Worshipping a Differently-Abled Christ

Each Masters Senior at Princeton Theological Seminary is eligible to give the message during the weekday service. I gave my message on April 1. If you want to listen to the sermon or the whole service, you can. Here is the link to the sermon and the service before and after the sermon.

The passage for this sermon is John 9:1-5

Throughout my life I have been trying to understand why I have a speech impediment. Why did God do this to me? At first I thought it was a curse done to me because of past sins; just as the Disciples ask Christ about the man who is blind. Then I wondered for some time if it was a prank on me. One day, I would wake up and this impediment would be gone. Jesus would be appearing more like Buddy Jesus from the movie Dogma and He would say “April Fools!”

Most of my life, I longed for that day to be whole, to feel whole. Why God? Why am I not whole? Then throughout seminary I have tried to reconcile my speech impediment through looking at it as a gift, as Jesus seems to proclaim in John 9. Christ must have meant for this to happen. A way to use me in the world. In wrestling with this, I have come to see that this too is not true. Being a person with a disability is not a gift nor is it about sin. I have realized the reason that I have felt like an outcast has nothing to do with my relationship with Christ. The source of my pain has been the reactions of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ here on Earth.

Part of Jesus' witness in the Gospels is about restoring outcasts to their communities. The Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network contends that “The healing stories in the gospels, [like John 9] are primarily concerned with restoration of persons to their communities, not the cure of their physiological conditions.” This man who was blind was not welcome in his community and is only restored to his community after the miracle.

Furthermore, at the end of this story, Christ proclaims that people who can physically see are spirituality blind. Then the inverse must be true: People who have disabilities can be spiritually whole. This speech impediment is just a part of who I am, not a sin, not a gift. Our collective sin have been trying to reach an unrealistic perfection while living in an imperfect world.

• Let's remember: We are asked to live faithfully, not sinlessly. 

• Let's admit: We as humans err a lot. 

• Let's confess: We will not be perfect as it is currently defined in the modern world. 

Lent is an ideal time to think about this restoration. The theologian Lisa Eiesland writes in Disabled God that after the resurrection in Luke, Christ appears with injuries to His hands and feet. By doing so, she claims that Jesus' disability indicates not a flawed humanity but a full humanity. 

By acknowledging this truth that we worship a God who is differently abled and yet still whole, we can admit that our faithfulness, not our perfection, bring us into the body of Christ. Therefore, the resurrection in two and a half weeks is a collective restoration for all of us. We each have different abilities and struggles. We all have gifts to offer each other and the world. 

Let me caution you all today too: People with disabilities are not here for abled body people to feel blessed or feel lucky. We are not here for others' self-realizations. We are here to be active parts of the body of Christ and to offer our own gifts and talents to the world. Attitudes of pity, judgement, and fear of people with disabilities interfere with this restoration. 

 This is the Good News! On Easter, we, as an imperfect people, will be restored back into this whole living differently-abled body of Christ.

Lets Stop Glorifying War in Church

This weekend, we are celebrating Memorial Day. In the last week, as I have passed churches on the road and seen their Facebook updates, I have seen a lot of messages that says something about honoring our heroes. Each time I read or see that, I cringe. It is further evidence of the combining Christianity and patriotism in this country. The Early Church gathered in secret to worship a Savior that was executed by the most powerful military at the time, but now we worship the most powerful country and its military strength along with Christ. There are a lot of dangers in this continued Idol worship.

The influential German theologian Karl Barth was perturbed as a young man when his clergy mentors and other prominent Germans signed the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three in 1914. This manifesto offered unequivocal support of the actions of the German military. This had a major effect on Barth's theology about the separation of the church and the government. When a professor talked about this pivotal moment in Barth's life and theology last semester during a class on Karl Barth, he did not even attempt to make the connection between Barth's crisis to the current dilemma that we face in this country. Tomorrow, thousands, perhaps millions of US Christians will walk into their churches and not be surprised to see the American flag near the altar.

I have been thinking about this dilemma for a while. Growing up, I attended anti-death penalty vigils outside of my state's Governor Mansion. In reading about the cases, I sometimes learned that the death row inmates have served in the armed forces at some point before their crime. Often I reflected on this double standard, we teach people how to kill people and then praise them, but then we will also put to death the same people if they kill other people. How does any of this fits in Christ's admonishment that we should love our neighbors?

Last May I took a short intensive class on Young Adult Ministries. As part of this class, we talked about ministries in university settings, prisons, and the military. To talk about military chaplainships, the class traveled down to Washington DC and talked to chaplains currently serving in different parts of the armed forces. Several of us asked most of the chaplains how they dealt with the command from Christ to love our neighbors. All but one chaplain did not answer this question. Usually they responded with that they are just following orders or altogether avoid the question. The one chaplain who actually answered the question said that it was a hard question and one that some soldiers had a hard time wrestling with.

