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Dear People of Christ Church,
Last weekend, I was blessed to join in the Sakadawa Interfaith Celebration at the Kurukulla Center in Medford. The center had invited all of Medford and beyond to join in chanting and prayer for peace in honor of the Buddha’s birthday. Leading worship I do pray in church, of course, but it was also completely delightful to have someone else do the heavy lifting.

I am not, of course, a Buddhist or a Hindu, but Eastern religions have still had a profound impact on my spirituality. When I was in college I studied in India for half of my senior year and I had the chance to stay for two weeks at the Chinmaya Ashram. When I was looking for a place for my retreat, I met a woman who had gone to this community every year for forty years. “Hinduism,” she said, “basically seeks to make people happy. Meditation,” she said, “will bring you bliss. The ashram is Hindu. But we don’t want to make you a Hindu. Hinduism wants you to be a better person. It wants Muslims to be better Muslims. It wants you to be a better Christian. If you learn to cultivate this now, your life will change.”

And it did. Two years later I was in seminary, somewhat to my own surprise and even more so to those around me. I think you have to practice for a lot longer than I have to achieve bliss, but there are glimmers. The thing that Buddhism and Hinduism and Christianity all share is the knowledge that true freedom isn’t to be had in always getting your way. Whether Jesus on the cross, or Gautama Buddha under the Bodhi tree, or an 80 year old Hindu woman willing to have tea with a 21 year old American girl, the basic movement beyond ego and self-interest flows in the same direction. Many deeper minds than my own have engaged in serious interfaith dialogue on this.

Buddhism, a religious sibling to Hinduism, teaches profoundly about compassion, particularly compassion for ourselves—the wellspring of our compassion for others. The teacher Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara says the thing that gets us caught is the story we tell ourselves about who we are—we get caught on our former selves and forget that the “we” we are has always been an illusion, a set of ideas that props us up to face the world, but ultimately of no more weight than a breath. These stories we tell are a deep part of the suffering we create. As a Christian, I look behind the un-substance of that breath and see the image of God in which we all are made—and the detritus of sin that separates me from living into it more honestly. As a Christian, too, I know nothing can separate me from the love of God.

I’ll leave you with one of those stronger interfaith minds than my own, the monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968).

Both Christianity and Buddhism show that suffering remains inexplicable, most of all for the [one] who attempts to explain it in order to evade it, or who thinks explanation itself is an escape. Suffering is not a ‘problem’ as if it were something we could stand outside of and control. Suffering, as both Christianity and Buddhism see, each in its own way, is part of our very ego-identity and empirical existence, and the only thing to do about it is to plunge right into the middle of contradiction and confusion in order to be transformed by what Zen calls ‘the great death’ and Christianity calls ‘dying and rising with Christ’.

Blessings,
Sara+

More on Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara here.
More on Thomas Merton here.

Dear People of Christ Church,
Tuesday, June 2, I hope you’ll join me for our “end of life issues” conversation. This is the third or fourth year our parish has offered this time, and there just aren’t enough words to say how important it is to grapple with these hard questions.

I write about death in this space a lot. I write about death when someone beloved to our congregation dies. I write about death when we host these conversations every year. I write about death as we get close to Thanksgiving—having everyone at the table is a good time to talk about end of life questions. I think about death a lot. But thinking and writing about death a lot isn’t the same as being okay with it.

And that’s why we have to practice.
That’s why we have to talk about death again and again and again, until we can get it from our brains into our hearts and back to our brains that death is part of life, that we have reason to trust God and trust those we love, that the “One who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give new live to our mortal bodies” through God’s indwelling Spirit (BCP 501). God is love. The love that makes us grieve for one another is the same love that gives us everlasting life. Our love for each other and the love of God are of one piece. God’s love weaves in and out of our own lives in each of us.

