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Waiting for God is like... You're expecting a guest. You haven't seen them in ages. You know they're coming, although you forget the exact time. And you don't need to impress them—they'd probably sleep on the floor, but why wouldn't you give up your bed? And it's not clean enough and you don't have matching curtains and they're not gonna care because they love you but you'll still probably do your best. Scrub the counter, at least. So you try to stay up to greet them but they're late or you were wrong about the day and you keep dozing off. All you really have to do is be at home when they knock and you'll wake up and figure everything out when they get here—but who wants to answer the door half-asleep? And you can probably get a few more things done while you're waiting. You can light a candle—that's welcoming, right?

So maybe you stay up doing dishes or maybe you give up and go to bed, but the knock makes you jump either way. It's light outside when you let them in, and that's not right, it can't be morning already. The windows are dark. Anyway, you're pouring them tea and apologizing for the mess and you realize they're not a guest at all—they live here, actually. Have your whole life. They probably make your lunch every day. Your house isn't yours at all, now that they're here, now that they've arrived and always been here. It's been yours, plural, yours together, and isn't it lovely that you don't have to worry about the curtains matching anymore? They've already seen them and chosen to stay every time.

There's another knock at the door. They arrive and you pour them tea. You get some sleep. You stop being surprised when your lunch is ready to go. You're expecting a guest. They make themselves at home; they are at home; they've been making themselves a home.

Your days are spent opening the door. They've been gone for so long; how could they have left you; why are they always forgetting to use a coaster and leaving icy circles on the wooden table; why can't you have any privacy in this house; you can't find them anywhere; this is only home when they're here; they keep arriving and you keep making tea do you think they'll ever get tired of tea do you they'll get tired of you opening the door half asleep do you think they're secretly annoyed by the mismatched curtains

Someone knocks on the door. You are interrupted. You keep forgetting you're expecting a guest. You were hoping they'd come and interrupt you. Someone knocks on the door. You're awake. You always make enough tea for two.

Eventually someone doesn't knock on your door. You find them on your doorstep waiting. You've been expecting a guest. The windows of your house are open all the time now, even though it's dark and cold, and you make your home some tea. It's never cold inside, as if opening the door let in warm air instead of cool. The candle you lit has been burning without getting smaller. You can't remember why you used to be surprised, why waiting was frantic. You wash the dishes because that's the next thing to do; because you wash the teacup of your not-guest like it's the chalice of a king.

One day you don't have a door anymore. You can see through the walls of your house and the whole galaxy spreads out before you. They're expecting a guest. You walk outside. The universe makes you tea.

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dna is made of angels. (taps mic) hello??? dna is divine intent made tangible. is this thing on

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jesus was human. sometimes it hits me and im incapable of thinking about anything else. jesus got blisters for walking barefoot & spent entire nights wide awake & got teary eyed while listening to people sing & joked around with his friends & was good with his hands & went swimming in the river when it got too hot & laughed so hard he cried & kissed his mother goodbye & liked when people played with his hair & was always kind to children & stopped to pet stray dogs & got grumpy when he was tired & wept for his life & asked to not be left alone & bled & loved & lived & died

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When Victor Hugo said To love another person is to see the face of God, and Dostoevsky said To love someone means to see them as God intended them and The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.

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—Stephen Adly Guirgis, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

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Daily reminder that God loves His gay children!!! God loves His lesbian children!!! God loves His bi children!!! God loves His trans children!!! God loves His pan children, His poly children, His ace children, His aro children, His agender children, His nonbinary children, and every other child of His that’s a color of the beautiful LGBT+ rainbow. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. God loves you.

