines of making our world a more peaceful, justice-oriented place. Our values at home are not private; they are the seeds of everything our kids, their classmates, and entire generations will carry forth into the world. We parents educate and influence our kids, their teachers and school administrators, classmates’ families, coaches, babysitters, daycare providers, youth ministers, scout troops and teammates when we speak up, recommend, correct, and testify to justice-oriented approaches to any conversation.

To the activist community: Parents are a huge untapped force for activism, if movements are able to think outside the box and make space and time for our little ones to be underfoot or older kids to come alongside us. Those of us who stay home with kids younger than school age may be busy with many small tasks that seem not to amount to much. We are hungry for meaningful tasks — that we can fit in around nap times and meltdowns — to still influence a world that needs our voices more than ever.

Also, if you can find a way to bring together parents of littles for some community, while making an impact for the cause, we will be there. We understand like no one else the dire need for solidarity and support. What a difference it will make if children growing up during this era internalize that getting together on a cause that is bigger than us, making signs, calling legislators, and yes, even taking to the streets, is how our democracy works. A few organizations are on it already: Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and Moms Rising, but many others need to catch up. Recognize and tap into the power of parent activists!

Perhaps it seems like an annoyance, a petty reason to complain. Having your vacation plans scuttled is not the same as working without pay or remaining on furlough as many government employees are during this partial government shutdown. It does not create the same level of risk to people as the FDA ceasing routine safety inspections. But as the trash piles up, bathrooms overflow, and visitors blaze their own trails in partially shut, but mostly just unsupervised national parks, there is a clear message: Everything is ours to exploit, as potential collateral damage from human agendas.

People of faith, this is so dangerous.

Our national parks are a safeguard against our own worst inclinations. Christians sometimes call it “sin,” but we might also just name it “human nature.” We know that we need to check ourselves before we sacrifice everything on the altar of self-interest.

Some of our national park sites are explicitly monuments to those who stood powerfully against human exploitation: for civil rights, women’s rights, or an end to slavery. But the current threat is most dire against those national parks designed to protect the space for wild animals to remain wild and natural wonders to remain unpolluted, because they are of intrinsic value — without relation to their use to people.

Much of religion as we practice it is about people, relating to our neighbors, and understanding ourselves due to our relationship with God. But all the Earth is God’s, and God calls it all “good” before humans even enter the creation story in Genesis.

We are not all there is, and human agendas are not all that must be considered.

Wild animals and geyser basins and waterfalls remind us that nature is a force all its own, and we need to stand back, respect it, and pause in awe of something other than ourselves. A healthy dose of humility is a necessity to our national character, and our national parks provide space for that realization to shake our over confidence. We are privileged to live on this land, and privilege comes with the responsibility of stewardship.

National park boundaries are also limits we set on our own capacity to exploit nature. I read the exhortation in Genesis 1:28 to “have dominion over every living thing that moves upon the earth” as a charge for humankind to care for all living things and to help them to thrive, instead of stomping it all underfoot in pursuit of our own gains. This current targeted neglect and destruction of our national wild spaces is an affront to who we are and what we are to be about as stewards of God’s creation.

Allowing unsupervised access — without staffing the protection of national parks —denies the truth about human sin: that given the means to exploit for our own gain, we will.

We are called, especially as people of faith, to pursue more than our own needs and desires. We are to live in ways that allow all God’s creation — animals, plants, and even rocks and trees — to thrive unpolluted and unpoisoned by our fights.

The national parks are an acknowledgment that human beings are not all there is to our country or of value in God’s sight. The volunteers stepping up — especially young people like members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association who have organized volunteer clean-up efforts during the shutdown in several national parks — testify to this value. But should all self-awareness and self-limitation for the good of our earth be voluntary? Should it be left to the children?

For the earth’s sake and our national character, we must demand an end to this shutdown that is poisoning who we are.

