Month: May 2020

The Day I Got Cussed Out in the Park: A Reflection on Whiteness in the Wake of the George Floyd Murder

Heidi Torgerson

I was 20 years old on the day that Ms. Bell cussed me out in front of everybody, right there in the middle of the sweltering, littered park. Ms. Bell was the director of the Summer Youth Employment Project, a ministry of the mostly-Black Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Muskegon Heights, Michigan. I was the youth director at Bethlehem that summer thanks to a partnership between Bethlehem and my home congregation, an entirely White church in the small North Dakota town where I grew up.

Ms. Bell and I – together with Mr. Lewis – were in the park that day supervising the 20 or so Black teens who had found work and a sense of purpose in the Summer Youth Employment Project. As they raked and bagged trash and hurled jokes at each other, a White man with a steno pad walked through the park gate and approached me with a smile. He introduced himself as a local newspaper reporter, asking if he could interview me about the Summer Youth Employment Project and the kids whom the project engaged. “Of course!” I said with pride as I began to answer his questions.

The interview didn’t last long. The reporter was already leaving by the time Ms. Bell crossed the park. She was full-on yelling by the time she reached me. Her cussing hit me like a slap in the face as she asked me who in the hell I thought I was, how in God’s name I thought I could speak for her when she was the director of the program, and why the eff I didn’t have the good sense to send the reporter over to her when he arrived.

I was humiliated. And I deserved every word of the tongue-lashing Ms. Bell gave me that day.

I am White, and I had spent my entire life up until that summer in communities that were almost entirely White. In so many ways, I was wholly unprepared to face the racism that I didn’t even know was within me. I had no tools to analyze the ways that White supremacy culture functioned around me, and how I was complicit in it. Thank God, then, for Ms. Bell, who loved me enough to cuss me out for my dangerous ignorance, for my failure to recognize what it meant that a White news reporter automatically assumed that I – the only other White person in the park that day – must be in charge of all the Black folks working there.

That episode in the park was neither the first nor the last time I was forced to reckon with my own Whiteness that summer. Twenty-two years later, I’m still reckoning with it. Facing the ways that White supremacy culture continues to show up in my personal, professional, and civic life is hard. It is painful. It is embarrassing. It is scary. It is confusing. It is vulnerable.

It is also necessary.

George Floyd – an unarmed Black man – was murdered by a White police officer in Minneapolis, MN on Monday. Righteous anger over his death has spilled out in protests engulfing Minneapolis and other cities around the country. Race-based violence has snuffed out the lives of too many of our Black siblings. Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Sean Reed. Eric Garner. Philando Castile. Tamir Rice. Trayvon Martin. Sandra Bland. Michael Brown. Oscar Grant. Walter Scott. The list of Black lives lost is as gruesomely endless as the history of White supremacy in this country.

I sometimes hear other White people suggest that we are not responsible for this history. We did not create the systems of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow laws and redlining and other forms of institutional racism upon which this country was built. Those systems were created a long time ago. Most of us who are White never see the effects of these systems up close, and so we have the luxury of not really thinking about them. We have the privilege of looking at the problems as too overwhelming to fix. When these racist systems result in the death of yet one more Black person, we are paralyzed at best. We don’t know how to do anything beyond shaking our heads or sharing a headline on social media.

In her book Thinking About God, German liberation theologian Dorothee Soelle looks through theological lenses at a post-Holocaust, post-Cold War, growing-Third World crisis world. In considering the challenges facing God’s people and, indeed, the entire creation, she finally comes to this conclusion: “I am responsible for the house I did not build, but in which I live.”

I am responsible for the house I did not build, but in which I live.

My White siblings, this house in which we live is killing our Black neighbors. We must find the courage to take responsibility for it. We must encourage in one another the kind of vulnerability that opens us to learning what our Whiteness means and how it functions in the world. We must develop the kind of resiliency that will allow us to challenge one another in love – not to heap unproductive guilt on ourselves or on each other, but to see and to understand that our identities as White people are not neutral. We cannot change what we cannot see. Let us, together, learn how to see.

It is literally a matter of life and death.

Resources to begin:
“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” is a classic essay which includes an eye-opening list of seemingly benign ways that White privilege shows up in everyday life.

“Why Talk About Whiteness” is a brief, helpful introduction to exploring White culture. The article includes links to several essays and books for further reading.

The Whiteness Project is an interactive investigation into how people who identify as White, or partially White, understand and experience their race.

Yours Are the Hands

Heidi Torgerson

on being Christ’s body & on the rebirth of the church – a sermon for ascension sunday

This might be, like, the nerdiest church-person thing that could possibly come out of my mouth, but I actually stopped being cool somewhere around the year 2000 so I’m just going to say it anyway:

I have never been more thankful for the liturgical calendar.

