This is a sermon by Jessica Ketola from September 15, 2024 @ The Practicing Church.

GENESIS 1:26-31
Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”
   So God created human beings in his own image.
    In the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.
Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—everything that has life.” And that is what happened. Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!

Over the last few weeks, we have contemplated this Creator God both transcendent and immanent whose breath is in our lungs and whose image we bear. We are crowned with glory and honor, love and compassion. We are wonderfully made, our bodies, souls, and minds are formed by God and deemed very good. And this morning, we contemplate this God who has made us from the dust. What is the significance of this? I believe it reveals our interconnectedness with all of creation, with the land, with our place.
 
“Isn't it something that in Genesis, God makes a home for things before God makes the thing? Not the fish first but the sea. Not the bird first but the sky. Not the human first but the garden. I like to think of God hunched over in the garden, fingernails hugging the brown soil, mighty hands cradling mud like it's the last flame in a windstorm. A God who says, Not out of my own womb but out of this here dust will I make you. Place has always been the thing that made us. We cannot escape being formed by it.”
― Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
 
This earth, this ground, this place is sacred, meant to be a home for the community of creation. For if we look here at Genesis 1, we see that God put humanity in a place, the garden of Eden, and this place, this creation, was integral to their vocation. In this story of Genesis, God creates a home for humans to thrive in. For as the 2nd century theologian, Irenaeus has said, “The glory of God is a human fully alive." Here we see this thriving occurs within a context, within a community of Shalom. Shalom is this Biblical concept meaning the webbing together of God, humans and all creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.
 
So core to our human vocation is this idea of stewarding the earth within this community of creation as ambassadors of God’s goodness on the earth. We see God has placed us within this context of creation in which all of the trees and plants, fish and animals are given to us as gifts to steward and enjoy.
 
“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.”
― Wendell Berry
 
Yet today, we live largely above place. In the midst of globalization, technology, and hyper mobility, place has become invisible. Our lives now revolve around the automobile where we have the ability to drive out of our neighborhoods and find life wherever we choose. We can hop on a plane and be half way around the world tomorrow. Most of us have lived in many different houses and places, we’ve moved across the country for jobs or school. By some estimates, Americans now change residences an average of fourteen times in their lives. And this has profoundly shaped the church. Where folks used to find a church in their neighborhood, now people travel out of their neighborhoods to church shop for the church with the best programs. So we as a society have become displaced.
 
We spend much of our lives on screens where we chat with our clients and colleagues from all over the country and world. Social media creates this virtual reality where we have thousands of friends on social media and we have never been more lonely. We can be voyeurs and consumers of experiences from all over the globe, yet we have never been more empty. We have bought into this myth of individualism and self-preservation. We are a culture who has traded the real for the virtual, the local for the global, embodied wisdom for artificial intelligence. And all the bedrocks for human flourishing in our society such as good nourishment, rest, movement, healthy relationships, meaning, and rich spirituality are being compromised by the gods of empire, greed, narcissism, and exploitation. As a society, we are terrified—profoundly anxious suffering from deep fragmentation. For when we abdicate our God-given vocations, harm comes to our communities and neighborhoods. Today, we are seeing the great unraveling of the fabric of our society.
 
Yet if this anxiety is caused by alienation, it can be remedied by a return to belonging.

​Have any of you ever had a panic attack or sever anxiety? You may have been encouraged to practice the grounding technique of the five senses. What’s one thing you smell? Tell me two things you hear. Riley says, “There is a mysterious entanglement between our welfare and our capacity to ground ourselves in a particular place. We are meant to be connected to it.” The simple beholding of place can slow your heart and steady your breath.
 
Riley goes on to say, “I used to romanticize a nomadic existence. I used to think it was a requisite for “finding myself”—to travel around untethered until I stumbled upon a realness in me. It makes me wince to think that I thought I could learn myself by untethering. I’m very skeptical of this today.”
 
“For those of us whose sense of place speaks more of trauma than of belonging, it is understandable to think that the sole and sacred solution would be to belong nowhere at all. But this is alienation masquerading as freedom. It is a dangerous conflation. French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil said, ”To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” Alienation and trauma of place are best met not with dislocation but with belonging, with a defiant rootedness, even if those roots stretch out to new and safer places” (19).
 
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. We are meant to be rooted—to belong to a place and a people.
 
"Place is primarily a relational concept. When the Creator made our world, he was creating the place for relationship between God and all of creation. From that relational place on the earth comes a model of contextualization. God always gives the good news of the welcoming desire for relationship in a particular place.” – Randy Woodley
 
We are meant for connection, to be at home in our bodies and in our place in harmony with the community of shalom. Yet we know that in the story of humanity, this Shalom was disrupted. Adam and Eve chose to mistrust God by seeking to transcend their humanity and their creaturely limits. They wanted to become God.  Even though they lived in paradise with every good thing, they believed this lie of scarcity that God was holding out on them, that the grass was greener outside of their place.  Immediately, they began to experience the pain of rupture and shame as the goodness, trust, and harmony of relationship was shattered. And what do they do? They hide in shame, blame the other, and avoid their God-given responsibility. And in doing so, they are displaced from the garden.
 
We have the same temptation today. We either try to transcend our human limits – trying to be everywhere, everything, all at once, driving ourselves to exhaustion and burn out. Or we avoid responsibility. We fail to be faithfully present in our places—to love our neighbors, to care for the land, to steward creation for future generations. Through Jesus, this rupture of shalom is now being redeemed.

