Cultivating a vision of hope in a world of despair

Love. It’s the thing that makes the whole world go round. In this time of prolonged societal disruption, grief, and suffering, it is now more important than ever to have practices that ground us in the love of God. God who set the world in motion is at the center of the Cosmos pulling everything and everyone into the divine force of Love.

Love is remaking the whole world.

Love is the most powerful force, nd nothing can separate us from the Love of God. Nothing, no thing, can stop the eternal work of God. No pandemic. No injustice. No natural disasters, politics, illness, losses, or crises. Nothing can separate us from this love.

I know I need to hear this. I need to feel this. I need to know this deep down. As the uncertainty and losses of the pandemic persist, love is what carries me, nourishes me, and sustains me. Whether it is visible or not, I need to know that God is at work right smack dab in the middle of the mess. I need to believe in the goodness of God and the power of Love.

And I don’t think I’m alone. This year, the Apple TV comedy, Ted Lasso, became an instant hit telling a heart-warming tale about an American coach hired to rescue a Premiership football team in the U.K. — despite a total lack of experience. The show’s popularity speaks to how its optimism and hope were tremendous gifts amid the darkness of a pandemic world. One of the things that seemed to resonate deeply is Ted’s Lasso faith in God and humanity. He envisioned a world of goodness and love. The bright yellow sign that he posted in the locker room is now a meme everywhere — BELIEVE!
​
This is a message that we need to hear, a vision we need to see. Ignatius of Loyola, who was a Spanish Catholic priest and theologian in the sixteenth century and founder of the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits), offered us a vision of a world held in love. You see, he observed that our vision largely controls our perception and experience of the world and thus is at the heart of our spiritual journey. It’s often said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” But Ignatius Loyola reverses the saying:

“When I believe it, I’ll see it.”

If we think the world is a bleak place, full of evil, greedy, selfish people who have no love for God or each other, that’s what we will see when we look around. If we think that our world is full of goodness and opportunity, a place that God created and sustains and loves, that is what we’ll find.

Ignatius offered this vision in the Spiritual Exercises intended to help people grow in their love for God, beginning with the Principle and Foundation.

God who loves us creates us and wants to share life with us forever. Our love response takes shape in our praise and honor and service of the God of our life.

All the things in this world are also created because of God’s love and they become a context of gifts, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.

As a result, we show reverence for all the gifts of creation and collaborate with God in using them so that by being good stewards we develop as loving persons in our care of God’s world and its development. But if we abuse any of these gifts of creation or, on the contrary, take them as the center of our lives, we break our relationship with God and hinder our growth as loving persons.

In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all created gifts insofar as we have a choice and are not bound by some responsibility. We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a more loving response to our life forever with God.

Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.

[What Is Ignatian Spirituality? by David L. Fleming, SJ]

What stands out to me is this.

Everything has the potential of calling forth in us a more loving response in our life with God.

This means that EVERYTHING in our lives right now — the joys and the sorrows, the gifts and the losses, the disillusionment and the hope, the beauty and the brokenness, the grace and the struggle…everything has the potential of calling us deeper into the love and life of God. Everything.

Nothing is wasted.

Not the last two years of what sometimes feels like Groundhog Day on repeat — days of uncertainty, anxiety, polarization, grief, protest, boredom, Netflix binging, pajamas, Zoom calls, and quarantine. For our God is a God of redemption, a God of the impossible, a God who brings fruitfulness out of barrenness and life out of death.

We began this year with the Advent invitation to believe, joining in the ancient chorus of saints who like Mary echoed a deep and resounding yes to birth the holy. For nothing is impossible with God.

I believe that we must begin to see through the eyes of faith. For negativity and cynicism dominate the airspace these days. I get it. We are feeling the prolonged effects of collective trauma, isolation, and loss. And yet there is another reality that is greater than any suffering or evil — God’s kingdom of Love is here healing and remaking the whole world.
​
So what do you see? What do you believe?

In the literal and spiritual fog of this season, can you put your trust in this Love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things “(I Corinthians 13:7). Love is all that matters. No one, no circumstance, no thing can take love away. When everything else is shaken, only love remains.

So however your battle-worn souls come today, love is here to greet you. Love welcomes you into a space just for you. You can lay all your worries and burdens, your striving and your surviving aside for just a few moments to slow down, breathe, inhale, and exhale. Experience the Spirit here with you, present, now. Sit in the loving gaze of your Creator. Receive deep nourishment as you root down deep into the abundant and eternal love of the Divine. I encourage you even now and through the coming days and weeks to meditate on this love of God and to begin to shift your vision to see the world through eyes of hope, faith, and love.