For those of us who are left behind, though, death is terrifying. We know who we are in relation to those around us. Our parents, friends, spouses, children—they help make us who we are. We fear not having those we love. Who will we be without them? So it seems easier to save up the hard conversations for later. It seems like maybe if we don’t talk about death, it won’t be real. But our denial of death doesn’t make it less real. The less we talk about what we want for the end of our life, the harder it is to face when it actually happens.

What kind of care do you want in case of a traumatic injury? Under what circumstances would you want to initiate a “Do Not Resuscitate” order? Is it important is to you to be at home when you die? What hymns do you want to be sung at your funeral? Do you want someone to offer a eulogy about you? What Gospel do you want to have preached? Are you a “many dwelling places” kind of person, or do you go for the beatitudes? Have you filled out a health care proxy form, and does your doctor have a copy? Would you consider leaving a gift to your church, or other organizations that are important to you, in your will?

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome,
I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8: 38-39)

Thanks be to God!

For our end of life issues “workbook,” see A Christian Prepares for Death

Blessings,
Sara+

Dear People of Christ Church,
This week I was out of the office for a few days at the Making Excellent Disciples conference, a program of the diocese. The aim is to support mentoring and leadership training for newer ordinands, and I’ve had the privilege to journey as a mentor to Jack Clark, the assistant rector in Sudbury, over the last two years. One of our workshops today was on how the church is called to be prophetic. What does it mean to tell the truth when truth telling virtually ensures not everyone will be on board with you? How do you make room for conversation and mutual discernment? As we sat down one of the participants asked where our stones were—I thought he was talking about some crafty project with rocks or something—but he was really joking about whether we were going to stone our presenter, a fate met by many a prophet either literally or metaphorically.

We like when truth is spoken to power…as long as it’s our truth. There is always a fine line in finding the right way to bring politics in. Anything that has to do with power is political—it’s just part of life. On the one hand, if you sincerely want to lead on an issue, you have to actually think about how effective your proclamation is going to be. On the other—sometimes you just need to SPEAK and let the chips fall where they may. Jumping into the pulpit or your staff meeting and letting loose on what you think about Guantanamo, however, just may not be a great strategy to try to advocate for recognizing the dignity of every human being. Silence, though, also doesn’t seem to be the answer. Jesus had plenty to say about who had what and how people cared for each other in in real life—real cities and communities and families—not just in the abstract. He taught in a world not so different from our own, in that respect.

Our workshop leader on prophetic ministry was Cameron Partridge, a good friend of mine and, though he wouldn’t claim the mantle of “prophet” for himself, he has had a goodly prophetic ministry for our diocese and the wider church in advocacy for the concerns and inclusion of transgendered people. Cameron and I were ordained together in 2004, he the first trans man to be a priest in our diocese—Christ Churchers may also remember him as being here for Adah’s baptism as her godfather. He’s also filled in for me on a Sunday at least once or twice! Part of our conversation included a reading of the book of the prophet Jonah. If you haven’t read the book of Jonah lately, please do yourself a favor now and read the whole thing (it will take five minutes). One of the more resonant things about Jonah is that, while he grudgingly calls Nineveh to repentance, he totally doesn’t want to. Jonah argues with God, throwing tantrum after tantrum. But God stays in relationship, loves Jonah, and loves Nineveh. They work it out. Once he’s called to be a prophet, Jonah doesn’t straighten up and obey God—he wrestles and argues and wonders and sighs. He’s real. He trusts God with his whole self, and God trusts him. I think the wholehearted relationship between God and Jonah is a good model for what it is for parish ministry to grapple with the prophetic. They have a real relationship. They listen to each other. They’re safe.

Who challenges you in your life to think like a prophet? When have you had the courage to speak? Where do you think this community is called to do that work?

Blessings,
Sara+

Dear People of Christ Church,
After confirmation, parish arts day, the post office food drive, the Mother’s Day Walk, and whatever else I’ve forgotten that’s happened in the first two weeks of May, finally it feels like we aren’t sprinting toward anything.

(There is planting day on Saturday, but if the thing that’s making your life feel busy is a morning spent gardening, you have it pretty good).

