When Love Shows Up: Weekly Reflections about God's Presence

I want to do something I don't normally do. I want to look back on this past year and name a few things I learned in 2024. I wouldn't normally do this because, frankly, who the hell am I to tell you what I've learned, as if it could be relevant to you? It's a little cocky. So when I say I learn them, please know I am guessing you probably already knew all these things yourself. So rather than learning anything from me, you get to just be proud of me for finally catching up with you! It's also worth saying that most of the things I learned this year, I did not learn for the first time. At least I think I've thought them before. But in this last year, these four things sang out more loudly, more clearly than they ever have before. So this is more like four things I relearned. I tend to resist New Year's resolutions, but I will say as I look forward to 2025, I am hoping to hold these things a little more closely than I have in the past. So without further ado, here are four things I learned in 2024.Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

Usually this time of year, as we prepare for Christmas I try to write something about how you should go easy on yourself, about how the holidays are stressful enough without you having to add to that with a lot of judgment and self-criticism. I always make a point of saying how much I hate New Year's resolutions because, one, you're going to fail at them anyway, and two, becoming a better person should not actually be your main goal. And of course all of this rests in the reality that God loves you no matter what, and it would do your heart some good to rest in that a little bit. But not this year. No, this year the other shoe drops. You're not working hard enough. You could be doing more. It's the end of the year and what do you have to show for it? Did you really give it your all? If Jesus showed up at your door today, how disappointed do you think he'd be on a scale of 1 to 10? Maybe you should be going all out to make Christmas perfect and set yourself up for a new you in the new year. You understand that God would love you more if you were just a better person, right? Ok, fine, I don't actually believe any of those things. But I wonder what it felt like to hear that. Did you buy any of it?

We read these stories of memorable moments. We call them defining. In many ways they are. The miracles define the lives of those who experience them. And the curses - the illnesses, and deaths of which Jesus cures people - they are themselves definitive. The bleeding woman, the dying child, the dead man. Is this life defined? A collection of maladies and miracles, of blessings and curses - bullet points and highlights, the things found in an obituary. But my life is filled with so many unmemorable moments - daily, hourly, I am doing things the details of which get forgotten almost immediately. It's the things that happens after the thing happens. I have written and preached and spoken repeatedly about the day my father died. I have detailed at length my conversion experience on a seaside trail in Italy. I have gleaned my parents' divorce, my wedding day, and the birth of my children for sermon material. A collection of curses and miracles that I call definitive. But right now I am thinking about picking my kids up from school. The days I've done this bleed into one another, my memory of them is an amalgamation. I don't remember any specific time I locked eyes with one of my children as they made their way out of the school building, any specific time they broke into a run toward me, any specific time they tried to knock me down with a hug. But it has happened so many times, so consistently, so unmemorably, that it has begun to define me.

11 years ago my family and I walked into a theater and watched what would become one of the most significant movies of the last several decades. Of course I'm talking about Frozen. It became the highest grossing film of that year, the highest grossing animated film up to that point, and singlehandedly re-established the cultural relevance of Disney's animated movies. But more important than all that, Frozen brought the song "Let it Go" into the world. Everything else about Frozen's impact pales in comparison to this. "Let it Go" won an Oscar, a Grammy, and sold nearly 11million copies in one year. Even if you have never seen Frozen you have heard this song. And if you have had a child, grandchild, godchild, or are friends with anyone who has had any of these in the last decade, you know this song. It is impossible to overstate its ubiquity in our culture. Let me step back for a moment and acknowledge the obvious. Yes, I am still a priest and this is still my religious podcast. And yes, I am an adult. And yes, in the midst of some of the most interesting and trying times in recent memory, I am here talking/writing about a Disney movie and one of its songs. Stick with me. Jesus will be here soon. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

Kindness is the conscious decision to humanize the person right in front of you, to at least seek to empathize with them, to insist that they matter even when you don't want them to. The temptation to hate is so strong. I am speaking about myself here as much as I am speaking about anyone. I do not believe kindness comes naturally when we feel threatened, when we are hurting. We are in a time of upheaval and great cultural division, fear, and animosity. Some are grieving the results of this election, and some are celebrating - and if you look at the numbers, it's a fairly equal portion of both. We cannot say that our country is united behind Donald Trump. That would be a lie. We could not have said the country was united behind Joe Biden after his election. That's not how this works in real life. We know that politicians like to speak in sweeping terms about the electorate. I think those broad declarations about us are disingenuous - wishful thinking. "America has spoken!" they will often say. Have we? Our winner-take-all mentality insists on a narrative of unity that does not reflect our experience. And our binary thinking requires good guys and bad guys for us to be able to function. This is fertile ground for hatred to grow. We are fractured, and the breach runs deep. I am not at all sure it is reparable. We all belong to each other, but we don't act like it, and often we don't even believe it.

