Reflections of Ryberg

Are you satisfied?

Tom Ryberg — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:48:46 +0000

My good friend, the Rev. Dominique Atchison, wrote an excellent post today on how Dr. King’s words and deeds have been “white-washed” in the progressive church lately. That is to say, his specifically racial critiques have been largely set aside in favor of more general social justice critiques, such as his anti-war stance and his work on behalf of the impoverished. Rev. Dominique sees, and I do as well, a way in which the apparent desire to make Dr. King’s words continue to speak here and now, ostensibly by elevating his non-racial positions, makes the assumption that his racial positions are largely outdated and no longer relevant for our consideration today.

As if by taking the “WHITE’S ONLY” signs off the pool house and the White House, we have truly ushered in a new era of racial unity and justice.

Sorry – that’s just not how it works. In her article, Rev. Dominique references some “other” words from King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech, ones you certainly won’t hear political conservatives appeal to in their efforts to twist Dr. King into an opponent of affirmative action. Check it:

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

And here, to my seeing, lies part of the problem: SOME of the things on this list are, in fact, over with. These days, we (mostly) don’t have segregated motels and hotels. And signs that proclaim “For Whites Only” – (at least overtly) – have been taken down. So it can be tempting to declare, as President Bush did, talking about Iraq in 2003, “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!” – as if it weren’t 2012 and we didn’t still have racial justice issues (or, for that matter, Iraq issues).

We’ve made some progress on the overt stuff, sure. And that should definitely be lifted up and celebrated. But what about the rest of King’s list?

Is police brutality against black and brown people over?
Are high percentages of black and brown people still living in ghettos, small and large?
Are people of color well-represented in public leadership roles?
And more basically – can any of us honestly say that we live in a time when “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream”?

I don’t think we’re done yet. As we remember Dr. Martin Luther King today or any day, let’s please be honest about the fullness of his dream – that it was explicitly racial, because he lived in – and we still live in – a state of explicitly racial inequality. Let us give thanks for the great prophets of yesterday, as well as those today (you know who you are!), but let us critically examine their prophetic visions on an ongoing basis, lest we fall into self-deception about progress that actually has not yet been attained. As for the question, “When will [I] be satisfied”, today I will honor Dr. King by joining in his dissatisfaction, until justice, like water, finally rolls on down.

Learning to Exhale: Breathing as an Act of Surrender

Tom Ryberg — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:49:17 +0000

(Cross-posted at The Inward and Outward Journey.)

Confession: When it comes to Sabbath practices, I am so bad at this!

This was most recently evidenced by the fact that, for the umpteenth time, I stayed up too late last night.

It wasn’t the first time this year, or even this week. It was just the latest iteration of what for me has become an undesirable and frequent pattern: I get stressed out by day, then stay up late worrying by night. This, of course, becomes a vicious cycle: I’m stressed, so I stay up late, so I get less sleep, so I’m tired the next day, so I’m less efficient, so I feel more overwhelmed, which stresses me out, so I stay up late…

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now that the coffee has kicked in and I’ve had a little time to reflect, here’s part of what I think is going on for me: refusal to exhale.

Our scripture this week is very timely:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. (Genesis 2:1-3)

On page 5 of Wayne Muller’s amazing A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough, Wayne notes that in the original Hebrew, the word for this rest can be read as “And God exhaled.” And Wayne goes on to pose the question: When do we exhale?

When I’m stressed out, when I feel like I’m holding a lot of stuff, I feel physically tight. The muscles in my neck and shoulders become tense. I feel emotionally tight as well. My mind races from one thing to another, as if I’d drop all the things if I spent too much time thinking about any one of them. And I feel spiritually tight – it’s hard work trying to maintain all this control, you know? Who has time for spiritual renewal when I’ve got so many things to worry about?? I hardly have time to breathe!

…And that’s what I mean by refusal to exhale: physically, emotionally, and spiritually refusing to breathe…

or open

or widen

or relinquish

or release.