“There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” ― Wendell Berry, Given

“Western peoples need to develop a more honest history and a shalom-oriented theology, in practical partnership with the indigenous peoples of the world, to gain a better understanding of place. I suggest that the way forward is both structural and relational, requiring honest historical and theological rethinking and a coming to grips with the following concerns: colonialism and neocolonialism; the way current forms of capitalism resist shalom; the way racism affects our thinking and relationships; the practical implications for living on stolen land; how violence is thought to be needed in order to maintain the present system; what true reconciliation looks like. We need to find ways to share power, and we should seek to understand what justice issues are still unresolved among indigenous and other disempowered peoples." – Randy Woodley
 
How do we return to faithful presence?
 
I believe we return to awe, to wonder. Poets like Wendell Berry and Cole Arthur Riley and Mary Oliver remind us of our vocation to worship, to be full of gratitude and wonder.  When I get out in nature, it is not long before I realize that I am but creature in complete and total awe of the Creator who has created this beautifully complex and interconnected world. As I spent time on retreat, I would stare hours at the huge evergreens, the Salish sea, the hummingbirds. As Mary Oliver writes, “To notice the sunflowers, the hummingbird, the blue plums, the clam deep in the speckled sand, to recover my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.” In doing so, we remember that we are but dust, and to dust we will return. We remember our human frame and limits.
 
Simultaneously, we remember our vocation, our responsibility to our neighbor and this family of creation. We quit abdicating our responsibility as citizens and neighbors, and we begin to care about the local economies of our place, trading mindless consumption for intentional cultivation, planting gardens, caring for the land, and co-creating communities of shalom. For there is no shalom when our neighbor is hungry or without. Faithful presence means we become responsible to the flourishing of our neighborhoods.
 
Wendell Berry talks about his path toward faithful presence.
 
“Until modern times, we focused a great deal of the best of our thought upon rituals of return to the human condition. Seeking enlightenment or the Promised Land or the way home, a man would go or be forced to go into the wilderness, measure himself against the Creation, recognize finally his true place within it, and thus be saved both from pride and from despair. Seeing himself as a tiny member of a world he cannot comprehend or master or in any final sense possess, he cannot possibly think of himself as a god. And by the same token, since he shares in, depends upon, and is graced by all of which he is a part, neither can he become a fiend; he cannot descend into the final despair of destructiveness. Returning from the wilderness, he becomes a restorer of order, a preserver. He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors his forebears and his heritage, and gives his blessing to his successors. He embodies the passing of human time, living and dying within the human limits of grief and joy. ("The Body and the Earth," 95)” ― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
 
This has ramifications for how we are to be as the church. We believe that the Spirit is inviting us to return to faithful presence in the particularities of our places and neighborhoods. In the model of Jesus, who moved into the neighborhood, to show what God was like, we are invited to get proximate (Jn 1). Jesus, who being God, humbled himself, giving up power and privilege, to enter into our world in order to heal the great ruptures of sin (Phil 2). We too, are invited to give up our power and privilege, our transcendence and our avoidance, to join in God’s work of shalom in our places.
 
Reflection //
 
What does this look like in our everyday lives?

What does it mean to embrace our limits to become rooted in a place?
 
What does it mean to stop avoiding but to be responsible to our places?

​I was asked to post my talk from Sunday. Much of this discussion is drawing from Dr. Willie James Jennings commentary, Acts.

We’ve been journeying through the book of Acts looking at the birth of the church and the movement of the Spirit to bring Jesus’ reign of healing and renewal on the earth. The revolution had begun. The revolution continues today in us as God’s healing community. For the revolutionary movement that began in Jesus is now being lived out in his followers. For through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, humanity is being redeemed and a new community of equality, dignity, and inclusion was emerging as the disciples were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and restored in their vocations to be God’s image bearers on the earth.
 
This week's text finds us in chapter 4. So far, we’ve read about Jesus sending his followers to be healing agents in the world, ascending to the Father, and then pouring out the Spirit at Pentecost on all people in a remarkable in-breaking of the kingdom where men and women, slave and free, rich and poor, and many cultures and nations gathered in Jerusalem that day heard the gospel in their own language. The long-awaited age of salvation had come, and the timid and confused disciples were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit and preached with boldness and conviction. Thousands joined this revolutionary Jesus movement to become a part of this new Jewish community marked by generosity, inclusion, and devotion.
 
I invite you to listen to a tale of two temples. For we begin to see the conflict escalate between the religious authorities who held power in the Jerusalem temple and this revolutionary community who are now the new temple filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered to do the healing ministry of Jesus. Remember, the Holy of Holies was the sacred chamber in the temple of God’s presence that only the high priests could access, yet when the rupture of sin was healed through Jesus, the veil was torn open. On Pentecost, the ancient prophecies were fulfilled as the Spirit of God was poured out on this new community. Yet we begin to see the conflict between these two temple realities here in Acts almost in parallel fashion. Last week, we recounted the story of Peter and John going to the temple and healing the lame man. Yet now we see that they are facing opposition from the powers, not unlike Jesus did. Thus, we see this template emerge—that to follow Jesus and to do the liberating, healing works of Jesus ensures that we will upset the powers.
 
In my own life, I’ve experienced this a number of times. I remember distinctly when I was about 18, we were hosting a prayer meeting to pray for the youth in our city on Sunday nights. And I was on volunteer staff for a big church at the time. When the Spirit began to really show up in our meetings, word got out. We began to invite some of our friends who were tired and burnt out from all the ministry to come and find refreshing and soak in the presence of God. For the Spirit was really moving. But this threatened the powers. And it wasn’t long before I was called into the youth pastor’s office and essentially interrogated. Eventually they shut our meeting down because our meeting wasn’t sanctioned by them. We were a threat. This story illustrates the tension surrounding the nature of God’s temple and the nature of God’s church. Is it a building, an organization, or an institution that can be controlled and curated? Or is it the wild and untamable Spirit embodied in the community of God's people and poured out indiscriminately in the world?
 
