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5603a4c
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So often in the church, being a pastor or a "spiritual leader" means being the example of "godly living." A pastor is supposed to be the person who is really good at this Christianity stuff -- the person others can look to as an example of righteousness. But as much as being the person who is the best Christian, who "follows Jesus" the most closely can feel a little seductive, it's simply never been who I am or who my parishioners need me ..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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127b734
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We had started out caring about each other, but in the end none of us knew how to care for each other. But this experience taught me that a community based on the idea that everyone hates rules is, in the end, just as disappointing and oppressive as a community based on the ability to follow rules.
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rules
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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8eb1f02
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There's not enough wrong with it to leave and there's just enough wrong with it to stay," Matthew later told me. "Fight to change it."
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dissatisfaction
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c988bd3
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Knowing all of this makes me love and hate Jesus at the same time. Because, when instead of contrasting good and evil, he contrasted truth and evil, I have to think about all the times I've substituted being good (or appearing to be good) for truth.
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jesus
truth
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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2827d47
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This was the bonus to liberal Christianity: I could use my reason and believe at the same time.
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reason
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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64e7e22
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I think this is why we at House for All Sinners and Saints sometimes say that we are religious but not spiritual. Spiritual feels individual and escapist. But to be religious (despite all the negative associations with that word) is to be human in the midst of other humans who are as equally messed up and obnoxious and forgiven as ourselves. It allows us, when confronted both with assholes in SUVs or by our own intolerances, to hold up brea..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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097f17a
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Jesus was a real revolutionary and that Christianity had unfortunately given the guy a bad name.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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33351bd
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The disciples' mistake was also my mistake: They forgot that they have a God who created the universe out of "nothing," that can put flesh on dry bones "nothing," that can put life in a dusty womb "nothing." I mean, let's face it, "nothing" is God's favorite material to work with." --
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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6158821
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And I get it. I can be cynical myself. Every time I see some smiley TV preacher talk about God's plan for me or hear Sarah Palin say something irretrievably mean and stupid about poor people, or every time I pass an embarrassing billboard featuring Jesus and a fetus, I totally get why reasonable people would keep their distance.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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caf9572
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looked at you, gave you bread, and said, "Child of God, the body of Christ, broken for you." Child of God. Child of God. We're all children of God. And we've been given the authority, even the duty, to declare that to each other. And so I find myself on US 36, where another asshole is embodying so much that I despise, and in my mind, I bless them. I look in their eyes, hold up the bread, and say, "Child of God..." Jeff, like so many of..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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337a833
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We weren't a ship of fools so much as a rowboat of idiots.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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3e789e7
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maybe we simply don't want our leaders to have needs. Maybe it's not only the leaders who think they should be perfect; maybe it's also their followers who expect them to have it all together. Maybe we want the people who care for us and lead us to not be like us, to not struggle like us, because if we realize they, too, are hurting and needy, then maybe the spell -- the illusion that we're okay, that we're in good hands -- breaks.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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af004e5
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I wonder if she's ever encountered a Denver outreach worker with a bleach kit. Did she ever open a baggie from a clean-handed social worker and see a note under the tourniquet and sterile cooker that said, "You are loved as you are," and did it ever break her heart? Well-meaning notes from church folks aren't miracles and perhaps they all go unnoticed, but even if that's the case, the truth remains: God loves Candy now. With dirty feet. Not..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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b1d5c7a
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I thought of how God had sent a prostitute to help the Hebrew spies who would, through her help, and only through her help, conquer the city and fell the walls. I also wondered: Had that been humiliating to them? Receiving help from a whore? Would they rather have done it all by themselves or with help from someone of their choosing?
