Pentecost & The Killing of George Floyd

[This article was originally published for BreakPoint and you can find it here.]

O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere and fillest all things; Treasury of Blessings, and Giver of Life – come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One. – Eastern Orthodox Prayer

This past Sunday was the Feast of Pentecost for many Christians around the world. It’s the day we celebrate the Holy Spirit’s descent. At my church there were assigned prayers and readings that reflect upon the meaning of Pentecost. Usually, (outside of a global pandemic) everyone wears clothes of red, the liturgical color that symbolizes the Holy Spirit, as in red tongues of fire. It’s also one of the five feast days when, ordinarily, the sacrament of Baptism is celebrated. This fact invites us to reflect on the role of the Holy Spirit in salvation.

Looking over the prayers and readings for Sunday, one Pentecost theme stands out above all others: The Holy Spirit reunifies a divided humanity. This theme is clear in the fundamental story of Pentecost found in Acts 2. When the Holy Spirit comes, the division of humanity that occurred at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is reversed. From chaotic division to gospel unity. That’s what the Holy Spirit does.

On Pentecost Sunday, our worship reflects this theme explicitly, over and over again. We begin our service with these words:

Celebrant: There is one Body and one Spirit;

People: There is one hope in God’s call to us;

Celebrant: One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism;

People: One God and Father of all. 

– The Book of Common Prayer (BCP), 299.

Then the Priest prays the prayer of the day:

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever, Amen. – BCP, 227.

Then we have the Acts 2 reading, followed later by the renewal of baptismal vows when we are asked:

Celebrant: Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? 

People: I will, with God’s help.  – BCP, 417.

Friends, this is not only the providence of God on display, it is the counter-cultural nature of Christian worship at its best. This Sunday we were invited to reenact God’s story in such a way that we remember His vision for a redeemed humanity, one where “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).”

We are called to grieve how far from this vision our sinful divisions have taken us. And we will sing, pray, and long for the fulfillment of that vision once again.

In other words, in this Feast of Pentecost, Christians around the world can grieve a world in which George Floyd has died, yearn for a world where racism and all other human divisions are no more, and expect the comfort and assistance toward this end that only God, the Holy Spirit, can bring.

This is the world that awaits, where “the songs of peaceful Zion thunder like a mighty flood” because “Jesus out of ev’ry nation has redeemed us by His blood.” (William Dix, Alleluia Sing to Jesus).

Easter During COVID-19

THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST WRITTEN FOR AND PUBLISHED BY BREAKPOINT.

“For to their longing eyes restored,
the Apostles saw their risen Lord.”

Many weeks into the full experience of this pandemic I have, to my chagrin, come to accept a fact I’ve been fighting since DAY 1: God wants to work in me something new, something holy.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to me, a life-long Christian, but it is because I neither requested nor approved this work! Neither did God ask.

So, now, in the hopes of purging my soul and recognizing this COVID-19 season to be the severe mercy that it surely is, and in an effort to discover that perhaps I’m not the only one who’s been reluctant to offer God a sacrifice of praise during lock-down life, I would like to make my confession. Here I go…

I confess my incessant moodiness and irritability.

I confess that a subtle but pervasive anger lives in me, whose presence is as mysterious as it is destructive.

I confess that tears of sadness, despair, and doubt have come suddenly and frequently these past few weeks.

In summary, I confess that I have not prayerfully cultivated and thus do not currently possess, the physical, spiritual, relational, and emotional resources I need to be able to honor God and love my neighbor during this pandemic.

That feels better.

To be clear, I can’t honestly say I’m ready to cry out, “Thank you, Jesus!” for this mess of truth in my lap, but I’m beginning to inch toward that by asking questions like, “What is going on in me?” And “What is God doing in my heart, in my marriage, in my relationships with my kids, and in my work?” These questions are, in my experience, a kind of slippery slope of truth-telling. They lead, ultimately and because of the kindness of God, to repentance and to God’s forgiveness. This is my hope.

“What is going on in me? What is God doing in my heart, in my marriage, in my relationships with my kids, and in my work? These questions are, in my experience, a kind of slippery slope of truth-telling. They lead, ultimately and because of the kindness of God, to repentance and to God’s forgiveness. ”

A few days ago, I heard a line from one of my favorite hymns that might as well serve as the soundtrack for my journey of repentance and faith during COVID-19. Check out the last line in this stanza:

That Easter day with joy was bright
The sun shone out in fairer light
For to their longing eyes restored,
the Apostles saw their risen Lord.

