Oneness | The Trinity: A Surprisingly Practical Doctrine for These Times

Sarah Withrow King January 3, 2020

The night before Jesus was crucified, killed in part because of political and religious corruption, he prayed that his beloved disciples, his friends, would “become completely one.”

John 17:20-24
“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

Knowing he was about to suffer tremendously and die, Jesus prayed for his followers to be unified, in the same way that Jesus is unified with the One he called “Father.”

So, how does it work? How does it work that Jesus is God and that God is the Holy Spirit? My high school youth director said to think of it like water, ice, and steam: the same chemical in different forms. But ice and water and steam can all exist separately from one another, where Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are one single divine nature. It’s all a little much, a little complicated, especially in a world in which animated pictures have become a stand-in for communication and many of us (raises hand) think that reading the headline gives us all the information we need.

But in addition to Jesus praying that we would act like this unified divine being, we’re also made in the image of a Trinitarian God, so it’s probably something we ought to pay attention to. Because we’re not just going through the motions, it’s the very nature of who we are.

God is many things, but at the core, God is love. Out of love, God created the world. Out of love, God sent Jesus to redeem us. Out of love, God offers the opportunity for reconciliation, rather than condemnation. God’s love is so expansive that worlds, planets, stars, the sun, the moon, all of life flows out of, into, and through God. God’s love is life creating, life sustaining, and life saving. Our first job as followers of Christ is to love God. Our second, to love one another. Jesus says that “everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

I think it’s important to note that God doesn’t love human creatures exclusively. The scriptures are full of references and stories about God’s love for all creation. Psalm 104, for instance, praises God for the majesty and care of creation, describing in loving detail how God gives every animal a drink of water, provides shelter for birds, gladdens human hearts, and provides plants for humans and animals alike to eat. The earth is full of God’s creatures, and God loves this very good world. St. Francis of Assisi is one of our spiritual parents who reminded us of this again and again.

But we’re the only creatures made in God’s image, so what does that mean for us?

The Trinitarian nature of God is intimacy and relationship. German theologian Jürgen Moltmann says that the Trinitarian nature of God demonstrates “the process of most perfect and intense empathy….The Persons of the Trinity make one another shine through that glory, mutually and together. They glow into perfect form through one another and awake to perfected beauty in one another” (The Trinity and the Kingdom). This is the Imago Dei in us. This is the way of being to which we can aspire. And no part of our life is exempt. Every relationship, every interaction, is and ought to be indwelled with this spirit.

This is a radical way to look at the world: motivated and sustained by the love of Christ, we share the good news that old ways of living, being, and relating have been replaced by the reconciliation of all creation to the Creator. Our calling, then, is reconciliation, returning and leading others to a life in Christ that is communal, just, and interdependent by its very nature.

And when we get this representation wrong, we really get it wrong. Every violent abuse of power and every bullying act is a mutilation of God’s image. It violates the stewardship with which we have been entrusted by the Creator who lovingly crafted and righteously cares for this world.

One way in which the early church Fathers described the Trinity was the word perichoresis, a Greek word meaning things like: to make room for, to go forward, to contain, rotation, around. It describes an intimate indwelling, a deep and fluctuating connection, mutual submission, shared love and breath and purpose and experience. A communal dance of connection between God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Our most trusted and intimate relationships are a dim reflection of the Holy Trinity, and yet we are called to pursue that same oneness. Just before He prays, Jesus tells his disciples to love one another, to abide in Jesus: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’” John 15:9-13

What does it mean to pursue intimacy in an age of emojis? What does it mean to live in mutual submission to one another in a country where independence and individual freedom is the highest prize? What does it mean to dwell with one another in our economy? The questions of the Trinity aren’t simply mysterious and theoretical, they’re deeply practical ones with long-reaching, beautiful potential. Brazilian theologian Leonoardo Boff says:

“We need to go beyond the understanding of Trinity as logical mystery and see it as saving mystery. The Trinity has to do with the lives of each of us, our daily experiences, our struggles to follow our conscience, our love and joy, our bearing the sufferings of the world and the tragedies of human existence; it also has to do with the struggle against social injustice, with efforts at building a more human form of society, with the sacrifices and martyrdoms that these endeavors so often bring. If we fail to include the Trinity in our personal and social odyssey, we shall have failed to show the saving mystery, failed in evangelization...We are not condemned to live alone, cut off from one another: we are called to live together and to enter into the communion of the Trinity. Society is not ultimately set in its unjust and unequal relationships, but summoned to transform itself in the light of the open and egalitarian relationships that obtain in the community of the Trinity, the goal of social and historical progress. If the Trinity is good news, then it is so particularly for the oppressed and those condemned to solitude.” Trinity and Society

How can I contribute to a world that presses into the Kingdom? How can we, as a church, resist the impulse to build walls, cut connections, decide who is “in” and who is “out”? How can we submit to one another, abide in and with one another, and become truly “one”?

About the Author

Sarah is the author of Vegangelical: How Caring for Animals Can Shape Your Faith (Zondervan, 2016) and Animals Are Not Ours (No, Really, They’re Not): An Evangelical Animal Liberation Theology (Cascade Books, 2016). She spends her days working for CreatureKind, helping Christians put their faith into action. She lives in Eugene with her husband, son, and animal companions and enjoys action movies, black coffee, the daily crossword, and dreaming of her next international journey.

The Advent of Revolution | Patiently Impatient and other Paradoxes of an Enfleshed God

Sarah Withrow King November 8, 2019

Over the course of about a decade, I’ve come to appreciate Advent in a way that has surprised me. While I was raised in a Christian home, we didn’t pay much attention to the church calendar. We even tended to skip services on Christmas and Easter because they were so much more crowded than normal Sundays. I remember that, as a child, some of my secular friends had Advent calendars in their homes, and that I felt resentful that they got a bit of chocolate every day, a reward for the coming of a Savior they didn’t even believe in. A little bit petty, to be sure.

Eventually, I came to believe that Advent is about being patiently impatient. Actively waiting for a promised peace and wholeness that is already, but not yet. For Christians, Advent marks a time of pre-revolution, the anticipation of the coming Kingdom of God in which all people will turn to God instead of turning on one another (Isaiah 2); a time in which the rod of the oppressor is broken, the people rejoice, and tools of war are burned (Isaiah 9); a time in which all creatures will live in harmony with one another (Isaiah 11); a time in which death will be no more (Isaiah 25). The Creator of the world took on human flesh, came to the Earth as a human infant, showed us how to live and love and obey, was executed as an enemy of the government and religious powers, returned to life as an eternal victor, and told his followers that he’d be back and while we were waiting, we should spend our time on earth sharing the Good News far and wide.

There were three chapters in my journey from Advent agnostic to Advent enthusiast.

First chapter: Jesus was born in a particular time, in a particular place. Palestinians, including Jesus’ family, were under the thumb of the Roman empire. Their movement and economy was restricted, they were under the constant threat of violence. The Jewish people anticipated the coming of a Messiah who would overthrow their oppressors. Instead, they got Jesus, a Messiah who befriended Romans, tax collectors, and other undesirables and who was a constant thorn in the side of the religious establishment. In 2012, I visited Bethlehem. I sat and touched the spot in the Church of the Nativity where Mary is said to have birthed Jesus in the midst of political tyranny. A few hours later and just footsteps away, I sat in the living room of another Palestinian mother, who described nursing her own newborn on the floor of her family’s home as rockets and gunfire were exchanged between the Israeli army and a group of armed Palestinian hostage-holders inside that same church. Mothers and their infants, across centuries, searching for peace.