I invite you to read the text in Acts 4:1-22 and see what stands out? Notice where there is some conflict for you in this passage? What is the Spirit disrupting? Where is there some clarity for you in this passage? What is the Spirit confirming?
 
While Peter and John were addressing the people, the priests, the chief of the Temple police, and some Sadducees came up, indignant that these upstart apostles were instructing the people and proclaiming that the resurrection from the dead had taken place in Jesus. They arrested them and threw them in jail until morning, for by now it was late in the evening. But many of those who listened had already believed the Message—in round numbers about five thousand!
 
The next day a meeting was called in Jerusalem. The rulers, religious leaders, religion scholars, Annas the Chief Priest, Caiaphas, John, Alexander—everybody who was anybody was there. They stood Peter and John in the middle of the room and grilled them: “Who put you in charge here? What business do you have doing this?”
 
With that, Peter, full of the Holy Spirit, let loose: “Rulers and leaders of the people, if we have been brought to trial today for helping a sick man, put under investigation regarding this healing, I’ll be completely frank with you—we have nothing to hide. By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the One you killed on a cross, the One God raised from the dead, by means of his name this man stands before you healthy and whole. Jesus is ‘the stone you masons threw out, which is now the cornerstone.’ Salvation comes no other way; no other name has been or will be given to us by which we can be saved, only this one.”
 
They couldn’t take their eyes off them—Peter and John standing there so confident, so sure of themselves! Their fascination deepened when they realized these two were laymen with no training in Scripture or formal education. They recognized them as companions of Jesus, but with the man right before them, seeing him standing there so upright—so healed!—what could they say against that?
 
They sent them out of the room so they could work out a plan. They talked it over: “What can we do with these men? By now it’s known all over town that a miracle has occurred, and that they are behind it. There is no way we can refute that. But so that it doesn’t go any further, let’s silence them with threats so they won’t dare to use Jesus’ name ever again with anyone.”
 
They called them back and warned them that they were on no account ever again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John spoke right back, “Whether it’s right in God’s eyes to listen to you rather than to God, you decide. As for us, there’s no question—we can’t keep quiet about what we’ve seen and heard.”
 
The religious leaders renewed their threats, but then released them. They couldn’t come up with a charge that would stick, that would keep them in jail. The people wouldn’t have stood for it—they were all praising God over what had happened. The man who had been miraculously healed was over forty years old.
 
What I notice is that liberation is disruptive. For as soon as the disciples began to join in the healing ministry of Jesus, they face the same opposition from those who killed him. Peter preached with boldness the gospel of Jesus, and yet these words became fighting words the moment that they brought concrete liberation for broken people. These words brought about direct confrontation with those in power. Jesus not only spoke these words but was the Word and challenged and confronted the powers, both spiritual and human. In some ways, this moment was inevitable. The struggle against those in power that marked the life and death of Jesus was coming for them as well. The great illusion that we are susceptible to is that as followers of Jesus we can live a path different from Jesus and his disciples. We believe that somehow we can be loved or at least liked or at least tolerated or ignored by those with real power in the world. Yet this illusion forgets our location—that we are common, everyday people proclaiming liberation and the provocative truth that violence and death are no longer the ultimate power.  Jesus is risen!

These words touch two intersecting nerves, the religious and the political. We see this dangerous cocktail portrayed today in Christian nationalism. For some, it is heresy to say that Jesus is the power of God. For others it is sedition to say that Jesus is the power. Only criminals touch nerves at this level and receive the consequences: for they were arrested and put in custody. Theologian Willie James Jennings says this:

"Real preaching and authentic teaching is inextricably bound to real criminality. Christians of the modern West have never really grasped our deep connection to the criminal mind. We should always understand ourselves as those called to be secular critics who unrelentingly call into question the gods of the age – that is the prevailing social, cultural, political, economic, and academic logics that support or are at ease with the status quo of grotesquely differentiated wealth and poverty, uneven access to the necessary resources for life and health, and forms of sublimely stubborn oppression masked inside social conventions." 

The powers always embody and support the status quo that keeps people imprisoned and oppressed. So what does it mean that to follow Jesus is to become a criminal disciple? What does it mean  to get into some good trouble, John Lewis style?
 
This weekend, we celebrate Juneteenth and the spirituality of liberation that was practiced by enslaved people, who despite the legal and social reality, sang spirituals that declared healing was coming and  salvation was possible. Our Black brothers and sisters have cultivated a deep spirituality that we must learn from. They know that liberation means becoming an enemy of the state. They know the powers that seek to incarcerate, enslave, kill, and oppress—that continue to withhold full emancipation for Black Americans today.  And yet, they have cultivated a deep hope and black joy as resistance to the powers as they continue to sing, “There is a balm in Gilead, this I know, this I know.”
 
Peter and John are judged just as Jesus is judged, but Jesus had gone before and showed them the way. Instead of trying to escape the place of judgment, they seize it. And Peter becomes like the great jazz master, Louis Armstrong. He states this motif that will be repeated again and again with endless variations. Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. The table is being turned over, and an upside down world is being turned right side up in these words. Peter stands next to the man God has healed not by the powers of the world nor the elite, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet this threatens the powers. Peter is in essence saying,  "You do not have the power of God to heal the broken. You do not have the power to raise the dead. You do not have the power to save. Only Jesus can."
 