ALL THE THINGS…where is there stillness?
Depends on what you mean by stillness. Longing for rest is one thing—too many Saturdays working makes Sara a dull girl—but stillness is different from inactivity. Both are necessary at ties, but stillness comes when the focus is on God, not on the outcome. Whatever brilliant or important thing that we think is so important is secondary to that faithfulness. Stillness comes when our interior lives aren’t determined by our external circumstances. That’s not to say that our external circumstances don’t matter—you have only to spend some time with the photos from the Day Center exhibit currently in the parish hall to know that material and spiritual needs are linked. But ultimate reconciliation isn’t in having the biggest team for the Peace Walk or the coolest Children’s Play Garden. It’s in how we are listening for where God finds us in community. We are called to be faithful to God’s nudging toward hospitality and solidarity—not to focus on the task to the exclusion of the call.

I imagine that our contemporary striving for stillness and comfort is not so different from the experience of the earliest church. Their anxieties were different, but there was still anxiety. Today is the feast of the Ascension—the church’s time of marking the end of Jesus’ resurrection appearances to his disciples. The Gospel story is a bit fantastical—he is raised up into the clouds out of sight—and while I believe the experience of the disciples, I’m not sure of what to make of the literalness of it—science and whatnot—but what I DO really get is the sense of uncertainty and fear that the remaining community felt. Living in the midst of uncertainty is hard. Chaos is hard. Grieving—hard. One moment the disciples knew Jesus to be there, and then he was gone.

Liturgically/poetically/metaphorically in the church we observe the ten days between Ascension (today) and Pentecost (May 24) as the time between Jesus ending his resurrection appearances, returning to the heart of God, and sending the Holy Spirit. Those tongues of fire at the wild parties of Pentecost were the promise of God’s active working in our midst for all time, sent by Jesus in God our Creator. In this time between, the absence is the presence; it’s paradoxically in this dark time that the light is being born in our hearts. I’m in the middle of reading Cheryl Strayed’s book, Wild, in which she chronicles her hundreds of miles hike on the Pacific Coast Trail from southern California to Oregon. After her life falls apart, she is reassembled on the trail, the exhaustion and pain giving way to grace and transformation. She didn’t make peace with her mother’s death because she ate dehydrated food and walked alone for four months and her feet were covered in blisters. But it was still in the midst of that adversity and loneliness that the peace came, finding herself near the end emptied of everything but gratitude to have arrived (274). Absence was presence. Even unable to see God or know God, yet God is present. It’s the stillness in the whirlwind, the intimation of rest even in the midst of striving and action. Not because we’ve fixed or changed what’s outside ourselves, but because we’ve listened to our God who whispers.

Where is your soul? Where have you found a moment of peace?

Blessings,
Sara+

Dear People of Christ Church,

So many great things going on this week!
Friday night, please join us for our parish arts and talent show. There will be everything from bellydancing to singing to poetry about cats, along with pieces from the Community Day Center’s Photo Exhibit, “Homelessness Through Our Eyes.” And there will be pizza.

Saturday, come over to help with Post Office food drive. The USPS’s annual “Stamp Out Hunger” event allows you to put food out at your mailbox to be delivered to local food pantries, and our own “Grandma’s Pantry” is a grateful recipient. Often times the haul is very generous, which means we need lots of help. Please be in touch with Sally Lobo if you can make it.

Sunday, please join Christ Churchers for the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace. In the last few years we’ve had 15-20 participants—let’s make it 30 this year! Meet at 7:30 am near the B Peace for Jorge tent on the Common. The Walk benefits the Louis Brown Peace Institute, founded by Tina Chery after her son Louis Brown was murdered. Money from the walk this year will go for a new grant program for advocacy groups and a new fund for those who need assistance with burial costs when their loved ones die by violence. We’ll be walking as part of the B Peace for Jorge team, which convened under the leadership of Bishop Tom Shaw after Jorge Fuentes, a counselor for St Stephen’s B Safe Program (for which we will volunteer later this summer!), was shot walking his dog. The year after Jorge’s death, Bishop Tom did the walk and celebrated the Eucharist at the end, a tradition Bishop Gates will continue this year.