As a Christian, when I am in church, my allegiance is only towards Christ. I do not believe that God only blesses the USA, instead I believe God loves the whole world. I do not buy into a philosophy that is the outgrowth of the Manifest Destiny that led to the unnecessary slaughter, slavery and death of millions of Native people. I do not buy into a philosophy that was used to justify slavery in this country and around the world. I believed that we are called to love our neighbors period.

By writing this, I do not want Christians to abandon our troops. We should dialogue about what it means to support our troops and how to support these men and women after they return home, changed forever. We should also hold up the people who go to the same regions to do purely humanitarian work, often unarmed and with less support, in an effort to bring about peace in other ways. But at the same time lets not glorify the world's richest military within our church doors. We already do that enough the other six days of week.

Instead, on this Memorial Day weekend and after, let's keep Church as a place to remember the human costs of the war (including all casualties of war) and our own implicitness in this industry that keeps us at war. Let's pray that God will keep giving us strength to work towards an eternal peace that will only exist when God's Kingdom come into being.

The Unpredictability of March

A couple weeks ago, I attended the meeting for worship at Princeton Friends School, which the school calls "Settling In". Each week they meet for 30 minutes and a student offers a query. Since it was the first day of March, the assigned student asked "What are you looking forward to in March?"

Students talked about upcoming birthdays, looking forward to playing outside more, and summer coming closer. They were ready to shed their winter clothes and activities for sunny days spent outside. Eighth graders expected to hear back from high schools soon and they were nervous and eager to find out where they were accepted. These students were eager to take the next step in their education and life.

One of the teachers stood up and talked about how March could bring different weather. In March it is still normal for there to be a late snowstorm he said, but we also could expect sunny days to happen where short sleeves can be worn and bike riding could be done. The theme of his message was that March brought unpredictability, at a time when we wanted something concrete, ie the end of Winter and the start of Spring or the end of one stage of life and the becoming of another. We know that Spring is coming and we will hear about where we go on the next stage of our life, but March always brings surprises and bumps along the way.

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In my experience this rang true. I used to go to New Orleans in March from Washington DC with a group of high school students for an alternative spring break trip. I remember often times bundling up to go to the airport in DC and then shedding all the layers once we landed in New Orleans. New Orleans was usually sunny with highs in the 70s and 80s that week in March. It gave us our first glimpse of Spring that helped us make it through the last few weeks of a DC winter/early Spring when we returned home. We were given a chance to see what was awaiting us once we waited out the dreadful last weeks of the winter season.

But that was not always true. Once I remember arriving to the airport in DC when it was in the 70s there. Instead of the group all wearing shorts and T-shirts in preparation for warm weather to follow us, we were carrying jackets and coats while wearing jeans. I actually expressed concern for two students who arrived with shorts on. "Did you come prepared? Did you look at the weather forecast?" Once we landed in New Orleans, it was a different than other years. It was cloudy with a high in the upper 40s. That night the temps dipped down to about freezing. We were cold that night sleeping in the not well insulated dorm room. It did warm up by the end of the week, but it seemed strange.
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A week later after the Settling In worship, I was reminded of the teacher's words. A small snowstorm dumped a couple inches on Princeton, ruining any plans for bicycling or playing outside. It was beautiful and Princeton looked more like it was early January than early March. Jenn and I would have appreciated the snow more if we weren't in a hurry to make it to DC. We left that morning instead of the night before due to forecasts of snow. Yet, despite the weather forecasters' predictions, the snow came that morning.
The unpredictability of March caught us and we were not prepared or happy. We were worried that we were going to be late. Even though we knew it would clear up as we headed south, we were still worried in the moment. We knew that we needed to just keep driving until we were out of the storm

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I feel like being a religious seeker is living perpetually in a state of March. Hopefully most of us have made it through the long journey towards God, the Light, the Holy Spirit. We know that we are almost there to the glory and unlocking the mystery, but we are not there just yet. Instead we will encounter a little more doubt and weariness and we will encounter quick fixes that promises happiness sooner than later. Sometimes I feel like that this time is harder than the journey I experienced at my lowest point in time. I am ready for the low point to be over. I am ready for God! That thought, much like looking forward to sunny days during a late winter snowstorm, keep me going in my faith.  