Well, this is the last blog I will publish before the election. I am aware that nothing I could say at this point would sway your vote one way or the other. I think most of you who know me and have read my writing have your own guesses about how I will vote. And I don't pretend that anything I've put out there has had much of an influence on your vote. So I will not be using this platform to tell you for whom you should vote, or even to tell you to vote at all. But I am thinking a lot about November 5th. I believe it is the most consequential election of my lifetime so far. I care deeply about what happens. And also, beyond casting my vote, I have no control over the outcome. What I also believe is that there will be a November 6th. And a November 7th. And hopefully many days after that. And I believe that, regardless of the outcome of the election, we will still all belong to each other. And we have some work to do in order to act like that's true. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

Soon people began to arrive for the 9 o'clock service, which is our largest. They piled into our parish hall, all smiles and grace and understanding and playfulness. I was overwhelmed. This day started in disaster and was met with grace by every single person involved. There were so many opportunities for panic, sadness, or frustration - and I'm sure those feelings were felt here and there, but the overriding sense was that we have got this, that we've got each other, that we know what's important. And I know. I know we have insurance. I know what ended up happening was a tiny little thing: A pipe had burst. There was some water damage that was not catastrophic, that would be repaired, that would be covered. And it does not compare to the damage and disaster that has befallen our siblings in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee after the recent hurricanes. It amounted to a minor inconvenience. We are safe and sound and will be back to normal so quickly. We are a fortunate group. Even in our misfortune. We are privileged by our resources and insurance. At the same time, our response to the trouble we faced was revelatory to me. I say revelatory, though it's worth noting it didn't reveal anything to me I didn't already know about God. But we can forget so easily how love and grace work to transform our lives. I already knew how grateful I was to have the people of this church in my life, to be a part of theirs. I already knew that they are a good-hearted, flexible, loving, understanding, and resourceful bunch. None of this was new. But it was revealed to me all over again.

That word enfranchised might seem out of place in a spiritual conversation. It's a word we find in the political realm. We sometimes forget that political matters have spiritual elements and spiritual matters affect our politics. Enfranchisement in our current context is mostly about voting, but the primary thrust of the word is that a person's presence and dignity is acknowledged as part of the larger community. They are not shut out. They are not kept quiet. This is what Jesus is doing in his healing. When he calls the woman daughter, he is publicly incorporating her into the shared life of her people. She is enfranchised, and that is spiritual and political at the same time. I cannot unequivocally tell you that Jesus likes democracy. It never comes up in his teaching. What I can tell you is that Jesus is serious about leveling the playing field, about every person's life mattering. He is serious about giving voice and dignity to the people he meets. The values Jesus embodies are, I believe, consistent with what we value about democracy. Everyone has a voice. Everyone has a place in the conversation. Nobody left out. I do not live in a democracy. I live in Ohio. Ohio, a place I have come to love very much, is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. You're welcome to do a Google image search of our districts if you are a fan of visual comedy. But for context I will tell you this: Ohio is 42% Republican and 40% Democrat, with 18% stating no affiliation. If people all voted on party lines and that 18% miraculously all voted Republican, you might feasibly expect our representation to be 60% Republican, 40% Democrat. In reality, 75% of our representatives are Republican. 75%. Our districts - which have been ruled unconstitutional but somehow still stand - are intentionally designed to engineer a one party supermajority.

When we wrote that line, about 7 years ago, I thought I knew what we meant by "every". In my mind, I was thinking primarily about Republicans and Democrats, and a good mix of independents that included moderates, libertarian types, and some socialists for good measure. This was the scope of my thinking, and I thought that was pretty broad. That was everyone. It feels naïve now. Sunny, even. It's not that I didn't realize other ideologies and perspectives existed - it's that I assumed the rest to be so extreme as not to need to be acknowledged or discussed. But in the intervening years, Christian Nationalism has emerged as an apparently acceptable perspective. Many legislators openly and comfortably proclaim themselves as Christian Nationalists. Shockingly, frighteningly, it is not a disqualifying proclamation. It should be. Christian Nationalism is antithetical both to America and to Christianity. Christian Nationalism insists on creating legislation based on one particular interpretation of religious belief. That is patently unamerican. Our country has in its founding documents a refusal to establish a state religion. You will sometimes hear adherents to Christian Nationalism try to sidestep this by talking about "Christian values" as the backbone of America's creation. This is also patently false. For all its faults, our country's desire to exist as a place free from religious coercion is imaginative, noble, and courageous. America is not a Christian nation. We were not founded by Christians, but by a mixture of Christians, Deists, Atheists, Agnostics, and Unitarians. Our founding documents are not Christian. While some of the values they promote may be compatible with Christian thought, they are not themselves inherently Christian. Pretending otherwise is just that: Make-believe.

