A DELIGHTFUL DISCOVERY I made while researching a countercultural Christian community in Washington, D.C., was the book Gifts of Grace by Mary R. Schramm. In 1965, Mary and her husband, John, started the Community of Christ. The community intentionally wove together a deepening faith, activism for peace and justice, and shared life with other Christians from the raw starting material of honoring each person’s unique contribution. Discerning each one’s gifts was a way of learning about God’s will for their lives, individually and collectively. “I don’t care whether you’re 8 or 80,” Schramm wrote, “you are responsible for finding out the things that God would have you do.” To do that, she encouraged paying attention to what one enjoys. “I don’t think God gave you a gift or an ability to make you miserable,” Schramm said in a talk about her book. “God made us to be fulfilled by the gifts that God gave us.”
The idea of “being called” by God can be intimidating. It can also be misused — for example, when someone is convinced that they should determine what your calling is or is not, or when someone erects barriers to exclude the callings of others. An intimation of God’s call can also spur feelings of self-doubt or unworthiness, as it did initially for the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah. Yet, in their stories we see a God who chooses individuals and calls them amid their struggles. What might be perceived as a weakness can be turned into a strength through the gift of God’s grace. Imagine! A God who wants us just as we are.
February 2
Grounded in Change
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30
IN MOMENTS OF anxiety, I repeated to myself, “I am a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” I found assurance in this prayer during a season of painful conflict within the wider church I served when I was in my 20s. Whatever the outcome of my denomination’s debates and policy struggles around LGBTQ equality, I trusted that God would help me find a way to do the work that I was called to do.
Did Jeremiah, in times of trial, ever have moments of questioning his own capabilities? Did he repeat to himself the words God had given him when God first called? Even among the prophets, Jeremiah had a particularly difficult message of nonresistance to the power plays of various empires. This stance caused him to be counted as “a traitor by both king and commoners,” writes Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro. Jeremiah repeatedly had to recommit himself to trust in God and trust in himself. He also had to trust in the capability of his people to turn, to change. “The prophets do not simply condemn,” writes Shapiro, “but offer a principled program for personal and social transformation.”
Change begins with recognizing the injurious consequences of our choices and choosing differently going forward. Jeremiah calls us to pluck up the weeds of our unwillingness to follow God. In their place, the prophets help plant seeds of justice and peace in those willing to change, for the flourishing of society.
February 9
Called to Solidarity
Isaiah 6:1-13; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11
FOR DECADES, SECTIONS of Chicago were devastated by austerity economic policies. Past political leaders promoted unethical real estate practices that took wealth from Black families, pursued misguided anti-drug efforts, and closed schools. Now, lots lie waste and historic greystone homes are empty, many with boarded-up windows and a red X on the door. The edges of parks and gardens are littered with used syringes. Despair is palpable. When I read God’s description to Isaiah of “cities [that] lie ruined” and “the fields ruined and ravaged” (Isaiah 6:11), I think of the west and southeast sides of Chicago where I’ve worked for the past 18 years. I also recall the elders and youth, journalists and community leaders who opened my eyes and ears to understand how things came to be as they are and how people are working to change them.
In Daniel Berrigan’s poetic commentary Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gift of Tears, he describes how Isaiah is “resurrected from moral death” through his calling by God and by opening himself to the truth of what is happening around him. In place of a dull mind, Isaiah gains a sharp analysis. He learns to see the mechanisms that cause desolation. Isaiah “becomes the measure of our own possibility of seeing, hearing, understanding with the heart, of being healed,” Berrigan writes. After we have seen the unjust consequences of choices made in the past, we can find others who are also awake to the possibility of change, who are no longer numb. By joining in solidarity with those also called to rebuild desolate places, we can discover God’s invitation to new life and a way out of society’s moral death. Echoing the prophet Isaiah — and the first disciples following Jesus — we too can say: “Here I am, send me!” (Isaiah 6:8).
February 16
Trust Beyond Fear
Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26
THROUGH JEREMIAH, GOD sends a reminder that those who trust in human saviors will end up living in desolation (“in the parched places of the desert”). “Parched places” (17:6) are not only in the wilderness anymore. After several weeks of drought last summer, the soil in a local pollinator garden I help tend contracted from lack of moisture. It pulled back from the church building next to it, leaving a gap of almost an inch between soil and the stone wall. I hadn’t seen parched soil shrink back in that way before. It disturbed me.
Jeremiah encourages people not to be anxious in a time of drought. How do I interpret that when applied to climate anxiety and dangerous political upheaval? Jeremiah 17 describes the benefits for the one who “trusts in” God (verse 7). But trusting God does not mean that everything will turn out just fine. God is not promising to punish or reward individuals according to our own skewed views of justice. The prophets see disaster coming because they understand that actions have consequences. When powerful leaders choose selfish values and a majority acquiesce, then disaster will follow. Yet the prophets assure us that God still loves us, still calls us back to the right way of living — even when the worst happens. That’s something we can trust.
Our political leaders are not saviors. We don’t put our trust in them to be saviors. We make the wisest choices we can and then commit to holding leaders accountable. Like the rest of us, they are only human. But when we spend too much time dwelling on our fears, we become isolated and parched. Fear does not nourish us. Fear only feeds itself. When we fix our greatest trust in God’s unchanging love, then we will draw on a Source far deeper than what is seen at the surface, like a tree with deep roots.
February 23
Enemy Mine
Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40; 1 Corinthians 15:35-50; Luke 6:27-38
I GREW UP attending anti-war demonstrations with my parents and members of our Christian community. We often invoked Jesus’ call in Luke 6 to “love your enemies” (verse 27). But in truth, I never thought of the people the U.S. was at war with as “enemies.” It wasn’t until my late 30s that I felt the visceral force of enmity. After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, I noticed how my gut clenched at images or language that identified certain political leaders as “saviors,” that blended sacred Christian symbols and language with right-wing extremism. My blood ran cold. Bile rose in my throat. Oh, I thought, this is what it means to have an enemy.
In How to Have an Enemy: Righteous Anger and the Work of Peace, Melissa Florer-Bixler writes that Jesus’ instruction to love enemies is best understood as part of a new order in which the powerful no longer have power over the oppressed. Jesus’ original hearers of the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6 were familiar with demands from their military occupiers. Roman soldiers regularly requisitioned cloaks or commanded civilians to carry a soldier’s pack; all were acts “meant to wear down and overwhelm vulnerable communities,” writes Florer-Bixler. Jesus encourages his followers to refuse to be intimidated in moments of confrontation. “To assert oneself in this moment, to turn the other cheek, is to refuse the destructive power that is also destroying one’s enemy,” Florer-Bixler says. When we face Christian nationalists today who distort and twist our faith into one of domination and oppression, we can remember the truth of Jesus’ words, “The measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6:38). Enmity can only derange and destroy us. Liberating love has the power to transform all.
Celeste Kennel-Shank, author of What You Sow Is a Bare Seed: A Countercultural Christian Community During Five Decades of Change, is an ordained Mennonite minister living in Chicago.
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