“For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” – Matthew 7:8

When my oldest son was merely a toddler, we would play hide and seek. At first, he didn’t seem to truly understand the strategy behind the game. Rather than finding a good hiding spot, he would sit against a wall in the middle of a room, cover his eyes with his hands, and say, “Mama, come find me!” Then he would giggle like crazy as I pretended I couldn’t see him sitting there right in front of me and made a big deal of looking for him.

I’m remembering this adorable story as I contemplate how we seek and find Jesus.

Sometimes, especially when we are going through something difficult, we may feel as though Jesus is hiding from us. Or worse, as though He has left us entirely.

But is it true? Is He hiding? Has He left us?

Or could it be, that He is right there in front of us, but we are not looking in the right place?

There’s a story I heard once about Billy Graham – one of Evangelical Christianity’s greatest evangelists in his time. The story goes that Graham once traveled to a Buddhist monastery high up in the mountains of Tibet or Nepal (I forget which). He was able to meet with one of the monks who lived there. He sat down with this monk, and he told him about Jesus. After he finished his evangelistic spiel, he asked, Would you like me to introduce you to Jesus? And the monk said, No, because I already know Him. 

The monk had sought out truth, and he had found Jesus. Or, perhaps, Jesus had honored his seeking by revealing Himself to the monk. The Buddhist monk lived secluded in the mountains of a country where less than 2% of the population is Christian – but he came to know Him, because Jesus was near.

There’s another story, told in the excellent book, “Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus” by Nabeel Qureshi.  In the book, Qureshi chronicles his journey, which began with him setting out to debunk Christianity and prove Islam. Along the way, he found Jesus instead, and, convicted of the truth of Christianity, he converted. He sought the truth, and found Jesus, because Jesus was near.

Lee Stroebel is another example. He was an atheist in a marriage on its way to divorce when his wife met Jesus. She didn’t bang him over the head with it or try to get him to convert. But he saw the change in her. Change for good – not changing into some cold, judgmental, hateful person. She became more patient, more loving, more joyful. So, he set out much like Qureshi did to debunk Christianity and to convince her she had fallen for a ploy. Instead, he also found Jesus. He was convicted by the amount of evidence for Christianity and has become one of our generation’s great apologists. He found Jesus – because Jesus was near.

When I took a missions class some years back, I heard stories like this from real life missionaries serving all around the world. Stories of Hindus coming to Christ through mind-blowing miracles, of Muslims meeting Jesus in their dreams, of entire families and even communities being transformed by the power of Jesus Christ. Jesus not only is found by those who seek Him but shows Himself to those who do not even know what it is they seek.

Here in the U.S., our churches sometimes seem confused about where to find Jesus. We are told – implicitly or explicitly – Jesus doesn’t do miracles like in New Testament times. We are told Jesus doesn’t necessarily speak to us directly, but rather only through His Word. It is almost as though we are lowering our expectations so as not to be disappointed.

But what if He does? What if Jesus does do miracles, does want to speak to us directly, and does want to engage with us, but we no longer know how to hear Him?

Or maybe, we are not finding Him, because we are not even looking for Him.

In Matthew 13:58, Jesus is teaching at the Sea of Galilee and Matthew notes, “And He did not do many miracles there, because of their unbelief.”

What if we are missing out on Jesus because we do not believe?

Maybe we believe in Jesus, in the God-man who existed on Earth 2000 years ago and did many great things. Maybe we even believe He rose and died again and hope in Him for our salvation.

But we do not believe He wants and is able to radically move in our lives today. We do not expect to hear Him or experience Him in any kind of real way.

Or maybe, we aren’t expecting Him to do anything because we are so busy trying to do everything ourselves.

We think we’ve got this. We don’t need divine intervention. We’re doing a-OK on our own.

We’re bustling about, trying to usher in His Kingdom through passing the right laws and voting for the right political candidates and marching against our “heathen” neighbors.  

Forget about the fact that this approach is contrary to the gospel of Jesus. Jesus who loved and served and had compassion on the vulnerable around Him.  He didn’t care if they were outcasts or if they were unpopular or if they were unclean. He just loved people.

Why is it so hard for us to do the same?

Maybe that’s the real reason why we can’t find Him – because we’ve been blinded by our own pride and privilege and determination. Because our independence and individuality means more to us than the King we claim to serve.

But, if we are truly followers of Jesus, if we are “little Christs”, should we not be emulating Him rather than some white savior type image? Should we not be more concerned about following Christ than following a flag?

I think if we were, if we truly were seeking Jesus, I think we would find Him. I think He’s not as far away as we believe.  I think He wants to be found, just like my toddler did. Jesus wants to step in and do amazing things in and through our lives.

Because He is near.

Mary was said to be ‘perplexed’ when the angel Gabriel told her she was carrying the hope of a broken people. Like her, we must set aside our fears in a divided world and respond, ‘Here I am.’

Across the globe, from small communities in southern India to the splendor of the Vatican in Rome to homes across Oregon, people will gather Christmas Day to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. It is a joyful time. Families come together, churches fill up, gifts are exchanged and children can hardly contain themselves as they await Santa in his many forms — Father Christmas, St. Nicholas, Père Noël and others.

For Christians, Christmas is also a time for engaged reflection.

Howard Thurman, the theologian, author and civil rights leader, wrote a beautiful poem called “The Work of Christmas” that can help move American Christians from the commercialism of Christmas and into the heart of Jesus’ message for the world:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

Faith is work, after all.