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:16–21)

May you experience profound grace to believe in a God who is able to accomplish abundantly far more than you can ask or imagine.

For what you believe, you will see.
​
So why not join the long history of saints, reformers, and dreamers and follow the seminal message of the hour….BELIEVE!

​by Jessica Ketola

Fall is in the air and the lit wick of my pumpkin harvest candle is signaling the return to all that is warm and cozy. A new season is upon us, though it remains a continuation of what is turning out to be a woefully prolonged season of pandemic.

As Covid-19 surges, the summer of hope has ended in gloom. Or so the headlines read. We were so ready for the new-found freedom of vaccines to liberate us from the tyranny of the virus, but here we are again back to overwhelmed hospitals and alarming death tolls. Lord, in your mercy.

It is disheartening, numbing, maddening. I haven't even wanted to think about it.

And yet, hope persists.

In a world that makes sense less and less — a world that seems hell bent on the decimation, brokenness, and fragmentation of relationship on every level, strata, and sphere — a world that is rife with chaos, violence, upheaval, and turmoil, we stand firmly in a Love that is redeeming all things. Our story is the greatest story ever told. We must not forget that Love is the most powerful force in the world. God, our Creator, Liberator, Restorer, Comforter and Friend is the very essence and embodiment of Love, and Love will win the day. So in the midst of spiritual, political, environmental, social, and economic devastation, we can hold onto fierce and stubborn hope.

In fact, we know from history that it is precisely in these moments of great societal upheaval that the Spirit breaks out in new and powerful ways to forward God's work of renewal and transformation on the earth. The great expansion of the gospel in the first few centuries of the early church was birthed in tumultuous times of oppression, war, persecution, and pandemic. So though the earth is groaning and heaving with birth pains all around us, this is the time in which we as the church are called to embody Love on the earth.

For I believe that the Spirit is indeed birthing a new thing. Our American way is crumbling; and the North American church is flailing. We are desperately in need of reformation. This is why we as The Practicing Church remain committed to reimagining the church in the neighborhood. We must find ways to reconnect to the Real, to incarnate in our places, to embody our faith, and to be restorers of all that is good and holy and sacred in the world. We are called to offer hope in the midst of despair, mercy in the face of judgment, wholeness in the midst of great fragmentation, comfort in grief, vulnerability in shame, and peace in violence. We are called to reinterpret the gospel in our time and in our place as good news and healing for all that is broken.

Last month, we had the gift of attending a cohort through Sustainable Faith with other parish-style communities who are also dreaming, praying, and leaning into more embodied, holistic, and relational ways to be the church. We returned home more certain and encouraged that in fact God is unfolding a beautiful work in us. And so many all around the country and the globe are also responding to the invitation to follow the Spirit into a land unknown and unseen, hearing God's words, Behold, I am doing a new thing. [Isaiah 43:19]

A few months ago, I had the privilege of being interviewed for The Lean-In Podcast to share our story of embodying love and justice in our neighborhood and community. It was just released yesterday and I hope you will listen and share it with your networks, but mostly that your heart will be encouraged as you listen to God's work in and through us.

Earlier this year, we were featured in an article for Duke's Faith & Leadership publication. I continue to be amazed that our small community is being used to encourage and inspire others to repent, to reimagine, and to re-form what it means to be the church today. I am so amazed at God's goodness and faithfulness to us over and over again.

This is why in spite of all the bad news that bombards us, we continue to LEAN IN to the goodness and mercy of God with stubborn hope, faith, and love for what is unseen but being revealed in us. 

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. - Romans 8:18-25


by Jessica Ketola

Recently, our story was featured in the Duke Leadership publication, Faith & Leadership.

The Practicing Church in Shoreline, WA seeks to live out its faith in the neighborhood

by Yonat Shimron

The Rev. Jessica Ketola is an old hand at doing church. Her parents were pastors. She served as a worship leader for more than a decade. She recorded Christian praise songs. She ran a church nonprofit that tutored low-income neighborhood children.

But in her mid-40s, the Vineyard-ordained pastor decided to change all the rules.

In January 2017, after a season of upheaval at Vineyard Community Church, where she had been serving as an associate pastor, she relaunched the congregation in her Shoreline, Washington, living room.

Ketola called it The Practicing Church and explained her vision to the 25 or so members that remained: it would be a neighborhood-based church that would serve the community out of a commitment to Jesus’ way of love and a desire for God’s shalom, or peace.