Peter begins to open the scriptures even as Jesus did, quoting Psalm 118, a text the people would have been very familiar with from their own scriptures. Yet Peter reveals Jesus as the stone that was rejected by the builder, but has become the cornerstone. These again were provocative words directly tying Jesus to their Messianic hopes. The Lord who is their strength and song and has become their salvation. As the healed man who had been disabled his whole life now stands clutching their side, this connection between salvation and healing cannot be missed. These words are often interchanged throughout the scripture. Salvation is a salve, a healing balm. Jesus is the cornerstone for this new community, and yet the builders rejected him. The builders are the judges and the powerful who institutionalize life, enact social orders, and create unjust systemic structures. Yet Jesus is enacting a new social order that saves, heals, and liberates. No one else can do that.
 
Jesus dismantles the dichotomy between the spiritual and the social. Notice what the man whom Peter and John healed does. He “entered the temple,” where, as a lame man, he was never allowed before. This salvation, this healing, restores him to community. This community is visceral, embodied, palpable, personal. What a stunning moment it must have been for a beggar who had sat alone all day, ostracized, his disability the topic of discussion, his condition the cause of sideways glances— now to be welcomed into community and invited into God’s presence. This had social, economic, cultural, and political ramifications. What salvation! What healing! What liberation!
 
The new temple of Jesus community is now where people encounter God’s generosity and healing presence. In truth, this is what the old temple was always meant to be. Yet now God’s healing presence was unleashed by the Spirit upon the common, everyday people to heal all that is broken. And this is our same invitation today if....

If we will reject the status quo and dare to challenge and disrupt the powers and gods of the day in order to join the liberating and healing community of Jesus.

​In Advent, we sing the haunting words, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, remembering that Christ has come as Love incarnate, in flesh and blood, to liberate all creation that is groaning and longing for redemption. A redemption in which we now participate, and the consummation of which we anticipate.

This is our hope in a world brimming with suffering and turmoil. It is this hope, however faint at times, that God is here with us, our Immanuel. Christ came as Creator to redeem all of creation.

"For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God."

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies."[Romans 8:19-23]

We consider the glory and the scandal of a God who entered into the bodily experience of humanity and the grit and dirt of earth suffering under the tyranny of evil — in order to recreate it!

There is much we can learn as we humbly realize our place in creation not as gods but as creatures and stewards of God's glory, healing, and beauty on the earth.

"Creation is God’s gift to us as a first teacher and she is a teacher for life. Although God may be an abstraction to us, in spite of all our efforts to make God concrete through theology, story, ceremony, and song, creation is the one solid, concretized demonstration where God exists. God embodies the wonders of sunrise to sunset each day. God shows God’s self in the rainbow, the song of the loon, and the dance of the Sage Grouse. God’s presence is there in the birth of every living creature and again in its death. And God is revealed throughout the life of every single cell and every complex system on earth and beyond."

"Each of us, along with all living creatures, encounters creation before we can read or understand ideas about religion. Shared by all, that primordial sense of coming to grips with our earthly context is humanity’s deepest spirituality. The earth is our first, most consistent, and most continuous teacher." - Randy Woodley, Mission and the Cultural Other: A Closer Look.

This Advent, we long to reclaim an earthy and embodied spirituality that takes the incarnation of Christ seriously. Jesus came in flesh and blood, in vulnerability, humility, and weakness. Jesus entered into a particular culture, place, and time — born to a poor family in a backwoods town in an occupied land.

Our Immanuel, is still here, God with us, in bodies and in dirt.


by Jessica Ketola

​I've been writing more about what it means to be a Christian in the dirt — meaning how we live the incarnation, this mystery of glory housed in flesh and bone, embodying love and stubborn hope for new creation in the soil of our everyday lives and the places we inhabit.

Radical Hospitality as the scandalous welcome of God is central to our practices as a faith community. For the kingdom of God is like a big, long banqueting table, full of friends, strangers, neighbors, misfits, and sojourners. I love the invitation of the table. For there is something so earthy, bodily, and yet mystical that happens around the table. When we break bread together, we feel a sense of connection, delight, community, and presence.

So much of how we imagine gathering as the community of God’s people is around the table. Hospitality has been a pillar of Christianity over the millennia as Christians have cared for the sick, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. Far from the modern, Martha-Stewart-influenced notions of hospitality meant to impress, hospitality was the means of grace to care for those in need. “Welcoming the stranger… is the most often repeated commandment in the Hebrew Scriptures, with the exception of the imperative to worship the one and only God" (Theologian Orland Espín).

In the New Testament, Jesus displayed a radical inclusivity and welcome in which he modeled a spirituality that is shown to the least of these — the hungry, the needy, the prisoner, and the sick (Matt 25). Hospitality comes from two Greek words: philos which means “friend” and xenos which means “stranger.”

Hospitality is the love of strangers.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to love our neighbor and the stranger —those who are often excluded and neglected in society. And this is very challenging today. We are so fragmented in our society. We don’t know our neighbor. We have largely outsourced and institutionalized care for the stranger. We are prone to gather in our homogenous groups, and we don’t often bump up against those who are different from us. We are often isolated from the real needs and hunger of the oppressed and the poor. And we are afraid…that we’ll be overwhelmed, that we’ll be pushed to our limits, that we won’t have enough time, money, and resources…

Yet, Jesus invites us into another way — a way of abundance that combats the scarcity we feel. We are invited into radical love and generosity. Jesus modeled a scandalous and highly controversial faith that welcomed and included those in society who were outsiders. This greatly offended the Pharisees and still offends us today.

Jesus befriended those on the margins, those who were invisible, those who were oppressed, and those without power, privilege, and voice. And he was highly criticized by the religious people of the day for hanging out with the wrong people. The wrong race, the wrong religion, the wrong gender, the wrong status. But we must understand this.

