Living the Great Stories

 Friends, 

I hope you have found our summer series, “Living the Great Stories” to be as interesting and challenging as I have. I’ve been amazed at how these stories are layered with meaning, far beyond the simple narratives themselves. And I’ve appreciated how our other preachers on staff have been able to show the connections between the human experience that gave rise to these stories and the challenges that you and I face in a world that continues to resist God’s love and justice. Judging from your comments, I know that many of you are either discovering these stories for the first time or rediscovering them anew also. What a joy this journey is. 

 

The temptation that I face, when re-visiting stories like these, is to get absorbed into the curious features or memorable surprises of the stories more than to the role that such storytelling plays when God’s people are listening for God’s word in a world filled with noise. Last week, in the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and  … Abednego, Nebuchadnezzar comes across as a narcissistic bozo with his ridiculously Freudian gold statue (90 feet tall and 9 feet wide) and his demand that everyone bow to it. His retinue of followers – the list of which is repeated again and again – come across as sycophantic yea-sayers. The idea that one can make a fire “seven times hotter than usual” is suspect as a measurable possibility, but delightful as a way of showing Nebuchadnezzar’s inane fit of anger, especially when the fire only consumes his strongest warriors as they toss the three Hebrews in. The details are all so delicious and humorously disproportionate – even in the end when Nebuchadnezzar threatens anyone who blasphemes the God of the Hebrews with tearing them limb from limb and destroying their houses forever. 

 

The reality behind this story, however, was no laughing matter. The southern kingdom of Judah was defeated by the Babylonian Empire, with many of the youngest, strongest, and brightest were taken away into Babylon itself, while “the remnant” were left to gather themselves and struggle to survive. A puppet king was put in place, who would later conspire with Egypt to escape Babylon’s grasp, only to have Babylonians re-enter Jerusalem and destroy the temple. The experience of the captives living in a foreign land and the remnant living in Judah are tragic realities. It is in those tragic realities of humiliation and suffering that stories like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego arise. They are humorous stories that pillory the presumptions of the powerful.

 

So, the challenge for us is how to hear these stories and the grim reality behind them as the word of God today. It is the tendency of many white, relatively well-to-do Christians to imagine that the challenges of white relatively well-to-do Christians are comparable to the faithful Hebrews staring down the fire. Realistically, the geopolitics of our day would suggest that white, relatively well-to-do Christians are more like the suburban Babylonians in these stories than the oppressed Hebrews. White, relatively well-to-do Christianity is not treated as a foreign oddity in the US. It has such a place of privilege in our day that even to say “white, relatively well-to-do Christianity” will provoke some people to cry “foul!” 

 

A better approach for us, as a white, relatively well-to-do congregation of Christians, is to hear these stories as stories that are told from the underside of power. Most of the Hebrew Scriptures were written during or about a time when Israel and Judah were living in the shadow of a foreign empire. And the entire New Testament was written under the shadow of the Roman Empire. My hope, as we visit these stories of heroism, tragedy, and even comedy, is not merely to re-visit old nostalgic stories, but to marvel at how God is at work in the world. The God we gather to worship is this God, ever on the side of the oppressed and captives, through stories of heroism, tragedy, and comedy. When we begin to hear these stories as liberation stories, we begin to hear the Word of God in them. 

 

See you in worship, 

Mark of St. Mark

Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

Friends,  

From June 27 – July 2 many of our fellow Presbyterians gathered in Milwaukee for the 227^th General Assembly (GA) of the Presbyterian Church (USA). I will offer some (only some) of the things that took place there, with links if you want to explore anything further. 

 

1. Structure: Over the last four years, a “Unification Commission” has been working to unify two branches of the church that were previously separated: The Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency. The new, unified entity will be called “Presbyterian Life & Witness” (PLW). PLW will be led by the Rev. Jihyun Oh, Executive Director and Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, to support synods and presbyteries, leader development, reparative justice, life of the communion, and strategic partnerships. For more information, visit this portal. 

 

2. Mission: Going into the GA meeting, there were a lot of deep feelings about actions that led to the elimination of the PCUSA World Mission program and the termination of all appointed Mission Co-Worker positions back in March of 2025. Both the decision itself and the execution of the decision were under strong criticism by former mission co-workers. In the end, the GA passed a motion 396-98 to form a 7-person Commission to review the decision-making process dating from 2018 that led to the actions of March 2025. The group will offer an interim report in 2028 and a final report in 2030 GA meeting. (You can read the full motion here.) The purpose of the commission is “to be restorative, not punitive” but it may contain recommendations to appropriate bodies about terminating employees.  The PCUSA now has an office of Global Ecumenical Partnerships, which you can explore here.

 

3. Israel/Palestine: After hearing the impassioned testimony of Palestinian-America, Fahed Abu-Akel, Moderator of the GA in 2002, the GA voted 454-15 declaring that the government of Israel has violated the international law prohibiting genocide in its war in Gaza. If you do not have a subscription to The Presbyterian Outlook, you can read 3 articles for free, and I recommend this one to see what this action entails. 