"I had come to a place where I was weary of all the incongruence of the church,” said Ketola, 49, a married mother of four adult children. “I was longing for more authentic ways to express my faith.”
​
Four years later, worship services still take place in her living room -- except temporarily during the pandemic, when it’s meeting Sunday mornings on Zoom. Although now double in size -- about 50 people -- it is still small but has made a big impact on the neighborhood of Richmond Highlands in Shoreline, a city of 53,000 on the Puget Sound north of Seattle.

Instead of a singular focus on the Sunday service or a targeted missions project, The Practicing Church seeks to live Christian life in community.

READ MORE

I repent. O God, I repent. Have mercy on us. Grant that we would repent not only with our lips but with our lives.

This prayer rose up in me with tears, anger, and lament as I viewed disturbing images of the evils of white supremacy desecrating our capitol. Confederate flags, nooses, a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt alongside QAnon symbols, “Jesus Saves” banners, and crusade crosses — the fruit of white nationalism and the cult of Trumpism extremists now rearing its ugly head in a brazen, demonic display of power.

This day of insurrection was also the Feast of Epiphany. A day in which we celebrate the revelation of God to all people through the humanity of Jesus Christ. This day was a day of revelation to be sure. Unveiling once again America’s greatest sin in the very heart of our beloved democracy. For while our forefathers painstakingly crafted documents envisioning a world of equality, liberty and justice for all, they did so knowing full well it was not truly for all. For neither the slave nor the first indigenous Americans were to share in this freedom, and the atrocities of horrors rooted deeply in our nation’s history persist. The overt and glaring evil of white supremacy running amok in our nation’s Capitol is a prophetic sign of a gaping, festering wound that must be healed in our country. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

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. The prophets cried out, “I can’t breathe.”

You can be sure that God heard their cries. For God is a God who is on the side of the oppressed (Psalm103:6) — those who are crushed, degraded, humiliated, exploited, impoverished, defrauded, deceived, and enslaved. Our God is a God who heard the cries of the Israelites in their misery and suffering and brought them out of slavery. Our God is a God who came to bring good news to the poor and liberation to those who are bowed down under oppression (Isaiah 61). Jesus revealed God as one who brings liberation not with the flexing of power but in the laying down of power. Not seeking the dominance of sword, empire, wealth, fame, or politics, Jesus modeled a new, subversive reality. Blessed are the poor, the meek, the merciful, the mourning, the hungry, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted (Matthew 5:1–12). The greatest is the servant of all (Luke 22:25–27).

So liberal or conservative, left or right, do we have ears to hear? If God is with the oppressed in our country, what is the invitation of the Spirit? What is a posture of humility? Are we listening to the black and brown prophets of our day?

I am. As a white woman of privilege, as a follower of Jesus, and as a pastor, I am listening. I am listening to the voices of my black and brown siblings. I am reading articles and books. I am listening to podcasts and watching films and documentaries. I am learning a hard and grievous history. I am following black theologians and church leaders. I am listening to BIPOC leaders in my community. I am joining in protests and neighborhood vigils. I am lamenting with my fellow white folk, wrestling with my complicity, and praying prayers of repentance.

For if 2020 was a year of revelation, may 2021 be a year of repentance.

And if ever there was a time for the American church to repent, it is now. It seems blatantly obvious as we see images of confederate flags and lynching scaffolding amongst crosses and coups. Reformation is needed.

​Every 500 years or so, the church — and the world — experience huge social, political, economic, and cultural shifts. Author and religious professor, Phyllis Tickle in her book, The Great Emergence, uses the analogy of “The 500-Year Rummage Sale” to describe “cleaning house” movements of the church among tectonic shifts like today.¹ And not unlike Martin Luther’s Theses posted on the door of the church in 1517, I can think of 95 problems that need to be addressed within the American church today.

The greatest is the white supremacy baked into our nation’s Christianity from its inception. The horrors of slavery, colonization, and indigenous genocide were upheld with distortions of the gospel in the Doctrine of Discovery and a proslavery Christianity that perpetrated oppression. And its influence across the church in the United States of America can still be felt today.² With 40% of our nation’s population now identifying as non-white and gross racial inequities across every spectrum of society, the impact of the white church’s complicity can no longer be ignored.³

Other “problems” for the North American church worthy of rigorous examination and discussion would include individualism, consumerism, a modern form of Gnosticism, and Christian nationalism to name a few.

This is a time of reckoning. A time of revelation. A time for repentance. A time for reformation.