Second chapter: in all the nativity plays and movies I’ve seen, Jesus’ mother Mary is portrayed as a kittenish, frightened girl. Timid, barely speaking. But when I read Mary’s song of praise after meeting my Palestinian mother-friend, I hear a young woman secure in the promise and protection of her Creator:

“And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.’”
Luke 1:46-55

This young mother wasn’t wringing her hands in fear. And though these holy promises wouldn’t be realized in her lifetime, her confidence was secure--a hope in the midst of tragedy and uncertainty. As a young, unwed minority, Mary may not have had much political power, but she used her voice to proclaim the truth she knew would come to pass. There’s a celtic hymn based on Mary’s song of praise that I’ve written about before, the Canticle of the Turning. It’s a perfect song for Mary: a gentle tune with a particularly powerful message: “The world is about to turn.”

Third chapter: we were part of a church in Philadelphia that observed the liturgical calendar, and that included welcoming Advent in through a church-wide theme. One particularly chilly year, shortly after a spate of high-profile extra-judicial killings of unarmed people of color had made headlines, there was a discussion about the year’s Advent theme. Someone suggested we talk about getting small and quiet as we waited for the coming of the Lord. And I remember a friend of mine, a black woman who worked as an attorney fighting some egregious injustices in the city, said, “Advent is about a coming revolution, it’s not about being quiet.”

Advent is about revolution coming in the form of a helpless infant human who would grow into a young man, executed by the state. Advent is about the assurance of peace in the midst of war. Advent is about the hope of reconciliation in a world that has had only a small glimpse of conciliation. Advent is about patiently waiting for the coming of the Kingdom of God, while actively witnessing and working towards the promises of the Good News of that Kingdom.

I’ve had a hard time having hope recently. I’ve had a hard time feeling my faith. But perhaps this Advent can be one in which I press into paradox, being sure of what I don’t know and certain of what I can’t see.

About the Author

Salt and Light | Salt Needs to Be Shaken

Sarah Withrow King September 20, 2019

“It’s about time for me to email him again,” said the sophomore from an evangelical college in Tennessee. Since her arrival at the school, she’s been encouraging students, faculty, staff, and administration to follow God’s original command to humans: to care for the earth. In this case, every couple of weeks, she’s been asking for the school to host a chapel speaker who can talk about creation care. And she’s been turned down every couple of weeks, for a year. “This isn’t something our students are interested in,” replies the chaplain, every time, as if spiritual leadership is about telling people what they want to hear. As if college students today aren’t reading headlines about unprecedented species extinction, historic weather events becoming every-year-occurrences, global food insecurity, and more.

I met this Jesus-following student and a handful of her peers from schools across the U.S. as part of my day job directing CreatureKind, a nonprofit that helps Christians recognize faith-based reasons for caring about the wellbeing of farmed animals, and take action in response. This year, we’re partnering with Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA) and I got to attend their annual cohort retreat, where evening conversations revolved not only around favorite Instagram accounts and the best of bad reality TV, but how college students could reduce their energy use in dorms, the pain caused by immigration raids and family separations, and how to share their testimonies. This year, there was also a lot of conversation about Amazonian Rainforest. Students were concerned that this massive area, often referred to as the world’s lungs, had been enveloped in apocalyptic blazes for weeks, in part because the current Brazilian President has emboldened agri-business to accelerate the pace at which they slash and burn the rainforest landscape to make room for more cattle grazing and cattle-feeding crops.

Why did these college students give up the last week of their summer vacations to attend a training in rural Michigan and engage themselves in emotionally difficult conversations? To a person, they answered a call because their faith compelled them to be there. As members of the body of Christ, as part of the Christian church in the United States, they read and respond to the words of Jesus: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-16)

This year’s YECA cohort join a rich tradition of missionally-minded people working on behalf of God’s creation. They’re prepared to be salt on their campuses and in their churches, shaking a bit out everywhere it’s needed. Candles in the dark. Lone voices in the wilderness. Because voices need to speak, lights need to shine, and salt needs to be shaken out of its container and onto food to do the job it’s meant to do.

But is working on behalf of creation really salty? Maybe not always. But most of us who spend our time and energy in this space aren’t simply trying to preserve our own future (or present) security. Rather, action for environmental justice is obedience to God (Genesis 2:15). Action for environmental justice is seeking justice for and serving the most vulnerable of God’s people (see Loving the Least of These, a primer from the National Association of Evangelicals). And action for environmental justice is pressing into the promise of the reconciliation of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:18-23).

Seventeen years ago this month, I started my post-college job search. I made a list three pages long of nonprofit organizations that I thought did good work, and at which I thought I could make a difference in the world. I didn’t grow up saying the Lord’s Prayer on a regular basis, but the years have taught me that I was trying to make my life the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.” On earth. As it is in heaven. Of course, nothing I can do will bring about the full reconciliation of creation, that’s the work of Jesus (Colossians 1:15-20). I will never heal the world’s wounds. But my three-page list was a prayer: “Show me how to press into the promise of your Kingdom, on earth.”

My list wasn’t all environmental organizations. I cared about a lot of issues then, and I care about a lot of issues now. I see many of the world’s struggles as deeply interconnected, and it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s wounds. Systems that cause harm to the poor also cause harm to the environment. The devaluing of one kind of life can easily lead to the devaluing of another. The same sickness that causes someone to abuse an animal can cause that same person to abuse a human. And our sins hurt us as much as they hurt others.

One of the YECA leaders closed the retreat with the following prayer as a blessing for the students. A reminder that enormity—and the knowledge that the work will never be done in our lifetime—need not stop us in our tracks. We can and should “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly” in service of Jesus. We need to be salty, and we might even need to turn some tables over in the process, but we can do so in full peace, knowing that we are workers, not the Master Builder.

Archbishop Oscar Romero Prayer: A Step Along the Way

*This prayer was composed by Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, drafted for a homily by Card. John Dearden in Nov. 1979 for a celebration of departed priests.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent
enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of
saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an
opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master
builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

About the Author

Adventuring with God | I’m Not Usually the Adventurous Type

Sarah Withrow King July 12, 2019

Quote: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” Samuel, a freaked out little kid trying to do the right thing.

I had been working for PETA for nine tumultuous, but rewarding years. I had a toddler. I had just quit working full-time because trying to save the world from itself and make sure my kid didn’t eat a dog toy was too much to handle in one ten-hour day. It was becoming difficult to pay for the house we had bought from friends in a fit of impulsive optimism now that we were limited to one and a half incomes and the additional expense of even part-time daycare. And I felt increasingly divided, the only Christian at work and one of only a handful of vegans at the big Presbyterian church that was our home. I was tired of wearing all the hats one at a time and I was in the midst of a pretty nasty bout of late-onset postpartum depression.

So of course that’s when God told me to go to seminary. Of course.

I remember the exact moment I heard the words. I was sitting in a worship service at First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia. The fellowship hall where the contemporary service was held had recently been built, a multi-million dollar project I’d viewed as ethically questionable, given the gentrification and poverty in the neighborhoods surrounding the building. So, one Sunday morning, I was sitting cross-legged on a wide padded chair, in the front row on the far left of the hall, my usual spot (even at City Salt, I just realized). I was watching the three jumbo screens, listening to dramatic music as stylized prophetic scripture scrolled in and out of view. It was about blood and sacrifice, that’s all I remember.

I remember thinking, “Wow, this video would be so cool if there was factory farming and slaughterhouse footage behind it.” And then immediately after: “Sarah, you’re the only person in this room of six hundred people who is having that thought.”

And my head opened up and warmth gushed in. I heard the voice of God, clear as anything happening in the room. I heard God say, “You love animals and you love me. I made you this way for a reason. Stop fighting it. Go to seminary.”