"So are there other Republicans at the church?" he asked me. And I laughed. I laughed because it was a great question, asked directly, and without a hint of irony or cynicism. My breakfast companion was sitting across from me at a local diner when he asked this question. He is getting to know Church of the Redeemer, but he's been an Episcopalian for his whole life - maybe longer. And as a Republican, he knows the drill. There are, for the record, plenty of Republicans at Redeemer, and in the Episcopal Church. 39% of Episcopalians, to be precise, identify as Republican. Not a small number. But compared to, say evangelical Christians, 56% of which identify as Republican, Episcopal culture simply feels a little more politically liberal. Plus, Cincinnati is a Democratic leaning city in a Republican leaning state. So that skews our congregation's numbers a bit as well. I laughed because, it was a lovely, vulnerable question. We live in such a heated and politically divided time. And I won't even bemoan that. I think it makes sense that things are heated and divided. I don't like it. But I think I get it. To many people - myself included - it feels as if the soul of our country is currently on the line, and how we navigate these next few years will be profoundly decisive. At the same time, we are getting more and more accustomed to living in self-selected bubbles based on common interest or affinity. So if he's getting to know Redeemer, he wants to know if it's a bubble. And that is a vulnerable question, because he's sitting there over his eggs benedict asking, "Is there a place for me?" It takes courage to wonder that aloud, and it filled my heart with love. I laughed, because, and I told him this immediately, not two minutes earlier, another Republican parishioner had just texted me to congratulate me on my 8th anniversary of ministry at Redeemer. "See?" I joked, "Republicans!"

Last week I insisted that, as a Christian who is American, I must understand myself as Christian first - that my Christian identity supersedes my Americanness. There are, of course, problems with this assertion. The first problem might just be that it makes me sound like a radical. We are currently in a time when a sizable portion of American leaders are working to remake American culture in a way that devalues and endangers women, minorities, LGBTQ+ persons, and immigrants - and they're doing it in Jesus' name. Many of these leaders argue that this is a Christian nation, that it was founded on Christian ideals, and by Christian men. None of those things are actually true, but they have been repeated so regularly that they seem to have seeped into our collective consciousness as being self-evident. Nevertheless, in Jesus' name, many Americans are seeking to force their understanding of Christian living on others. I believe this actively goes against who Jesus is and what he teaches. Every time Jesus gets angry in the stories we have of him, it's because he's witnessing leaders misuse their religious authority to harm others. Jesus is not a theocrat. Some people believe that commandment about taking the Lord's name in vain means you shouldn't say "Oh my God" or exclaim "Jesus Christ." But the real blasphemy is harming others in Jesus' name, using God as the buttress upon which you reinforce your own political power and social standing.

I remember putting that flag up and thinking, "I'm home." America was something about which I was religious. I wouldn't have said that at the time. I would not have acknowledged that. But I could not only not fathom being anything other than American - I could not imagine that any other country could be as good as mine. To love my country was not just about affection or allegiance. To love America was to consciously believe that it was the greatest country on earth, that there had never been a country and never would be a country as powerful as smart, as resourceful, as successful, as free - as Good as the USA. To love my country meant to know what was wrong with other countries. To love my country was to feel sorry for people who weren't American, who didn't know what it was like to be so free, to be so successful, to save the world so many times The line between patriotism and nationalism is sometimes razor thin, isn't it?

What does it look like to value our children? How do we care for them? What is our responsibility to our children? I have been thinking about this a lot. And I want to say this very clearly: I don't just mean my responsibility for the children I call mine. I also do not mean our responsibility to children because of what they will mean in the future when they are grown up. I mean our shared responsibility for the children among us right now. What is their value? What is their place in our community? And what is our responsibility to them? All of them, by the way. All of them. I am a parent. I have three children, and I confess that much of my wondering about this has been based on my experience of raising them. More specifically, I am raising them in public schools in Cincinnati. And of course, that pushes me to think regularly about our city's commitment to children. In the aftermath of yet another school shooting, I wonder if we value their safety, their very lives. And I confess, I wonder if my children were not in public schools, would I care so much? And if I didn't have children at all, would I care the way I care now? Jesus didn't have children. Jesus didn't have a wife.