​As I witnessed the flagrant demonstration of white supremacy, the strange fruit of Christian nationalism, and the disparity of the police response to this historic insurrection, I was filled with grief. “Have mercy on us, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of our sins. Wash us clean from our guilt. Purify us from our sins…. Forgive us (Psalm 51).”

No matter what your political affiliations, repentance is called for. From the rural red-neck to the progressive hipster, we as white Christians are called to repent. Not just with our lips, but with our lives. Repentance means to shift or change one’s mind, to turn around and to act differently. We must lift our voices in prayer and humility. We must fully reckon with our troubled history and the sins of our nation. We must follow and learn from the faithfulness of BIPOC leaders. And we must reclaim the gospel of Jesus that is freedom for all people, disentangling our faith from whiteness and imperial oppression.

Let us turn from our idolatry and follow the way of Jesus. Frederick Douglass believed that “the widest possible difference” existed between the “slaveholding religion of this land” and “the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ.”⁴ Jesus preached a radical new vision of liberation in which the oppressed were lifted up, the ostracized were embraced, the slave and prisoner were set free, and the broken were healed.

“If one’s gospel falls mute when facing people who need the good news the most — the impoverished, the oppressed, the broken — then it’s no good news at all.” — Lisa Sharon Harper⁵

This is a time of reckoning. A time of revelation. A time of repentance. A time of reformation.

Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.


​-by Jessica Ketola

God entered the world on the margins.
Not in Jerusalem but in the obscurity of Bethlehem
God was revealed to the shepherds not the priests
To the outcasts and the ruffians, God announced the good news.

Good news and great tidings of joy to all people.
Not just tax cuts for the rich or more comforts for the privileged.
This is good news for the poor.
To break the chains of oppression.
To set the prisoner free.
To heal the sick.
To comfort those who are brokenhearted.
To announce that God is not displeased with us, nor angry or withholding.
God is on our side. God is here. Present now.
The God of Love, revealed in Christ Jesus, is with us.

This, this is the good news the angels sang.
Filling the sky with their reverberating sounds.
Summons of peace on earth, good will to all people everywhere.
Regardless of culture, race, class, religion, or gender.
Songs shining the light of a midnight star
Into the darkest places of our collective lives.

We must not underestimate the power of the manger
And the hope it holds.
The Christmas song of the angels is not as innocent as it sounds.
It has turned the world upside down before now.
It still can.

​
by Jessica Ketola

Thanksgiving is canceled. With the alarming rise of COVID deaths and infections, we are a nation that is collectively grieving. Some of us are grieving the loss of life as we’ve known it. Others are grieving the loss of loved ones ravaged by the virus. And yet in reality, grief gets much closer to what this holiday is all about. For many Native People, Thanksgiving is a National Day of Mourning.

@mrotzie, “For what it’s worth, canceling our Thanksgiving celebrations to prevent the spread of COVID gives us a great opportunity to talk to our kids about how entering someone else’s home to intentionally spread a deadly disease is foundational to the holiday in the first place” Twitter, 12 November 2020, 1:22 pm, https://twitter.com/mrotzie/status/1326998703685705734.

Admittedly, I’ve always loved Thanksgiving. It was a time when my big family came together to celebrate. And celebrate we did! Aside from the inevitable family drama, we would sing and dance and play games and laugh ’til our guts hurt. And unlike other holidays that were commercialized to be about shopping or candy baskets (ignore Black Friday), this one day was about being grateful! Yes, I was all in!

Except.That it propagated the myth. The myth of Thanksgiving. This idyllic picture of Pilgrims and Indians feasting together in a harmonious and mutually beneficial relationship. True, there was some beauty in this first feast they shared. However, we simply cannot stop there without acknowledging the atrocities that came next as white colonizers exterminated millions of indigenous people who had occupied America for millennia. Nor should we ignore the atrocities that continue as the racism, greed, trauma, and structural violence continue today. One of the most prolonged and sustained genocides of a people with the goal of complete and total erasure. All cloaked in this idea of Manifest Destiny and done in the name of Christ. It’s enough to make my stomach turn. Maybe no turkey for me this year.

Until.

I read an article featuring Dr. Randy Woodley. Dr. Woodley is a man I deeply admire and have learned from, a Keetowah Cherokee, a Christian, and a professor at Portland Seminary in the Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies program. And thanks to Dr. Woodley’s gracious and profound wisdom, I was shown a place at the Thanksgiving table once again.

In spite of our ugly history, no…actually, because of these atrocities, I want to suggest that we all continue to celebrate Thanksgiving, but with a caveat.