I gain something out of refusing to exhale: the illusion that I ultimately have control over all these things I’m worrying about. But the utterly terrifying – and liberating – truth is, I actually don’t have control over the things that give me the most stress. And so for me, stress management isn’t about somehow seizing more control, but rather the opposite: letting go of my desire to control those things. In spiritual language, this is the discipline of surrender.

A curious thing happens when we breathe deeply: our bodies relax. Our heart rates slow down. Our thoughts become clearer. We become more attentive to the things around us. We gain the ability to sustain our focus on one thing at a time. Viewed in this light, breathing itself is an embodied act of surrender: Inhale: allow the oxygen into my body, and hold it there… Exhale: …then surrender it back out.

In the coming days, as we explore the practices of physical, emotional, and spiritual Sabbath together, let’s please be sure to take time to breathe… and relax… and let go of that which we cannot control. Let’s try to do this not only in our designated “Sabbath times,” but when the stress is at its highest points. I’ll keep you posted about how that works out on my end…

Breathe with me?

Schedule break-in

Tom Ryberg — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 23:39:03 +0000

Our church has a big sign out front that says “COME AS YOU ARE”. Today, this guy came in as he was, which necessitated changing my plans for the afternoon: from office organizing to serving my neighbor. My office was messier than I wanted when I left for the day, but I just saw the sign on my way out, and I’m kinda grateful that we can, in fact, come as we are to this place, messiness and all.

On “gender-neutral parenting”

Tom Ryberg — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:14:22 +0000

There’s been some flurry recently about the hetero Canadian parents who are raising their youngest without revealing the biological sex of the child. They seem to want to resist the way people typically gender children (and adults), treating them differently according to their gender.

At this point, I’m fully on board. For whatever reason, we (Western? American?) human beings often act as if we are entitled to know the gender of others, such that it stresses us out if we can’t tell for certain. We want to know this apparently so that we know how – and to what extent – we might relate to one one another. Maybe this goes back to wanting to find the best possible mate. I suspect it has to do with being able to treat people differently, or expect different things from them, or apply any number of other social norms upon them according to their privates, and frankly, how many of us really believe that it’s important for us, as individuals, to make such genitalia-based considerations? I know I don’t. Yet, by default, I gender people all the time, and seek to “know” other people’s gender when the lines are blurry.

But I am in no way entitled to find out this information about others, now am I? What a strange pattern of behavior. We should really question our underlying motivations for wanting to know the biological gender of others as prerequisite for interacting with them. As a parent, I can understand not wanting other people to ‘gender’ my child and treat her according to whatever crazy notions they hold about how girls should be treated. I get that.

Be a gender superhero!

And, having said that, I think that “gender-neutral parenting” is problematic. It seems akin to people who profess to be “colorblind” when it comes to race. Only a small fraction of people are actually colorblind, and I’m betting that even most of them are capable of discerning between different shades of skin color. We have color. And our color is often different from others. And most significantly, the reality of different skin colors has been imbued with tremendous social meaning for hundreds, if not thousands of years. By declaring ourselves to be “colorblind,” all we are doing is playing “let’s pretend” so that we might ignore the painful reality that our society still doles out unfair advantages and disadvantages based on color to this very day. We have color. And that matters.

So too – we have gender. And that matters. Gender is one way that we are different from one another – and it is a particularly embodied way at that. To try to minimize and hide this difference from others, no matter how grand the intention, strikes me as an attempt to ignore or push aside a difference that is very real, maybe even important, and, by the way, one which is perfectly fine. It’s okay, it turns out, to have a vagina, and not a penis. Or vice versa. Or something in-between. The particularity of each human body is perfectly wonderful, according to God and nature. Where there are problems, they belong to us, and it is up to us to adapt our social norms, roles, and expectations accordingly.