I was glued to my seat as the sensation ceased. I looked around to see if I was the only person who had heard what I did. This kind of thing didn’t happen at First Pres Norfolk. We’re the frozen chosen. Only a few of us ever got up the nerve to raise a timid hand at particularly moving parts of a worship song or two. I had no precedence for this experience and didn’t know how I was supposed to respond.

Seminary? I had no desire to be a pastor. I didn’t think my negative view of people would really be a good fit for that job. And it had been ten years since I had been to any school. Google had barely been a thing when I graduated college. How would I function as a student in a whole new world? Also, I really dislike being led places. I’d much rather do the leading. I didn’t want an adventure, I just wanted a good night’s sleep. It was a ridiculous notion.

But I started poking around at the possibilities, late at night and on the weekends. I started to allow myself to think of a different future for myself than the one that my boss at PETA and I had planned on. Giehl and I prayed about the possibility. We met with our lead pastor, to get his blessing on the whole endeavor. He pointed me to Palmer Theological Seminary and the work of Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) and a Palmer professor.

And when I walked in the doors of Palmer Seminary in Philadelphia, a six-hour drive from our home in Norfolk, I knew it was the next stop on my journey. A scholarship and a chance to work with ESA sealed the deal.

So Giehl started looking for a job. I could work remotely part-time, but we relied on his income to pay the bills and provide our insurance. If I wanted to go to Palmer, we needed to move from Norfolk to Philadelphia. And if we were going to move, Giehl needed a job that would support the three of us.

Months went by. We arranged for dog-sitters and drove up for interviews. We looked at neighborhoods and houses with a Philadelphia realtor. Offers were promised, but none delivered. A hiring freeze here, a budget shift there. Summer came and I lost hope that I’d be able to matriculate that fall. There was just no way. The timing was too tight now.

Dejected, I thought God might be directing me to Regent, instead. Though it was just a few minutes away in Virginia Beach, the school didn’t seem like a particularly good fit. The degree programs weren’t what I was looking for. None of the classes looked at issues of systemic justice, the intersection of politics and faith, or creation care. The vast majority of professors were old, white, and male. (Ron is also old, white, and male, but many of the other Palmer profs were not, and I had been looking forward to learning from people who looked at the world through lenses different than my own).

Then Jim Gates, one of our family’s closest friends, and the associate pastor at our church, stood in our kitchen and said to me, “Don’t give up on Palmer.”

Sometimes God speaks to us through supernatural revelation. Sometimes God speaks to us through our goofy friends while we’re staring at the cracked green tile in our kitchens, wrapped up in a world of our own worry. And sometimes God speaks to us through the open doors that follow.

Palmer classes met one day a week, I discovered, and all the classes I wanted to sign up for were on Monday and Tuesday. Palmer kept commuter rooms on campus for students, with beds and desks and showers, and the nightly rate was extremely reasonable. While the drive up and down the Eastern Shore was dotted with factory farms and chicken slaughterhouses, I could make the trek from Norfolk in five hours or less if I left at strategic times. We put our house on the market and despite the burst real estate bubble that caused its value to drop the year after we bought it, we sold it in under a month, and walked away with enough cash to put down first and last month’s rent on a more modest home. Friends stepped up to offer to take Isaiah to pre-school the mornings I was away.

We moved to the rental house in Norfolk the week before classes started. During new student orientation, a group of 80 students, including many grandmothers who were even more afraid than I was about starting school again, sang “Here I Am, Lord” and I wept with gratitude that God had made the path so clear, when I was determined not to see it. During the first training for new students working with ESA, a professor mentioned that he was working on a book and one of the chapters would be on the environmental impacts of eating meat. I gave my notice at PETA that day.

Three years later, I graduated with a Masters in Theological Studies. We sang, “Here I Am, Lord,” during graduation, as we had during orientation. The next year, I published my graduate thesis. Shortly after that, I published Vegangelical. The next year, I met David Clough and we founded CreatureKind with the mission of helping Christians think theologically about farmed animal welfare, and to take practical action in response.

Now, the writer of “Here I Am, Lord” is a little more confident about the efficacy of their efforts than I am. I’m not sure my hand has saved anyone. But I’ve walked with some certainty that by doing my best to listen and respond to God, I’m pleasing the One who created me. So listen to John Michael for a minute (there’s some powerful stuff in there), but then read Thomas Merton in case that’s a better reflection of how you live into your own adventure.

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

About the Author

Perpetual Creativity | Images of God

Sarah Withrow King May 17, 2019

When I looked up the lectionary texts for this Sunday, I thought I had won the blog lottery. Acts 11:1-18 (Peter’s “kill and eat” vision), Psalm 148 (all creation praises God), Revelation 21:1-6 (the new city, where death and pain will be no more), and John 13:31-35 (love as the mark of Christian discipleship). As a person who has spent her entire adulthood navigating the intersection of animal welfare and Christianity, I couldn’t have put together a better grouping of scriptures to use to talk about how our faith ought to impact how we think about and treat God’s other creatures. I’ve written about that a lot. Like, a lot. And there’s still more to say.

But then my favorite gym coach, who isn’t, as far as I know, particularly religious, asked me if I’d read The Shack. I did read it, about ten years ago. I remember quite vividly because it was the first book I read after giving birth. In hindsight, maybe not such a good choice of postpartum reading material. Anyway, my coach liked the depictions of God in the book, the way the persons of the Trinity were portrayed. The idea of God as multifaceted was new to him. And I realized when I read the book, that was a new idea for me, too.

Because I grew up mostly with this Jesus.

[Image from: http://www.ladbible.com/news/news-son-pranks-his-mum-with-a-picture-of-ewan-mcgregor-she-thinks-is-jesus-20181227]

Yes, there’s the “classic” Jesus on the right, and Ewan McGregor on the left. McGregor, a Scott, played Jesus in a 2015 film. Not surprising, since of the 42 actors Wikipedia lists as having portrayed Jesus on film, only six are from non-European origins. It’s this two-dimensional Jesus that’s the first to come to mind when I think of an “image of God.” This image is so deeply embedded in my consciousness, in fact, that when I was doing a visualization exercise with my spiritual director, recently, Jesus appeared to me as a curly-haired, blond, California surfer-type.

But of course, Jesus isn’t two-dimensional. He also wasn’t European. And the God who created the whole universe can’t be contained by a single gender or ethnic origin.

And yet, I remember feeling really surprised when I first saw “Forensic Jesus,” an image created by a team of forensic anthropologists.

Image: Forensic Jesus, Popular Mechanics [Image from: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a234/1282186/]

I wonder how our ideas of what it means to be made in the image of God might affect how we receive and process artistic depictions of God. The following is a collection of some of the images I’ve come across in recent years that have made me pause and wonder, and sometimes to notice and interrogate discomfort.

Can I see the image of God in others, when the others don’t look or act like me?

Can I “image” God to others, when the others don’t look or act like me?

If God is something beyond (and better than) my default “old white man on a mountain,” I wonder how my misperceptions of God might have impacted my ability to see God in refugees, in imprisoned people, in people who smell bad and act weird or do drugs or breed dogs or spank their children or live according to my idea of what the world should be.

What does it mean to see Jesus walk beside a man in a Nazi uniform?

Can I see the risen God in a nightclub, laughing with her friends?

How do these representations of God expand my heart? How can they contribute to furthering my ability to look with compassion on the whole world?

What does it mean for me to take two-dimensional white Jesus off the wall, and replace that with three-dimensional complex Jesus?