Settler folks must be educated to realize that Thanksgiving in America didn’t begin with the Pilgrims. For thousands of years, many feasts of thanksgiving have been characteristic of all our Indian tribes. This phenomenon continues today. Settler-immigrants should reorient their thinking to view that First Thanksgiving as the first opportunity for them to join millennial old traditions among America’s Indigenous peoples to thank God, who was already present before they arrived, and thank the land upon which they were living. They should view the Plymouth feast as the land welcoming them, and as a result an opportunity to express gratitude to all creation, especially those plants and animals that provided the feast and extended their lives another day. They should see themselves as good guests of the Host Peoples of America and rethink their social posture with more humility.¹

Eat Humble Pie.

Yes, you heard him. If we are to eat pie this Thanksgiving, let it be humble pie. It’s time to discard the myths of colonialism and white supremacy and sit in the discomfort of grief, lament, disorientation, and feelings of powerlessness. For isn’t this the invitation of Christ in Philippians 2:6–8. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

So let us be humble, and let us be grateful. And let us learn from those who host us and honor and care for the land, acknowledging the Creator that sustains our very breath. And yes, let us make room for truth and lament as we educate ourselves concerning the real history of America.

No matter what your Thanksgiving Day looks like this year, the disruption of 2020 invites us to continue to learn the real history of this holiday and to acknowledge the tribe whose land we are on. May we use this time to learn about the rich traditions and wisdom of indigenous peoples. And may we partake of much goodness and feasting and leave plenty of room for gratitude and Jesus-inspired, humble pie.

Decolonizing Thanksgiving

Celebrating True Thanksgiving: One Native American View

The Thanksgiving Myth

Thanksgiving Promotes Whitewashed History, So I Organized Truthgiving Instead

“All The Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans

​Thanksgiving is canceled. And I’m heartbroken. Feasting around the table with family, friends, and neighbors is a small taste of heaven here on earth. And frankly, I could use some heaven right now in the midst of all the hell of 2020. Our family had already decided not to do the big, crazy gathering with extended family. But with COVID-19 surging across our county and the nation, we made the agonizing decision to forgo gathering with our own kids. Since they are in their twenties without family traditions of their own, this is difficult.

There is a debate happening on the public stage in regards to COVID, freedom, masks, social distancing, and restrictions. Facebook is a minefield right now. People are angry, and rightly so. Anger is part of the grief process. Whether we like to admit it or not, we are all grieving so much. The loss of community. The loss of stability. The loss of loved ones. The loss of church, school, jobs, and life as we’ve known it. It’s a lot.

I don’t pretend to have the answers. I am not a scientist, disease specialist, or economist. The response to the pandemic is complex. However, I would push back on those that would minimize the staggering death tolls of this virus and its worldwide impact. There is no conspiracy big enough to encompass the globe. And if your privilege keeps you at a distance from the virus’ ravage, that’s something to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. In talking recently to a pastor in New York, she has lost 20 elders, pastors, and sages to the virus within her own black community. I can’t imagine! And no matter where you stand on these issues, I think we all are missing the kind of leadership that would pull us together in this critical moment.

As followers of Jesus, I believe our response should be unique — not driven by the culture wars of our day, but by Jesus’ radical example. As COVID cases and hospitalizations skyrocket across our nation, what does it mean to follow Jesus?

Jesus made it really clear. In the gospel of Mark, we see Jesus’ ministry gaining momentum as he preached and demonstrated a message of freedom and liberation. To a people who were crushed under the tyranny of empire, this was indeed good news. And just when the disciples begin to catch on that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah upon whom rested all the Jewish hopes, their world was rocked. This kingdom was not coming in grandeur, dominion, or political power, but in suffering, humiliation, and death. It was not a “make Israel great again” campaign. If the disciples were excited about the inauguration of a new kingdom, they most likely had grand visions of greatness (Mark 8:31–33). But Jesus actually rebukes these worldly ideas about power and gives one of the most provocative and challenging invitations that rings true today.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:34–35).

Individual Rights
Much of this debate has been framed around individual rights and freedom. But let us be clear, the promotion of individual rights is not a Christian value. Jesus says the exact opposite — to follow him is to lay down our rights. The kingdom of God does not come in the flexing of one’s own self-interests and political power, but in subservience, sacrifice, and the abdication of power.

The better question is, “What does it mean to love our neighbor as ourselves?” This is the most crucial discourse of our time and the greatest command. It is also the grid in which we as followers of Jesus should consider our response. This is the thinking behind our decision to cancel Thanksgiving, sacrificing our own desires to be with family in the hopes that next year, more people can be with their families. Laying down our own lives so that others can live.