All that is to say, I am more in favor of abolishing the traditional limits associated with masculinity and femininity then with abolishing gender outright. There’s nothing wrong, in my view, with claiming and celebrating the particularity of one’s own gender. But there’s a lot wrong with imposing norms on others based on their gender.

On TyRy’s imminent arrival

Tom Ryberg — Tue, 17 May 2011 03:06:11 +0000

It’s the “all baby, all the time” show in my head these last couple of days. Even yesterday morning, as all the last-minute details were coming together in the hours leading up to worship, I was more relaxed about all that than I’ve ever been. All I could think was, “My wife is getting ready to PUSH OUT A BABY. …!!”

At this point, TyRy is two days past her due date. Her head seems to be solidly planted in low, which means it could be hours, days, but also even weeks at this point. We surrender to the process as best we can. And meanwhile, my life is already being radically reoriented, and I haven’t even met this kid yet…!

So very exciting.

It’s not about the Constitution.

Tom Ryberg — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:39:28 +0000

President Obama released the ‘long form’ version of his birth certificate yesterday.

He didn’t have to. No other president in U.S. history, or contender thereof, has been subject to the kind of xenophobic, racist, bigoted scrutiny that Barack Obama has. There’s no “you must provide a copy of the long form of your birth certificate to your detractors” clause in the Constitutional provisions determining eligibility for presidential office. But this foolishness has gotten out of hand, with four in ten Republicans believing that Obama wasn’t born on American soil, despite his having already produced a birth certificate – and an affidavit – to the contrary. So the president evidently decided, here ya go, crazies.

With the release of the additional, ‘somehow-much-more-convincing-than-the-first-one’ birth certificate, this non-issue can finally be put to rest, hopefully (right? right??). But while the additional documentation “solves” the issue for reasonable folks, it won’t solve it for those who can’t reconcile themselves to the reality of having a president whose race/cultural experience/multicultural upbringing makes him an exotic, perpetually-unknown, mysterious “other.” For those folks it ain’t about facts, proof, citizenship, good faith, logic, or any of that noise. To them, Obama is so clearly not-”American” that no matter what technicalities permit him to be the legal president, he just can’t be. There’s no possible way.

So, in the aftermath of new and improved proof that the president is a citizen, I feel just as unsettled about the reality of racism in America as before. I feel just as unsettled about the reality of xenophobia in America as before. I feel just as unsettled about the reality of religious bigotry in America as before, and I feel all of these things because throughout all of this we still are too cowardly to acknowledge the reality that racism, xenophobia, and religious bigotry are at the heart of the “Where’s the birth certificate?” nonsense that has crippled our public discourse for years. And they’re at the heart of Donald Trump’s “where’s the report card?” nonsense, and probably at the heart of the next thing he comes out with too.

We need to start calling this out plainly. The endless efforts at ‘otherizing’ Obama aren’t about reasonable disagreement. Barack Obama is a American, a Christian, and our president. Refusal to believe that he is American – talking to you, 4-in-10 Republicans – is plain xenophobia. Refusal to believe that he deserved to attend the ivy league schools he excelled in – Donald Trump – is plain racism. Refusal to believe that he isn’t a secret Muslim – armchair warriors – is plain religious bigotry. I’m sick of standing by while xenophobic, racist, bigoted nonsense permeates our public discourse as if it were legitimate. It isn’t. It’s time for the media – or the rest of us in the meantime – to start calling things what they really are.

Update: A hard truth from Baratunde:

On hijacking the racial pain of others, or why we white folks need to stop thinking about “race issues” as if they were external from ourselves

Tom Ryberg — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 18:45:29 +0000

Here’s something that just happened on Facebook. One of my friends, a woman of color, shared an article that named 10 Conversations the author wanted to stop having with white people. In response to her post, a white male Facebook friend of hers left a bunch of comments in which he shared personal experiences of having been the target of racial prejudice, and lamented the unfairness of people judging him just because he is white. And from that point, everyone, including myself, thus became engaged in an extended back-and-forth with this guy about his self-proclaimed victimization as a white man. He was able to do something I think happens quite a lot, which is when a person of privilege ‘hijacks’ a discussion which in some way calls out their privilege, changing the focus from the unfairness of the privilege, to soothing the feelings of those who are privileged. Which demonstrates how privilege allows us to escape from the implications on injustice.