Image: Jesus Christ, Liberator by Br. Robert Lentz, OFM [Image from: https://www.trinitystores.com/artwork/jesus-christ-liberator]

Image: Refugees: La Sagrada Familia by Kelly Latimore [Image from: https://kellylatimoreicons.com/gallery/img_2361/]

Image: from Kalacha, Kenya [Image from: https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/13/living/gallery/faces-of-jesus/index.html

Image: Michael Belk, The Second Mile [Image from: https://journeyswiththemessiah.org/photo-Jesus/the-second-milethe-joyful-gift-of-forgiving/?portfolioCats=36%2C35]

About the Author

Beauty From Suffering | A Dry and Weary Land

Sarah Withrow King April 12, 2019

Please note that this post is longer than what’s typical, but well worth the read. Join Sarah as she delves into a unique and meaningful perspective on suffering, and invite the Spirit to speak to your heart in his way of grace-filled conviction.

In the last week, I’ve been overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the impossibility of my job, impotence in the face of health struggles of my friends and family, horrific flooding in Nebraska and Mozambique, a mass shooting at a mosque in New Zealand, and worry that climate change will mean that my child will one day experience food insecurity. In response, I’ve doubled down on strategies to be more effective during my work day, brainstormed ways for my friends to get relief, checked in on Nebraska colleagues, attended a vigil in solidarity with the local Islamic center, and wondered if my family could learn to grow all our own food. In other words, in the face of incredible suffering past, present, and promised, I’ve tried to play God as best as I can.

Ask me how that’s working out for me.

Honestly, this week wasn’t really much worse or more intense than others. And my reaction wasn’t much different, either. I’m not particularly proud of it, but this has been the response I’ve developed living in a world that it sometimes feels like God forgot.

At a conference recently, with a gathering of theology and religion teachers who are committed to creation care, a Jewish Rabbi relayed part of the following Midrash. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but as injustices and sorrows have piled on in the weeks following, it has woven its way deeper and deeper into resonance with my dry and weary soul:

The Midrash describes the birth of Judaism with the following cryptic parable:

“And G‑d said to Abraham: ‘Go from your land, your birthplace, and your father's house…’” (Genesis12:2) — To what may this be compared? To a man who was traveling from place to place when he saw a palace in flames. He wondered: ‘Is it possible that the palace has no owner?’ The owner of the palace looked out and said, ‘I am the owner of the palace.’ So Abraham our father said, ‘Is it possible that the world lacks a ruler?’ G‑d looked out and said to him, ‘I am the ruler, the Sovereign of the universe.’

Abraham's bewilderment is clear. This sensitive human being gazes at a brilliantly structured universe, a splendid piece of art. He is overwhelmed by the grandeur of a sunset and by the miracle of childbirth; he marvels at the roaring ocean waves and at the silent, steady beat of the human heart. The world is indeed a palace.

But the palace is in flames. The world is full of bloodshed, injustice and strife. Thugs, abusers, rapists, kidnappers and killers are continuously demolishing the palace, turning our world into an ugly tragic battlefield of untold pain and horror.

What happened to the owner of the palace? Abraham cries. Why does G‑d allow man to destroy His world? Why does He permit such a beautiful palace to go up in flames? Could G‑d have made a world only to abandon it? Would anyone build a palace and then desert it?

The Midrash records G‑d's reply: ‘The owner of the palace looked out and said: “I am the owner of the palace.” G‑d looked out and said to Abraham: “I am the ruler, the Sovereign of the universe.‘”

What is the meaning of G‑d's response?

Note that the owner of the palace does not make an attempt to get out of the burning building or to extinguish the flames. He is merely stating that He is the owner of the palace that is going up in smoke. It is as if, instead of racing out, the owner were calling for help. G‑d made the palace, man set it on fire, and only man can put out the flames. Abraham asks G‑d, ‘Where are you?’ G‑d replies, ‘I am here, where are you?’ Man asks G‑d, ‘Why did You abandon the world?’ G‑d asks man, ‘Why did you abandon Me?’

Thus began the revolution of Judaism --- humanity's courageous venture to extinguish the flames of immorality and bloodshed and restore the world to the harmonious and sacred palace it was intended to be. Abraham's encounter with G‑d in the presence of a burning palace gave birth to the mission statement of Judaism - to be obsessed with good and horrified by evil. (Midrash Rabbah Bereishit 39:1; as interpreted by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in Radical Then, Radical Now, Harper Collins, 2000).

Perhaps Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel also felt the palace burning when he wrote the story in Night of three people hung on gallows in a Nazi concentration camp. One of the victims, a young boy, suffered a prolonged death, so small was his neck. “For God’s sake, where is God?” asks one of the men forced to watch the execution. “And from within me,” says the protagonist, “I heard a voice answer: ‘Where is He? This is where—hanging here from this gallows…’”

Is God dead? I don’t think so. I think God is there, being hung on the gallows. There, watching in horror with the other captives. Even there, knocking at the hearts of the soldiers who did unspeakable things in Nazi death camps, and the citizens who allowed the atrocities to take place. In the spiritual drought of frustration, of anger, of helplessness, of overwhelm...perhaps in that weary land of unjustified suffering, perhaps when there is no actual water, God is still with us.

It was really difficult for me to think about this season’s blog topic, “Beauty from Suffering.” I don’t think suffering is beautiful. I don’t think human suffering is particularly redemptive, or good. As a person who has walked through the world with many privileges (my nonprofit wages put me in the top .3% of the world’s earners; I’ve never feared my child would be taken from me at a border crossing; and I’m white, educated, physically able, etc.), I feel really uncomfortable lifting up the benefits of suffering. Suffering isn’t the way things are supposed to be. Suffering isn’t really supposed to be at all, we’ve simply inherited it as a reality thanks to sin, and, as Christians, we believe we’re living with it while God moves to reconcile the whole of Creation back to the Creator.

Yet it exists. Suffering exists. We must all deal with suffering in some way. Suffering changes us all in some way. We all react to suffering in some way.

The first time I ever tried to talk to fellow Christians about industrialized animal farming was at a Christian music festival at a Baptist church in central Washington. It was blistering hot, and my friend Jason and I were standing under a thin tent in the parking lot, listening to a 13-minute loop of undercover investigation footage play on a portable DVD player while we fielded questions from festival-goers. I don’t remember most of the people I talked to that day. But I’ll never forget the face of one man in particular, or his words.

He asked why we were there at the festival. I described some of the legal cruelties that animals endure on intensive farms, which supply about 78% (cows used for beef) 99.9% (chickens) of all meat, dairy, and eggs in our country. I said, “Twenty seven billion land animals are raised and killed for food each year, and that’s in the U.S. alone.” And he said, “And thank God for that.”

Thank God for that. Fifteen years later, the words still ring in my ears. Thank God for that.

Thank God for that?

It seems astonishingly callous, given the misery endured by those billions (plus trillions of fish); the environmental damage caused by the system; the inhumane conditions industrial farms and slaughterhouses create for the people with few other options but to work there; and the ways industrial animal agriculture contributes to global food and water insecurity.

I felt angry then. And the suffering that I advocated against then still exists now, in spades (read the link at the article, we’ll come back to it later). Today, I just feel resigned. This is my life, having this conversation, again and again and again.

As a follower of Jesus, I read the Midrash with a different ending. I believe something changes when Jesus dies on the cross, a dark day of Lent that we remember together on Good Friday. I believe Jesus’ death and resurrection, his triumph over the grave, and the Holy Spirit left to us for the “already, but not yet” time...I know that should be enough to slake my thirst for justice, righteousness, beauty, and hope. But I confess, it isn’t always. There are times when I know what I believe, but I believe I have very little faith.