Through the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament, those who follow Jesus are given a vision of the world that directly contrasts with the world we live in. For all that is good with the world, we also live in a time of unparalleled crisis. In times of crisis, God calls us into a partnership to find solutions.

Many of the issues that confront us today, such as greed and oppression, are issues the Hebrew prophets and Jesus would have recognized. What is different for this time? The scale of what confronts us. From the reality of human-caused climate change and the implications that brings for the future of all creation, to the growing threat of nuclear conflict, to increasing economic inequality. Crisis greets us whether or not it is a holiday.

Small children opening gifts under the tree this year, regardless of where they live, face the genuine threat that climate change will, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported this past October, produce a future of suffering that will fall hardest on those Jesus called the “least of these.” Still, all of humanity will be impacted. The chaos caused by the gathering storm increases the risk of world war, terrorism, hunger and poverty, and it will further divide people along regional and economic lines.

Religion, which is too often used to divide, can be a tool to inspire the world to action. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was said to be “perplexed” when the angel Gabriel informed her that she was carrying the son of God, and the hope of a broken people. Her first response is understandable but her second response is remarkable. Like Moses and others called by God to great tasks, Mary sets aside fear and responds: “Here I am.”

This Christmas we live in the shadow of conflict. Historians tell us the United States has not been this divided since the period before the Civil War. The world itself is in peril.

At best, our government stumbles in the face of complexity; at worst, we lash out in misdirected anger fueled by racism and xenophobia as we separate children from parents and tear gas others, refugee families not unlike Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

Our answer to all this must equal Mary’s: Here we are!

At the start of the Gospel of John, we are told: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

There is darkness today, to be sure. That darkness comes in many forms. The light of God’s people, known by different faiths and traditions, can still overcome it if we reunite this Christmas Day and each day after in common cause, as Jesus taught, to free the world from oppression and offer love in place of hate. If we genuinely honor Jesus and celebrate his birth, we cannot be the generation that allows all of creation to wither due to neglect or war. We must bring light and love to help creation grow and thrive.

Merry Christmas. Let’s get to work.

In most, if not all traditions, it is an affirmation of the desire and hope that we can be, and become, in some ways, fuller and better people.

New Year’s resolutions are notorious for their short shelf-life, but people of faith know that they can be much more than vain attempts to get more fit or eat better.

The premise of virtually every faith tradition is that we can become, somehow, “new” people – any time of year.

It’s fair to say that we all have things to “work on”, to embrace or to leave behind, but more than that, central to most faiths is that we can become entirely new people, born, as the saying goes “again”.

This new person, as some of know directly, is oddly more solid and more porous, more submissive and yet more determined, more “free” but yet more defined, more demanding and yet more forgiving, and perhaps even more sad and somber – with a heart more joyous and celebrative than ever before.

The “converted” person is freer of what binds everyone else, but somehow knows a deeper allegiance to a presence few others seem to comprehend or acknowledge.

Violations and cruelty are seen clearly as an affront to the Creator as much as to any individual.

Injustice is seen, not only as an assault on a person or people, but as an insult and injury to justice itself.

The seeking of “justice” is not a goal or a belief, it is a correcting, a stabilizing, a reclamation that Creation – and the Creator – matter more than we can ever know.

Scriptures of all faith warn of those who are “seeking but never finding” and of those who become more brittle, cynical even cruel and vindictive with a veneer of religiosity. These people, we are told, are the worst.

To use phrases from scriptures, they “block the way”, “poison the well” and “make worse converts than themselves”.

They, like all of us perhaps, make a world in their own image.

And the “fruit” of such a “faith” is all too apparent. Eventually.

But not always before lifelong damage is done.

But the person truly “born again” seeks AND finds. Heals and restores. Requires much – and forgives much. Celebrates and mourns.

And values life, even as they are willing to leave it behind.

Being born “again” then, is much like being born the first time; we find ourselves in a world where we must learn how things work – from gravity to the volume of our own voices – and become a vital, contributing presence in a world that we find ourselves in, fully but not always willingly.

And perhaps that is the point – the world is ours – and not ours. We belong to it as much as it belongs to us.

A New Year is as much about endings as it is beginnings.

Western traditions set the new year in mid-winter, Asian cultures at the “new moon” – the ultimate signifier of spring.

They are both right. A new year, and a new beginning is a celebration of life as much as a mourning of what has cast a lasting shadow over it.

When does the year “begin”, when does it “end”?

Perhaps it only begins when we embrace it and it merges into us so that we, now, then, and all of eternity, all of our hopes, dreams and disappointments become indistinguishable.

The kingdom of God is within us, in front of us, and among us.

It is never far away. And never out of reach.

You don’t know what’s happening yet in Charleston. Go and help these people who lost their granddaddy, then get back to your office so you can start calling people. As soon as I returned to my office, I started making calls. I got through to my baby sister, Nadine, who lives in Charleston. She hadn’t heard anything, but she was going to go check it out: “I’m putting on some clothes and going down there to the church.” I called JonQuil. He told me, “Auntie, we down at the church but nobody’s letting us get close to the building.” His tone conveyed his concern. “They just keep saying something happened in the church. Maybe some shooting. We don’t know.” He said authorities were gathering family members at a nearby hotel. So while everybody was there, holding onto each other, I was in Dallas alone. I kept calling my nephew and my sisters, but the calls went to voicemail. Whatever was going on, I knew Momma would have been at church that evening. Every Wednesday there was a Bible study, and she made it her business to be there and make sure the church was ready. She opened the doors and was always one of the last people to leave that church—every night. My mother loved that church. As long as she was able to get out of her bed, Ethel Lance was gonna be at that church—you could count on it. One time she said to me, “For all the things that I might not have done right in my life, the more time I spend in this church, the more I get to talk to God and ask for forgiveness.” “Ma, I don’t think you did so many things wrong.” 