Here’s the thing: white people should be processing our pain which stems from racism. We should certainly bring to light our feelings of sadness and discomfort and grief and shame and all else that dwells just under the surface of our white skins, sure as the nose on your face, despite our best efforts at suppressing all that shit. We should be processing these and other issues precisely because they get in the way of our relationships with people whose skin and privilege do not look like ours. We should process these and other issues precisely so that we aren’t inappropriately trying to process them on other people’s turf, or in the midst of other people expressing their pain.

We tend to do stuff like hijacking racial teachable moments because we don’t create these other, more appropriate outlets for this kind of racial processing. That stems from us thinking about race only insofar as it applies to others, but not ourselves.

Talk about it, white people. Don’t just horn in on other people’s discussions about race and racism. Let’s get together – on our own time – and let the whiteness tumble out.

On Lazarus: While We Wait

Tom Ryberg — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 04:39:55 +0000

We started a three week sermon series on the story of Lazarus today. I preached the first part today. It went well. First, the scripture:

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ Thomas, who was called the Twin,said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away,and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’ (John 11:1-27, NRSV)

While We Wait

Rev. Thomas M. Ryberg

First Congregational Church of Battle Creek

April 3, 2011

John 11:1-27

Today we heard the first part of the story of the raising of Lazarus, which is perhaps the most spectacular of all of Jesus’ miracles. It is found only in the Gospel according to John, and it happens immediately prior to when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the back of a colt. The gospel-writer for the Book of John uses this story to foreshadow the upcoming death and resurrection of Christ. It is in the aftermath of the Lazarus story that the crowds who witness this event become galvanized into a full-out frenzy for Jesus, which results in some of the religious leadership conspiring to kill him. The story of the raising of Lazarus is the impetus that sets the rest of the Jesus story in motion.

But in this week’s reading, we do not encounter the complete Lazarus narrative. We begin with Mary and Martha sending word to Jesus who is some days away, that their brother Lazarus, whom they remind Jesus that he loves, is ill. Jesus, upon receiving this news, determines to wait an extra two days before leaving for Bethany, where Lazarus is staying. According to the gospel-writer John, Jesus does this in order to make his ultimate arrival much more spectacular and miraculous. He waits an extra two days. And Mary and Martha and Lazarus, in turn, must wait for him.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who recognizes the feeling of waiting for God to show up. The act of waiting seems to be fairly fundamental to simply being alive. We wait all the time, in big and small ways. We wait for the bus. We wait for new employment opportunities. We wait for results from a doctor. We wait for those who chronically run late (some of us a little more chronically than others!). We wait for the pizza to get here. We wait for it to stop raining so we can go outside and get the mail. Depending on the Sunday, we wait for church to get over so that we can hurry home and turn on the game. (At other churches, I’ve heard they do that.) And so on.

In big and small ways, waiting is fundamental to human living. Does anybody here not know the experience of waiting for something? It is part of our collective and individual human experience. And it is an ingrained part of our faith, insomuch as we spend a good deal of our living time waiting for God. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find myself waiting for God.

I’m waiting for nothing less than the very realm of God to become fully manifest on this earth, right here, right now. I’m waiting for the kingdom of heaven that Jesus declared is at hand. This what I’m thinking about every week when we pray together, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” I’m waiting for God to come set right that which is wrong in this world, from global and local hunger, to global and local violence, from the large-scale grief of a nation at war, to the small-scale grief of a family who has lost a loved one too soon. To varying degrees, to live as a human being means to encounter the experience of suffering, and in response, we cry out to God the truth of our condition, and then…all we can do is wait. We must wait. Waiting is part of what it means to be human. And it is part of what it means to be a follower of God.