With a lot of “walk” events—for breast cancer, or hunger, or suicide—the walking can feel sort of secondary. They are an important occasion to raise awareness—to turn our attention and offer support. For several years my kids did the Walk for Hunger with Grace Medford, and I know it gave them a tangible sense of focusing their attention on those who have less than they. But there is no direct correlation between putting one foot in front of the other and ending hunger. It’s a means, not an end.

The thing about the Peace Walk that is so compelling to me is that this is a time when the walking actually DOES make a difference. Many of us never have occasion to visit places we hear about on the news where yet another young person has been shot. We aren’t confronted with the reality of not allowing our kids to play outside for fear of random gunfire. The news tells us about these crimes, and maybe we pay attention and maybe we don’t—but we forget that there are communities and churches and schools full of kids and moms and dads and teenagers who walk their dogs who confront this as reality all the time. But illegal guns are a problem for everyone. Racism is a problem for everyone. 500 people from the suburbs descending on Dorchester once a year doesn’t change much. But bit by bit, it might change us. Maybe you have a conversation with someone or maybe you see racism in a different light. Maybe just one piece of the puzzle of race and inequality snaps in place. There’s hope.

This year, it feels especially important—this year’s march isn’t tied specifically to the Black Lives Matter Movement, but of course they are related. Police officers will be stationed throughout the walk to help guide walkers—we are grateful to them! But it’s the same racism that has led many police officers to immediately find people of color suspect. It’s the same racism that still lingers as suspicion and mistrust. It’s the same racism that infects our justice systems, our schools, and our streets. One poisonous well, many different outflows. Sunday, we will be one people of God, trying to find our way back to each other and to the grace of Christ that makes us all whole.

Blessings,
Sara+

With so many occasions for lament this week, I’m feeling drawn back toward the good shepherd we heard about in our readings and psalm last week. I admitted it’s not been my favorite image, but when in the valley of the shadow of death, the table set before the enemy is something we need again and again. This week, I want to pass along a poem I encountered from a newly discovered blog, that of Andrew King, a Canadian Anglican layman. Fast-food worker by day, poet by night, he’s set himself the goal of writing for each week of the church year. I’m grateful.

We need the shepherding of Jesus. For Paula Tatarunis, whose health has taken a turn for the worse and for her husband Darrell, who has hard decisions to make. For Nepal, for towns so remote it takes two days for rescuers to get there to assess the damage, much less offer aid. For Baltimore, for an end to racism in this country. I don’t usually watch much broadcast news, but this week I caught some of the Baltimore coverage on CNN—as they showed two single scenes of property destruction on a continuous loop. How many more people walked peacefully? How many more people cleaned up the next day? And how do the media talk about incidents like that when perpetrated by, for example, white college students? Nobody says “thug” or “riot” at those times. The valley of the shadow of death for all of us in this country is the legacy of racism that sees the bodies of people of color as less-than. As Andrew King writes, “may the cup of joy overflow for those whose suffering has been their drink.” Amen.

PRAYER TO THE SHEPHERD
(Psalm 23, John 10: 11-18)
O Lord our Shepherd,
may your flock not want
in the refugee camps
of Yarmouk, of Darfur, of Dadaab.
May life-giving pastures of nourishment be theirs
in Sudan, in Niger, in Chad.
May waters of peacefulness and healing flow
in Somalia, in Syria, in Ukraine.
And may souls be restored in our own cities and towns
where violence and hunger still live.
O Lord our Shepherd,
death shadows the valleys
and the houses and hills of our lands.
May the strength of your grace and
the assurance of your love
ever with us and ever embracing,
bring comfort to the grieving and alone.
May there be a table of reconciliation prepared
where enemies may sit down in peace
and may the cup of joy overflow for those
whose suffering has been their drink.
Let your goodness and mercy attend your flock,
O Shepherd, our Lord,
and may all your flock dwell
in the unity of your love
as long as life endures.

