"God Is Good"

 Friends, 

 

I want to continue the mode of thought that I began in last week’s Extra, but before that I want to offer an apology.

 

Apology: Two weeks ago, I left out a crucial adjective when describing St. Mark. I was picking up on the phrase “white, relatively well-to-do congregation” that I had been using to make a point and referred to St. Mark as such. I ought to have said, “historically” or “mostly” white, relatively well-to-do congregation instead. If my choice of words left any of you feeling unseen or left out, I apologize and promise to try to do better. 

 

Back to last week’s Extra. I wrote about how many of the biblical stories that we have been reading contain so much violence (e.g. Jael and her infamous tent peg) that I know of pastors who refuse to preach from the books of Joshua and Judges. It is my contention that the violence in these stories is not prescriptive but descriptive, and rather courageously so. It is one thing to say, “God is great” in a time of relative ease and comfort. It is quite another to say the same in times of war, famine, and loss. One form of this question entertained in the Psalms is, “Does the steadfast love of God endure, even in this moment?” Another form from Genesis through Ruth is, “Will God keep the promise that God made to Abraham?”  

 

Yet even if we were able to yield our fortunes and our travesties to the sovereignty of God by maintaining that “God is great,” another question comes up. If God is great and calamity happens, can we also say that God is good? So the question is not just “Is God sovereign?” but “Is the sovereign God also the loving God when calamity strikes?” That question has been raised anew among liberation theologies, post-holocaust theologies, and even in popular reflections, such as Rabbi Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People. 

 

This question is further complicated when we say that one expression of God’s love is that God gives us the gift of freedom. We are free to return God’s love by being faithful. Or not. We are free to embody God’s love by loving our neighbor. Or not. We are free to reflect God’s love by loving ourselves as God’s creation. Or not. Even Presbyterians, with our historic understanding of predestination, honor human freedom. It’s a messy situation, because, if God is loving and God’s love is expressed in offering us the freedom to return that love (or not), then that make God vulnerable in a way that we don’t associate with “sovereignty.” The prophets even depict God as an aggrieved spouse, whose lover cheats openly and repeatedly. It is a profound thought that God’s sovereignty is expressed, not by forcing us to mechanically love and serve, but by allowing us to err, even as God calls us back in the vulnerability of unrequited love. 

 

I attended a panel discussion on Psalm 82 once that had biblical scholars from both Presbyterian and Lutheran seminaries. The first speaker said, “When I saw the composition of this panel, I knew exactly the trajectory of our conversation. The Presbyterians would speak from the perspective of God’s sovereignty, while the Lutheran’s would speak from the perspective of God’s love.” (There’s a lot of history behind that astute observation). One of our driving aims this summer is to find ways to read violent biblical stories and disarmingly honest psalms, not to mention manifest brutality of the cross, through the lens of God’s sovereign love, or God’s loving sovereignty. That’s why those of us who preach rely on your prayers. 

 

See you in worship,

Mark of St. Mark

 

"God Is Great"

 Friends,  

This week during worship we will hear the story of Deborah, Barak, and Jael from the book of Judges. I had a pastor friend who refused to preach from Joshua or Judges, dismissing them as not being the gospel that Jesus Christ preached and too much trouble to try to redeem. Having grown up in a strict Baptist tradition, it was a very courageous approach for him to take and one that did not come easily. I share his concerns, but I still listen for the Word of God in these stories. To be sure, we have interpretive choices to make regarding how to read them and yet more interpretive choices to make when trying to understand and live into them. It helps me to approach the Scriptures as a series of ongoing conversations about life before God, rather than as a series of “chapter and verse” final answers. 

 

Violence is a real part of the biblical stories, not just in the Old Testament, but also in the gospels – the crucifixion story being chief among them. We struggle with how such a violent world fits within God’s good creation. The story that we will hear this week, begins – as many stories in the book of Judges do – with the note that “The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD,” so God gave them over to an oppressor. That simple beginning points to a common but contested presumption in the Scriptures – the nation that is faithful will be blessed; the nation that is unfaithful will suffer. While that formula doesn’t always hold in the stories, the question behind it is an enduring one, namely the question of God’s sovereignty. 