As a parent, it is unthinkable. To my 3- and 7-year-old daughters, my presence is everything. From the moment they wake up to the moment they fall asleep, and if they happen to wake up distressed in the middle of the night too, they want me there. We do not live in the crossfire of gang conflicts and are not scraping by with money for one meal at a time, but I’d be willing to bet that even if that were the case, me being with them would still be the most important thing in their lives. Of course a parent who loves their children would try to escape with them to a better life, and may God go with them. But woe unto those who seek to re-traumatize God’s beloved children.

Our immigration system is broken; all sides acknowledge that. But breaking the closest bond between human beings is not solving anything. So much brokenness and latent trauma haunts American society from taking African-American children from their parents during slavery, or removing Native American children from their families to be assimilated via boarding schools. Have we learned nothing from our collective sins against parents and children? Can we utter “Father God” or “Our Father who art in heaven” with any integrity, while perpetuating such violence to the family? Separating immigrating or asylum-seeking mothers or fathers from their children is never in the interest of the child, nor is it in the interest of our communities.

When we call God our parent (as Jesus did), we are claiming that God experiences the depth of the parent-child relationship at the core of human families, and God loves us like a parent does a child. This is part of what our God declares in Genesis by “making humankind in our image” (Gen 1:26); being in relationship is at the core of who God is and who we are. A Father or Mother God would never endorse ripping apart parents and children to make a political point or even to deter immigration. Can American Christians consent to this way of enforcing immigration restrictions by our government?

READ: Separating Immigrant Children from Their Families is Torture

For what is a mother or father to their children, or a Father or Mother God to us? Our mother is fiercest protection from all who would do us harm. Our Father is our fiercest advocate up against anyone who would oppress us. The way She repeatedly tells us how much we are loved is the foundation of our own self-worth. The way He coaches us to keep becoming who he knows we can be ingrains perseverance and resiliency in our personalities. The only people on earth I trust to have “no greater love than this, but to lay down one’s life” (John 15:13) for me are my parents. Children deprived of their parents have no dependable protection for their physical, emotional, or spiritual well-being in our cruel world. Is God to fill in those roles with no people to help?

A child being separated from your mother or father with no hope of reunification is traumatic for everyone involved. It should grieve us to the point of protest. If you are the parent, a part of you dies with that separation. This is part of the self-traumatizing sacrifice of birth parents who make an adoption plan for children they are unable to parent. If you are the child, you bear what is referred to in adoption circles, based on the work of Nancy Verrier, as a “primal wound” from the separation from your first parents. Birth parents, children, and adoptive parents move on, but trauma can affect the rest of our lives, our relationships, our resiliency, our participation in civil society. Families crossing into the United States have left their home countries because of trauma. Separating parents and children at the border is heaping trauma upon trauma for both parents and children.

We could mitigate our guilty feelings by quibbling over which parent God resembles and how. Some churches endorse strict gender roles in parenting by defining fathers and a Father God as ones who guide their children, discipline them, and are to be obeyed, while those in the motherly role take care of emotional nurture and comfort. Yet even such a father would never willingly traumatize children by forceful separation. Jesus challenges his hearers: “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?” (Matthew 7:9)

Although Jesus himself used the word Abba (“Daddy”) to speak with the intimacy of a child to God, God’s actions reveal a mothering character as well. God has “numbered every hair on our heads” (Matthew 10:30) like a mother who knows when any little thing is amiss and “neither slumbers nor sleeps” (Psalm 121) while watching over us. Jesus nurtures and raises his disciples not just through teaching, but endless days of just being with them, making sure the crowds are fed, aligning his heart with grief-stricken mothers at the death of a child or with tenacious mothers begging for their child’s healing. God has lived in the space between parents and children many times. God, our parent, will not condone destroying this sacred bond.

If you want to admit that separating children from their parents at the border is a political issue to you and nothing else, you have other images of God you can twist and wield as you wish: God as Judge, God Who Decrees Commandments, or God Who Seeks (Your Interpretation of) Justice. But the God as Parent metaphor is no longer available to you.