The Bible is full of stories of people who are waiting. Apart from Lazarus, there is Noah, and his family, as they wait for the rain to come, then for the water to subside so that they can get off the boat. The Israelites, groaning under Egyptian slavery, wait for liberation from their oppressors. Then they wander around the desert for forty years, waiting for a homeland. They are exiled by the Babylonians, then occupied by the Romans, and they wait for king after king, then a Messiah to lead them to freedom. And these are just a fraction of the many examples from the Older Testament.

Waiting is an integral part of being human. So, I invite you to call to mind this morning: what are you waiting for?

There are a couple of big things in my life that I’ve been waiting for. Andria and I are waiting on a baby, who if she arrives on schedule should be here sometime in the next 4-8 weeks. We wait for her to come into our lives – in a sense, she’s already here now, but not like she will be shortly! We are waiting for our lives to be irrevocably altered for the next 18 years and more. And I’ve been waiting for this – fatherhood – my whole life. Fatherhood is one of the two things I have always looked forward to, as long as I can remember, and it is now nearly upon me. Nearly…I’m still waiting… on the one hand, I am yearning to take my daughter into my arms and hold her close, and look out at the world together as she grows. And the next moment, come all these darts that puncture holes in my sense of readiness, giving way to all my insecurity: how in the world will I be able to care for another human being like this? How will the process of giving birth actually be? Will she be healthy when she comes? What happens when she gets sick for the first time? What will this mean for my job? Will I ever learn all the ins and outs of cloth diapers?

And there’s another big other thing I’ve been waiting for, for many years, and that is to become a pastor. As I enter my fifth month here at FCC and am preparing to take my installation vows next week, I have been thinking quite a bit about how now, at 28 years old, I am finally fully entering the profession of my calling. After 23 years of continuous schooling, including the last seven years of pastoral discernment and preparation, I have one more week to wait before being installed as an associate pastor here. THis has been a long time coming. I graduated from high school eleven years ago. College, 6 years ago. I am ready, and so excited to be finally embarking into this work. And not a day goes by that I do not feel gripped with gratitude that I somehow ended up here, amidst all of you, who have welcomed Andria and me with open arms, and who are bold to worship God with the best you have to offer, whether at 10 or 11:30 on Sundays, or 6:30 on Wednesdays. The spirit of God is palpably alive here, and I am humbled and excited to participate in the ongoing work of this church. But, even as I have been here four months already, I have not technically been installed yet as associate pastor. I have seven more days to get my last rookie screw-ups over with, and don’t worry, I intend to make the most of them!

I am waiting to officially join as pastor, after years of discernment and preparation. And I am waiting to meet someone who will change my life in ways I can only begin to imagine. So in other words, two of the biggest milestones I’ve been waiting for for my entire life – family and career – are coming to fruition in one week, and one month, respectively. I feel very small in the face of these big events!

Waiting does that to us, doesn’t it? Raises our anxiety, makes us feel vulnerable, makes us feel small. It is a context of powerlessness, at least in relation to whatever you’re waiting for. There is a certain anxiety in waiting. It means we are invested in some sort of outcome, and have expectations around how the outcome should result, and so we are vulnerable to all the “what ifs” that arise in the meantime. What if I’m not ultimately cut out for the work to which I’ve given the last six years of my life? What if something happens to the baby before she comes? There is vulnerability in waiting, in not yet being able to see the outcome that we long for. Are you waiting for something too, something big? Something which makes you feel vulnerable, anxious, maybe even powerless? What are you waiting for?