The night he was betrayed, John’s gospel tells us that Jesus prayed fervently for his disciples, pleading with God to care for them in his coming absence. But Jesus doesn’t pray for the disciples to not experience the woes of the world, or to be removed from society, to wall themselves off:

John 17:13-26, NRSV
“But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves...I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one...As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world...The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world...I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

As Christians, we know that Jesus has done the work of redemption, that the work of putting out the palace flames isn’t entirely in human hands, but as Jesus-followers, we also know that we are called to take action daily to pick up that cross and follow him. I’m not very good at countering suffering with love. But that’s what Jesus did, that’s what God does, whether or not we can feel it through the layers of sick through which we sometimes encounter the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the world.

Last month, I got the opportunity to spend two days with the veterinarian who blew the whistle on the horrors he witnessed in Nebraska. That New York Times article means he can’t find a job in his field, his marriage ended, his life now is not what he imagined it would be. But he’s finding meaning in new projects with surprising new partners. He’s curious and his sense of humor is still intact. And he’s doing life-saving work. A friend of mine was able to use his financial resources to help a Guatemalan refugee family travel to their sponsors in Colorado. And I don’t often feel like I have much love to give, but we adopted a dog this week who’s been bounced around to too many homes in her short life. She’s a perfect hot mess, just like this life.

About the Author

The “Aha” Moment! | Come Be a Fool as Well

Sarah Withrow King January 25, 2019

1 Corinthians 1:25, 27-31
“For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength...God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”

When I was sixteen, I had a mad crush on a college boy, who I met through a local summer camp. He was very invested in following Jesus, and I was very invested in following him. We started a postal correspondence, because even though Queen Elizabeth II sent her first email in 1976, I am not an early adopter of technology and didn’t get my first account until I was out of high school (and that was to correspond with an entirely different boy, because I didn’t make very forward-thinking choices between the ages of sixteen and twenty two).

Anyway, in one of those letters sent through the U.S. postal service, my camp friend included a piece of paper with the following song lyrics typed on them:

Seems I've imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God's Holy wisdom is foolish to men
He must have seemed out of His mind

For even His family said He was mad
And the priests said a demon's to blame
But God in the form of this angry young man
Could not have seemed perfectly sane

When we in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
When we in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong

And so we follow God's own fool
For only the foolish can tell-
Believe the unbelievable
And come be a fool as well

So come lose your life for a carpenter's son
For a madman who died for a dream
And you'll have the faith His first followers had
And you'll feel the weight of the beam

So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Have the courage to say I believe
For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see

So we follow God's own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable,
And come be a fool as well

Here it is performed live:

Following Jesus doesn’t make sense, and I’m not sure it’s supposed to. It doesn’t make any more sense to break from our surrounding culture’s status quo now than it did for Jesus to go up against the occupying powers of Rome, or the religious elite of Israel. It doesn’t make sense to give everything we have to the poor, to turn the other cheek when we’re harmed, to pursue peace at the risk of our own lives. It doesn’t make sense to eat, spend, and live in ways that put ourselves last and others first. In a world of swords and guns and drones, it’s foolish to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors...downright dangerous, even.

And yet.

Come be a fool, as well.

About the Author

2nd Sunday of Advent | Peace: Oh Come, Thou Dayspring

Sarah Withrow King December 7, 2018

Isaiah 11:1-9
“On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,
and from his roots a bud shall blossom...
Not by appearance shall he judge,
nor by hearsay shall he decide,
but he shall judge the poor with justice,
and decide aright for the land’s afflicted.
He shall strike the ruthless with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.
Justice shall be the band around his waist,
and faithfulness a belt upon his hips.
Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the young lion shall browse together,
with a little child to guide them.
The cow and the bear shall be neighbors,
together their young shall rest;
the lion shall eat hay like the ox.
The baby shall play by the cobra’s den,
and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.
There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD,
as water covers the sea.”

I’ve loved singing hymns since I was a child, sitting next to my parents in church, listening to my dad harmonize and to my mom’s beautiful soprano lilt. Eventually, I learned to read the alto line, and would concentrate on being able to follow the often-unintuitive harmonic changes. I didn’t pay very close attention to the words, preferring to admire how the sound of my voice mixed with others to create beautiful noise, instead of pondering the archaic language and outdated turns-of-phrase tumbling out of my mouth.

And, I confess, there are times I read the promises of scripture much like I sang the prose of songs: without much thought as to what they really mean. Or, more specifically, what they mean I am being called to do. “Isaiah 11, yeah, the wolf and the lamb and no more hurting and killing.”

During Advent, many of us will sing the familiar refrain of Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel. Here’s a version I love.

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“Oh come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer / us to thine Advent here / disperse the gloomy clouds of night / and death’s dark shadows put to flight.”

Come thou Dayspring.

A “dayspring” is the dawn of a new day, or the beginning of a new era, a new order, a new way of doing business. Far from just another sunrise on just another day, the particular dayspring of Jesus’ birth would mark a profound shift in what it meant to be alive on this earth. This Dayspring would bridge social, economic, gender, religious, health, legal, and all other divides. This Dayspring would bring hope to a people suffering under the tyrannical rule of a violent empire and to those within the empire, too. This Dayspring would turn notions of forgiveness, hospitality, and faithfulness on their heads. This Dayspring would conquer death, and show us that we can, too.

From Isaiah’s prophecy (“There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain”) to Mary’s Magnificat (“[H]e has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate”) to an 18th-century German hymnal (“death’s dark shadows put to flight”), we see that the incarnation, the enfleshing, of God signals a profound change in the same old death-dealing order of things.

And yet, I find myself thinking in ways and taking actions that give death victory. “I’m just one person, my actions won’t make a difference.” “There are so many things going wrong, I can’t think about them all.” “This is just one of the compromises I’m making to this imperfect world.” These are not the thoughts that fuel the dogged pursuit of peace, they are complacency and surrender to the lies of the Enemy.

How can we pursue peace? What choices can we make that help foster the flourishing of God’s whole creation? How can we contribute to life, and not death, to healing, and not violence? How can we love, and not fear?

A prayer, because we won’t be able to do this alone:

God for whom we wait,
Lord of night and the solemn beauty of darkness:
you have grieved over your creation,
over our swords and all the terrible weapons we fashion.
Nations and peoples live in fear: how can we make tools of our swords
or take the wages of our weapons to feed the hungry?
Give us, Lord, a love that is greater than our fear.
We wait for the Messiah,
keeping watch and praying in his name,
Jesus, who is Lord for ever and ever. Amen.

– Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers, 1988

About the Author

Sarah is the author of Vegangelical: How Caring for Animals Can Shape Your Faith (Zondervan, 2016) and Animals Are Not Ours (No, Really, They’re Not): An Evangelical Animal Liberation Theology (Cascade Books, 2016). She spends her days working for CreatureKind, helping Christians put their faith into action. She lives in Eugene with her husband, son, and animal companions and enjoys action movies, black coffee, the daily crossword, and dreaming of her next international journey.

Tension | The Miraculous Catch and the Tension of “Already, But Not Yet”

Sarah Withrow King October 12, 2018

Please note that this post is longer than average, but most certainly worth the read. It’s recommended that you carve out a quiet time and space to thoughtfully read over these words while remaining sensitive to what the Spirit says.

There are some passages in the Bible that, I have to admit, I just wish weren’t there. They make me uncomfortable, don’t fit with my understanding of God, or are really hard to explain to people who aren’t Christian. These passages are like the weird uncle we love but secretly hope he doesn’t show up to our high school graduation.

For me, the story of the miraculous catch is, for me, one of those passages.