If that phrase is new to you, now you know…the church keeps a calendar. But instead of moving us from May 24 to 25 to 26 and so on, the liturgical calendar moves us through the seasons and stories of our faith. The liturgical calendar takes its name from the word “liturgy,” which means “the work of the people,” and our work as God’s people begins in worship. Different colors, themes, and scriptures accompany each season of the liturgical calendar, which begins not in January but in late November or early December. Advent is the first season. The color blue comes out to accompany these 4 Sundays of waiting and anticipation which lead us into the next season – Christmas. White is the color of Christmas, signifying the purity and light of Christ. Then there are some lower-key “Time After Epiphany” Sundays, all dressed up in green, before we move into Lent, which are the 40 days the church spends in solemn preparation for the death and resurrection of Jesus, which we remember with great reverence during Holy Week. Purple is the color of Lent.

And then, come Easter Sunday, we are back to white as we celebrate life. The resurrection of Jesus is such a spectacularly powerful, hope-filled event for our lives and for the world that the church sets aside a full 50 days to celebrate it in our liturgical calendar. And toward the end of Easter, we find Ascension Day. The ascension falls exactly 40 days after Easter in our liturgical calendar. That was last Thursday, but the ascension of Jesus is such a significant event that we often observe it on the Sunday immediately following. So, we call today – the last Sunday of Easter – Ascension Sunday – the day when we hear the writer of Luke and Acts tell of Jesus’ last appearance to the disciples before returning to the heavenly parent.

So, I’ve always appreciated the way that the liturgical calendar marks the rhythms of our life together as God’s people. But I find myself even more grateful for it in the middle of this coronavirus crisis because time is doing weird things lately. I know you can relate! I often wake up in the morning not having any idea what day it is. I’m pretty sure last Friday was actually 62 hours long, and that the month of April alone included approximately 472,000 days. I don’t think I’m even fully, consciously aware of how my brain has already kind of divided the whole of life into two pieces along a coronavirus-shaped hinge. There’s life pre-COVID-19, and there’s now. The chronological time that our regular calendars mark feels all out of whack, and so I find some sense of grounding in our liturgical calendar, knowing that God’s time is somehow revealed there.

The disciples, in our reading from Acts today, were having a different kind of struggle dealing with chronological time and God’s time. Jesus had been crucified only about six weeks before the ascension in Acts. With his death came the death of the people’s hope that Jesus would be the one to overthrow Roman rule, ushering in a new reign of freedom for those who had been suffering. But then Jesus was raised, and he’d been appearing to the disciples for forty days, talking about the kingdom of God. Their chronological clocks were still ticking, and so they ask Jesus as they had many times before, “Is THIS the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus tells them that their time is not God’s time, and then he blesses them. He assures them that they will receive God’s power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them. He tells them that they will be witnesses to his radical love not just in Jerusalem, but to all the ends of the earth.

And then he is lifted up on a cloud, carried away out of their sight and into heaven.

Yep. You heard me right. The person who wrote Luke and Acts tells us that Jesus was lifted up on a cloud and carried away into heaven. We’ll talk on some other day about how differently our first-century ancestors viewed the heavens and the earth, about how science isn’t actually the enemy of the Bible, and about how you don’t have to throw away your intellect in order to be a Christian. But for now, here’s the question I want us to sit with together:

What does this story mean for us? The earliest followers of the Jesus movement believed it was important for people to know that Jesus had not only been raised, but that God carried Jesus away into the heavens as he was blessing the disciples below.

Church, what does this mean for us?

St. Teresa of Avila was a 16th century Spanish nun who had an especially powerful connection to the mysteries of God. There’s a poem attributed to her that gets to the heart of the matter more beautifully than I could. She writes:

Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Beloved of God, when the writer of Luke and Acts tells us that Jesus ascended into the heavens, he is telling us that the power of Jesus’ love was carried not just into one specific place somewhere far away. The power of Jesus’ love was carried into the whole of the cosmos, touching everything that is with the grace of God. The power of Jesus’ love ascended not just into the heavens. It ascended into you. It ascended into me. It ascended into God’s people so that we might embody the grace, mercy, compassion, justice, gentleness, and love of God that Jesus embodied so fully while he walked this earth.

Christ has no body on earth now but ours, Church.  

The liturgical calendar is going to move us into Pentecost next week. Rushing winds and tongues of fire carry the Holy Spirit to God’s people on Pentecost, and the church is born. And it’s perfect timing. This coronavirus pandemic has changed everything we thought we knew about what it meant to be Christ’s body on earth. It’s unsettling, to say the least. My internal chronological clock is not just ticking; it’s screaming! It’s screaming to get back to the way things were. So thank God that the liturgical calendar is throwing us a bone here, giving us an opportunity to reflect not only on the birth of Christ’s church at Pentecost, but on the re-birth of Christ’s church today.