Join Shane Claiborne and Rev. Sharon Risher in Savannah, GA on June 4th for a Beating Guns event! 

*******

Even after days of watching, I could not tear myself away from the television. If I was awake, the TV was on. The day after the murders, the police arrested Dylan Roof—I hate to even acknowledge his name. The news outlets had been showing a video of him leaving the church. The next day a woman recognized him driving his car and called the police. He was taken to jail in North Charleston. Evil. The first time I saw him, saw his face, he personified evil to me. I was stunned by his youth, though. How did such a young boy get so much hate inside him? His eyes looked dead. That picture they showed of him with that little smirk on his face—I hate to see that picture because it represents pure evil to me. It’s gotten better for me as time has passed, but that look in his eyes is just haunting. I was captivated by the proceedings on television. Praise God! You are not gonna get away with this. They got you now. They got you now.

*****

My parents lived paycheck to paycheck, but I never really knew that as a kid. I never felt hungry or cold or poor. I just remember that we never seemed to have enough space. We had one bedroom for all the kids back then. The girls had to double up in bunk beds and our brother had a bed to himself. I shared my bed with Esther, and for a while Terrie had her own bed. Then, when Nadine was born, she slept in the bed with Terrie. That’s just how things were in those days, and I didn’t really mind, except that Esther was always peeing the damned bed! Later, we found out that she had a kidney problem, but all I knew back then was that I would wake up every morning with a peed-up damned bed.

We had a praying Momma who had a big heart and was always willing to help somebody else. Momma would always say, “Every man for himself, and God for us all.” She loved wearing fine perfumes and dancing to James Brown’s music. Momma was a no-nonsense kind of woman who had a very strict work ethic. She kept her home clean and spotless. On special occasions, when we got dressed up in our Sunday clothes, Momma would spray us with one of her perfumes. Then she would hide the bottle, because she knew, given the chance, we’d be spraying it all over the place. Oh, she loved her perfumes! One time when I was a little bit older, I bought her a fragrance at Edward’s Five and Dime store. It was “eau de something.” I was really proud of buying that bottle of perfume with my own money, which I had earned from running errands for the neighborhood ladies.

****

Life has given me challenges and failures, good times and bad times. Along my journey I have known feelings of hopelessness, shame, guilt, and unworthiness. Sometimes I have replayed old tapes of toxicity in my mind and plunged into darkness, wallowing in all things negative. Yet, inside I knew, Sharon, you’re better than this, and that eventually I would find my way back to the present. But life has given me some lessons that I want to share with anyone willing to take heed. My stuff may not compare to someone else’s, but we all have stuff. No matter who you are, what you have, the house you live in, the job or title you hold, life is going to toss you around sometimes. Nevertheless, God has given us all what we need to be the best person we can be. The things to ask yourself are, “Am I comfortable with who I am? Can I be content being the authentic me? Is there room for change in my life? Am I willing to do some deep self-reflection and take inventory of myself? Is there purpose in my life beyond just getting through?” Sometimes I sought answers to those questions, and at other times life forced me to reckon with the solutions. Consequently, I have learned a few things along this journey called my life.

****

LESSONS I Learned!

You cant heal in isolation, Trust your gut instinct and cling to your faith, Be prepared to get rejected.

You’ve got to persevere. Don’t give up on humanity. Everybody has a purpose, You have to put in the work to achieve your dreams.

Register to join us for the RLC Book Club with Rev. Sharon Risher on June 26th at 7pm EDT!

One of the most common questions I get — once people have moved past denial — is, “What do we do now?”

Often this question is understandably accompanied by a great amount of anguish, stress and a sense of being overwhelmed — feelings I myself encountered while researching and writing the book.

The recognition of the longevity and enormity of the problem in white Christianity can often lead to a kind of paralysis that inhibits meaningful action.

In “White Too Long,” I shared a powerful exchange that occurred in a meeting between the two First Baptist Churches in Macon, Georgia — one predominately white and one predominately Black — who had begun a journey together to talk openly about racism for the first time in their shared histories:

If we get past denial, if we get past the magical thinking that time will settle our moral obligations for us, the next challenge for white Christians today is to deal with the paralyzing notion that the weight of this history is so enormous that meaningful action is impossible.

At one early meeting between the white and black members of the two First Baptist Churches in Macon, a white member confessed that she was simply overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do. After a painful pause, an African American woman responded calmly, “Of course you are.” This reply was a palpable moment of compassion and accountability. While giving the white woman permission to feel overwhelmed, the African American woman’s response also gently affirmed that this discomfort was not an excuse for inaction.

I recently wrote that the first step toward recovery from the distortions of white supremacy is “to separate being white from being Christian.” This is the heart of the matter. But given how long the assumption that white lives matter more than others has been with us, and how deeply it is embedded in our architecture, histories, liturgy, hymnody and theology, this is no simple task.

Faced with this formidable past, I’m convinced that the most important thing white Christians can do is to simply start somewhere. And to start somewhere local. The following suggestions are intended to be prompts to generate thinking. There is no boilerplate 10-step program or magic formula, just the courageous work to begin where we are, to see what we have been unable to see and to change what we have been unwilling to change.