Dear People of Christ Church,
This Sunday, our Episcopal Church class meets with the oh-so-exciting topic of “Contemporary Moral Issues.” We’ll tackle all the hot questions, from the death penalty to the environment to sexuality to whatever else anyone brings to the table. We’ll also talk Scripture, and by necessity Episcopal polity will get thrown in too, since that’s some of how we do our work. How we organize ourselves as a church and how we read the Bible are both part of how we discern together the mind of the church.

Or, probably more accurately: minds. Sometimes we’re not of one mind. By design—and since the beginning of Anglicanism with King Henry, we’ve had dissent built into our DNA, with no expectation that the individual consciences of Episcopalians must agree with some higher authority (apart from, you know, God).

Our own branch of the Anglican Communion, The Episcopal Church, makes decisions together by meeting every three years. The next General Convention is this summer, when representatives from every diocese—bishops, priests, deacons, and lay people—will meet together, this year in Salt Lake City. Six years ago at General Convention a decision was made to acknowledge diversity in the church on the practice of marriage and representatives voted that in places where equal marriage was the law, bishops could decide to permit clergy to officiate at all marriages. Our bishops said yes—our partners in Western Massachusetts at the time said no (finally, in 2013 that changed to yes).

How does Scripture help us reason through this stuff?
Well, if we’re going to read the Bible literally, we are in trouble. If instead of saying the opening prayer on Sunday I mutely held up a sign saying that the Bible forbids me to speak in church (1 Cor 14:34; 1 Tim 2:12), the wardens would have my head. Although since they’re women, too, it’s not like they could step up and lead the service.

So the Episcopal tradition of Biblical interpretation is not literalist. There is no neutral, “interpretation free” way to read the Bible. No matter what, we are always reading from somewhere. One of my favorite texts about this happens when the Ethiopian eunuch meets the apostle Philip on the road, reading the book of Isaiah. Lest we think a spectrum of gender expression is a new invention, the eunuch was a castrated man who served in the court of the Queen (unfortunately in this case, it was probably not a chosen life path). “Do you understand what you’re reading?” Philip asks him. “How can I, unless someone explains it to me?” the eunuch answers. This work of explanation and interpretation happened in that chariot 2000 years ago, and happens now. We read Scripture with all of our senses—we look at history and politics and language—and we read the rest of Scripture! If the Gospel of John tells us that God is love, then how do we interpret loving partnership in expansive ways? If, as Galatians 3:28 says, in Christ there is no male or female, and in Genesis humankind is made in God’s image, then how do we reason gender equity next to those passages from Corinthians and Timothy? Scripture argues with itself just as much as we do. And what a gift it is to be part of that conversation!