But I am well aware that this view isn’t shared by all. I’m afraid the gods of individualism are now inflicting a devastating cost. Jesus said that the first would be last and this seems to hold true. “America First” is now last in the effectiveness of our pandemic response with the highest death tolls across the globe. I am no expert, but the countries that have had the best response either have leadership or a culture that is valuing the collective good over the individual. Admittedly, this is complex. We are balancing our social fabric and economic well-being against our health and the loss of lives. And yet “what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?” (Mark 8:36–37)

This virus has exposed how connected we truly are. We are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. [Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]

Saint Paul said it this way, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it,” likening us to a body, interconnected and interdependent (I Corinthians 12:26).

So as followers of Jesus, how do we sacrifice our own self-interests on behalf of our neighbor? What does love require?

As Christians, love must be the lens through which we respond.

Self-Preservation
On the other end of the spectrum, we have those who are motivated out of fear and self-preservation. They have holed up in their homes with copious amounts of toilet paper and provisions to wait it out. Loving neighbor is somewhat counter-intuitive as we are being asked to distance ourselves for the good of others. However, there are many who do not have the privilege to do so. Doctors and nurses and essential workers. Our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness and poverty or living in close quarters of prisons and detention centers. Again we must ask, what does love require?

Historically, the Christian response to plagues has been to care for the sick and consider our own lives less important than our neighbors. In fact, it was the response of the Christians to the Antonine plague and the Plague of Cyprian across the Roman empire in the second and third centuries that triggered the explosive growth of Christianity.

There are so many hurting today. Isolation, anxiety, and depression are rampant. People are spiraling under the weight of financial loss, hunger, and instability. Mental health is a huge concern. I know of pastors who have performed more funerals for suicides than Covid-related deaths. While the Christian ethic would require us to never endanger others through our negligence or recklessness, what is the invitation to love? How are we to lay down our lives for our neighbor?

Perfect love drives out fear.
Love looks different for every person. For some, love compels them to be on the front lines caring for the sick. For others who are or are caring for the vulnerable with chronic health issues, love looks like staying home. For my community, love has meant taking some calculated risks at times (still using precautions and masks) to love our unhoused and immigrant neighbors. Love has meant checking in on our elderly neighbors and those who live alone. Love has meant cultivating connection and meeting practical needs however we can. Love has meant giving our stimulus check away to those who truly need it. Love has also meant the sacrifice of staying home, wearing masks, and taking precautions so as not to endanger our neighbor.

Regardless of our political, cultural, or sociological differences, as Christians, we must resist the inclination to seek individual freedom or self-preservation. Rather, Jesus calls us to a radical, self-sacrificing love. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) The self-denial and suffering of Jesus is actually the prototype for the Christian life. As this pandemic continues to rage, love beckons us, provokes us, and compels us. Love is the litmus test.


by Jessica Ketola

The never-ending drone of commentary across the channels. The blue and red map of the “United” States of America that is in actuality more divided than ever. The roller coaster of hope, fear, and outrage. The prolonged, nail-biting suspense without final resolve. Election week has not been for the faint of heart. 

Admittedly, I may have succumbed to copious consumption of comfort food, profuse pumpkin candle burning, and an inordinate intake of media. How did you get through?

Along with the election madness, I was simultaneously pushing through mounds of classwork for my master’s program, trying not to be distracted with news cycles and social media alerts. And midst the pile of weekly required reading was the classic text by Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination. And of all the weeks to read such words! Words still as relevant and provocative as ever. Words that I believe we desperately need to hear right now.

For certainly, we are living in a time of imperial totality, not unlike Old Testament Egypt. With the religion of static triumphalism manifested in much of the American church today and the politics of oppression and exploitation, we surely are in need of deliverance. If only we can fight through the enculturation and amnesia of our present state, perhaps we can remember and reclaim God’s new work of liberation found in the Exodus story. On one hand, we see the dismantling of the oppressive empire of Pharaoh; and on the other hand, the formation of a new community oriented around God’s freedom, justice and compassion.

And as I read Brueggemann’s words, his call to action resonates. In order to live into God’s vision of freedom, we must grieve and we must hope. And this week, as the newscasters drawled on and on and on, this felt appropriate. Left and right. Rich and poor. Rural and urban. Black, brown, and white. We are divided and polarized. We are incensed and outraged. We have demonized each other in lieu of the imperial gods of our enslavement.