WATCH the Faith Forum on White Discomfort

Here are seven places to start.

1. Take a walk around the church building and grounds. In what ways does the physical embodiment of your church communicate whiteness? If you have stained-glass windows, do they depict a white Jesus or other biblical characters who are presented as white? During Advent and Christmas celebrations that include a nativity scene, are Mary, Joseph and Jesus white? What about the paintings and bulletin boards that adorn the walls — are the images of people all white? And who uses the church facilities during the week? If only predominately white groups meet there, why is that?
2. Examine the church website and social media sites. These days, potential new members are as likely to see the digital footprint of the church long before they encounter the sign out in the front lawn. On shoestring budgets, it’s easy to grab unreflectively stock images featuring white people for landing pages and events. Do these images reflect the body of Christ? And is there anything communicating a commitment to be in solidarity with Black and Brown congregations and people in your community?
3. Review the children’s educational materials. One reader recently wrote to me that she was appalled to find how many 1950s-era materials that depicted only white people were still on the preschool library and classroom shelves. And what about those pictorial children’s Bibles, with all the characters depicted as white?
   One way not to pass along white supremacist assumptions (and to communicate a more accurate history of what characters from the Middle East and Africa would look like!) is to correct the materials we use to teach the next generation about our faith.
4. Tell a truer history of ourselves. Most churches that have been around for more than a generation have commissioned an official history that tells the story of the founding and early growth of the church. But these glossy accounts sitting in the church library or on tables in the foyer are typically incomplete at best. They, by design, are like a resume, usually written with a commitment to telling the most flattering, impressive story of the congregation.
   Here’s one practical proposal. Pull together a group to write a more honest church history that begins with this simple question: Why is our church physically located where it is? Why is it in this part of our community and not another one? In nearly all cases this question will quickly lead to issues of racially segregated neighborhoods, white flight from cities to suburbs and land grabs from Native Americans, to name just a few. And other questions will flow from this beginning: Has the church ever had a policy or practice of prohibiting non-white members? Where was the voice of the church during past and present movements for civil rights? How different would a history of your church be if it were written by non-white members of your community?
5. Evaluate the hymns and other songs being sung in worship. The imagery — associated whiteness with purity and goodness and blackness with sin and evil — performs powerful moral and theology work, often below the level of consciousness. Are we still unreflectively singing 19th-century hymns with lyrics like, “Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow/Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow”? Or the militant, Crusade-invoking “Onward, Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War”?
6. Assess what’s being addressed from the pulpit and other church-wide educational events. To give just one example from the Roman Catholic context: After 25 years of regular proclamations from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the importance of addressing racial justice, a 2004 survey found that 64% of Catholics had not heard a single sermon on racism or racial justice during the entire three-year cycle of the lectionary. Even in the midst of the effervescence last fall, following months of nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, a recent Pew study found that only 40% of congregations heard sermons that even mentioned race or racism. Was this widespread silence from the pulpit the witness of your church? Historically, white pastors have heard a loud cacophony of voices warning them from speaking out against white supremacy. Does your pastor know there are congregants longing for leadership on issues of racial justice?
7. Read your church budget as a document expressing its moral and spiritual priorities. This one is straightforward but vital if white congregations are going to move authentically from confession and truth-telling to the work of repentance and repair. We have it on good authority that “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Given the history and complicity of white Christian churches with white supremacy, every white Christian church should make a commitment to support a predominately non-white church or nonprofit that primarily serves non-white people in their community, with three stipulations: a) The support should be significant, an expression of confession and repair; b) The support should not just consist of a one-time offering but be incorporated as a multi-year commitment reflected in a regular line in the church budget; and c) The support should be in the form of “no strings attached” general operating funds rather than to a specific project. Relinquishing control is an important spiritual practice for white Christians.

READ: The Sacred Work of White Discomfort

Starting somewhere and starting local will mean you may perhaps be the first person to voice these issues in your congregation, but you are likely not the only person on this spiritual and moral journey of transformation. And there are other churches engaged in this work who have found it enlivening and life-giving.

One sure sign of the continued presence of white supremacy is the outright resistance you will inevitably encounter from some and the protests of discomfort from others. But this is also evidence of the importance of the work.

This piece first appeared at Religion News Services.

For more from Robert P. Jones, watch RLC’s Faith Forum on White Discomfort on YouTube. 

For many Americans, though, the opposition to Russia’s invasion isn’t rooted in the immorality of war or imperialism but rather opposition to Russia and support of the West. Unsurprisingly, Putin’s poorly calculated war has resulted in more Western unity and the possibility of NATO growing.

What this showcases is that opposition here is more political than ethical. Our outrage against war is too often rooted in who is doing the invading and where they are invading.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice displayed this blatant hypocrisy when she declared invading a sovereign nation violated international law and order. My jaw dropped when I heard a key proponent and apologist for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claiming that such invasions were unlawful. I was stunned but also deeply saddened, both by the American exceptionalism of her claim and by the Western and white supremacy in it.

And this kind of incident is not isolated to FOX News broadcasts or an architect of the Global War on Terror.

CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata made revealing comparisons of Ukraine to Iraq and Afghanistan, describing Kyiv as a “relatively civilized,” “relatively European” city, whereas Iraq and Afghanistan are places that have had “conflict raging for decades.” D’Agata apologized, but his comment is emblematic of deeply rooted racism and Western bias and how that influences perceptions of non-white countries. Think of it as akin to saying violence in cities is less concerning than violence in the suburbs because violence is “the norm” in cities.