Maybe like me, you are waiting for some big news pertaining to family, or employment. Maybe there are major events in your personal circumstances that are impacting you and your loved ones. Whatever you’re waiting for, I’m very glad that we can wait together, in community. It is a true blessing that we can share our joys and troubles and support one another while we wait in this church community. We are not nearly as vulnerable to the anxiety of waiting when others wait with us. And waiting is a part of walking in faith together. As people of faith, we are waiting for the realm of God to be made manifest on earth. We are waiting together for the day when our world will no longer be divided up along artificial boundaries of who has and does not have money and power. We wait together as we along with our loved ones suffer in mind, body, or spirit. We wait for the day when all flesh will see the salvation of God. We are waiting for God to show up and do the new thing that God promises to do. We are waiting for God.

Lazarus, Martha, and Mary waited for God too. Lazarus was gravely ill, and he needed God to come in and turn his world around. He was unwell, and he was not able to help himself get better, no matter what he did. He needed help that could only come from Jesus. And for that matter, he needed help that Jesus routinely provided at the time, everywhere he went. Jesus was, after all, a healer. He crisscrossed the region, going from town to town, preaching and healing. This is what he was known for, and this is precisely what Lazarus needed, because he was not able to heal himself, by himself. Lazarus had exhausted his own capacity to heal himself, and so he needed to call on a higher power. Perhaps some of us here resonate with Lazarus this morning, having exhausted the personal resources that used to get us through.

What happens next seems all too familiar: God does not show up as had been hoped, and Lazarus dies. This seems to be true in our day as well: God does not apparently intervene in order to prevent death and suffering, which is what we so often hope for in the face of tragedy. From the looks of things, God is not very interested in going around the world and preventing bodily death. And sometimes, this reality makes it real hard to keep the faith. Maybe some of us resonate with the circumstances of Lazarus.

Then there is Martha. When I read this story, it is easy for me to identify with the righteous anger of Martha, when she says, if you had only been here, my brother would not have died. If you had only been here. How many times have I doubted the veracity of God’s promise in the face of human suffering? If only you had been here, in Japan. If only you had been here, in Haiti. In Darfur. In Rwanda. In New Orleans. In Serbia. Or Auschwitz. Or at the cross.

If the purpose of God is to intervene and prevent human suffering and death, then God is not at all good at being God. But it is interesting to me that even in the one and only story in the Bible in which Jesus raises someone else from the grave, God does not act in order to prevent the death, but in such a way so as to triumph over death later on. And even then, God only apparently does this once, in order to establish glory, not in order to protect humans from dying. Not in our Bible, and tragically, not in our lives.

So when Lazarus dies, Martha declares, If only you had been here, my brother would not have died. It is a statement of grief, one which is still attempting to bargain with Jesus. She showed strong faith and had high expectations, and Jesus did not come through according to what she had in mind. So she let him know, bringing her argument directly to the Lord. By the way, when we feel like this, let us be as bold as Martha in taking our pain straight to God.

Martha’s sister Mary, on the other hand, has a very different reaction. She does not come out to greet Jesus when he finally arrives; she remains instead at her home, where Lazarus had died, where the pain is. In her sadness, and perhaps her anger as well, Mary stays behind. She withdraws and disengages from communicating with Jesus until after he had been back for a bit. Where Lazarus is dead to the point of needing literal revival and Martha goes out to argue with God, Mary is caught up in her grief, and goes inward, keeping it close. She’s not challenging, not processing externally, not talking about it on the outside. She and Martha handle their respective grief differently, just as any two of us do today as well.

Depending on where we are in life, we might find ourselves feeling like Lazarus – close to death, in bad need of the kind of repair that only God can provide. We might find ourselves feeling like Martha – righteous, expectant, angry, when God has not come through as we had hoped and expected. And we might find ourselves feeling like Mary – withdrawn, isolated, disengaging from God as a result of God’s apparent inability to make things right. So whether you resonate with Lazarus, Mary, or Martha, or none of the above today, perhaps it will be instructive to consider what actually happens, according to the text.

Namely – Jesus does actually show up. In the words of the old gospel song, “He may not get there when you want, but he gets there right on time.” Jesus showed up! And he had a plan. And his plan was not understood by anyone else, under the circumstances. Ultimately, Jesus does indeed show up to Mary and Martha and Lazarus, and when he does, it means big things.