The Need for Eldering

Last week I wrote about where I see hope among Quakers today. Let me be clear that was only a partial list of the good news and I was primarily focusing on YAFs because I have read and heard YAFs talk about their negative experiences of not being supportive. With the post I did not want to diminish these concerns, but I do not think that is the only storyline out there about the current state of YAFs. But that is the only storyline I see being repeated over and over.

With that being said, I do have a concern about the current state of Quakerism: Our lack of effective eldering (that is, eldering that is spiritual-led and not personal attacks).

We need eldering again. We need people to be elders. We need people who are willing to be eldered.

We need Quaker meetings/churches to be a guide for ministers and a nurturing place for them, but also a place for people in ministry to be challenged and held accountable. I do not see this happening a lot and I, for one, have ran away from eldering on several occasions.

I have held this concern for a while, but I have not written about it yet because I do not have any concrete ideas on how to get to that point. But I feel like I needed to write this post anyways.

Overall, I do not think ministry happens just because of one person or a small group. I do not believe if the one person or group does not act or is not adequately supported, that ministry will disappear forever into the abyss. I know this because I have seen this happen a couple times where people independently feel led towards a particular ministry. Sometimes they join together and work towards this common vision. Sometimes only one or two goes forward with the ministry while others find other callings.

I want to share a personal story about not following a leading. After the last YouthQuake in 2004 (a triennial event that bought together teens and younger young adults from all kinds of Quakerism), I was pumped to have an event for Young Adult Friends across the divide and hold it during the summer at Earlham College. I even gathered together some traveling Quakers in a room to talk about this idea and to gather their opinions about this kind of event. I had found someone else to join me in this work. But it never got off the ground.

But this event still happened about four years later in May 2008 and the people who ultimately organized the conference were not in that room when I shared my idea. I did not feel called or I was not ready to take on the leading, but that energy was not lost because I did not stand up to follow. I am glad others did. It was a great conference. In the future, I hope I can stand up and follow a leading that others had, but, for some reason, they couldn't follow through.

God works in mysterious ways and being in ministry is about being faithful to God and to your own self. But also ministry is also about the community and is larger than one person or a handful of people. I am wary of ministries being focused on the glorification of an individual or a small group. Ministries are a way to live out God's Kingdom here and to show people to see what is possible through God.

This lead me to offer some queries rather than solutions:
How can ministers ground themselves into monthly meetings/churches?
How can monthly meetings/churches hold ministers accountable and ask difficult questions?
How can ministers hear these difficult questions and not feel personally attacked?

I have more questions than answers on this subject, but I am clear that Quakers need eldering again.

Bringing the Good News about the Current State of Quakerism

This summer, I preached three times at the church where I was interning. Part of sermon writing is to bring the good news at the end of the sermon that let people know that Christ loves them and to point out the good in our world that sometimes look like anything but good.

Over the past few months, I have read blog posts about how Quakerism is dying, no one is supporting Young Adult Friends' ministry, etc... I think these points do have a point, but I don't see it as that as the only point. I have seen several instances of Young Adult Friends being supported by the wider community and I believe that we are growing.

Here is some of the good news:

• New York YM Young Adult Friends Field Secretary Gabi just wrote a post about her travels among Young Adults Friends in New York and New Jersey in the past six months. She has been busy attending to the needs of Young Adults there.

• Christina has been carrying a leading since 2002 about a Quaker yearlong service program. She followed the leading and others joined her along the way. She was supportive by Friends all over and by her home meeting.  In August her leading came into reality when seven Young Adult Friends arrived in Atlanta to begin a yearlong internship with Quaker Voluntary Service. The leading is still growing. Houses will open in Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon next August too. And it will not stop there... People are energized about bringing this explicitly Quaker program to their community and our dream (Currently I serve on the board) is to keep growing a network of houses. 

• In Portland, two Evangelical Friends churches and an unprogrammed meeting have joined together to support the new QVS house there. That is amazing and exciting to see the branches working together!

• Another Young Adult Friend, Ana, followed a leading to create a Quaker summer camp in the Intermountain Yearly Meeting region. She worked for several summers at different Quaker summer camps and visited others. She and her partner, Ariel, have shared their vision with Friends across the Southwest. The camp, Mountain Friends Camp, has been going three years now and it keeps growing each summer. 

• An unprogrammed Young Adult Friend, Zachary, was led into Navy chaplaincy. He is currently serving in the Navy under the care of an Evangelical Friends church, who have taken him in and supported him in his ministry. Next month he will speak at a Convergent Friends gathering in the Northwest, A Nursery of Truth. I wish I could go. Hopefully others can go!

• Friends General Conference just started the New Meetings Project. The coordinator, Brent, has found that more than 70 Friends worship groups/meetings/church have started in the last ten years. That translates to one new group starting roughly every seven weeks. I have been to several of these new groups and they have a great sense of community.