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These comparisons break my heart, as an Arab-American, the son of Egyptian immigrants. Why is the world united in its opposition to the invasion of a white country? And why did so many Americans find unity in their support of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, especially at the outset of those conflicts?

There are many reasons for this, but the most personal to me is that brown nations are seen as less human, less worthy of dignity, and less deserving of peace. Further, this line of thinking implies that brown people are less capable of self-determination and need to be rescued by white saviors. It is dehumanizing, like the world is saying, we are not worthy of life, and we are not capable of our own liberation.

These poorly conceived wars – fought on false pretenses in the case of Iraq – did wane in popularity over the decades. But, it wasn’t how the U.S. ripped the countries apart that spurred Americans’ disdain; most Americans just didn’t want American soldiers making those sacrifices any longer.

I am grateful for their opposition, but it still did not have to do with my dignity, with our dignity. In fact, President Biden’s haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan showcased as much as Afghans were left defenseless. Even more sickening is how many more Americans say they would support bringing Ukrainian refugees to the U.S – 74% were in favor in one recent poll. Compare that to the portion of Americans who supported allowing Afghan refugees, other than those who helped the U.S. government, seek haven from the Taliban in this country. An Associated Press poll published in October found that only 42% of people were in favor of allowing that category of refugees to come to the United States, even after they had passed security checks.

Not only is this hypocritical, it is racist.

The dehumanization of brown people wasn’t limited to those living in Iraq or Afghanistan. I felt it at home, too. I grew up in a predominantly white town in exurban Pennsylvania and witnessed the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon as a sophomore in high school. The wars with Afghanistan and Iraq that followed profiled me and my family as enemies of the United States.

REGISTER: Faith Forum on White Discomfort – March 17th at 7pm EDT

We were forced to assimilate, to wear American flag pins, to demonstrate our patriotism conspicuously to try to evade racialized harassment. I remember the names classmates called me; one of them even likened my appearance to that of Osama bin Laden. The racism I experienced is exactly why it was so easy to justify the invasions at the time – the people the U.S. was bombing didn’t look like white Americans.

The vile propaganda that furthered the racism I experienced galvanized support for the wars. And it is not dissimilar to the propaganda that Putin is selling to support his own unlawful wars. In both cases, the warring nations are creating an enemy to convince their own populations to support an immoral invasion. In the case of the U.S., much of that enemy was already created by Western media, TV, and cinema. Brown people, specifically Arabs, have been the bad guys for a long time in our media.

In Ukraine, Putin is commanding Russian soldiers to kill and fight people that look like them, that sometimes speak the same language. The kinship that Russians and Ukrainians share makes the actions of the conflict apparently evil. There is nothing wrong with that on its face. It is clearly wrong to kill family. But I long for a world where people who look like me are seen as siblings in that family, where it is equally unconscionable to invade our countries. I long for a world where we are bold in our opposition to armed conflict, and not only when it serves our national interests or when its victims look like us.

This article was originally posted by PhillyVoice.com.  

Melissa has been on death row for fifteen years for the alleged murder of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah, who fell down a flight of stairs and died of brain injuries two days later. In January 2021, Melissa received her execution date. Melissa’s lawyers believe in her innocence and are working against the odds to get a fresh look at the evidence. The only evidence against Melissa is her confession, which was given under duress after seven hours of police interrogation in the middle of the night. Melissa was pregnant with twins, and instead of being able to grieve her daughter’s death, she was accused of a crime.

The hope is to advocate for a new trial. Last year, a panel of judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned her conviction and death sentence, which should have resulted in a new trial. Instead, the State of Texas appealed to all 17 judges on that court, which voted 10-7 to reverse the order, reinstating the conviction and death sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the case.  

LISTEN: RLC’s Faith Forum on the Death Penalty

As the lawyers try everything they can, the only option left is the court of public opinion, which is how Melissa’s son, sisters, mother, cousins, and others came to be sitting in our church. We provided a space to screen a film about the case, The State of Texas vs. Melissa, and Sabrina Van Tassel, the film’s director, led a conversation about the current situation. 

The death penalty is complicated. I get that, and many Christians either have really hardened views on the topic or avoid it completely. But we as Christians need to address the topic of the death penalty and have deeply nuanced approaches to it because Scripture takes it seriously. On the one hand, the Bible does speak on capital punishment (Gen 9:6). On the other hand, it says a great deal about the certainty of guilt (Deut 17:6; Num. 35:30), intent (Numbers 35:22-24), and due process (Numbers 35; Deut 17). We cannot just wholesale argue that Scripture permits or prohibits the death penalty. Instead of having a heavy hand bent toward capital punishment, we must weigh the factors of each incident and respond accordingly. 

Capital punishment is a decision that should not be taken lightly. When someone on death row pleads their innocence, we should pay attention and not simply give the system the benefit of the doubt. We should investigate, research, and get involved, especially if it’s a case in our state. Yes, many folks on death row say they’re innocent, but some of them really are. Over 1500 people have been killed on death row since 1976, and at least 186 people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have now been exonerated and freed. That’s approximately 12%!

READ: Buddy Stouffer’s Execution Was the Last of 2021. Will It Be the Last to Be Proved an Error?