“For to their longing eyes restored, the Apostles saw their risen Lord.” This line comes from J.M Neale’s translation of the hymn, That Easter Day With Joy Was Bright. We sing it at my church on the Second Sunday of Easter-tide. It’s part of a larger poem that dates all the way back to the 4th or 5th Century, something I value because it means this a poem whose truth has managed to comfort many “longing eyes,” not just mine.

Eyes tell stories.

In the moments before Jesus’ resurrection appearance, what story did the longing eyes of the Apostles’ tell? Tragedy. Defeat. Confusion. Worry. Despair. “We saw Jesus perform miracles only to watch Him die on a cross?!”

Indeed, their eyes were telling a story we would all recognize right now, in the midst of this pandemic, in the longing eyes of people on respirators, struggling to breathe. It’s the same story told in the eyes of health-care workers, and in those of people without work, food, or shelter. I confess that, if you had seen my eyes recently, this is the story they too would have told you.

But the “longing” is only half of the story: “For to their longing eyes restored, the Apostles saw their risen Lord.”

I recorded a version of That Easter Day With Joy Was Bright and I invite you to consider it as a possibly traveling song for your own journey through the rest of COVID-19. May its message move you from longing eyes to a risen Christ.

Josh Bales | That Easter Day With Joy Was Bright | Album: Come Away From Rush & Hurry



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Christianity, Tech, & Grief in our Viral Moment

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THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST WRITTEN FOR AND PUBLISHED BY BREAKPOINT.

For the past two weeks, my church in Orlando has been, like many churches around the world, hard at work responding to the coronavirus crisis:

How will we care for those effected by the virus? How will we continue our worshiping life, carry on leadership meetings, and handle a possible loss of financial support?

One of the tools helping us answer these questions has been technology. In fact, technology has been one of the only tools available to us in a time when local officials have asked us to stay home. So, we began livestreaming our liturgies and communicating daily with our congregation through emails and social media platforms. This has given all of us comfort and a needed (albeit disembodied and virtual) sense of connectedness during the uncertainty of this pandemic.

But I have to make a confession. A quiet unease has been lurking in my soul with every virtual worship service I participate in. It’s a dissonance between the reality of the global pandemic and my (subconscious?) attempts, via technology, to keep my life as “normal” as possible, in the realms where such false normalcy is possible: my emotions, my relationships, and my spiritual life.

“The six feet of physical distance between me and the person in line at the grocery store, not to mention the empty streets and closed businesses in my city, confronts me with this reality.”

Let me explain.

Physically speaking, the truth of the tragedy facing our world is unavoidable: the entire globe has ceased to function. The six feet of physical distance between me and the person in line at the grocery store, not to mention the empty streets and closed businesses in my city, confronts me with this reality.

But, if I so choose, with technology, I can leave this bleak physical existence and, thanks to emotion-numbing Netflix series, small group Facetime hang outs, and live-streamed worship, live relatively the same life I had before this whole thing started. Pandemic who?

Let me be clear. Technology isn’t the enemy. I’m no Luddite. I’ve read recent articles addressing these issues that sound, to my pastoral ears, unsafe on the one hand, or grumpy on the other. I’d prefer to avoid both postures, if possible. I believe technology is great until it becomes, like any gift of God, one more creative way we avoid the frailty of our humanity and the hunger of our souls; that is, our need for God.

But our use of technology the past few weeks has come dangerously close to the story of Job whose friends repeatedly offered him cheap answers to the question of the overwhelming tragedy that had beset his life. Such answers were no doubt attractive options for Job in ending the tension he lived between a God who claimed to be good and the unspeakable tragedy that God allowed. (In the end, even God Himself refused to give Job explanations for the evil he had endured, opting instead to remind Job of the trustworthiness of His own authoritative identity as God, the maker of heaven, earth, and every mystery in between.)

Aren’t Christians people who tell the truth, as best we can, according to God’s word, about ourselves, our world, and about God? To lose this calling is to lose ourselves and our mission, right? This was the kind of prophetic calling that Flannery O’Connor embraced. She awakened readers to their universal need for God’s grace by refusing to shield them from the violence and grotesque brokenness of a world in need of a savior. In the face of Covid-19, I believe this is now our calling, too.

