Dreaming a Project of Freedom

RECOUNTING THE STORIES that shape our religious longings happens in the shade of uncertainty and fear. We remain in “Ordinary Time” but are besieged by a global pandemic with fallout the likes of which we cannot yet know. It would be easy to scapegoat people or to descend into fear. But we are called to live out our faith, even in difficult times—or maybe especially in difficult times.

We know we are constantly being shaped by our histories, in every way. Telling the stories of how we’ve come through in the past and grounding ourselves again in the firm foundation of our faith will, over time, reveal to us how that foundation shaped our lives in this season. It may embolden us to join God’s project of salvation, deliverance, and freedom for all creation. With Christ at the center of our lives, we have a constant invitation to return to the source and to center our lives in God in such a way that we see our responsibility to live, on behalf of this world, in the name of Christ. It pushes us beyond our circles of family and friends and helps us to see a larger connection, deeper relationships. Perhaps if we can get there, we will be able to see our need to repent from our self-absorption. We might be able to see that we are a web of relationships and—just as Moses needed the help of at least five women—that we need one another to survive.

August 2

Wrestling a Blessing

Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 17:1-7, 15; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

IN GENESIS 32, Jacob wrestles a blessing from the man at the river Jabbok, but not without cost. Jacob says he’s seen God face to face (32:30), something Moses would later be told is impossible. There has been much scholarship on whether the man with whom Jacob wrestles is God or an angel. The text is fully ambiguous. But it seems clear that Jacob wrestled in the night because he was afraid to face his past. He feared the coming confrontation with Esau.

I have had internal wrestling matches that have felt like I was in hand-to-hand combat with myself. Lately, I’ve been wondering whether our nation can wrestle with its internal beginnings, with its demons and angels—with its past. Recent events where Black people have died either in vigilante killings, such as Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, or state-sanctioned police killings, such as the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, tell me we still have some communal wrestling to do, in hopes of finding a new name that includes “justice.” Jacob needed to win because from his lineage would come the patriarch from whom came the messiah who “God blessed forever” (Romans 9:5). If people will know God’s blessings, they must find a way to live into what is right for the sake of us all.

August 9

Glimpse God’s Grace

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

I GREW UP in the Deep South believing in ghosts. When we heard ghost stories, our fear was based in the fact that elders in our lives insisted they had encountered one. When the disciples believe Jesus walking on the water is a ghost, it makes sense to me. How else could they explain a man walking toward them on a lake, with the winds against them (Matthew 14:24)? They had spent all night in a struggle with those storms. Perhaps they’d concluded that they and everyone around them were doomed. Seeing Jesus coming toward them did not encourage them. The struggle had discouraged them.

Many times, we struggle while believing we have no divine support. Our human efforts exhaust us; fear overtakes us. These feelings seem inevitable when we are struggling with the storms of social inequalities, for example. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We are all in the same boat now.” But Jesus wasn’t in the boat with the disciples. He was beyond it. And perhaps that can give us hope and be for us a glimpse of God’s grace. In the gospel the storm rages, but faith will steady us, Matthew says. Here, Peter experiences the saving hand of God in Jesus personally. God’s invitation to us, personally and communally, is to risk going beyond what we know about safety and to trust Jesus’ outstretched hand.

August 16

‘Josephs’ Among Us

Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2, 29-32; Matthew 15:10-28

THE PASSAGE FROM Genesis gives us a theological reading of Joseph’s life. In this telling, Joseph is clear that he was sent to preserve his family’s life—not by the action of his brothers, but by the grace of God (45:5, 8). Perspective helps him not to be bitter. Reconnecting with his family was emotional and fulfilling. Just as there has been joy when people reconnect with family during this pandemic, so too did Joseph shower his kin with tears and kissing (verse 15). Our global health crisis has separated us by death. It also has separated us because we cannot travel beyond our borders or beyond our homes, due to shelter-in-place precautions. We try to make sense of what we face, just as people did during the famine of Joseph’s time. Looking back over what had been a hard life in hard times, Joseph was able to see the hand of God.

As we pray for scientists to find ways to lessen the deadly impact of the coronavirus, we might look to those who have prepared through their life’s call for this moment—scientists, doctors, nurses, chaplains, and other first responders. They are our “Josephs” in this moment. How can we see and honor their gifts, on which we all vitally depend? We owe it to one another to work for a more just world, where none are dependent on the kindness of one person in power. If we had a more equitable medical system and economic system, perhaps our “Josephs” would not need to be extraordinary people.

August 23

Network of Deliverers

Exodus 1:8 - 2:10; Psalm 124; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

THE EXODUS STORY is a staple in the African American religious imagination, in which we see God as “coming down” to rescue us as a people from an oppressive system. The shrewd midwives, who “fear God,” outwit the shrewdness of Pharaoh. The story has been used to encourage faith in God and uprisings for justice. But this story is horrific. The Hebrew people are enslaved; their lives are bitter. But they continue to thrive, even under worsening conditions—such as the decree to kill all boy babies. We want to rush to the women who help thwart Moses’ death and celebrate them, but what of all those other dead boys? God saves Moses, but not the rest—and that is sobering.

Today, I continue to be sobered by the people who do not get delivered, who do not escape their oppressor “like a bird from the snare of the fowlers” (Psalm 124:7). If I tell the whole truth, I have wondered more than once this season: Where is the God who delivers? Why does it seem God has not taken up our cause to prevent us from being “swallowed up alive” (verse 3)? Exodus says God delivers by providing unlikely leaders—such as midwives, mothers, and sisters—but also by employing the power of the powerful. What if we viewed everyone around us as important? Would it provoke us to join God’s project of freedom, deliverance, and thriving for everyone? Would we defy unjust laws for freedom’s sake? Could we believe we are all called to this network of deliverers on whom God can count?

August 30

Radical and Scary

Exodus 3:1-15; Psalms 105:1-6, 23-26, 45; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

IN A DRAMATIC scene, God calls to Moses in a bush that burns but is not consumed. Moses had no way of knowing what turning aside to see it would mean for his life. Perhaps it was the assurance that God would be with him (Exodus 3:12) or the assurance that this was indeed “the same God” of his ancestors (verse 15) that led Moses to say “yes.” He could not know how hard it would be, how much death would ensue, or what his end would be.

Of course, to the people of God, Moses represents God’s presence and deliverance, and they would sing of it in the psalms. Psalm 105 is the sung version of the people’s memory of liberation. For the people, Moses personified hope. I’m not convinced they were always “patient in suffering,” as the writer of Romans instructs (12:12), but certainly they prayed for many years for deliverance. We have no account of them rebelling, though, as the progeny of former slaves, I imagine that they did. But perhaps prayers were their rebellions and their weapon songs. Perhaps they did not avenge themselves, as Romans says, but left “room for the wrath of God” (verse 10). The only way to participate in God’s project is by overcoming evil with the good we do. We must be willing to lose our selves in God’s vision and be willing to lose our lives for the sake of it. These words are radical and, frankly, scary. Discipleship is costly.