• I am a big proponent of online outreach, but two of these new meetings, West Philadelphia Worship Group and Silver River Meeting, do not have an online presence. They grow because of the community they have created. They see each other throughout the week in between meetings for worship and are deeply connected to each other lives. How can we grow to know each other outside of worship? 

Lastly, God loves us for the imperfect human beings we are.

These are just a few examples I know of and why I have not lost all hope in my faith community.

Yes, there is a lot to be sad about with Friends today, but I don't see it as just doom and gloom. I am having conversations with Friends all over about a whole range of topics and I am excited. Yes we have a lot of divisions, but amazing conversations and projects are starting!

Where do you see hope in the world of Friends today?

Sermon- Gospel Writers in the Windows Luke

Last Sunday, August 5th, I preached my last sermon at Princeton UMC and it was the last day of my internship there. I had preach two other sermons there this summer: Have We Crossed the Line? and Neighborly Love.

My sermon began a new sermon series for the church "Gospel Writers in the Windows", which will explore the four Gospel Writers in the stained glass windows in the sanctuary in order of they appear. Luke, Matthew, Mark, & John (Luke is first because the Tiffany Studio artists a century ago thought the color sequence of the robes was preferable this way.)

I based the sermon on Luke 12:22-34.

Today we begin a new sermon series as Russ said, exploring the four Gospel writers. Each writer brings different elements into their telling of Jesus' life and ministry. The first three gospels, known as the Synoptic Gospels, share a lot in common in terms of stories. Biblical scholars tend to agree that the three gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, & Luke had similar sources. Mark is considered to be the oldest and the two writers used Mark and other sources for their own Gospels. For example, 76% of Mark can be found in the other two Gospels. But yet they each use different literary styles and have highlighted different themes in the story of Jesus. 

Stained Glass Windows at the Church

Then lastly we have the Gospel of John. In that gospel we encounter a Jesus, who is acutely aware of his divinity. There are numerous differences between the Synoptics and John. For instance, in John, John the Baptist does not baptize Jesus. Then, at the Last Supper, Jesus washes the disciples' feet and does not offer them bread and wine as sacraments. Because of these differences, Biblical scholars think John used different sources than the three Synoptic Gospels.

Today I will focus on Luke. Like the other Gospel writers, we know very little about him personally. In Colossians the Apostle Paul refers to Luke as a physician. Also Luke has the distinction of writing two books in the New Testament, this Gospel and the Book of Acts. These two books parallel each other in their structures. The Gospel tells the journey of Jesus and His ministry and then in Acts, he tells the journey of the early church beginning after the death and resurrection of Christ. Luke has a social justice bent, which is apparent by the numerous parables in the Gospel on this topic, like the story of the Good Samaritan. Lastly he dedicated them both to Theophilus, which means "friend of God" in Greek. There are theories about whether this person was Luke's benefactor or even an actual person.

When I began my internship, Pastor Jana gave me a choice on which Gospel to preach on. Immediately I chose Luke, unaware about the history of the beautiful windows on my left. I wanted to preach on Luke because I love all of the parables about social justice, something that I have been passionate about all my life.

A couple weeks ago I happened to read Luke 12 and I knew I had to preach on it. This one chapter has a lot of challenges for us as Christians living out our daily lives out in the wider world and for the church body as a whole. I think I could preach for hours just on these twelve verses.

But in the interest of everyone's time and patience, I will limit my preaching and I will just focus on two messages I hear in this passage: one for individual Christians and another for the church body.

The message I hear for individual Christians is: Can we give up? Can we just give up everything to act like lilies in the field to follow Christ?

A picture of me in 2004 talking on a cell phone

My ego tells me that I tread lightly on this earth and that I have few attachments to my material possessions. But my ego is wrong. Yes I might have fewer possessions than I once had due to moving frequently. But my material possessions still own me. You will rarely see me without two devices: my laptop and my cell phone. These two possessions have a tight grip on my life. I can't even begin to count the numbers of hours I have spent on these two electronic gadgets alone and not even for worthy endeavors. (A side note: Never buy a cell phone with Solitaire on it. I tried to give it up for Lent this year and I failed miserably!) 

Frequently these two devices take me away from the present moment and from the people around me. I can spend hours at a time with these two devices and ignore the loved ones in my life. These possessions allow me to be distracted from my relationship with God and focusing on living out Jesus' teachings. 

What are the material possessions that distract you from deepening your spiritual life? What can't you give up in order to act like lilies in the field?