 

Some friends recently reminded me how the Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper once said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” When we say, “God is great,” declaring that God is the almighty sovereign over all the earth, then the ebb and flow of life bring hard questions. When a nation is defeated, when people are oppressed, when the able-bodied are taken away in exile and the feeble are left to suffer – Is it God’s doing? Is that what it means to say, “God is great”? 

 

One person in US history courageous enough to address God’s sovereignty was Abraham Lincoln. In his First Inaugural Address, facing the prospect of a civil war, Lincoln urged patience and to trust that “If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.” Four bloody years later, in his Second Inaugural Address, he quoted the 119th Psalm saying, “Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” Lincoln was wresting with what it means to say God is great in the context of violence, just like the bloody stories in Joshua and Judges. 

 

While some of the actions, presumptions, and even conclusions in Joshua and Judges are hard to accept at face value – Jesus will contend with some of them – I think we are missing the point if we just bypass the books altogether. I do not see them prescribing violence as God’s way of exercising sovereignty in the world but insisting that God is great even in a world filled with violence. Even in the US, where we are usually shielded from the violence of bombings and invasions pertinent to war, we are daily exposed to violent stories of school shootings, racialized and sexualized violence, as well as a plethora of violent imagery through gaming, streaming, and movie-going. We carry anxieties about the grids on which we depend and the controllability of the artificial intelligences that we create. Within our own context of violence we ask, along with the communities of the books of Joshua and Judges, “What does it mean to say, ‘God is great’ in such a world?” 

 

Next week we will explore the accompanying statement, “God is good.” 

 

See you in worship,

Mark of St. Mark

 

 

 

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 

World Refugee Day

 Friends, 

 

Tomorrow, June 20, is “World Refugee Day,” an international day designated by the United Nations to honor people who have been forced to flee their native home due to conflict or persecution. 

 

Consider the precarious nature of a refugee. Our history has shaped us so that much of our identity lies in the nation-state of our birth. Upon birth, we get “birth certificates” – official papers distributed by the state. We have “citizenship,” with all the consequent rights and protections, based on where we live. We apply for “passports” that offer us recognition as we travel abroad. Simply telling someone that we are “American,” or “Indonesian,” elicits presumptions about what we might be like, simply because of that identity. 

 

A refugee is someone for whom that system of protection and identity has broken down. Last week, Kate Forer told us the story of how her family came to the US fleeing the Armenian genocide. After worship, I heard from several folks who had similar stories in their families – refugees who made their way to the US often with little more than hope to survive; refugees who arrived utterly dependent on a different country to recognize them, welcome them in some way, and to permit them to make a new life here. Since their “Civil Rights” have been taken away, the question becomes whether other countries would honor their “Human Rights.”  

 

Being a refugee is one kind of challenge; responding to refugees is another. When the People of Israel left Egypt, they were landless, so everywhere they went posed a danger. If they passed a field of wild oats, could they harvest some for themselves, or would local folks consider that robbery? If they encountered a spring of fresh water, could they fill their water skins without being attacked? The stories of God providing manna from heaven and water from a rock are specifically tied to that period when the people of Israel were in between a situation in Egypt that they could bear no longer and their own land with their own fields and cisterns. The first challenge they faced was survival, and God provided for them. 

The second challenge was equally difficult. It was the challenge of forgetfulness. As they were preparing to enter the Promised Land, God warned them, “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.  (Deuteronomy 6:10-12). “Forgetting the Lord” is an ethical and spiritual challenge for secure folks. When God commanded the people to leave the edges of their fields unharvested for the sake of the widows, orphans, and aliens, that command was always punctuated, with the reminder, “For you were once aliens in a foreign land.” 

 

Much of the “Christian Nation” mythology that many advocate today mishandles remembering. When God commanded the People of Israel to remember, it was not “Remember you are special, not them.” It was “Remember, I blessed you, so you bless them.” World Refugee Day invites us to remember that when a people’s identity and consequent civil rights are broken, we still honor their inherent identity and human rights as God’s children. 