 

4. Christian Nationalism: By a vote of 458-18, commissioners approved a motion asking the denomination’s 164 presbyteries to ratify new Book of Order language affirming the church’s commitment to justice, peace, mercy, and human dignity while rejecting “any ideology that seeks to establish Christianity as a privileged or dominant force through the power of the state, or that conflates religious identity with national, racial, or ethnic supremacy.” The GA also directed the denominational leadership to take an active role in making sure the ideology is truly understood by issuing “a joint statement calling attention to the dangers and distortions of Christian Nationalism as an urgent theological and social concern of our time.” The San Jose Presbytery authored the resolution describing Christian Nationalism as “a dangerous and increasingly pervasive ideology that seeks to merge national identity with Christian identity, distorting both faith and politics” that “contradicts the foundational commitments and public witness of our church: love, equality, inclusion, peace, religious freedom and the imago dei [image of God] of all beings.”

 

5. LGBTQIA: There were several actions taken by the GA and appropriate groups regarding LGBTQIA matters. The GA voted to support gender-affirming healthcare and to let congregations signal their openness to calling an LGBTQIA+ pastor on their Ministry Discernment Profile when searching for a pastor. 

 

Of course there were many more motions, referrals, heated debates, affirmative conversations, and worship moments throughout the GA meeting that space will not allow me to cover (and the breadth of which does not allow me to comprehend.) Some of the links I have provided can lead you to more information and I’m happy to explore other things with you if you want. Overall, the work of GA is passionate and difficult, but I found this GA to be particularly focused on speaking prophetically, both outwardly and inwardly, as God moved them. For that I am thankful.

 

Mark of St. Mark

What to the Christian is the Fourth of July?

 

Friends, 

 

This weekend will be quite the celebration throughout the US. It is not my intention to be a wet blanket, but I must confess my ambiguity over the 250^th birthday of the US’s declaration of Independence from Great Britain. A few years ago, on the weekend of Independence Day, I spoke about Frederick Douglass’ astounding reflection, “What, to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” After worship it turned out that one of Douglass’ descendants was visiting with us and he thanked me for it. Since that time, I have made it a discipline to read it annually. Again, it is not for the purpose of being a killjoy, but because a key part of the Christian journey is to be committed to truth, especially when it is easier to be swept up with enthusiasm. 

 

When Douglass asked what the Fourth of July meant to a slave, he leaned on the important issue of perspective in our observance. The irony of an enslaved person hearing their owners and taskmasters celebrating independence is thick. It is part of the enduring power of sin that those who are set free easily become oppressors. It was a temptation that God addressed repeatedly when the People of Israel were entering the Promised Land. In the words that will be part of our focus for the month of July, God says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4-5).  Then God commands the people to bind those words on their hearts and their heads – making it both part of their thinking and their feeling. Then, comes this warning: “When the LORD your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors … and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” For the next four chapters, God recounts the ways that God had been faithful in bringing the people through the wilderness to the good land, and how they had repeatedly put God to the test. Now, the challenge would not be their scarcity and fear, but their abundance and forgetfulness. 

 

“Remembering” is not just a sweet feeling in the heart. It has ethical teeth, such as when God says, “You shall also love the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:19). God was not being a wet blanket, but was urging them to see their prosperity as “blessings” – gifts to be received with thanks and shared with joy. 

 

So, to paraphrase Mr. Douglass, “What to the Christian is the Fourth of July?” It is certainly a cause for celebration. It is a time to be thankful that we have freedom of expression and can practice faith without restraints from the state or an “official” religious body. It is a time when we can look around us and see the diversity of cultures, languages, histories, and journeys that gather in the US as a bouquet of beauty. There is much to celebrate. But there is much to remember. 

 

We remember the displacement and massacre of Native Americans, sanctioned in part by the “Doctrine of Discovery,” whereby the church blessed taking land, forcing migrations, coercing conversions, and sanctioning executions.  We remember how, in 1619, the first African slave ships came to Comfort Point, off the coast of my hometown of Hampton, VA, starting a three-centuries-long practice of slavery that was supported by the “founding fathers” and given license by the church. We remember the “Trail of Tears.” We remember the appropriation of lands that were once considered part of Mexico and are now the hotspots of immigration enforcement. We remember the era of Jim Crow laws that tried to institutionalize separation based on racial identity. We remember segregated schools, water fountains, and the lynching tree. We remember the exploitation and oppression of Chinese railroad workers. We remember Japanese internment camps. We remember exceptions to workplace and minimum wage standards when applied to farmworkers. We remember the Tulsa massacre. We remember Stonewall Inn and The Pulse Nightclub shootings. We remember neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville and repeated school shootings. We remember George Floyd and the cloud of witnesses victimized for being black. Rather than trying to erase these hard truths about the American story, we should teach them to our children, bind them on our head and heart, to remember in hopes of achieving “Never again.” 

 

What, to the Christian, is the Fourth of July? Unlike the triumphalistic “will to power” that is espoused by so many Christian Nationalists, this weekend calls us to two things. It is a time to celebrate what is good and noble; and to remember what is difficult but still true about our nation’s brief history. Remembering our ambiguous history is the key to living into a future of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly before our God. 

 

Mark of St. Mark