Perhaps I was channeling the insanity of the moment, I can’t be sure. But I shouted at the television, “We must reclaim the narrative!”
​
Grief That Dismantles
For I felt grief. In spite of my candidate of choice pulling ahead. In spite of the ground-breaking, glass-shattering of Madame Vice President-Elect. I felt joy and relief for sure. I even shed some tears. But the grief remained. For while I welcome back sanity to the office of the president, I know many others don’t see it this way. And here we all are, part of the same family, “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) Yet we are divided more than ever, and it hurts that we cannot hear one another. Even more, it hurts that we remain deeply committed to white supremacy in spite of horrific and enduring injustices. There was no landslide of repudiation for our black brothers and sisters. Our deep fragmentation remains.

For I’m afraid we have sold our souls to the American Dream of consumerism and individualism predicated on the violence of racism. Regardless of your politics, I think we can agree. Trump is not an aberration, but a mirror of a society given over to narcissism, greed, and the evils of white supremacy. We have been promised a counterfeit “freedom” that leads to death — that puts individual rights over the common good, that dehumanizes others in pursuit of power, and permits our consumption without regard for oppression and exploitation. 

But “what good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Matthew 16:26)

Prophetic Critique
The mythic claims of the gods have been exposed — America is anything but great. We have worshipped the gods of empire, ease, success, and satiation, and we are now formed primarily as consumers and not creators, colonizers and not co-laborers. Numb people do not discern or fear death. We work and we shop. We click and we watch. We consume products, and in doing so, become the very products consumed. We are slaves to the machines we build for ourselves. 

We have taken what is not ours. We have raped and pillaged, killed and maimed. We have violated, extracted, and depleted as if people, creatures, and resources are disposable. And now we wonder why there is fire in our streets and fire across our land with no air in which to breathe.

We must grieve and lament and tear our clothes like the prophets of old. We must weep and wail as a prophetic critique of the looming death all around us. People are in the streets. Hospitals are full. Graves are in mass. Families are at war. The world is on fire. So many suffering, oppressed and dying. The earth is groaning, heaving, and sighing.

“History consists primarily of speaking and being answered, crying and being heard. If that is true, it means there can be no history in the empire because the cries are never heard and the speaking is never answered. And if the task of prophecy is to empower people to engage in history, then it means evoking cries that expect answers, learning to address them where they will be taken seriously, and ceasing to look to the numbed and dull empire that never intended to answer in the first place.”(Brueggemann, p.13)

We must stop looking to the numbed and dull empire for answers that only a God who is truly free can answer. The radical new vision of liberation that Jesus proclaimed and demonstrated birthed an alternative community in which the oppressed were lifted up, the ostracized were embraced, the prisoners were set free, and the broken were healed. God’s good and just kingdom upends not only the religion of the day but dismantles the imperial politics of oppression and exploitation.

Hope That Energizes
This is where hope comes in. For Brueggemann insists that it is not only the prophetic critique of grief that brings liberation, but the prophetic energizing of hope to imagine an alternative reality. To be clear, there is plenty of reason for despair. In the midst of a global pandemic, it is hard not to feel a sense of powerlessness. The reigning consciousness militates against hope or any prospect of change on the horizon. There is no room for anything outside the dominant narrative of totality and permanence. Thus, despairing people do not anticipate or receive newness, nor do they believe they have to power to move toward new life. And yet hope persists in a God of resurrection in which “all things are possible.” This is why we must fiercely hold on to hope, to call upon the artists, the poets, and the dreamers to imagine an alternative reality of God’s good and just kingdom.

“Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.” (Brueggemann, p.65)

What if…our present reality is not the only reality? What if… this kingdom is not the only kingdom? What if…there is another way to live? What if…we are called to be creators, not consumers? What if…there is an alternative community of freedom, justice, and compassion?

An Alternative 
I believe with all of my heart that there is hope — for the church, for our neighborhoods, and for society as a whole. God’s future is here and is unfolding in a people who turn away from the false gods of empire and who imagine and orient themselves around a new social reality that includes and liberates the most vulnerable and oppressed. God’s kingdom is demonstrated in authentic, incarnational communities that are embodying compassion and justice on the ground, creating a new social fabric in the neighborhood.

So midst the mind-numbing hopelessness of polarization, dehumanization, and fragmentation, I am holding stubbornly onto both grief and hope. For there is no relief in the empirical binaries of black and white extremes. Rather, there is a third way, another way. A way of love and mercy, repentance and forgiveness, compassion and justice. 