This. Is. The Gospel.

Its essence is radical welcome and inclusion. We see this as Jesus welcomed women, Samaritans, crooks, adulterers, and lepers, many of who were considered to be no less than dogs. No one is outside of God’s mercy and grace. This gospel transforms communities. It breaks down all the divides. The kingdom invitation is for everyone. Slave and free. Rich and poor. Educated and uneducated. Jew & Gentile. Christian & Muslim. Indigenous and refugee. Every shade of black, brown, and white. Straight and gay. Conservative and liberal. Everyone is invited to the table of God.

Because of this, I believe that radical hospitality is central to who we are as a church. For it is the essence of the kingdom.

This is the extravagance of the feast of God.


by Jessica Ketola​

We've been talking about our value of Creative Liberation — a value at the heart of God's work on the earth. Yet, so often we have read the scriptures from a location of privilege and have failed to see that this gospel is good news to the poor. We must decolonize our faith and decenter whiteness, for the Biblical narrative is largely written from the perspective of those who are oppressed. I believe we must reclaim a faith where our conversion to God demands our conversion to our neighbor. Theologians like James Cone, Gustavo Gutiérrez, William Jennings, Miroslav Volf, Renita Weems, and many others can help us understand liberation as a central theme of the Biblical narrative. One of the gifts of graduate school is being introduced to many different perspectives, ideologies, and thought leaders, and I've been ruminating on the intersection of gospel and culture.

Does the gospel of Jesus Christ transform culture? Many Christians today believe in a gospel that transforms the soul but not society. This question then lies at the heart of a Christian’s socio-political understanding. For me, it is a resounding “yes.”

For if the arc of scripture begins with the goodness and shalom of Creation and ends with its restoration in New Creation, then it follows that we are to be participants in this work of transformation. “Can the conclusion be avoided that not only is shalom God’s cause in the world but that all who believe in Jesus will, along with him, engage in the works of shalom? Shalom is both God’s cause in the world and our human calling.”[1] Shalom is the underpinning for a socio-political understanding that seeks human flourishing, justice, and right relationships with God, self, neighbor, and creation. This vision of human happiness and wholeness found in the inseparable love of God and neighbor informs my belief in a Christ who transforms culture.

Ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr’s models for Christ and Culture prove helpful here. [2] Two of the most predominant approaches today hold moral weight, Christ Against Culture and Christ Of Culture. The former offers a faith deeply committed to preserving holiness and a counter-cultural life. The latter offers an engagement with culture and an ability to contextualize faith in the language and forms of the day. Yet, one without the other offers a misshapen gospel. I believe that Christ Transforming Culture demonstrates an incarnational model that holds these two together — in love of God and neighbor, piety and justice, love incarnate in the neighborhood for the flourishing of all. We need a "radical evangelicalism [that] offers a tradition and a trajectory that is biblically based, Christ-centered, and socially involved—a gospel that embraces forgiveness and holiness for individuals and redemption and wholeness for the world." [3]

It is a travesty that piety has been separated from justice in the sociopolitical sphere. For politics is nothing more than the interrelationships between people and how power is shared, a realm ripe for the preservation of salt, liberation from oppression, and restoration of communities.[4] This kingdom liberation does not locate itself in the kingdoms and empires of this world – either in confusing God’s kingdom with a political agenda or in hopes of gaining worldly power or dominion. Rather, it is located once again in the justice and shalom of “right relationship” or “righteousness.” It is in the explicit call of scripture to care for the most vulnerable and needy in our communities, “not in rights asserted against one another” [5] but in responsibilities of humanity’s covenantal bond and “inescapable mutuality.”[6] Faith without works is dead, and a religion that has largely failed to address the injustices of our times is an impotent one. “Christians have not done enough in this area of conversion to the neighbor, to social justice, to history. They have not perceived clearly enough yet that to know God is to do justice.” [7]

2020 was an apocalyptic year, a year of revelation. Amidst pandemic and protest, the deep seeds of racism and white supremacy were exposed in ways that captured our attention. The brutal violence white people’s privilege had distanced them from now played over and over on screens. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder that catalyzed demonstrations all across our nation, it was increasingly difficult to believe that racism was a part of our ugly past.[8] Though this was nothing new for black, latinx, or asian american communities, many white folks awakened to the systemic and persistent evil of white supremacy. This was a time of grief, outrage, and protest amidst the tide of police brutality against black and brown bodies. The prophets cried out, “I can’t breathe.” [9]

You can be sure that God heard their cries. For our God is a God on the side of the oppressed — those who are crushed, degraded, humiliated, exploited, impoverished, defrauded, and enslaved. Yet what was the response of God’s people? Did the Church hear their cries?

Many did not. Many chose to stay clear of the “politics” of the day in a Christ Against Culture stance. Others became even more entrenched in the particular ideology of their political party both right and left, unwilling to converse with the “other” in a Christ Of Culture approach. The polarizing divides were profound — splitting apart families, friends, and churches.

Similar to previous times of civil unrest, there was “the appalling silence of the good people” within the white church, who professed their love for all lives, denied their culpability, and proved to be a “great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom.” [10] There was a refusal to see, let alone address, the systemic nature of racism, resorting once again to a gospel that sanctions the personal over the social. The roots of this bifurcation go back to our country’s inception in the doctrine of the "spirituality of the church." This spirituality attempted to extricate the church from addressing the social evils of slavery, promoting a “Christianity [that] could save one’s soul but not break one’s chains.” [11] Yet, this hideous distortion of the gospel repeats in response to the outcries to value black lives. “Where were the saints trying to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves [oppressed communities], but to do away with slavery [the systems that brutalize and oppress communities]?” [12] Who was listening to the black and brown prophets of the day?