 

So, allow me to make a plea. Since seeking refuge is a subset of immigration more broadly, I want to invite you to consider joining our October 2-4 trip to the US/Mexico border. We need informed and compassionate voices in our public conversation about immigration, and this trip offers us a way to join that conversation more fruitfully. You can find information here. And if you are interested in being part of the trip, I need to know by July 12, so please send me a note here. And please note that the Mission Commission has set aside money for anyone who is interested but would welcome financial assistance. I cannot think of a better way for us to observe World Refugee Day than to commit to learning more about the challenges facing those at our own borders. 

 

See you in worship, 

Mark of St. Mark

 

 

Women in the Pulpit - an Emphatic "Yes!"

 Friends, 

Last weekend we began our “Living the Great Stories” summer theme with a lot of interest and enthusiasm. This Weekend is going to be full, especially on Sunday with the Blood Drive, the choir’s last anthem and the handbell ensemble’s last offering before their summer breaks. And on both Saturday and Sunday we will see a delightful video that Bridget Duffin put together with the information Pastor Hayes collected, honoring our graduates. And Kate Forer will be preaching on the story of Hagar. It will be marvelous.

 

This week, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) met and drilled down into nonsense. Back when I was in college, I served as the Youth Minister at a Southern Baptist Church in Georgia. They were a wonderful congregation and the pastor was a very good mentor for me, since I was an enthusiastic but not particularly wise. During that time, I learned how the SBC worked, as a “cooperative,” where individual church autonomy was respected within the collective work of the larger group (missions, seminaries, etc.). It was a way of organization that many Baptists deeply appreciated. Then came what some called “the Fundamentalist takeover” of the late 1980’s. Seminary professors faced the threat of losing their position if they did not ascribe to a certain, narrow view of biblical inspiration. Individual churches were ousted (in some way, I’m not sure how), because they did not hold to a certain standard of doctrine or practice. As many upset Baptists told me, the church they once loved had become unrecognizable, because of the insistence of a few leading voices. For some time it has been evident that the takeover has succeeded. 

 

The vote this week was to strengthen the SBC’s prohibition on women as church leaders and preachers, voting decisively to add language to its constitution clarifying that its churches do not “affirm, appoint or endorse” women as pastors. And it was not even close. The vote had to be a supermajority (66%) and was closer to 75%. 

 

Honestly, it is hard to believe that this continues to be a matter of conversation, much less that a 75% majority would vote to prohibit women from preaching or serving as pastors. After speaking with a number of delegates, Ruth Graham of the New York Times wrote, “Supporters of the constitutional amendment argued that firmer procedures were necessary, because the acceptance of women pastors often precedes broader theological and cultural shifts to the left, including the acceptance of homosexuality.” As one person put it, “You’re never more than one year away from drift.” 

 

It feels heroic and faithful to draw lines and say, “This side is God’s side; that side is the world’s side.” There are even times when lines should be drawn. It just seems odd to me that gender roles, sexual orientation, and gender identity have become in so many Christian people’s minds the topics on which those lines must be drawn. Jesus spoke so much more about hate, violence, hypocrisy, retribution, and self-righteousness as his topics of great concern. 

 

This year, October 26 will be the 70-year anniversary of when the Cayuga-Syracuse Presbytery ordained Margaret Towner as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Southern Presbyterians – a separate but sister organization until 1983 – ordained Rachel Henderlite at All Souls Presbyterian Church in 1965. I do not say this as a note of self-congratulations. As early as 1889 the Nolin Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (another sister organization) ordained Louisa Woosley to be a minister, but the Cumberland denominational leadership refused to recognize her ordination. Women’s ordination has been a rocky and strongly deliberated journey for many Christian denominations, and of course the Roman Catholic Church continues to have robust conversations over it. 

 

It’s an interesting thing. Once we accept the ordination of women, of the LGBTQ community, of non-cis-gender persons, and begin to see how powerfully God equips and uses them, it is usually just a small matter of time before we begin asking, “What were we thinking?” And until our siblings are able to see a better light, we repent for all of those persons whose gifts and passions we will not be able to receive. 

 

When we attend worship at St. Mark, we are re-affirming your own commitment to being faithful to the God whose gifts were poured out on “each” and “all” on the day of Pentecost. Come, let us worship the God of abundance together.

 

Mark of St. Mark