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The moment you think ‘these people don’t deserve prayers’ is the moment you should be praying for them because they need it the most

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The Silt Verses Chapter II // Bernini, Saint Sebastian // Caroline Walker Bynum, The Holy Feast and the Holy Fast // Louise Glück, Saint Joan // René Girard, Violence and the Sacred // Anne Sexton // St. Denis Picking Up His Head // Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov // Caroline Walker Bynum, Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters // St Epipodius prayer meditation // Unknown Artist, St Catherine and the Demons // The Silt Verses Chapter VI

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St. Anthony the Incorrupt Tongue by Andres Rios

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Confronting our antisemitism during Holy Week

“Jesus of Nazareth, charged by the Roman authorities with sedition, dies on a Roman cross. But Jews ― the collective, all Jews ― become known as “Christ-killers.” Still haunting, the legacy of that charge becomes acute during Holy Week, when pastors and priests who speak about the death of Jesus have to talk about “the Jews.” Every year, the same difficulty surfaces: how can a gospel of love be proclaimed, if that same gospel is heard to promote hatred of Jesus’s own people?”

- Professor Amy-Jill Levine

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Holy Week is here, so I thought I’d remind myself and other Christians that it is imperative to resist antisemitic interpretations of Jesus’s Passion.

Holy Week has long been a dangerous time of the year for Jewish persons (See this article for the history of antisemitic hate crimes on Good Friday in medieval Europe, for instance). And the scriptures that we choose to read in our churches during this time fuels that antisemitism not only this week, but the whole year round. 

When our Gospels’ various versions of the Passion narrative are full of inflammatory language about “The Jews” shouting “Crucify him!,” about the disciples (despite being Jewish themselves!) hiding away “for fear of the Jews,” it’s no wonder that we absorb an antisemitic message when we read those scriptures every year – especially when we aren’t given any guidance on the context as to why these texts were written this way or what to do about it.

So. How can we acknowledge and combat the antisemitism that has too long been entrenched in our communities?

________________

RESOURCES

First, let’s get educated on the basic facts about antisemitism in Holy Week’s typical scriptures, and alternatives to concluding that “the Jews killed Jesus”:

Article: “Who are ‘The Jews’ in John?” .

See this article from My Jewish Learning - “Who Killed Jesus?” .

You might like my sermon from last Palm Sunday that discusses antisemitism in the “triumphal entry” narrative and connects it to the perennial search for someone to blame when we feel afraid or helpless, including parallels to anti-Asian sentiments in this pandemic .

See also Jon M. Sweeney’s book: Jesus Wasn’t Killed by the Jews: Reflections for Christians in Lent

Next, let’s reimagine the stories we read during Holy Week in ways that don’t do harm to our Jewish neighbors! Replace the bad with good!

I most highly recommend Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine’s book Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week. .

Get a summary of and link to a pdf of her chapter on Palm Sunday and the “cleansing of the temple” (Jesus flipping tables) here .

And if reading a whole book isn’t your thing, Levine also has a video series where she talks about the Passion story – here’s the first video, just 9 minutes long

This quote from Levine in this article sums up the purpose of her scholarship as a whole:

“A number of Christian commentators feel the need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good. Instead of portraying Jesus as a Jew talking to other Jews, he becomes in their views the first Christian, the one who invented divine grace, mercy, and love, and all that other good stuff. Such views neglect the presence of these same virtues within Jesus’ own Jewish context. There should be no reason this Jewish Jesus is used to promote anti-Judaism.”

Finally, if you only have time for one resource, make it this article:

“Holy Week and the hatred of the Jews: How to avoid anti-Judaism this Easter,” also written by Amy-Jill Levine.

In this article, Levine describes how the anti-Jewish language got into the Gospels to begin with; how interfaith conversations today help stem the tide of antisemitism; and explores and ranks the 6 strategies Levine has seen people use when trying to resolve these problems with the New Testament. .