Blessings,
Sara+

Dear People of Christ Church,
Continued happy Easter, everyone!
I had a great week off last week reconnecting with my family after a long and wonderful Holy Week. As I have said many times, I’m a big fan of the services of Holy Week not just because it’s “good” to go to church (which, sure, it is), but because participating in those liturgies helps me come near to God in a deeper way—beyond my over-active mind, beyond anxiety and distraction. To actually place your body on the ground in front of the cross and to hear the first bells of Easter at the Vigil is to be placed in the path of mystery: God simply dwells with you.
On Sunday, I had the pleasure of attending church with my kids at Church of Our Savior, Arlington, where one of my daughter’s classmates’ mothers is the rector. (Thanks to new parishioner and retired priest Dan Crowley for being here!) COS is a smaller space, with a round altar in the center of the church and the pews facing inward on either side. As an Episcopal Church, the liturgy was much the same, but when it came time for the Nicene Creed Rev. Malia introduced it in a new way. Not everyone, perhaps obviously is a huge fan of the recitation of the Creed. As a historical artifact, it’s a snapshot of the heresies and arguments of the early Church—not necessarily intended to be an inspirational invitation to a holy life. For every line of text, there’s a backstory of debate with proponents on all sides.
For many contemporary Christians the doctrine that Jesus was fully human and fully divine seems self-evident, but it was not so 1600 years ago. The docetics said that Jesus just seemed human. The Arians said that he was divine but still definitely subordinate to God the Father. The Orthodox theology of the Trinity as three in One and of one substance carried the day, and we still recite this explanation of our belief even now.
A trickier question is how do we believe when we say we believe. That’s between you and God. When I introduce the Creed at Christ Church, I say something like “Let us confess our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed:” my way of explaining that this is the tradition of the church and this is the articulation chosen through hundreds of years, but it’s not necessarily the most comprehensive. The deeper meaning of the words and ideas is a personal question. At COS, Rev. Malia invited the congregation to say the Creed as either We believe (the “real” words) [in one God, Jesus, Spirit, Church] or We trust [in one God, Jesus, Spirit, Church].
For an over-thinker with some trust issues, this was a fascinating shift. The Latin word credo which the word “creed” comes from means “to give your heart to.” That explanation has always resonated with me because there’s an intentionality to it. But the poetry of it also lends a certain abstraction. “Trust” has a deeper vulnerability at the center. How do I trust God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit? All the time? What does it mean to trust God in the Church? To proclaim our faith? What does it mean to join our faith with the church through time in these Creeds?

Blessings,
Sara+

Dear People of Christ Church,
This week in our Lent series, we continued our conversation about prayer, along with several of the SSJE brothers’ meditations on work. Brother Geoffrey talked about how he’d learned from their experiences with sustainable farming at their retreat place in West Newbury. As the brothers have experimented with raising pigs, chickens, growing plants, and collecting seeds, they’ve learned about sustainability: you don’t take out more from the land than you put in.

Sustainability is a concept that the Christ Church vestry has talked about a lot; how are we careful about the commitments we undertake as a parish to be sure we can be faithful to the core of our mission. There are so many things we could be doing in our own lives and as a parish—really good things!—but we have to choose the ones that God specifically calls us to at this time and this place, not just those things which might be good in general. The same goes for our own lives; there is a line between finding the joy in serving others and being trapped by the drudgery of more that you can do. And there are seasons, too—season of hard work and seasons of rest. Brother Geoffrey ends up on the word “balance;”—it’s a word that gets kicked around a lot, most often in reference to not having enough of it. I recently ran into a review of a book by poet and philosopher David Whyte, who writes:

[Work/life balance] is a phrase that often becomes a lash with which we punish ourselves … ; People find it hard to balance work with family, family with self, because it might not be a question of balance. 1

Instead of thinking of the things we do as outside of ourselves—a core “me” that spends its energy on parenting, then writing sermons, then parish administration, then being a spouse, then a friend—what if instead each of those identities were woven together in whole? Instead of a “me” as a fulcrum in the middle, what if you were yourself all the time? What kind of life would you live?

One place to start is to try to envision a different fulcrum; instead of “me” as the middle, what would it mean if God were the middle? This is what’s most striking to me about thinking about the Ten Commandments. At first glance they seem so ordinary and so like a general humanist way of living: who wouldn’t think a society based on avoiding theft and murder would be a good idea?

The difference comes in the reason for avoiding all kinds of bad behavior: I am the Lord your God. What it means for God’s providence and love for us to be the center fulcrum is a different sense of freedom, a new place of interpreting our lives. If nothing can separate us from the love of God, then we’re given a new freedom in Christ to offer ourselves. The Sabbath is the one place where this is made most concrete. And, of course, the Sabbath. The Sabbath is God’s making-sacred of time, God’s gift of taking hold of us in time for God’s self. No working, no buying, no selling. Because we are God’s.