What if this pandemic is offering us as Christians an opportunity to show the world not how to avoid human pain, but how to process it with honesty, endurance, sacrifice, Christ-like compassion, and most importantly, the hope of eternal life offered in Jesus Christ?

Normally, in these articles, my thoughts would end here. If you’ve had your fill, stop now! If, on the other hand, you want one (admittedly technology-addicted person’s) practical suggestion for moving into the days ahead, read on. It’s actually just one word.

“Grieve because, “Jesus wept.” This verse of Scripture, infamous for its brevity, is a profound statement about dealing with tragedy honestly as the beloved people of God.”

Grieve.

Grieve because the overwhelming presence of laments in the book of Psalms, more than any other genre, are instructive for us in all times of life, but especially during a global human crisis. Psalm 4, for instance, is a Psalm of Lament prayed in the liturgy of Compline right before sleep.

Grieve because, “Jesus wept.” This verse of Scripture, infamous for its brevity, is a profound statement about dealing with tragedy honestly as the beloved people of God. Be sure to read the context of the verse- that wonderfully moving story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Incidentally (providentially) this was the gospel story assigned to be read in many churches all around the world this past Sunday, March 29th!

Finally, grieve because sadness is what healthy humans do with tragedy in a fallen world. Grieving evil will actually move you toward sanity, toward healthy relationships, and toward intimacy with God.

I’ll leave you with these encouraging words from author, Mike Mason, in his work, Practicing the Presence of People, about the nature of grief:

Sadness signals change…It is an intermediate emotion, a feeling that is going somewhere. Like a seventh or a ninth chord in music, it is rich in subtle tones that tend toward resolution, lean toward home. This is what distinguishes sadness from moroseness, self-pity, or depression, all of which have a feeling of stuckness. Sadness is always in motion in the backfield. You will know the real thing by this sense of movement toward happiness. In photographs, crying and laughing are hard to tell apart.

Sadness is like that moment in a rainstorm when the rain has not yet stopped, but there is a perceptible brightening, and there comes that subtle change in the atmosphere signifying the imminence of a rainbow. Sadness is hopeful. Anger feels hard in the body, fear feels alien, and depression is like a dull poison. But sadness is at home in flesh and blood. It is a soft and relaxed presence, a comfortable garment for the heart.

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Desire: Longing For God in the Aches of Our Hearts

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This article was first written for and published by BreakPoint.

The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for…

– Catechism of the Catholic Church

When I was a kid, the day after Christmas sent me into an existential crisis. When I was in high-school, I felt a loneliness I’ve never forgotten. When I was in college, I fell in love but that love was not returned. And at some point in my twenties, when the pressures of adulthood mounted, I grieved the loss of youth.

Longing. Desire. If there’s one subject discussed more than any other in my office as a therapist and pastor, it’s this. My clients and parishioners don’t use these words, exactly, but you can hear it in their stories:

“I wish my Dad had been a different man.” 

“I wish she would marry me.” 

“I wish I didn’t have to feel this grief.” 

“I wish God would tell me why.” 

“I wish I could find work that makes me happy.”

I can remember my own awakening to desire and longing in college, when I heard for the first time Saint Augustine’s line: “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” Not long after, I read this from C.S. Lewis:

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Longing. It’s that ache in the belly felt by every human being at some point in life. It’s as unavoidable as growing old. And perhaps, for precisely this reason, rather than ignoring it, denying it, demonizing it, or giving into it undiscerningly, we should pay attention to it. According to John Eldredge (who has done much work on this topic), “How you handle your heart’s desire will in great measure determine what becomes of your life.”

Perhaps not knowing what else to do with my own longing, I wrote a song about it. Here’s the lyric of the chorus:

All our longings- they’re like sacred signs. And they point us to the God behind them all. That’s why sadness, and every sweet romance- that’s why sunsets always make us homesick.

“Homesick” is a song, a story, about two people who confront their longing and find, underneath it, a holy fire, God’s fingerprints.

The man in verse one has a sex addiction. He is drowning in shame. What if he could know that, lurking beneath his depravity is actually a longing for intimacy, placed there by God, pure, innocent, beautiful, and full of dignity?