Fortunately, there is a remnant of Christians who believe that Christ Transforms Culture in the sociopolitical sphere. Those who were willing to repent of America’s greatest sin, white supremacy, offering more than “thoughts and prayers.” They listened deeply to a perspective that contradicted their own. They learned a hard and grievous history. They stood in solidarity with the oppressed in protests and vigils. They followed the prophetic witness of African American, Native American, Asian American, and Latinx theologians and church leaders, engaging in civil action. They spoke out against white supremacy in their pulpits and among their peers not without cost, insisting that all created in the divine image share in equity and justice. They wrestled profoundly and lamented their complicity, beginning to find ways to take up the cause of the oppressed, amplify marginalized voices, and elevate black lives.

Yet Christians today must commit to the long, hard road of a lived repentance, “for our conversion to the Lord implies this conversion to our neighbor” — a radical transformation where we come to know “Christ present in exploited and oppressed persons.” [13] “We are not to stand around, hands folded, waiting for shalom to arrive. We are workers in God’s cause,” [14] joining the Spirit’s work of peace-making, justice, and liberation on the earth.


by Jessica Ketola


[1] Nicholas Wolterstorff, “For Justice with Shalom”, in Until Justice and Peace Embrace: The Kuyper Lectures for 1981 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 72.
[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, “Types of Christian Ethics,” In Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture, Glen H. Stassen, Diane M. Yeager, and John Howard Yoder (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 15-29.
[3] Donald W. Dayton, Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 200.
[4] Matthew 5:13, Isaiah 58: 6-7, 12
[5] Karen Lebacqz, “Implications for a Theory of Justice,” in From Christ to the World: Readings in Christian Ethics, eds. Wayne Boulton, Thomas Kennedy, and Allen Verhey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 257.
[6] Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” The Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr, 1963, 1.
[7] Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Liberating Spirituality,” in Spiritual Writings (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011), 49.
[8] “‘I Can’t Breathe’: The Refrain That Reignited a Movement,” Amnesty International, June 30, 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/i-cant-breathe-refrain-reignited-movement.
[9] Jessica Ketola, “A Time of Reckoning, Revelation, Repentance, and Reformation: The Epiphany of America’s Greatest Sin,” Medium, January 12, 2021, https://medium.com/interfaith-now/a-time-of-reckoning-revelation-repentance-and-reformation-7003c588875b.
[10] King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 4.
[11] Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 38.
[12] Kathleen Jorden, “The Nonviolence of Dorothy Day,” in From Christ to the World: Readings in Christian Ethics, eds. Wayne Boulton, Thomas Kennedy, and Allen Verhey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 443.
[13] Gutiérrez, “Liberating Spirituality,” 48.
[14] Wolterstorff, “For Justice with Shalom,” 72.

Photo: Touching Strangers Series by Richard Renaldi

As a community, we are shaped by our shared values —those things that we fiercely love and hold dear, our "non-negotiables"  — one of which is  is Deep Listening.

DEEP LISTENING
We listen deeply to the Spirit at work within our own stories, the stories of our neighbors, and the stories of our place until we become fully immersed in the mystery of God’s Story of love that heals us and heals the world.

This posture of Deep Listening locates us well in the humility and self-giving love of Christ's example. Jesus Christ, who spoke Creation into existence, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself of all privilege and power to take on our humanity and enter our world, laying down his life for love (Philippians 2). The scandal of the incarnation is profound.

We also are invited into this cruciform practice to enter the world of others for the sake of love. Yet often, we are caught up in our own worlds, occupied with our own self-interests and the demands of our lives. How do we repent, shift, and orient our lives differently in order to live lives of love?

How do we enter the worlds of others?

​How do we give up our privilege, our biases, our comfort, and our preconceived ideas to truly listen — deeply and thoughtfully? How do we pause before rushing in with our own experiences and worldviews? How do we slow down to listen well and let our hearts be impacted by the stories of our neighbors?

This is vital as we seek to incarnate love in our everyday lives. History is full of the atrocities of imperialism, colonization, racism, and gentrification. Often we fail to enter the world of the other, to esteem their interests higher than ourselves, to truly listen and honor the wisdom of their stories. “For our conversion to the Lord implies this conversion to our neighbor” — a radical transformation where we come to know “Christ present in exploited and oppressed persons.”[1] We are called to listen deeply to the stories that contradict our own, allowing them to affect us, shape us, and form us in the radical love of Christ.


[1] Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Liberating Spirituality,” in Spiritual Writings (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011), 49.

by Jessica Ketola
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Sometimes it seems overly idealistic or naive to continue talking about the beautiful community God has called us to when the world around is groaning and heaving with tumultuous birth pains. For what good does it do to talk about love and justice in a world of hate, violence, and injustice? Yet, I am reminded that the self-giving, non-violent, enemy love that Jesus preached and embodied has the power to change the world.

Few are those who truly believe this, and fewer still are those who actually live it out. Dorothy Day was one of them. Day was a social activist, journalist, Catholic convert, mother, political radical, pacifist, servant of God, and more. Yet Day embodied what it means to put faith into action for social justice, deeply seated in her conviction to serve the poor and vulnerable. Her prophetic witness continues today.