It was only 10 weeks ago that congregations like Grace were still gathering together in the same buildings. That simultaneously feels like a lifetime ago, and like it was just yesterday. Life in the church is changing almost as quickly as the news updates we hear about the virus itself. We’re tired. We’re stressed. We miss our people. Time feels out of whack and we’re confused and crabby about it…or at least, I am. So what do we do?

I think we do what God’s people have learned how to do over literally thousands of years of practice. We hold close together. Though we remain physically apart, we allow ourselves to be re-membered into the one body that we have always been, people of Grace – people of God. We allow ourselves to be re-membered into Christ’s body here on earth as we become something new for the sake of the world.

As we experience this time of rebirth:
Let us keep our eyes – which are Christ’s eyes – open for every opportunity to look with compassion on those in need.

Let us reach out our hands – which are Christ’s hands – to bless this aching world in deep and meaningful ways.

Let us root our feet – which are Christ’s feet – in needs of this present moment, trusting that the power of Jesus will guide us into our continued becoming.

Disappearing Spaces

Heidi Torgerson

a sermon on john 14:1-14

Texts like this one from the gospel of John can be a bit tricky for a preacher, mostly because this one is so familiar. Church people have heard it a thousand times, and a whole lot of people who aren’t so familiar with church have also heard it a bunch. For example, regular church attender or not, I’d guess that most of us have heard this text read at at least one funeral. Traditional funeral sermons on this text encourage us to imagine Jesus putting his carpentry skills to good use for us in heaven, making up a bright and shiny room for us and our loved ones to call home when our time on Earth is done. Others of us have heard this text used to influence interfaith conversations, usually by suggesting that people of other religious traditions have no place in God’s reign and most certainly will NOT be our neighbors in any of those aforementioned bright and shiny heavenly rooms. The common theme here is that most us have learned to hear these words from John and cast our thoughts away from the complexity of this earthly life and instead to look heavenward toward the glories awaiting us in our Father’s house after we die.

I gotta say, I understand the tendency. Jesus’ words are reassuring. “Do not let your hearts be troubled! In my Father’s house there are many rooms, and I’m going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and bring you with me so that where I am, you will be also.” Part of my own weary soul breathes a tiny sigh of relief when I hear these words, because Lord knows – literally – that words of assurance are hard to come by in these days. Lord knows – literally – that its exhausting to battle our ways through the miniscule and massive challenges surrounding us every day right now. If you saw my weekly video message on Wednesday you heard me and my husband Jason talking about what a rough week it’s been around our house. Patience has been in shorter supply. Sadness and maybe even some atypical low-grade depression are more at the surface. We’ve been feeling frustrated about pretty much All The Things and also a little afraid of the long-haul nature of this COVID crisis, and of the reality that life isn’t ever going to be quite the same anymore.

I know because you’ve told me that things are feeling heavy for you, too. Loneliness is taking a new kind of toll for many of us, even for the proudest self-proclaimed introverts among us. Some of us are regular visitors to hospitals and clinics for health concerns that have nothing to do with COVID, except that they suddenly have everything to do with COVID because showing up to a hospital feels risky right now, even when it’s necessary. Some of us are separated from loved ones who are ill, or who are nearing the end of life, or who have died very recently, and the grief of all of that is just too much to bear. Some of us have lost jobs or have taken significant pay cuts or have been furloughed, and the financial stress on top of everything else is enough to almost topple us. Some of us live with depression or anxiety that might be relatively well-managed in normal times, but these aren’t normal times and our emotional health is suffering. Some of us are feeling bewildering signs that our overall wellness is just out of whack in ways that we haven’t really experienced before. And these are only the COVID-related parts of our life together. We don’t even have space to think about the climate crisis or the immigration & refugee crisis or the food insecurity crisis or, or, or…

It’s no wonder we long for words of assurance. It’s no wonder that we’d rather look toward that golden heavenly home than face the brokenness that’s both within and all around us. Like Philip in this gospel reading we, too, are apt to ask Jesus, “Alright, where is God? Show us the Mother – the Father – the Heavenly Parent – and we will be satisfied.”

Where is God? 

A close friend of mine named Jen kept a blog through a particular phase of her life. She began one memorable blog post in this way: “I have spent the last week seeing God everywhere, but principally in the disappearing spaces between people.” As I was praying over this text in preparation for this sermon, the memory of this friend’s words became gospel for me. It maybe sounds almost cruel to talk about the disappearing spaces between people as gospel when we’re in the middle of this extreme kind of physical distancing, but just stick with me here.

I have spent the last week seeing God everywhere, but principally in the disappearing spaces between people.