At first glance, we have a story where the disciples go out and can’t catch any fish at all. Jesus appears, their nets become suddenly overflowing with fish, and then Jesus cooks some of those dead fish as a meal for his friends. The simple truth is: I have wrestled for a long time with the reality that Jesus very likely ate animals and, as appears in this case, also participated in their deaths.

A little background might be good. As a vegan Christian, I spent ten or so years feeling like I was a pretty big freak. At church, I was the only vegan. In the animal protection world, I was one of only a tiny handful of Christians that I knew at the time. I felt constantly on guard, defending one or the other, before I heard God say so clearly: “I made you this way for a reason. Go to seminary.”

God saw me, God knew me, and God spoke to the deepest longings of my heart.

What I learned in seminary was that God created an interconnected, flourishing world; that humans are made in the image of this creative, life-generating God. In the beginning, we’re told, God made everything and it was beautiful and no one killed or ate each other. Humans, a part of this creation community, were charged to care for the earth and help it to flourish.

We messed a lot of things up through sin, but Jesus the Son of God came to us, took on flesh. The Creator of the universe walked among us as a fully divine, fully human being and brought us glimpses of the Kingdom of God right here on earth. So now we live in the tension of what we call “already-but-not-yet” time. In living, Jesus showed us how to live and in dying and rising, Jesus showed us how to live in hope.

That hope is represented in part by the “peaceable kingdom,” words we read even as early as the prophets: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” The Peaceable Kingdom

The Bible shows us a harmonious ideal and the promise of a reconciled future, but more often than not, harmonious and reconciled seem pretty far off.

In other words, I bring a bit of baggage to this passage. But we all, do, right? No one brings a blank slate to their reading of the scripture. And despite my discomfort, I’m drawn to this passage again and again, so let me take a deep breath, release my initial defensive posture, and try to hear what God is saying.

It helps me to read the passage a few times, slowly. To imagine myself in the scene. And to read and hear what others have to say about the passage.

First: a little about the book of John. Of the four gospels (books of the New Testament that specifically recount Jesus’s birth, life, and death), John was written last, late in the first century. John’s like the clean-up batter of the disciples here. He’s seen what others have written and he’s filling in a few blanks.

One of the things we might notice is that our story looks a lot like one in Luke, when Jesus first calls Simon, James, and John. There are some parallels in the two stories: the men have been working all night and haven’t caught anything, but they do what Jesus suggests, they are beset with an abundance. In the Luke account, this miracle leads Simon, James, and John to leave everything and follow Jesus.

Perhaps John is telling his reader something about what it looks like to follow Jesus for the long haul, how Jesus makes himself known to us when we don’t have the benefit of seeing him in flesh and blood, day after day after day.

This story strikes me as encouragement for an early church wrestling with what it means to be disciples of a teacher they’ve never seen, with whom there was no memory of intimate meals, firsthand encounters, miraculous and exciting events. This passage is about following Jesus on a weekday, in the middle of winter, when your boss is breathing down your neck or your spouse is disappointing you or your kids can’t remember that we don’t leave the house without shoes and you can’t recall the last time you felt anything like a summer camp high.

Three other themes jump out at me in this post-resurrection fishing scene:

First, Jesus makes himself known while we’re engaging the world together.

Compared to another post-resurrection appearance, when Jesus showed himself to just two people on the road to Emmaus, this group is pretty big, with Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, John, and two no-namers. There’s an air of “we need to stick together” in the first few verses. In the previous chapter, John writes about Jesus appearing to a group of disciples, but only Thomas the doubter is named. Here’s Thomas again. He believes enough to still want to band with these folks.

And I love the way the dialogue reads: “I’m going fishing.” “We will go with you.” I don’t quite know what to make of that. Maybe they’re bored, and this is the best idea they’ve heard that day. I imagine that the incredible feeling of walking and talking with Jesus, followed by the horrifying trial and crucifixion, followed by the dramatic resurrection would make everyday life seem pretty tame. But I think it’s more likely that these seven disciples feel a little uncertain about what they should do now. It probably just feels better to be with people who understand you.

So, they stick together and they go about their business. Literally, their business. They’re working together on a common task, towards a common goal, for a common good.

Second, Jesus makes himself known when we’re vulnerable.

By the dominant perspective of the day, these men had left their lives to follow a homeless radical who was publicly executed. This likely did not strike their communities as being very wise. Now they’ve been working all night and they have nothing to show for it. I cannot imagine how exhausting it would be to be on a fishing boat all night, hungry, dealing with hour after hour after hour of disappointment. This isn’t just physical exhaustion, it’s spiritual and mental fatigue, as well. Simon Peter is naked, which is about as clear a metaphor as you can ask for.

But to this weary crew of failures, Jesus appears.

Third, Jesus makes himself known to us through his partnership and his provision.

In this passage, Jesus calls his disciples “children,” a term of intimacy and deep affection. Jesus, the Creator, isn’t standing apart from the world. He is here. Jesus knows where the fish are and provides instruction, the disciples respond and do the work, then they all enjoy the fruits of their co-labor together.

The disciples’ attitudes are important in this story. Even when they’re exhausted, they hold a posture of humility and responsiveness. They actually obey Jesus before they recognize him as Jesus! At first, Jesus is just a dude standing on the shore, hollering instructions. If someone tries to holler at me while I’m tired and hungry, I’m likely to get a bit defensive. But these disciples did what the man on the shore told them to. Humility and a posture of partnership are a second nature to them because they are Jesus-followers. Jesus freely and eagerly partners with us in the restorative work of the Kingdom, but it is up to us to respond to that invitation.

Of course, Jesus will also make himself known to full-of-themselves loners who are impatient and a little selfish [raises hand]. But I’m guessing that partnership, patience, persistence, and a posture of humility help make the tasks we undertake together during this “already but not yet” time a little easier.

In both the Lucan account and this one, the disciples recognize Jesus only after he’d provided them with something, and not just a little of something, but an abundance. An abundance of provision is usually seen as a blessing, so I feel self-conscious reading about this miracle and wishing it was different. I think to myself, “Did Jesus really have to aid in the death of 153 fish?” Couldn’t Jesus have caused an higher-than-usual yield of figs? Or a particularly abundant olive harvest? Done that whole multiplying loaves thing again?

So, a fourth point: it is entirely possible for a vegan Christian to love and learn from this story.

When I read this story that includes its account of 153 fish losing their lives, I am reading it through my experience and lens. Even though the modern fishing industry looks nothing like Zebedee and Sons Fishing, Inc., I can’t help but think about the fact that today’s commercial fishing and industrial fish farms are environmental disasters. I read this story knowing that there are approximately six billion fish killed for food every year in the U.S. alone, every one of whom can suffer pain, none of whom are protected by a single animal welfare law, and for whom death will be slow and painful. And I bring to the text a knowledge that there is a modern day slave trade alive and thriving in some international fishing industries.

Instead of focusing on the fishing, though, instead of getting hung up on my own biases and mess and missing what God is saying to me through the passage, I’ve tried to take a step back, to quiet my own noise and just listen.

One of the main emphases of John’s Gospel is on Jesus’ divinity. He’s writing to a church that isn’t quite sure how this “fully God, fully human” idea works, and so we have that unique and beautiful opening of the Gospel that reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…”

Being vulnerable, partnering with others in community, engaging the world even when it’s impossibly hard...why and how we continue to do these things is part of the beautiful mystery of faith.

This mysterious faith roots us in and through each other and to God. We know that it’s not following this or any set of rules that will help us grow and thrive. It’s in the mystery that we’re able to go “further up and further in.” Following Jesus’ mystery, letting ourselves tumble head-over-heels into that abyss, can be downright scary. Fully God and fully human? Raised from the dead? The Trinity? A random woman in Oregon or a poor fisherman in Palestine being intimately connected with the sustainer of the universe?