From least useful to most useful, she names these strategies as excision (just removing the problematic stuff and pretending it was never there); retranslation (changing up the way we translate problematic texts, such as changing “the Jews” to “Judeans”); romanticizing (this includes Christians holding their own Passover seders – read this part of the article to see why we should Not Do That); allegorizing; historicizing; and, best of all, just admitting the problem:

“We come finally to our sixth option: admit to the problem and deal with it. There are many ways congregations can address the difficult texts. Put a note in service bulletins to explain the harm the texts have caused. Read the problematic texts silently, or in a whisper. Have Jews today give testimony about how they have been hurt by the texts.

Those who proclaim the problematic verses from the pulpit might imagine a Jewish child sitting in the front pew and take heed: don’t say anything that would hurt this child, and don’t say anything that would cause a member of the congregation to hurt this child. Better still: educate the next generation, so that when they hear the problematic words proclaimed, they have multiple contexts - theological, historical, ethical - by which to understand them.

Christians, hearing the Gospels during Holy Week, should no more hear a message of hatred of Jews than Jews, reading the Book of Esther on Purim, should hate Persians, or celebrating the seder and reliving the time when “we were slaves in Egypt,” should hate Egyptians.

We choose how to read. After two thousand years of enmity, Jews and Christians today can recover and even celebrate our common past, locate Jesus and his earliest followers within rather than over and against Judaism, and live into the time when, as both synagogue and church proclaim, we can love G-d and our neighbour.’

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What do you think? 

Do you have more questions you’re wrestling with? more ideas on how to actually deal with our antisemitism, in Holy Week and beyond? more resources on this topic you’d like to share?

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instagram.com/worshipgifs

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Intercessory prayer for Palm Sunday / Holy Week

Dear siblings in Jesus Christ, As ever, we have so much to pray for… But this week, I invite you to do something a little odd with me: Will you pray with me for Jesus, too?

In this week in which we remember his most agonizing moments, his trauma, his desolation, his execution as a common criminal, let’s pray for him, as he prays and works unceasingly for us.

Friends, let us pray.

…

For those unjustly blamed across time and space: for Jesus, accused and sentenced to death by the powers who feared his revolutionary Kin(g)dom; for our Jewish neighbors, wrongly punished across the centuries for Christ’s death and for many other crimes of which they are innocent;

for members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community who have become a hyper-visible target to pin this pandemic on; for migrants and immigrants who are accused of stealing jobs and depleting resources simply for daring to seek a life for themselves and their loved ones; we pray.

…

For those unjustly shamed across time and space:

For Jesus, tortured and taunted by Roman soldiers, stripped of his friends, his clothing, his life;

For sex workers whose livelihoods are criminalized and bodies dehumanized;

For all who have been victim-blamed, told that harassment, abuse, and even death are their fault because of who they are, how they act, or the jobs or beliefs they hold; we pray.

…

And for those who go unnamed across time and space: for the two men crucified alongside Jesus, and the countless others who have been tortured, executed, disappeared from before the dawn of the Roman Empire through the current regime the United States;

for all victims of mass shootings, too many to name, too many to bear;

for the numberless masses of human beings crushed under the grindstone of “progress,” the deaths of their cultures and of their bodies justified in the name of excess wealth for the few;

we pray.

…

O God who hears the cries of those unjustly blamed, those dehumanized and shamed, those whose names are eradicated from recorded history – and who replies by becoming one of them, by entering into ultimate solidarity on a Roman cross, and by exposing the violence of worldly powers for the evil it is,

Thank you.

Make your Spirit known to us. Unite and empower us for the work ahead.

Thank you.

Amen.

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“you act like we should all live our lives centered around not causing harm” uh yeah exactly..

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i feel almost as if nothing is more divine than queerness- God stands with the outcasts, the needy, and who is more outcast than those who have been told that they are wrong in their very nature? and yet, despite being ostracized, we have overcome, as God’s love does- what is more holy than that?

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Being created perfectly in the womb by God and being transgender are not mutually exclusive. They are, perhaps most importantly, truths that are intertwined. God made you perfect AND transgender. God made you transgender AND perfect. You are perfect BECAUSE you are transgender. You are transgender BECAUSE you are perfect.