Church, I do think the scriptures promise us an ultimate future dwelling at the God’s side. And I confess my hope that God’s dwelling will be filled to overflowing with all kinds of surprising people – including ones of different faiths. But the promise of an other-worldly, heavenly home isn’t what stands out to me as I read John today. Instead, I hear a recounting of the disappearing spaces between people. I hear a story of relationship…a deep and intimate relationship between Jesus and his friends that is lived out not in the sweet by-and-by but in the grit and pain of an earthly existence which just hard as often as it is not.

And boy, were Jesus and his disciples in the thick of that grit and pain. This particular piece of John’s gospel unfolds on Thursday evening, the night before Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus knows that he will soon leave this world and is trying to prepare his disciples for all that is about to take place. Just a few verses before the reading we heard today, Jesus told the disciples that one of them would soon betray him, and then he tells Peter that he will deny Jesus three times. It’s in this context that Jesus says, as we just heard, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Seriously, Jesus?! How could one’s heart be anything but troubled by all of this? Philip and Thomas and the others are afraid and, frankly, Jesus’ words about going to prepare a place for them, and coming back to take them with him, and reassuring them that they already know the way to the place he’s going, sound, like, actually a little bit crazy. So Thomas says it: “Jesus, we have no idea what you’re talking about. We don’t know where you’re going. We have no idea how to get there.” Jesus says, “Of course you know the way because I am the way, and the truth, and the life. If you have seen the Father, you have seen me. You HAVE seen him, and you know him.” Phillip enters the conversation with his own doubts. “Alright, Lord. SHOW us the Father and we’ll be satisfied.”

The disciples tend to get a bad rap in the gospels. They’re slow to understand and often slow to believe. But I read Thomas and Phillip’s questions and doubts not so much through a lens of thickheadedness. Instead, I see them as an illustration of the disappearing spaces between people…the disappearing spaces between them and Jesus. These disciples have walked a long road with Jesus, and Jesus is telling them that there is still a long and difficult road ahead. Their questions, to me, are an indication of the trust they have in their relationship with Jesus. That trust might not seem evident on the surface of their doubts, but somehow, their relationship with Jesus has deepened to the point where they are unafraid to be vulnerable with him, even in the midst of their fear and anxiety. A pastoral colleague of mine suggested last week that fear and anxiety, in tension with trust, is where we find the beginnings of hope. I think that’s right on.

“I’ve spent the week seeing God everywhere, but principally in the disappearing spaces between people.” This is a story about relationship. It’s about the relationship between Jesus and his friends. It’s also about the relationship between Jesus and the Father – the Mother – the Heavenly Parent. Phillip asks Jesus to show them the Father, and Jesus says, “Friends, you already know the Father because you know me. We dwell together, one within the other. There is no space at all between us. Believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. But if you can’t, believe because of the works themselves.” And oh, what works they have been!! The Way of Jesus, which these disciples have walked along with him, has been marked by acts of love that reveal the very face of God. Healing the sick. Raising the dead. Turning water into wine at a big ol’ party. Shedding holy tears along with his friends who were nearly destroyed with grief. Creating huge feasts for thousands of people out of simple fish and bread. Earthy, tangible works that change lives here and now, in this present moment, in this very time.

Beloved of God, these are anxious times. Here’s what I wonder. Dare we put that anxiety in tension with trust in the same Jesus who calls us just like he called those first disciples…who calls us again and again to allow the spaces between us and him to disappear…who calls us over and over into a deep and intimate relationship with himself? Dare we find hope in the midst of this anxiety? We HAVE seen God because we know Jesus. And we know Jesus through the radical ways in which he lived and loved and healed and served. We know Jesus for the ways he still shows up in the grit and pain of this earthly existence. Through his life, death, and resurrection he dissolved the spaces between us and him so that we might be freed to show a dead and dying world what resurrection looks like, feels like, smells like, and tastes like right here, right now. Yes, even in the midst of a pandemic.

You know the way to the place Jesus is going because you have already seen it. So as we gather again today around the abundant feast of bread and wine, rooted in relationship with the one who raises us from the graves of our own fears and anxieties, may we dare to live out the hope we find there. You know the way to the place Jesus is going because you have already seen it. So go! In whatever ways are safe and appropriate right now, Church, bring the hope you have come to know in Christ to the places he has first gone. Send notes of support to the sick and the suffering and to those who care for them, right down to the hospital custodians. Join the BEDS Plus meal train and provide for the hungry and the poor. Learn about Ahmaud Abery’s story and advocate on behalf of those who are victims of race-based violence in this country. Drop a care package on the porch of the neighbors you barely know, or make a gift to ELCA World Hunger in support of our neighbors across the oceans. And then notice as the spaces between God’s people begin to disappear, in spite of our physical distance.  Amen.