The mystery of Jesus is what inspires us to imagine a better way forward. The mystery of Jesus helps us navigate these strange modern waters that look a lot different than the Sea of Tiberius. The mystery of Jesus is the Kingdom of God that’s here, but not fully realized. The mystery of Jesus is God engaged in a long process of reconciling a whole groaning creation back to its Creator, while the world keeps turning and people keep living and dying and moving with and against that reconciling work.

Instead of erasing this passage from the Bible, I want to frame it and give it to every animal advocate I know who has struggled to remain part of a church. It’s so hard, so many people don’t “get” us. It’s so tempting to leave, to disengage from this tradition and communities who have failed again and again to see us and love us well.

But the miraculous catch is not just a story about catching or eating fish. This is a story of the mystery of a God whose love catalyzed the creation of the whole world, the wonderful mystery of that same God taking on human flesh and living a human life full of its human mess, the mystery of that Jesus dying and then rising again, and that utterly divine person of Christ seeing every one of us, knowing the desires of our heart, standing in front of us, and calling to us.

About the Author

Forgiveness | You Do Not Have to Be Good

Sarah Withrow King August 10, 2018

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

I think this poem by Mary Oliver says a lot about forgiveness.

“You do not have to be good.”

How many hours have I wasted in existential agony, beating myself up because I’ve failed to meet a bar set too high, sometimes by my own hand? I can ask for forgiveness from God, and I can extend forgiveness to others, but can I accept forgiveness? And isn’t that a kind of sin itself, wallowing in my inadequacies, failures, shortcomings? “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Colossians 3:14

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”

Hoarding our shames to ourselves allows them to grow. Can we take a courageous breath and share our shortcomings with another? And isn’t that a kind of grace, to give someone else the gift of our weakness, so that they can trust us enough to give us theirs? “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2

“... announcing your place in the family of things”

We are made in the image of God, called to community with the whole of creation, called to community with our neighbors, called to community with our family, called to community with our Creator. “If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” Psalm 139:9-10

Instead of falling into the same old cycles of regret, despair, and self-flagellation, let me breathe these truths:

I am a child of God. A creature of the Creator, known and cherished.
Forgiven of my debts.
Rescued from the power of darkness.
Reconciled through Jesus.
More than my worst mistake.
Beloved.
Amen.

About the Author

Sarah is the author of Vegangelical: How Caring for Animals Can Shape Your Faith (Zondervan, 2016) and Animals Are Not Ours (No, Really, They’re Not): An Evangelical Animal Liberation Theology (Cascade Books, 2016). She spends her days working for Evangelicals for Social Action and CreatureKind, helping Christians put their faith into action. She lives in Eugene with her husband, son, and animal companions and enjoys action movies, black coffee, the daily crossword, and dreaming of her next international journey.

Interruptible | Did Jesus Have to Overcome His Caveperson Instincts, Too?

Sarah Withrow King June 8, 2018

Human brains are not, for the most part, wired to appreciate and respond positively to a rational argument when that argument contradicts what we believe to be true. This three-minute video explains what I mean:

Does this resonate with you? For me, this feels most true in online spaces, when my overall aversion to conflict is protected by the buffer of cyberspace. I read a comment and I feel my face start to warm. My breath quickens. My heart beats faster and my arms begin to tremble, fingers ready to throw down a brilliantly-framed counter argument so devastating and righteous that only the most willfully ignorant would dare disagree.

Not a very pretty sight. Or a Christ-like one, most would say.

Watching myself engage in this kind of anti-communication and observing it happen all around me (television, social media, the dinner table…) makes me think of other ways that I can barrel through life without allowing something or someone to interrupt my agendas.

My vocational to-do list, which reflects what I think needs to be done, on my timeline. A colleague once called himself a “practical atheist,” meaning that he professed Jesus with his lips, but failed then to release control of his day-to-day activities to the Author and Finisher of all. If we believe Jesus is the beginning, and the end, why do we so often resist giving over the middle to him?

My rule of life might be summed up as: coffee, work, work, work, gym, sleep (i.e. produce, produce, produce). There are no margins in this life for interruptions, for an unexpected visit from my dad in the middle of the day, an invitation from my brother to go out to breakfast, time to wander out into the front yard to chat with the neighbors while our kids play in the afternoon, a quiet few minutes to simply sit in the love and care of the Creator of the universe who knows every hair on my head. A regular part of Jesus’ life was leaving things undone and going away to pray. Can I follow my Savior into a quiet, solitary place where production isn’t the purpose?

And can I change my mind? Can anything interrupt what I believe to be true and right and just? I think it can, and I think Jesus may have modeled this for us, too.

Jesus. Fully human, fully divine. God enfleshed, without sin. Jesus is our Lord, Savior, Redeemer, Friend.

And yet, Jesus doesn’t seem so friendly when he first encounters the Canaanite woman:

Matthew 15:21-28
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

I’ve always found this passage so profoundly disturbing. I love dogs, but I’m not sure Jesus’ comparison of the Canaanite woman to canines was a positive one. When I think about this passage as it relates to the video above, I start to see it in a different light.

What if this passage is Jesus and the Canaanite woman modeling for us what it means to reject de-humanization of others and embrace empathy? How differently the story would read if the Canaanite woman had responded to Jesus’ difficult statement by becoming defensive, angry, or simply walking away? Instead, she generously and winsomely presses into a potential conflict. Jesus allows himself to be physically interrupted by this very different being and by doing so, a moment of transformation is created and the woman’s daughter is healed. Can I be more like the Canaanite woman the next time someone says something hurtful to me? Can I be more like Jesus the next time someone presents me with information that counters my worldview? I pray God grants me the humility to allow for both of these possibilities.

I also plan to take a little action. Ages ago, a friend who is wired like me recommended a book called Practicing Compassion as a tool to pause and learn to love myself and others well. I’ll set aside a few minutes a day this week to begin reading it. It’s time I stopped resisting the shift towards slowness for which my heart longs.

Perhaps there’s something you’ve been resisting that would help you be more physically or psychically interruptible. A change in schedule, elimination of an unhealthy habit, an invitation to something or someone new. Henri Nouwen says that, “The first task of a faith community is to create sacred time and space, when and where we can allow God to reshape our hearts and lives and communities.” How can we help one another do that today, this week, this month, this year

Let’s start with this short meditation.

Amen.

About the Author

Sarah Withrow King is the author of Vegangelical: How Caring for Animals Can Shape Your Faith (Zondervan, 2016) and Animals Are Not Ours (No, Really, They’re Not): An Evangelical Animal Liberation Theology (Cascade Books, 2016). She spends her days working for Evangelicals for Social Action and CreatureKind, helping Christians put their faith into action. She lives in Eugene with her husband, son, and animal companions and enjoys action movies, black coffee, the daily crossword, and dreaming of her next international journey.

Seeing the Other | Love Your Enemies

Sarah Withrow King April 13, 2018

I don’t like people, until I meet them.

I’m not proud of this. I want to be a person who loves as Jesus loved, unconditionally and across all kinds of borders.

A decade in animal protection—watching videos of humans doing things to animals that will haunt my twilight thoughts until the day I die—taught me to be skeptical of the possibility of goodness in a person, to believe that everyone was capable of horrific violence and sadistic cruelty.

Well, that’s what I tell myself. But I think I’ve always been a little too sure of my own right-ness.

Social media and internet silos that are designed to show me more of what I like and agree with haven’t helped matters. I eat a bland digital diet of confirmation bias, gobbling up the videos and articles and memes that reinforce my existing opinions. I engage with online friends who echo my own existing views and, too often, quickly dismiss dissenting voices.