Church, we cannot be silent if an innocent person’s life is at risk. We must raise our voice to demand due process and indisputable evidence of guilt and intent. There are times when we must fight for retrials and new trials. We must be sure. These are image-bearers we’re talking about.

You can sign Death Penalty Action’s petition asking the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Greg Abbott to watch the film, The State of Texas vs. Melissa (available on Hulu and Amazon Prime). You can also call the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles at 512-404-5852 and Governor Greg Abbott at 512-463-2000 with the message: “Please watch ‘The State of Texas vs. Melissa” and grant her clemency.” 

We are still learning about Melissa’s case. But I encourage you to go to FreeMelissaLucio.org and learn too. Then pray. Pray for God’s justice to be done and for TRUTH to be made clear. God has created the church to be an institution for social good, so we must also put our faith into action while we pray. To advance God’s kingdom on earth and pursue his vision of holistic shalom means we cannot avoid what’s happening on death row. 

Visit FreeMelissaLucio.org to rent the film, host a screening, sign the petition, print fliers to share, and contact the Texas authorities who can halt this injustice. An in-person screening sponsored by Hope Community Church & Death Penalty Action, will be held at 7pm CST on Tuesday, March 8th, at Memorial UMC, 6100 Berkman Dr. in Austin, TX. In honor of International Women’s Day, the film may also be seen for free at FreeMelissaLucio.org on March 7th & 8th.

The collective grief and trauma is compounded for many of us. It doesn’t feel right to normalize it, but here we are. Another Uber Eats gift card. Another prayer request. Another casserole. Another bouquet of condolence flowers. None of it feels like enough.

Today as I write this, I’m doing something else I’ve normalized. Today, my 9-year-old is getting her 11th MRI. She was born with a rare form of spina bifida and has lived with a cone-shaped tumor called a syrinx tangled in her spinal cord nerves for her whole life. She is disabled. So here I am, tuning out the ridiculously loud hum of this ominous-looking machine encapsulating my child. I’m pretending it’s totally normal that she’s lying there with weights on her legs, watching Ice Age through a mirror.

But every once in a while, a thought will cross my mind, and my eyes will notice something- and tears come out of nowhere. I swear they weren’t there just a minute ago. I swear I was fine. But am I? Ever so often, she will break eye contact with the movie and look at me, so I try to make sure I’m smiling. I mouth encouragement with my lips to stay still while the doctors get the pictures they need. I give a thumbs up and a silent clap. I pretend I’m brushing hair out of my eyes instead of wiping away tears.

This is what it’s like to live with caregiver trauma every day. This is what it’s like to have to normalize living in a way that’s not sustainable long term—fighting through a million of those invisible moments, over and over. As my tears fell, I wondered what my daughter’s future would look like, and I felt the bitterness creep back in. It’s a constant battle to reject anger and trade it for mercy. For humility. For love. Sometimes I’m more successful than others.

As I sat in that MRI room, I remembered a day a few weeks earlier. On the way home from school, my 8-year-old with asthma asked out of the blue, “I know we wear masks to protect other people because we love people, but when someone doesn’t wear a mask around me, does it mean they don’t love me?” Again, she’s 8. And those words broke my heart.

Caroline has been hospitalized in the PICU multiple times over the last two years for asthma-related complications. Part of me wants to say yes because I have wondered the same thing. But as a parent, I know I can’t say that. And as my child sat waiting for my response, I had to figure out why really fast. So we talked about how Christ on the cross suffered after doing nothing wrong. We talked about how he prayed to forgive the people that put him there because “they knew not what they did.” We wondered about the crucifixion out loud together. Those people knew they were mocking and murdering Jesus as well as the robbers flanking him, but he forgave them still.

READ: Finding Jesus in Rural America

It occurred to me that maybe Jesus wasn’t suggesting that He was the exception, as in “forgive them, Father, for murdering me.” “Forgive them for they know not what they do” is actually very different. To this day, theologians and scholars still debate what actually happened on the cross. Maybe this is because the mystery of Christ on the cross is still much more radical and powerful than any of us could ever fully wrap our brains around. What if Jesus was asking his Heavenly Father to forgive how humanity’s obsession with murder, power, and violence had led him to that moment? What if Christ’s forgiveness is much larger than we could ever possibly imagine? What if his grace is? What if ours could be too?

So as my daughter and I pulled into the driveway, I reminded my child how fully loved she is. I reminded her how spreading love, forgiveness, and grace when it is hard is exactly how Jesus chose to reveal his authority and mercy on the cross. So even when we feel unloved, we choose to forgive and extend mercy anyway, like Jesus.

Caring for medically fragile children in a pandemic is at times an invisible load. Often we’ve had to minimize it greatly for the comfort of many of our healthier and more able-bodied friends. Just like so often, the experiences of BIPOC people are systematically erased in favor of a white narrative; the experience of medically fragile families and image-bearers with disabilities has largely been forced to the margins too.

When I think about the church leaders that have regularly boasted about how they disdain mask-wearing, distrust doctors, oppose health care reform, and refuse vaccines that will keep their most vulnerable congregants safe, I think about how unwelcoming places like that have been to families like mine. If these sanctuaries refuse to prioritize belonging for the least among us, then where do the least of these among us find sanctuary? Does a consistent pro-life ethic include the vulnerable in our midst? How much does the sanctity of their lives matter?

Our family has been blessed to be a part of churches that partner with us so well. They go out of their way to show our kids love in many thoughtful and intentional ways. They listen. They join us in solidarity. They truly care. But largely, when I talk to other parents of disabled children and adults with disabilities, their experience isn’t like mine. Those families are regularly excluded, overlooked, and ignored in many evangelical circles.