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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dee7d73
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In the story, the eunuch was riding along the desert road in his chariot reading Isaiah, and he was returning from Jerusalem having gone there to worship. But I started to wonder if he was also familiar with Deuteronomy, specifically 23:1, which says, No one whose testicles are cut off or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord." (Why John 3:16 is the most popular verse in the Bible and not Deuteronomy 23:1 is b..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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73a4307
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We bring the holy things of the church onto the holy streets of the city because on some level, the violence and despair of Good Friday is still a human reality. Unfortunately, we've never lacked an opportunity to pay such a visit.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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71f49f4
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I also had to deal with the fact that I simply could not express the level of antiracist outrage I wanted to, knowing something that no one else would know unless I said it out loud: despite my politics and liberalism, when a group of young black men in my neighborhood walk by, my gut reaction is to brace myself in a different way than I would if those men were white. I hate this about myself, but if I said that there is not residual raci..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c42cd1e
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On some level, although we can't handle the pain of acknowledging it, Good Friday happens every day.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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b7ff468
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Our 'ministry' is Word and Sacrament --everything else flows from that. We see a need, we fill it. We fuck up, we say sorry. We ask for grace and prayers when we need them (a lot). Jesus shows up for us through each other. We eat, we pray, we sing, we fall, we get up, repeat. Not that complicated.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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333812b
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We cannot create for ourselves God's word of grace. We must tell it to each other. It's a terribly inconvenient and oftentimes uncomfortable way for things to happen. Were we able to receive the word of God through pious, private devotion -- through quiet personal time with God -- the Christian life would be far less messy. But, as Paul tells us, faith comes through hearing, and hearing implies having someone right there doing the telling.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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bbdf1d9
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I believe that God's word of grace can also come through simple, imperfect everyday human love.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f0f0e6d
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demons, whether they be addictions or actual evil spirits, are not what Jesus wants for us, since basically every time he encounters them he tells them to piss off.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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2546b01
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So I was scared. I was scared about the fact that in order for me to be the kind of pastor I would want to be, I would need to look at some of my own personal stuff, which I was perfectly happy ignoring.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f5eb9c1
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The better you were at not doing these things, the better a Christian you were. It did not seem to me, even back then, that God's grace or the radical love of Jesus was what united people in the Church of Christ; it was their ability to be good. Or at least their ability to appear to be good. And not everyone can pull that off.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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1e3c9e5
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considering the question, what's the difference between Judas and Peter,*3 I've wondered what would've happened if Judas would have had a forgiving encounter with the resurrected Christ in the same way Peter did. What would've happened if Judas had heard in his ears a word of grace just for him, a word he could not create for himself. Would he still have died at his own hand? Proclaiming the purifying, forgiving love of God is what I cal..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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e235fea
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what is meant by the phrase "the Word of God." To us, the Word of God is, first and foremost, Jesus, the Word made flesh. Secondly, the Word of God is any way in which the story of God's self-revelation in Jesus is told to people (thus the importance of hearing). Thirdly, the Word of God is the way in which the Bible tells us who the Triune God is."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c6b560a
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I recently was asked by an earnest young seminarian during a Q&A, "Pastor Nadia, what do you do personally to get closer to God?" Before I even realized I was saying it, I replied, "What? Nothing. Sounds like a horrible idea to me, trying to get closer to God." Half the time, I wish God would leave me alone. Getting closer to God might mean getting told to love someone I don't even like, or to give away even more of my money. It might mean ..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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bd4d9eb
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But that so rarely works. And if our hearts and brains don't acknowledge these kinds of truths, they don't just go away. They burrow into our bodies. For me, any truth I try to push aside seems to seek asylum in my lumbar curve. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away; it just makes it a refugee. And the refugee camp that establishes itself in my low back grows and gets more and more painful over time. There is a cost to trying to deny pain, to..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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37f08e9
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A sexual ethic that includes concern means seeing someone as a whole person and not just a willing body.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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edc8c53
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I've squandered plenty of ink arguing against the notion that God had to kill Jesus because we were bad. But when Caitlin said that Jesus died for our sins, including that one, I was reminded again that there is nothing we have done that God cannot redeem. Small betrayals, large infractions, minor offenses. All of it. Some would say that instead of the cross being about Jesus standing in for us to take the really bad spanking from God for..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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0c5e8e4
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In the ten years I've been pastor at HFASS, I've known young married couples who did what the church told them and "waited," only to discover that they could not, on the day of their wedding, flip a switch in their brains and in their bodies and suddenly go from relating to sex as sinful and dirty and dangerous to relating to sex as joyful and natural and God-given."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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49f5df9
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I carried a bravado about my drinking like I was a hero of debauchery. But on that Christmas Day, I felt like shit. I had a vague realisation that I was just trying to keep up with some version of myself that I had decided was accurate.