There’s a lot at stake in shifting that fulcrum point away from our individual selves. If God has already reconciled me to God, then I’m judged by more than the quality of my last sermon or the readership on my last blog post. My kid messing up isn’t a wholesale condemnation on all of my parenting, it’s an invitation to come closer to each other and for us both to try something different.

Take a minute to re-center yourself in God’s grace. What does your work look like now? How do you feel about yourself? How can you let that grace be your fulcrum? What would help you bring that into each day?

Blessings,
Sara +

Dear People of Christ Church,

This week, I’ve been praying around sin—appropriate enough for Lent, of course—but in particular around criminal justice as well. The Tsarnaev trial, of course, is impossible to ignore, and on Tuesday I was also drawn into another case through a colleague in Georgia. Georgia was set to execute Kelly Gissendaner, prosecuted for her role in the murder of her husband. In her time in prison, her life was changed; she studied theology and began a correspondence with the theologian Jürgen Moltmann, ministered to her fellow prisoners and was, by all accounts, completely changed. Her story was a compelling one; Georgia hasn’t executed a woman in more than fifty years, and her story of conversion and compassion reminded me of everything we want to believe about human nature. We can change and we do change, even under difficult circumstances, even living through the consequences of the depth of our sin.

For our Tuesday night services, we’re using a Eucharistic prayer from the Church in Scotland which contains this line:
Lifted on the Cross, [Christ’s] suffering and forgiveness spanned the gulf our sins had made.
To which, of course, I would add—Christ’s ministry, and suffering, and forgiveness spanned the gulf of our sins. What I like so much about this phrasing is the visual metaphor—our sin separates us from God. We can sense that God is there, that there is hope and joy and forgiveness—but we can’t get there on our own. That gulf of sin is not intractable. God has already bridged it. But I need to acknowledge it as there, because without the awareness of sin, I slip into thinking that I’ve got everything figured out. Not because Jesus died as some blood sacrifice for my guilt, but because the crucifixion is a mirror of reality.
Twelve year old kids getting shot by police who are supposed to protect them, immediately seen as suspicious because of the color of their skin. Muslim women being harassed (and worse) for wearing headscarves. Synagogues defaced. The Charlie Hebdo massacre, girls kidnapped in Pakistan and Nigeria for going to school. The Marathon bombing. Human trafficking. The crucifixion happens every day.

When crucifixion happens, how does our society respond? Too often, we lash out with more violence. The death penalty is a prime example of this. The old Biblical injunction “an eye for an eye” gets quoted a lot, but in its initial context, that was intended to minimize punishment, not maximize (we might also recall that Jesus said some things that undid that logic). Kelly Gissendaner wasn’t executed, after all—after thousands of petitions and phone calls to the governor’s office, the prison said that the drugs for lethal injection looked “cloudy.” Maybe if all the petitions and phone calls hadn’t been made, she would have still been put to death; I don’t know. She’s alive, though, and for her, that is a blessing.

In Massachusetts, no one has been executed since 1947, though governors and legislatures have tried to bring back the death penalty a number of times. The Tsarnaev trial is a federal one, so even though our state doesn’t have the death penalty, federal prosecutors are asking for it and most of the defense, at this point, is around convincing jurors that mitigating circumstances make Tsernaev less culpable of his crime.

I’m not on the jury, so it doesn’t really matter whether I think Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is guilty, not guilty, or somewhere in between. I do, though, think it matters what all of us think and do about the death penalty itself. I signed the petition for Kelly Gissendaner because I was moved by her story. I’m glad to know about her and I’m glad she’s not been executed. But the death penalty isn’t about how good or how bad the defendant is. The death penalty is about what kind of society we create. And that’s about all of us. If we promise to respect the dignity of every human being every time we baptize someone, that includes the possibility—even the certainty!—that those human beings will fail. We are always bound by those vows, no matter how we think we can justify breaking them.

Blessings,
Sara+

For an article about the Episcopal Church’s work on death penalty abolition see here and on the movement in general here.