WATCH: RLC Book Club Kids and Youth Edition

Church institutions will cite their insurance policies as the reason they can’t accommodate a child with a particular disability in their upscale environment. Volunteers will feel inconvenienced and scared of liability. So then who will invite that child into belonging? Who will invite that parent? Or do we find ourselves standing as gatekeepers between medically fragile families and the table of Jesus?

Thankfully this is never the case as Jesus is always on the other side with the vulnerable – but that’s a sobering reminder as well. Exactly what kind of table are the gatekeepers protecting? And who will show up to make that child feel safe and that family feel seen?

The church has had a unique opportunity in the pandemic to participate in the grand reversal as it relates to children with disabilities. One of the simplest ways to participate is to simply join disabled families in friendship, advocacy, and the everyday work of bearing one another’s burdens.

I’m not talking about inspiration porn. I’m talking about friendship, belonging, and interdependent community. As a church, throughout this pandemic, how did we measure up? If we asked our disabled, chronically ill, and caregiving neighbors, would they feel safe enough to even tell us the truth? Would they feel safe enough to admit that, at times, the obsession with freedom and individual rights fueled by Christian Nationalism has led them to feel invisible and unloved by the church? Because there are times I don’t feel safe enough to admit that many church leaders’ public positions on healthcare reform, masks, and vaccines, have directly made my family feel unloved by the church institutions they represent.

While the disability experience is not a monolith, by & large caregivers and disabled people are familiar with the feeling of being excluded from environments that seemingly welcome their presence but not their belonging. And I have to wonder if our churches are not fully FOR the least among them first, then who are they really for?

As we continue towards whatever else 2022 holds, may we allow ourselves to be angered at the way medically fragile children have silently endured a different kind of pandemic trauma than their healthy peers. May we repent for all the times our actions and inaction made someone with a disability feel invisible and alone. And may we be willing to change how we pursue the cruciform love of Jesus towards the medically vulnerable so that those image bearers truly know how loved they are.

There is a place for steel bolts and cameras. There is a place for the contemplation of danger and the assessment of harm, the strategic memorization of exits and the hermeneutic of slight suspicion masked by a welcoming smile, an outstretched hand; would that there were fewer places for these things.

But there are other ways to pursue security that do not drive us apart, set us apart, set up barriers between us and the others made in the same image. When God split the adam, flesh from flesh and bone from bone (see Genesis 2:18-23), it was not to divide them but to create companionship, desire, comfort, turning humanity into what Wilda C. Gafney in Womanist Midrash calls “a bifurcated being (1).” 

If we were to pursue that which did not separate but brought us back together, what might that look like?

LISTEN to Walk With Me by Common Hymnal 

This is not a call to those who are busy defending themselves from direct action, nursing new wounds, or shell-shocked. It is the call and responsibility of those of us who are otherwise safe, with our feet by the fire, worried by the violence of others, and saddened by the sorrow of our friends. Our solidarity is not in pretending that our risk is the same but in changing the factors that destabilize the field.

What if we were to attack instead of retreat? What if, in place of despair or even a secure defense, we were to perpetrate an all-out offensive on the things that threaten to divide us: antisemitism, racism, domestic (what a word) violence, the prevalence, and ease of acquisition of guns, America’s preferred instrument of destruction?

From red flag laws to the red hot fire of forges melting down guns for garden tools, there are ways of making ourselves more secure that do not demand our separation but our cooperation. There are ways of reconciling ourselves to a human nature full of faults and fault-lines that require the filling in of trenches, the digging out of land mines, making straight the paths and passages between us (see Isaiah 40:3-5). 

Fund a violence interruption program; find out from the local trauma center who is doing the work you want to support. Mount a letter-writing campaign; find out from local and state anti-violence chapters what kind of legislation is being considered that will make our communities more or less safe from gun violence and other types of harm. Attend anti-racist and abolitionist educational opportunities. Bring some home to roost. 

What if we were to do the work of peace instead of the work of privilege, the building of towers of ivory and arrow-slits?

There are ways of loving our neighbors that do not require us to arm ourselves against one another, but that require us to equip ourselves with subversive understanding, deep collaboration, a conspiracy that recognizes the secret image of God settled subtly into every human being.

What if we were to combat the cold by setting fire to the things that chill us instead of shivering in dismay?

1 – Wilda C. Gafney, Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne (Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), 21

Economists talk about “externalities” in markets. The cost of a good or service in economic models is the place where the demand for a product meets the supply of the product. The more people who want something and the less of it there is, the more it will cost. But this model takes into account only the value that a buyer is willing to pay a seller for the good or service. It does not include any other costs that occur in the larger system when that good or service is exchanged. There are often additional costs borne by people who are not involved at all in the initial transaction. They are called externalities. One externality is the environmental cost of oil extraction, which is not fully included in the price of oil. Another is the impact of air pollution that occurs when someone drives a car: this cost is not included in the purchase price of the car. The costs of these externalities are borne by the general public, vulnerable populations, the earth, and so on.

These externalities and other impacts are present wherever money is put to work. Even the term “externality” is not quite accurate because those impacts are not really external to the system. Rather they are part of the system. This is true in investing choices as well. While money itself may be neutral, the application of money in the world is never neutral. As Jed Emerson says, “capital is always at work, always in motion (1).” This reality should encourage us to be thoughtful and intentional about putting our money to work. Do we want our capital put to work by businesses seeking to create more needs among consumers that they can meet with the latest product, or could our capital be better put to work meeting the many pressing needs that already exist in our communities?