Through what I consume, I train myself to pass judgement on vast swaths of the human population. Proponents of the political party that I don’t usually vote for? Dumb. Members of a religious order not my own? Probably brainwashed. People who view [fill in the blank hotbutton socio-political issue] differently than I do? They’ll see the light eventually. I really don’t like people…but then I meet them.

The generous, happy-go-lucky neighbor who holds views far from my own. He helped my husband identify a fulfilling business opportunity. The encouraging, patient gym coach who wears a different kind of #_____LivesMatter t-shirt than I do. She takes time after class to show me how I can improve my range of motion and strength. The old high school friend who predictably comments on every article about guns I post. He makes some valid points sometimes.

Shortly after football player Michael Vick was arrested for dog-fighting, I sat in a room with him for eight hours as he took a course on empathy for animals that I developed. We even did a Bible study together, since he identified as a Christian. I knew the terrible things he had been involved in, but was able to connect on a human level and felt no particular ill-will toward him.

Jesus understood the power of human connection. In the Sermon on the Mount, he is recorded as telling his listeners to go so far as to leave the altar if, in the middle of giving their gift, they realized they had an outstanding rift. Reconciliation and right relationship among the community was a higher priority that regulations or religious rituals.

“Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” It’s an astonishing and impossible ask. And the instructions that precede it press into the need for relationship especially with people we are prone to hate. If someone strikes you, give them your other cheek. If someone sues you for your coat, give them your cloak, too. If someone forces you to carry their pack one mile, carry it for two. And give to everyone who begs from you. (Matthew 5:38-42). How many times have I breezily lied to men and women begging outside of Union Station, or Fred Meyer: “Sorry, I don’t carry cash!”

In his book, Engaging the Powers, Walter Wink suggests that in telling his followers to turn the other cheek, give our cloak, and walk the second mile, Jesus is discipling us in the way of nonviolent engagement. Turning the other cheek “robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate” and offers a chance at redemption. Giving our cloak shames a system that would allow a wealthy person to literally take the shirt off the back of the poor. And walking a second mile carrying the pack of a Roman soldier, brutal occupiers of Palestine, helps “oppressed people find a way to protest and neutralize an onerous practice.” Each of these methods of nonviolent resistance not only restores dignity to the one who is shamed or oppressed, but also offers an opportunity for the oppressor to regain their own humanity.

Ethicists Glen Stassen and David Gushee look at these same texts of Matthew in their book Kingdom Ethics and posit that Jesus’ commands here to turn the other cheek, give a creditor your cloak, and carry the pack a second mile are “transforming initiatives” that help Jesus followers break out of old paradigms. Rather than violent retaliation, or passivity, we’re to take nonviolent action to resist evil.

So, where does that leave me, with my propensity for judgement and dismissal, for distance from the people and situations that make me angry or uncomfortable simply out of my own sense of self-righteousness? How do I resist the temptation to surround myself with the people and ideas that reinforce my ideas of justice? How do I even begin to break down these border walls between me and the people that I am so eager to “other”?

I am fortunate to work with people who are smarter and more compassionate than I am. One of them helped start The People’s Supper, a way of connecting across difference over a shared meal. Another helps lead tours to important Civil Rights historical sites, to help equip the church to live into our biblical call to be ambassadors of reconciliation. I learn a lot from them, mostly by listening. I need to do a lot of listening.

And I’m spending less time online and more time with flesh-and-blood people. Because I love everyone, once I meet them.

About the Author

New Creations | The World is About to Turn

Sarah Withrow King January 26, 2018

Ordinary Time. That’s what the Church calls these long weeks after Epiphany (the last hurrah of Christmas) and before Lent. The Savior has arrived, the Creator of the whole world is among us, incarnated in flesh and blood and bone…so now what? What are we to make of that space in between? Do we sit back and wait, or is there something deeply compelling and convicting about Ordinary Time, which is really not so “ordinary” at all?

In Luke 2:22-32, we read about Jesus’ presentation at the Temple, which took place forty days after his birth. Deeply faithful, and poor, Jesus’ parents bring him and two small birds to present to the priest. At the temple, they encounter Simeon, who the gospel writer describes as “righteous and devout…waiting for the consolation of Israel.” The Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he had seen the promised Messiah.

“Moved by the Spirit, [Simeon] went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: ‘Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.’”

Later in his life and ministry, Jesus would encounter extreme resistance from the religious establishment. This God enfleshed didn’t look like the Savior expected by Israel. Instead of a mighty Messiah who would emancipate the Jewish people from the Roman occupation, Jesus turned out to be a wandering teacher who broke the Law, consorted with rejects on the far margins of society, and disavowed the long-held acceptability of violent retaliation.

We get a glimpse of what the radical life and ministry of Jesus will hold in Mary’s spontaneous song of praise upon her visit to Elizabeth. Her son will be the one who scatters the proud, brings down the powerful from their thrones, lifts up the lowly, fills the hungry with good things, and sends the rich away empty (Luke 1:46-55). I wonder if she wasn’t quite the naïve farm girl we often portray her to be.

For those of us in the global north, this first Ordinary Time starts in the dead of winter. Days are short, dark, and cold, and it’s easy to succumb to the temptation to let the prophetic imagination hibernate. In the last few years, I have located a profound sense of hope, of surpassing joy, in this song, inspired by Mary’s own hymn of praise more than two thousand years ago. “From the halls of power to the fortress tower, not a stone will be left on stone. Let the king beware for your justice tears every tyrant from his throne. The hungry poor shall weep no more, for the food they can never earn; There are tables spread, ev'ry mouth be fed, for the world is about to turn.”

Nothing we can do will bring about the Kingdom of God. But perhaps one great opportunity of Ordinary Time is to sit with the fantastic reality that God took on human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ and showed us how to live in this brand new world…our world…a world into which the Kingdom of God has broken, but has not yet been fully realized. And what does that living look like?

Humility. Lament. Fidelity. Justice. Mercy. Peacemaking. Turning the other cheek. The pursuit of righteousness. Loving our enemies. Relationships before ritual. Giving to everyone who begs from you. And on, and on. Because the world has begun to turn.

Canticle of the Turning
Words by Rory Cooney

My soul cries out with a joyful shout
that the God of my heart is great,
And my spirit sings of the wondrous things
that you bring to the one who waits.
You fixed your sight on the servant's plight,
and my weakness you did not spurn,
So from east to west shall my name be blest.
Could the world be about to turn?

Refrain:
My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears,
For the dawn draws near,
And the world is about to turn.

Though I am small, my God, my all,
you work great things in me.
And your mercy will last from the depths of the past
to the end of the age to be.
Your very name puts the proud to shame,
and those who would for you yearn,
You will show your might, put the strong to flight,
for the world is about to turn.

From the halls of power to the fortress tower,
not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware for your justice tears
every tyrant from his throne.
The hungry poor shall weep no more,
for the food they can never earn;
These are tables spread, ev'ry mouth be fed,
for the world is about to turn.

Though the nations rage from age to age,
we remember who holds us fast:
God's mercy must deliver us
from the conqueror's crushing grasp.
This saving word that our forebears heard
is the promise that holds us bound,
'Til the spear and rod be crushed by God,
who is turning the world around.

About the Author

Please note that this post is longer than what’s typical, but well worth the read. Join Sarah as she delves into a unique and meaningful perspective on suffering, and invite the Spirit to speak to your heart in his way of grace-filled conviction.

Please note that this post is longer than average, but most certainly worth the read. It’s recommended that you carve out a quiet time and space to thoughtfully read over these words while remaining sensitive to what the Spirit says.

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