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself, "What else is the world interested in?" What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships. God is Love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship with each other of love. We want with all our hearts to love, to be loved. And not just in the family but to look upon all as our mothers, sisters, brothers, children. It is when we love the most intensely and most humanly, that we can recognize how tepid is our love for others. The keenness and intensity of love brings with it suffering, of course, but joy too because it is a foretaste of heaven.*
​
As you seek to live into a way of love, let this encourage your hearts. It is only within the love of God and neighbor that we see heaven here on earth. This is the way God's kingdom comes.
So we pray for the Spirit of God to infuse our hearts, minds, spirits, and bodies with the power of love. May we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to perceive God's redemptive work all around us. And may we have the courage to take some risks, to put our bodies in the way of grace, to step in and join God there. Enter into the mystery of communion you were created for. Love and be loved.


​by Jessica Ketola

* Excerpt from "On Pilgrimage," The Catholic Worker, April 1948, 1, 2, 11.

More Than Enough
Last Sunday, we talked about the Spirit-empowered community that is activated and graced with spiritual gifts. These rich and varied gifts are meant to function together as a body. The metaphor of the human body in I Corinthians 12 is a provocative critique of the individualism of church life today. Yet, we see that whenever the Spirit is poured out in renewal movements beginning with the first Pentecost and throughout church history, this type of Koinonia community emerges. Koinonia (κοινωνία) is the New Testament Greek word referring to shared community, fellowship, joint participation, and gifts jointly contributed. It is what happens when the Spirit indwells the beloved community.

"There was an intense sense of togetherness among all who believed; they shared all their material possessions in trust. They sold any possessions and goods that did not benefit the community and used the money to help everyone in need. They were unified as they worshiped at the temple day after day. In homes, they broke bread and shared meals with glad and generous hearts." (Acts 2:44-46)

Revival and reform movements throughout church history are accompanied by a return to primitive Christianity, social concern for the poor and the marginalized, generosity, sharing of resources, and egalitarian impulses that catalyze the "ordinary" person to contribute their gifts. When this happens, we know the Spirit is at work!

For this does not happen naturally. You know those people. You know yourself. We tend to be self-absorbed and myopically focused on meeting our own needs. Overwhelmed with the demands of life, we believe the lie that there is not enough. It is only by the Spirit of God that we are graced to live into another reality. When the community comes together to offer their gifts, there is always an abundance of riches. There is always more than enough.

The Story of Stone Soup
The Story of Stone Soup is an old, European folk tale that illuminates the power of community to move us from scarcity to abundance.

Once upon a time, there was a great famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. (Perhaps they hid their toilet paper too.) One day, a kindly-looking stranger came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.

“There’s not a bite to eat in the whole province,” he was told. “Better keep moving on.”

“Oh, I have everything I need,” he said. “In fact, I was thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you.” He pulled an iron cauldron from his wagon, filled it with water, and built a fire under it. Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a velvet bag and dropped it into the water.

By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the square or watched from their windows. As the stranger sniffed the “broth” and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their skepticism.

“Ahh,” the stranger said to himself rather loudly, “I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage — that’s hard to beat.”

Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he’d retrieved from its hiding place and added it to the pot.

“Wonderful” cried the stranger. “You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef as well, and it was fit for a king.”

The village butcher managed to find some salt beef . . . and so it went, through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for all.

This is the power of the Koinonia community and offers a beautiful vision for spiritual gifts. The "magic" of the stone is the unquantifiable Spirit that transforms the ordinary into the sacred, turning a measly two fish and five loaves into a feast for 500. A carrot or onion on its own is a meager bite, but when offered to the collective pot of community, it becomes a delicious meal that nourishes all.

All Things Become Possible
The importance of the neighborhood comes front and center as one of the last vestiges of community today. I see a microcosm of this every week at our neighborhood dinners. Each one brings a bottle of wine, a plate of cookies, a green salad, some warm bread. But when it all comes together, it is a beautiful feast —and feast we do! This Tuesday was especially poignant as we had many new faces and our home overflowed with the abundance of goodness when 28 neighbors came together across different backgrounds, cultures, and stories. Carnitas and barbacoa were piled on warm corn tortillas with guacamole, fresh salsa, Mexican rice, beans, and cornbread. Longtime residents shared stories with new homeowners. Culinary artists delighted while the comics entertained. The young and energetic coddled the babies of tired and worn parents. The toddlers and the pups ran in circles buzzing with excitement. Everyone contributed, and everyone was filled. No one left hungry of stomach or heart.

This economy of the Spirit defies scarcity and breeds daring imagination. All things become possible. Small, motley groups of people become the instigators of big, beautiful dreams. Those on the margins of the neighborhood are pulled into the center. The unspectacular and overlooked become goldmines of hope. The most unlikely characters become creators of goodness and healing.

"Those who sign on and depart the system of anxious scarcity become the historymakers in the neighborhood." -Walter Brueggemann

If we are to live into a new imagination of what it means to be the church today, we desperately need the Spirit of God to move in our midst. We need to be filled again, emboldened, and empowered into radical generosity to offer our gifts to each other and to our neighbors in a world in which all things are now possible!


by Jessica Ketola

We have been exploring the myriad of ways that the Spirit moves and speaks to us. Sometimes God moves in ways that are so far outside our western, rational worldview, and sometimes God moves in the minute, ordinary stuff that is easy to miss. A quick read through Acts reveals that God is far more mysterious, wild, active, and powerful than we know! Visions, encounters, strange languages, healings, conversions, earthquakes, prison escapes, people transported in the Spirit (how is that even a thing?), social revolutions, the birth of churches... And yet God also moved in the very ordinary practices of gathering in a home, breaking bread, and learning to share life together. Though often we like to put God in a box that we can understand and control, God defies the box.

We know this because of Jesus, who was definitely an "out-of-the-box" kind of person, perfectly revealed to us what God is like. Full of grace, love, and mercy — and yet kind of a badass revolutionary. He always did the unexpected, upped the ante, turned the tables, reversed power, and shifted the narrative.