The woman in verse two has lived, faithfully, in a lifeless marriage. Her attention to the longing in her heart for a better marriage or a different marriage is an act of faith. Romantic desire says, “Leave.” But God-given desire says, “Stay. Let your longing be an act of faith to the God who hates divorce.”

And so, her tears become tears of faith. Who knows, maybe God will fulfill her longing but, in the meantime, I imagine Him wrapping His arms around His brave, grieving daughter. She has confronted the very desire that He gave her and released it back to Him.

All our longings- they’re like sacred signs. And they point us to the God behind them all. That’s why laughter, and every moonlight kiss- that’s why silence always makes us homesick.

“Homesick” was a difficult song to write. My goal in writing it was to deepen my own awareness of the truth that, beneath the depravity of my human nature- beneath the loneliness, beneath the unrequited love, beneath it all- is a God-given dignity, one that, when finally restored, will be nothing less than the divine destiny for which I was created. Don’t hate your desire. Bring it to Jesus and let him refine it or fulfill it.

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The Chaos Of Christmas

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This article was first written for and published by BreakPoint.

Have you ever noticed how in the Christmas movies that they always seem to involve Christmas in chaos? For Charlie Brown, it’s commercialism. For George Bailey, it’s financial ruin. For Chevy Chase, it’s cousin Eddie and a violent, loose, squirrel.

Vanity Fair observed a few years ago out that it was Ralphie with his Red Ryder BB Gun and dysfunctional family in 1983 that upended the sentimental old order of Christmas movies by showing something every family could recognize, but I think the connection between chaos and Christmas goes back earlier than that . . . way earlier.

Songwriter Andrew Peterson describes the chaos poignantly:

It was not a silent night. There was blood on the ground. 

You could hear a woman cry in the alley ways that night 

on the streets of David’s town. 

And the stable wasn’t clean. The cobblestones were cold. 

And little Mary full of grace with tears upon her face, 

had no mother’s hand to hold.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, the chaos of the very first Christmas included a shameful public scandal, frightening visits from other-worldly messengers, a harrowing escape from a maniacal and murderous politician, and a birthing room would have made Motel 6 look like a resort.

Matthew tells us, “When Mary had been engaged to Joseph, before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit…”

It’s easy to read this story and forget that, for Joseph, as it would be for any unsuspecting husband in the months before his honeymoon, the news of Mary’s pregnancy meant betrayal at the deepest level. It meant, most likely, the loss of his future plans- a life together with Mary and whatever family they may have had. It also meant the end of a mutual financial arrangement between the couple’s two families.

Matthew goes on: “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” 

More than just a story of personal betrayal, this unplanned (and inexplicable) pregnancy before marriage meant, in those days and in that culture, almost the certain punishment of death for Mary. Scholars point out that Joseph would have been within his rights according to contemporary customs to turn Mary in and let her face this punishment.

Are you feeling the “Christmas spirit” yet?

The chaos keeps coming:

An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife…She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

In other words, God is asking Joseph to let go of what most men in that culture valued most: the continuation of one’s own family lineage through the natural birth and naming of a firstborn son.

Joseph’s chaos included losing this dream, too.

On the third Sunday of Advent each year, my church prays a famous prayer used by Christians in worship since the 700s A.D.

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us . . .

When I think of the chaos of Mary and Joseph’s Christmas, and our own, I’m tempted to qualify the petition with something like:

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us . . .  but not with a job loss, Lord! Don’t come among us with that. And please don’t come among us with a trip to the hospital or a family argument…

The Church has long pointed to Joseph as a model Christian father, and rightly so, because Saint Matthew concludes Joseph’s story like this:

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him…

In other words, instead of quietly dismissing Mary, which could have been Joseph’s otherwise reasonable attempt to avoid the chaos, suffering, and disruption, he obeyed God.

Maybe the reason we all connect with the chaos of Christmas specials is because they shine a light on the fundamental- but unsentimental- truth that our salvation appeared with suffering, that divinity arrived with disruption, and that Christmas came, all those years ago, in the midst of chaos.

This year, instead of quietly dismissing the chaos, suffering, and disruptions, what if we engaged it with faith and obedience, trusting that God’s disruptive activity in our lives will lead, like it did for Joseph, to the welcoming of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

A few years ago, I recorded an arrangement of Joy to The World that sought to capture the juxtaposition of the joy and chaos of Christmas. You can check it out below.