To be sure, it is a way of disruption. It is disruptive to grieve and to offer prophetic critique when peace is maintained at all costs. It is subversive to hope midst the crushing clench of empire. And yet we are invited into a vision for the beloved community of God whose practices of lament, protest, and complaint give rise to fierce hope and imagination for a new social order —a prophetic demonstration of God’s revolutionary kingdom of resistance, restoration, and liberation.

​So let us begin to imagine a new world for the poor, the persecuted, and the pure in heart — where the grieving will be comforted, the meek will inherit the earth, and those who hunger and thirst for justice will be filled. (Matthew 5:3–10)

"We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was never normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, My friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature." — Sonya Renee Taylor


by Jessica Ketola

Cultivating A Daily Practice of Love

In difficult times, how do you stay grounded? The onslaught of 2020 continues with the ferocity of pandemics, protests, and politics. It is challenging to maintain our equilibrium in the midst of so much chaos, change, and loss. And yet we know the harshest seasons push us to grow. During winter, a tree is dormant to the naked eye. But underneath the surface, it is hard at work growing and expanding its root system in search of valuable nutrients. So it goes with our souls. It is precisely in times like these that we are invited to root and ground ourselves in deeper ways.

But how you ask? In the midst of work deadlines, spinning plates, and bleak headlines? How?

Love. Love is the answer.

Love has the power to strengthen, nourish, and ground us in the midst of all the fray. The tumultuous storm that surrounds us is not of our own choosing. And yet, we can choose to surrender to love in the midst of its pounding waves. These are the waters of transformation.

Cultivate a Daily Practice
In order to access the power of love, you will need to cultivate a daily practice to ground yourself. This is easier said than done. So much competes for our time and attention. And yet in the midst of the fray, how are you making time for what is most important? Or do you find yourself scattered and weary from the demands of the urgent? There is plenty of research about the health benefits of prayer and spiritual meditation that make us less anxious and more resilient, present, and hopeful.

Are you finding some minutes of your day for stillness, reflection, prayer, or meditation? Are you sitting in the loving gaze and tender affection of God?

If you are daily immersing yourself in love, most likely you are beginning to experience what it feels like to be grounded in what is most true about your life. Love has a way of ordering and reordering our lives. The unimportant things begin to lose their pull and what is most core to our being increases in its desire.

Curiosity Can Cure Our Cynicism
If a daily practice eludes you, you may be feeling a sense of frustration, guilt, or cynicism. But guilt does us no good. And self-flagellation moves us away from love, not towards it. Here is where curiosity can cure our cynicism.

What do we believe that is keeping us from abiding and resting in love? What are we afraid of?

Often times, it is our subterranean fears and hurts that unconsciously drive us. We are afraid we won’t be productive “enough” if we take moments of stillness out of our busy day. Many of us have distorted images about who God is and what God demands. We are afraid that God cannot be trusted. Or perhaps we are afraid we are unworthy of love.

It is here in the rawness of our wrestling where love comes rushing in. God meets us right where we are, not in the place we want to be. In all our frustration, desire, avoidance, longing, and unbelief — God is near.

So don’t give up. Lean in with curiosity, honesty, and vulnerability.

Love Awaits.
​Love is calling and inviting you. The lovingkindness of God chases after you. This is not a duty, but a gracious invitation to live life in union and communion with Love — to let love heal you and empower you to bring healing to others.

Imagine for a moment that you lived fully, authentically, and vulnerably out of a deep and abiding love. What would be true about your life? Imagine what would be possible if you were free from all the fear and self-doubt that constrains you. Imagine the powerful good of a life given over to Love. Is there any other pursuit more worthwhile?

The Miracle of Practice and of Becoming
So this is the opportune time to cultivate a practice of love. New practices take time to establish, so give yourself plenty of grace (There is so much grace!). Keep on keeping on; and whatever you do, don’t give up!

No one becomes a marathon runner, concert pianist, or “saint” overnight. Over time, as new neural pathways are formed and new “muscles” are developed, consistent practice gives way to proficiency. What once was hard becomes automatic. This is the miracle of practice and of becoming.

They say you become what you practice. So let us practice love, and in turn, become people of love.

Love is the most powerful force in the universe, and there is no storm — no pandemic, politics, racism, quarantine, hurricane, or fire — that can overcome it. Though we will continue to lament, to work for change, and insist on justice, we will rest in Love. For we know that the tumult of this season will do its work if we let it — to secure us, nourish us, and ground us in Love.

by Jessica Ketola