So today, the question I'm sitting with is this:

In what ways is God moving that are unexpected? And do we have eyes to see?

Do we have the eyes of faith? It is hard to have faith in such a cynical world, and yet Jesus said that if we have only a mustard seed of faith, we can move mountains.

Jesus was matter-of-fact: “Embrace this God-life. Really embrace it, and nothing will be too much for you. This mountain, for instance: Just say, ‘Go jump in the lake’—no shuffling or hemming and hawing—and it’s as good as done. That’s why I urge you to pray for absolutely everything, ranging from small to large. Include everything as you embrace this God-life, and you’ll get God’s everything. [Mark 11:22-24 The Message]

The very definition of the unexpected means that it will surprise us. Perhaps it is bigger than we dare to imagine. Perhaps it is right under our noses. Perhaps it is hiding in Jesus disguised as the least of these. God, give us eyes to see what you are doing — the people you see, the humble ways you are at work, and the scandalous invitations of the Spirit. 

So what are the mountains in your life that seem immovable?

What seems impossible? Your unbelief? Your love of comfort? Your fear? What are the dreams that you have buried because they are too big or too daunting to acknowledge? If you really give yourself permission to believe that all things are possible with God, what is the Spirit inviting you to?

As followers of Jesus and people of the Spirit, we know that God can do far beyond what is possible in the natural. While we continue to experience heartbreak, loss, and suffering in this world, we live with great hope for we know that God is at work to redeem and restore. 

Saying yes to the wild and unexpected Spirit will take us out of our comfort zones,. It will lead us beyond what we can manage or control. It will push us to the glorious agony of hope, interdependence, and trust. 

My prayer for you this week is that as you spend time recharging in God's presence and listening for the voice of the Spirit, you will be given the gift of the mustard seed. May love immerse you, and hope revive you. May you be given eyes of faith to see the world anew — both in the ordinary particularities of your everyday lives and in the extraordinary ways that God is at work to do more than you can hope or imagine.

Nothing is Impossible.
​
​“It is certain that we may always live close to God in the light of God’s presence, and that such living is an entirely new life for us; that nothing is then impossible for us, because all things are possible with God.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 391

"God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us." [Ephesians 3:20-21 The Message]

As a community, we have been in a process of articulating what we deeply love, what we are passionate about, and what matters most. Through a community process of discernment, we have come up with these collective values:

DEEP LISTENING
 
We listen deeply to the Spirit at work within our own stories, the stories of our neighbors, and the stories of our place until we become fully immersed in the mystery of God’s Story of love that heals us and heals the world.
 
Through deep listening, we embark on the journey inward coming home to the love we were created for. We cultivate sacred rhythms in which we are healed in the loving gaze of God in whom we live and move and have our being. We listen and attend to the Spirit’s deep work within us and through us. We embrace mystery, foster curiosity, hold paradox, and seek to understand the worlds of those who are different from us. We exchange certainty for empathy, resist easy platitudes, and enter into lament as well as celebration. We learn to listen deeply to our own stories, the stories of our neighbors, and the stories of our place in such a way that it provokes us, heals us, and calls us deeper into God’s Story of redemption in the world.
 
 
CREATIVE LIBERATION
 
Made in the divine image, we offer our creativity and gifts joining in God’s work to restore goodness, justice, and peace between us and God, neighbor, ourselves, and all of creation.
 
We are a community of artists, makers, and creators made in the image of God. The ultimate act of creativity is God’s redemption of the world back to its original vision of goodness. We step into our God-given vocation as co-creators to join God’s work of justice and healing in the world. Embarking on the journey outward, we become a launchpad of creative liberation: inspiring and equipping people to become creative activists and peace-making advocates of the Spirit in the contexts in which they live, work, and play. We join in the Jesus movement to bring good news to the poor and liberation to the oppressed, healing broken hearts, opening blind eyes, dismantling unjust systems, creating new social economies, and restoring the environment (Isaiah 61).
 
 
RADICAL HOSPITALITY
 
We extend the wide welcome, belonging, and generosity of the table of God — where the lonely become family, strangers become friends, the disgraced are honored, and enemies become allies in beloved community.
 
We extend the wide welcome, inclusive belonging, and lavish generosity of the table of God. Radical hospitality is the remedy for the isolation and shame we feel, infected with society’s message that we are never enough. We tear down the walls of fear and exclusion and move toward one another on the journey together in self-giving love and commitment. We receive with gratitude the gifts and stories of the other, while respectfully and unashamedly offering others our gifts and stories as well. We feast at the table of extravagant grace, entering into deep listening, vulnerable authenticity, mutual care, and a commitment to loving people, especially those left out and underappreciated. We value difference and make room for everyone at the table. We embrace the beloved community in all its beautiful diversity recognizing that our flourishing is bound up together.
 
 
EMBODIED PRACTICE
 
We practice the way of Jesus together embodying love in real time and real space with real people committed to the flourishing of a particular place — making God’s goodness as plain as day.
 
In a culture where church means shopping and consuming community and is often disembodied, incongruent, and largely disconnected from our everyday lives, we dare to imagine a beautiful alternative. We believe that living into the way of Jesus takes practice — and that our faith is much more than something we add to our already busy, stressed out lives, but rather, it is a way of life. We want to follow Jesus in the gritty stuff of our everyday lives where we see the consequences of our actions, where our faith becomes real and more than just mere talk. We are the church called to faithful presence — to embody love in real time and real space with real people committed to the flourishing of a particular place — making God’s goodness as plain as day. We encourage all to find their plot of the garden within the community and the neighborhood they live and get their hands dirty!