Impact across the Life Cycle of Money

The way we interact with money matters. It is not neutral. This is true in all four parts of what I call the life cycle of money—earning, giving, spending, and saving.

We have talked a fair bit in the church about the theology around earning money—the theology of vocation. Are some jobs and ways of earning money less faithful to the way God has created us to live than others? Should we avoid jobs that exploit and damage others or the earth? Running a sweatshop and building weapons of war are some examples that provoke thought.

We’ve talked a lot about giving money away, about philanthropy. Stewardship is a very well-developed field in the church. There are many excellent books, seminars, conferences, and resources exploring the theology and practice of fund-raising and stewardship.

And more recently we’ve grown a lot in our thinking about spending money—after all, it was churches who started the fair-trade movement and raised awareness about how our buying choices influence lives around the world. It is common to find fair-trade coffee served in the fellowship halls of churches after worship.

But in many ways we’ve neglected the conversation about the impact of our saved money in the church. We will spend much time and effort ensuring that the $1,000 worth of coffee we buy each year for fellowship hour is fair trade, but we don’t give much thought to what the $100,000 endowment we have invested in the stock market is doing. By and large, we are content to take high returns from whoever will give them to us without giving much thought to the impact of that capital in the world. If it is true that we put our money where our mouth is, it appears that right now we have more faith in Mark Zuckerberg than in our own people and communities. As Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens, and Dwight Friesen, founders of the Parish Collective, remind us: “Economics functions as a mirror where the truth about your faith is reflected back. The spreadsheet is a theological statement—where your treasure is, there your heart is also (2).” This is true in all four areas of the life cycle of money. It is vital that we give deeper consideration to the saving/investing phase.

Lynne Twist uses the metaphor of water when she explores “the soul of money (3).” Money, like water, flows through our lives, neighborhoods, and ecosystems. Sometimes it comes in a flood—there is lots of it—and sometimes in a trickle, when there is only a little. And like water, money can bring life and growth where it is allowed to flow. But if it is held back and dammed up, it gets stale and toxic. As Jesus demonstrates in the parable of the rich fool found in the Gospel of Luke, money produces nothing good for anyone when it is held onto too tightly.

The source of both money and water affects the health of what it does in the world. Brackish or polluted water from upstream will kill everything downstream. The same is true with money. The outflow of money is not only important; the source of that money is as well. If that source, how the money is earned, is not healthy, then its impact will not be good for the larger ecosystem even if the earnings are put to good use. The good that money may produce downstream can be undone, or even outdone, by the damage caused in making that money upstream. This is particularly true in how money makes money—in other words, in investing.

What impact is your money having in the world right now?

In 2013 the archbishop of Canterbury, the senior bishop of the Church of England, rolled out an ambitious plan to put predatory payday lenders in the United Kingdom out of business. One of the worst offenders, Wonga, charged customers seeking short-term payday loans interest rates as high as 5,853 percent APR (annual percentage rate). (That comma is not a typo; Wonga was charging an interest rate of almost 6,000 percent.) Deeming this practice unethical, the church sought to support community financial institutions in order to encourage alternative lenders and with the goal of eventually putting Wonga out of business. But this worthy effort was undermined when it was revealed that the Church of England had invested some endowment funds in Wonga. So the church was making money off of the very same exploitative business it was trying to eradicate. Money the church was using for its mission downstream was polluted by the source upstream.Their investment choices were not neutral. Simply making as much money as possible, by whatever investment strategy is most lucrative, is not always the right choice.

A recognition of the importance of how money originates has led to the socially conscious screened-investing movement that has gained more traction than direct impact investing in the church (4). Many endowments screen out “bad” companies from their investment portfolio—what are sometimes called “sin stocks.” Tobacco, weapons, gambling, and alcohol were eliminated early on. Some investors have moved to screening out fossil fuel companies, those that sell bulldozers that Israel uses to build walls in disputed territory, companies that treat workers poorly, and so on.

Often screened portfolios move heavily into so-called clean investments in technology—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google. But given what we are learning about the addictive qualities of Facebook, the environmental impact of the materials going into iPhones, and questionable behavior of Amazon in the marketplace, are these companies really clean? While it is vital to ask how “clean” an investment is, and screening our investments is essential, simply removing the worst companies from an investment portfolio still leaves most of our capital working to grow business and not making a positive impact in people’s lives.

This is true even if we just put our money in the bank. The bank doesn’t store it in a vault in the back. It immediately lends it out or invests it. Unless we literally put our money under a mattress, it is at work having an impact every single minute of every single day. Put another way: “Do you know where your money spends the night?” What impact is your capital having in the world right now?

1 Jed Emerson, The Purpose of Capital: Elements of Impact, Financial Flows, and Natural Being (San Francisco: Blended Value, 2018), 224.

2 Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens, and Dwight Friesen, The New Parish: How Neighborhood Churches Are Transforming Mission, Discipleship, and Community (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014), 97.

3 Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life (New York: Norton, 2017), 102–3.

4 Often referred to as SRI (socially responsible investing) or ESG (environmental, social, governance screening).

Content taken from We Aren’t Broke: Uncovering Hidden Resources for Mission and Ministry by Mark Elsdon ©2021 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) Reprinted by permission of the publisher.