For Lazarus, it means total, radical, reorientation. In his case, what has been dead is now fully alive. So for those of you who find yourselves in similar straights with Lazarus these days, know that through the presence of Christ, new life is on the way. Get ready!

For Martha, Jesus’ appearance means a challenge to her current way of thinking, her righteous anger, and her current belief system. Believe in me, Jesus tells her, I am the resurrection. People come back to life through me. Do you believe this? And Martha, bless her soul, is able to answer, yes, I do. So for those of you who find yourselves identifying with Martha these days, get ready to open your heart and your head to new belief, new trust that God can and will bring about healing and growth that seems impossible on its face. Believe it!

For Mary, Jesus’ arrival means that it is time to risk leaving her place of solitude and responding to his call out to meet him directly. She brings with her the deepest concern she has on her heart, like Martha: “Lord, if you were here, my brother would not have died.” And she weeps. And in response to her tears, Jesus is deeply moved.

So for those of you who feel like Mary these days, do not withhold your tears from God. Listen for whether and how God calls you out, and take your sadness to God directly. Come out, and let the honesty of your grief be an offering unto the Lord.

No matter what you are waiting for today, no matter whether you most find a kindred spirit in Lazarus, Martha, or Mary today: know that God has not now, nor will ever leave you, even unto the end of our days. Lazarus, get ready! Martha, believe! Mary, come forward! Wait for the Lord, who is coming at once to do a new thing.

Amen.

Permutations of Philippians 4:13

Tom Ryberg — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:27:08 +0000

I can do all things through [Christ,] who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:13, NIV)

I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength.

Today I’m feeling compelled by #4 in particular: all the things I need to do, I can do through Christ, the living, embodied, incarnate presence of God. And boy am I seldom actually looking for God in the midst of my workload.

Which one’s speaking to you today?

On the future of Christianity (and values, Rob Bell, and God)

Tom Ryberg — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:55:32 +0000

I recently spoke at a rally for Michigan workers here in Battle Creek. I said some political stuff (in a values and hypocrisy kind of way, not so much party-line kind of way. You can see the video here). One of those who attended the rally found me later on Facebook and thanked me for being a Christian leader who was willing to “address the issues that most skirt around.” It got me thinking, and I responded that it saddens me that progressive people of faith have not been effective at articulating a faith-based vision of social justice and love; and that in this vacuum, much more extreme voices have dominated the public discourse. Consequently, “Christian” has practically become synonymous with “asshole” in recent years, and I am very eager to chip away at the walls my co-believers have erected, wherever and however I can.

But it is also true that for what it’s worth, things are actually changing rapidly among Christians. On the one hand, progressives are getting bolder and better at naming their values, but there is also an emerging debate raging among evangelicals themselves these days as seen in the recent storm of controversy over Rob Bell‘s new book, Love Wins. On the surface, all the uproar is about whether and how to interpret the doctrine of hell, but in the wise words of my CPE director, “the issue is not the issue.” In this case, the underlying issue is ultimately about whether or not the Christian church can finally embrace a God who is capable of acting in ways that are beyond our imagination: can we keep God in a box or not? Because it is our precisely our declaration that we’ve got God figured out and you don’t, that allows Christians to adopt a posture of violence and exclusion toward the rest of the world. But on the other hand, if we are finally ready, after 2,000 years and counting, to concede that people are in relationship with God in ways that are not ours, and that we need not necessarily embrace, understand, condone, nor condemn, just imagine how different the world could be? What if the majority of children grew up in a society (and faith tradition) that is both profoundly faithful yet acknowledges the reality of different beliefs and understandings? What if the response to difference was not to try and establish that which is ‘true’ or ‘correct,’ but rather to get curious about it, and to get curious about the beliefs we ourselves hold true?

Anyway, I’m glad to be part of a changing world, in relationship with a God who is ever breathing new life into our dusty lungs.