This line of thinking is counter-intuitive within our current culture, which values consumerism. When we leave the front doors of this church, Nassau Street and beyond are full of messages that tell us that if we buy this one thing, or take that one pill, or amass a lot of possessions, our life will be more valuable and we will be happier with ourselves. But when we overindulge ourselves, we just end up feeling emptier and then we get more material possessions to fill our lives and our homes, ultimately just to feel Loved. Let me remind you all: You are already great and beautiful as you are. In Christ, all are one, no matter if some humans might try to tell you otherwise. Most of all, You are Loved. Jesus is reminding us in Luke that material possessions aren't the way to build the Kingdom here.

The second message I have today is: Are we ready? Are we ready as a church to support each other in responding to a call to ministry? 

If a person stood up right now and offered herself or himself to ministry, how would we respond? Let me guess: some might say "Hey, I think she is nuts." Or "Won't he just sit down? We can't even see the choir." Wouldn't we? Are we prepared for that?

My friend Maurine is a traveling Quaker minister. Several years ago she felt a leading from God towards this ministry. But her Quaker church was not ready to hear this and soon she felt uncomfortable attending that church, knowing that they weren't ready to support her calling. Let me tell you this church was large and wealthy, so it had more than enough resources to support her, but they weren't mentally and spiritually ready to.

Eventually, another Quaker church welcomed her with open arms and she moved there to be under their care. This church was much smaller with a lot less resources and was hours away from the wealthy suburb. Now several years later, she feels supported in her traveling ministry there. And guess what? Since her arrival at the church, two other ministries have been started by other church members and they are fully supported too. The meeting is alive with the Spirit of God in their mist.


That is the remarkable part of ministry. Once someone follows a leading, others can get inspired too and follow their own leadings. Last week Cindy spoke about lay ministry and one integral part of lay ministry is the support of the congregation because it can be scary to take that first step alone. In Quakerism, we have support committees for people following a leading, no matter what it is.

In this church we already have a lot of great ministries here. But I want to ask you: are we ready for more ministries? Are we ready to support other lay members in following their leadings? If not, what is holding us back from being ready to respond?

The great theologian Howard Thurman once said: "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." What makes you come alive? What makes us as a congregation come alive? We need more Christians to live out their faith daily, not just by coming here on Sundays. The world is waiting for us and the world needs us to come alive today!

A Messy Faith- Inclusivity Within Friends

I love Quakers, yet they frustrate me endlessly. Regardless, all of them are still part of my religious family. I have traveled among Friends of all types, backgrounds, theological perspectives, ages, etc.... and we are an interesting, diverse community worldwide. We have a lot of room for improvement, for spiritual growth, for outreach. But I do not want to kick any one out, instead Quakerism to me means to be on a journey with God within a community of seekers, not a community of know-it-alls.

If we start saying, "I am a Quaker and you are not." We are setting up Quakerism to be an enclosed community, a gated community, again. Who will have the keys? Who will make up the rules?

I am grateful that Quakers believe in continuing revelations, that God is still speaking to us. In that belief, I feel that we do not need to conform to 1600s Quakerism, but instead ask ourselves, "How is God leading us today?" (See another blog post I wrote: "If I wanted to live by 1600s standards, I would be Amish")

The 1600s Quakers were radicals, then the 1700s US Quakers started to close themselves from the outside world, which continued until the mid 1800s. Especially in the mid 1700s, US Quakers read people out of meeting for a lot of infractions of all kinds, like attending a wedding of another denomination. This was meant to keep the faith pure. For example, meetings would issue traveling minutes as ways of introducing their members to other meetings, but it was also a way to track members, to keep them honest, and make sure that they did not wander off.*

So if we start kicking people out, what will be the list of infractions we will enforce? Who will decide? Do we want to return Quakerism to a pure state? Do we want to isolate ourselves again? Do we want to track each other's movements all the time?

Or, instead, do we want to invest in the spiritual growth of all Quakers and help each other grow? Do we want to struggle and grow together in faith?

I want to keep Quakerism a messy community. I want to invest in my fellow Quakers and to keep challenging them to go deeper in their faith, while they challenge me to go deeper. I do not want to be involved in a faith where everybody follows the rules for fear of being expelled.

There are a lot of conflicts within Quakerism today. They are hard, difficult, and painful. But, if dealt with loving kindness, these conflicts will help all of us to go deeper with our faith.

Lets keep challenging each other and keep Quakerism a messy faith, instead of a pure, exclusive community open only to the members who follow strict rules.

What would the Religious Society of Friends look like, if we challenge each other to go deeper?

*I recommend reading The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748-1783 by Jack Marietta