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christianity
faith
alcoholism-addiction-recovery
christian
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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4eabe15
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As a teenager, I loved how I looked in the outfit of using drugs and exercising poor judgement. I had tried it on, spun around in the mirror, and decided I would choose this look, this image, this identity. But eventually and without realising it, the ability to choose had gone. I had become what at first I had only pretended to be.
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christianity
teenage
christian
drugs
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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919b967
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Wanting to get at this idea that God meets us first under the oak tree, when our feet are dirty, not just after we have managed to clean them up, House for All Sinners and Saints has the practice of both foot washing and bleach kit assembly on Maundy Thursday. We sing "Take, O, Take Me As I Am" as we assemble bleach, tourniquets, and condoms into kits for outreach workers, through an underground needle exchange program, to hand to IV drug ..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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829ff29
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In ancient Greek, the root of means "to throw apart." That which causes us to fracture, to become less whole, is demonic. ... I like to think that when Jesus sent the disciples to cast out demons in his name, he intended for them to look with so much love upon those who had become fractured that their neglected pieces returned to the center of their being."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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a6b5106
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Identity. It's always God's first move. Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God's own.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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fba27a0
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For all the misguided harmful messages of my religious upbringing, I still cherish that I was raised in a family where things mattered. Our lives bore a continual inflection of faith. I belonged to a community that connected the events in our lives to the divine. We searched ancient scripture for meaning and guidance. We sang our hearts out. We called each other "brother" and "sister." We belonged to each other. I learned that from the chur..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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1e83ba0
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And then I remember: it doesn't matter. The fact that I sometimes don't get it is my shit, and I should not confuse my shit with my job. My job is to just love my parishioners. And I do. Not perfectly, but I do.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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96ad41b
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We've relegated death, birth, and even making music to the professionals...all things that, until a few generations ago, used to be done by regular people like us in the home. What used to be natural -- giving birth, playing instruments and singing, and dying among loved ones who will lovingly lay our bodies out in the parlor to be honored by those who loved us -- is now a commercial enterprise. Not that I'm ungrateful for a lower infant mo..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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4ea98ac
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Christians should help one another to silence the voice that accuses. To celebrate a repentance--a snapping out of it, a thinking of new thoughts--which leads to possibilities we never considered. To love one another as God loves us. To love ourselves as God loves us. To remind each other of the true voice of God. And there's only one way to do this: by being unapologetically and humbly ourselves. By not pretending. By being genuine. Real. ..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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6bde08a
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this God, is revealed in Jesus Christ, who became flesh and walked among us full of grace and truth and who is so for us and with us that he would go to the grave on our behalf--when
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c15ed9d
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Getting sober never felt like I had pulled myself up by my own spiritual bootstraps. It felt instead like I was on one path toward self-destruction and God pulled me off of it by the scruff of my collar, me hopelessly kicking and flailing and saying, "Screw you. I'll take the destruction please." God looked at tiny, little red-faced me and said, "that's adorable," and then plunked me down on an entirely different path. I am like a Lutheran ..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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495cf9f
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My mother claims that the first time I said more than one word at a time, I skipped the two-word combinations altogether and went right to "Do it self." Yes, thank you very much, I will do it myself. I do not want to need anyone else. After years of therapy and twelve-step work, I've finally realized that trying not to need others isn't about strength and independence; it's about fear. To allow myself to need someone else is to put myself ..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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1b6e71d
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God isn't waiting for you to become thinner or heterosexual or married or celibate or more ladylike or less crazy or more spiritual or less of an alcoholic in order to love you. Also, I would argue that since your ideal self doesn't actually exist, it would follow that the "you" everyone in your life loves is your actual self, too."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |