My tired imagination

It's been quiet around here, friends.

Quiet apart from sermons, that is.

There are a few reasons for this. First, the reality of having a preschooler and an eight-month-old baby. These days, I don't have much free time or quiet time for reflection and writing. And any writing time that I can make space for us being used for sermon writing and other necessary church writing.

Which leads me to the second reason, which is that I am pouring myself and my theological imagination more and more into my sermons this day, not by choice, but because the state of the world is demanding it of me. The things that I used to be afraid to say in sermons - the things that I was brave enough to blog out on the side - are not the things that I have no choice but to include in sermons. Pesky Holy Spirit.

But the third and most honest reason that I haven't said much around here is because I'm tired. Tired in body, yes, but tired in mind and spirit as well.

This last week, I opened up a conversation online about faith and racism, and was quickly taken to task by an old family friend, who obviously disagreed with what I was saying, but instead of entering into dialogue with me, chose instead only to critique my viewpoints with a fair smattering of condescending interjections (which I'm sure, in all honesty, he believed were an attempt to personalize the conversation and to draw on our long knowledge of each other).

The conversation hit me hard, because I want to believe that we, as a society, are in at least reasonable agreement about very basic life values: Racism is wrong. All people have dignity. Peace, not war. Love, not hate. Jesus calls us to lives of love, service, and justice-seeking. Faith calls us to care about the well-being of our neighbors. I want to believe that more people believe these things than not.

But I realized through this one conversation, and through subsequent news of a counter-protest at my hometown's candlelight vigil for peace and justice, that the bent I feel toward hope, love, justice, and peace is not shared as widely as I had assumed.

I realized that it takes a lot of work to address these difficult days. Sometimes, it takes work even to agree that these are, indeed, difficult days.

I can write and write and write about all that I am thinking and feeling about the world these days, and in the end, the people who will read it and love it are the people who already agree with me. And the people whose hearts I most want to be softened by my words are the people who are going to remain unaffected and unchanged by them.

Because nobody wants to change. I don't like to change. None of us do. Especially when changing means admitting that we were wrong, or immature, or uninformed. And if any of the work of change is going to happen, it's not by a well-written blog post. It's by relationships. And deep investment. And doing the hard emotional work of accompaniment.

Friends, I'm tired. I feel like I have less and less power to right the wrongs in the world. I feel like I have less and less energy to convince people that we should be caring about and taking care of one another. I am stuck in a place where the world seems more and more apt to bless selfishness and cruelty, and where the people who have more power than me to say, "this is enough" and to stand up for the powerless are the very people who lack the courage to do so.

My "New Program Year" resolution this fall is to be braver and bolder. To name injustice, to claim my faith, to stop putting up with bad behavior in the name of "keeping nice." To approach my calling as a Christian and as a pastor with conviction. Martin Luther says, "A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is."

There is suffering in the world. Jesus, by the cross, draws near to suffering people and suffering creation. And he calls us to name the sin and suffering and injustice that we see, instead of sweeping it under the rug or pretending that it isn't a big deal.

I mean, I'll be honest. It's hard work. There is a lot of resistance in the world to embracing the imaginative possibilities of keeping hope. And these days, I keep stumbling upon the question, "Does what I say or do even matter? Or is the world going to keep on fighting and killing and discriminating and hating, despite what I think and feel and proclaim?" It takes a lot of energy to resist the loudest voices with a small but fervent voice of faith that the world can be better; that people can be redeemed and hearts can be changed; that the kingdom of God really can and will win over human selfishness and cruelty.

In my difficult conversation last week, I was accused of being hysterical and over-emotional, and I was told, in the most patronizing way possible, that my choice to speak out against racism must be a response to some personal crisis that led to my obsession to work through these feelings.

Friends, I am indeed emotional about the state of our world. Vulnerable. Passionate. Because that is what faith does. It opens you up, and it makes you feel the world deeply. Faith makes you rejoice and hurt in new and different ways. But I'm not hysterical. I'm not over-emotional.

I'm simply tired. I don't know what to say that hasn't already been said, or what to say that hasn't already been affirmed by those who agree with me and rejected outright by those who don't. But I still want to use my voice to help right the world, because I can't just ignore the grief and the terror and the voicelessness and the hopelessness of those suffering in this present age.

Let us pray for one another, my friends. And lean on one another. No matter how tired we are, we walk this road together. We have a message of hope and a message of justice and a message of reconciliation. Even when we're weary, we persist. Because these are the messages the world needs to hear.