Aside from spilling beer down someone's back or getting an order wrong, when waiters screw up is when we forget our role: We can think it's our job to please everyone. We can think we are supposed to be the diner's best friend, or that people came to the restaurant to see us. Contrarily, we can treat the whole thing as transactional. We can get snippy and short with the kitchen. I would take myself too seriously and get self-righteous. One time the manager pulled me aside and sat me down because I yelled at him and the line cooks, "Well SOMEONE oughta care about the tables, and apparently it won't be any of YOU." That's right: I got put into time out for being too self-righteous. Waiting tables for the Lord - has similar pitfalls. What I noticed when I went on sabbatical was just how much I was carrying. And some of that is just part of the job - there's a lot of emotional labor in the facilitating of relationships. But some of what I was carrying was because I was forgetting my role. Thinking I was supposed to please everyone, or that I was supposed to be everyone's best friend, or that I was the star of the show. I can treat my role as transactional too - not in the sense of trying to get you to tip me - but in the sense that I can think that I have to earn your approval by doing enough things just right. And in both the restaurant and the church I can get too serious and self-righteous. Want to support our podcast? Give Here

Sometimes I hear people say that they don't take their children to church because they don't want to indoctrinate them. They want their children to make up their own minds about religion when they get older. So I think this is the place for me to say that I want to indoctrinate my children. I believe indoctrination is normal and good, and I am done pretending otherwise. I believe in indoctrinating my children. And I'm going to take it a step further and say that whether or not you even have children, you believe in indoctrinating children too. If you insist that children go to school, you are indoctrinating them into the idea that education is important. If you insist they try hard, you are indoctrinating them into the idea that effort matters. If you ever stop a child from hitting someone and say something like, "We don't hit," that's indoctrination. Can you imagine a parent saying that a child should decide for themselves whether or not they want to learn? So when we make our kids go to church, that is indoctrination. And when we stay home, that is also indoctrination.

Did you know that our bones are constantly breaking themselves down and building themselves back up again? You probably did know that. Most of you are better at knowing scientific things than me - it's not my strong suit. But I learned this about bones as an adult and it really blew me away. In the simplest terms, you have these things called osteoclasts that are constantly dissolving your old bone tissue. Meanwhile you also have osteoblasts that spend their time building new bone tissue. This is happening inside you constantly. It's a very natural and normal thing - the breaking down and building up. We all understand bones in terms of the stability and structure they bring to our bodies. So, at first for me it was counterintuitive to hear that part of their healthy process was that they were breaking down all the time. For most of my life, I have associated stability and structure with something like immobility. You want your house built on a strong foundation. And we often find great comfort in the idea of changelessness, of things remaining the same. When life deviates from our expectations, we seek to get back to normal, to something that resembles stasis because that feels safe. As the old hymn proclaims, "Like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved." But it turns out I'm moving all the time. These little invisible things within my very body are moving, tearing my foundation down and building it back up again all day every day. These strong bones are anything but static and immovable, and my desire to understand that has helped me learn to accept that change is inevitable. Want to support our podcast? Give Here

I've just returned from my sabbatical - a nearly four-month break from work that was facilitated by the amazing people, clergy, and staff of Church of the Redeemer, and graciously funded by the Lilly Foundation - who awarded Church of the Redeemer with a Clergy Renewal Grant which enabled me to travel both by myself and with my family. The primary purpose of this sabbatical was simply to rest, which I'm glad to say happened. When I wasn't just resting, I was going places that connected me to conversion experiences and food - and the places where conversion and food meet. So, what better place for me to take my family than Italy? It's famous for its food, it's rife with religious sites, and it was the location of my accidental conversion all those years ago. We spent a little less than a month in Italy, traveling all throughout the northern half of the country, and finishing our time there in Cinque Terre - the little patch of land on the hillside I keep talking about. I wanted to walk the trails of Cinque Terre again like I did all those years ago, and I wanted to take my family with me. I knew doing this would inevitably draw comparisons to the first time. How could it not? And while I was quick to tell anyone listening that I had no expectations of another conversion experience, I could not help but wonder if just maybe I'd be knocked down and picked back up as thoroughly as I once had been. Want to support our podcast? Give Here

To explain this pouch, I should probably first say that some of my father's family were practicing Santeros. You may not be familiar with Santeria, or if you are you may see it as some kind of voodoo, but Santeria quite plainly is an African diasporic religion that arose in Cuba in the 19th century as a mix of traditional West African polytheistic Yoruba religion mixed with our very monotheistic Catholic form of Christianity. It is a form of spiritism, very animistic and to many Christians it's probably heretical, but here we are. Growing up, my mom and dad enrolled me in catechism in our local Roman Catholic church. I became a very devout practitioner and took pride in my religious conviction. I was not modeling anyone at home since neither my parents nor grandparents attended church regularly. All the while this "other" religion loomed in the background. My paternal grandfather hosted Santeria gatherings and my father would go, but we were not allowed to attend. To my mother, who could be paradoxically judgmental, all of this was nonsense. It didn't help that it was stigmatically seen by many as a religion of the poor and uneducated. Mom, who had her own rocky relationship with her faith and even more with my father, had no interest in introducing us to any of this. But, like many others, she was respectful of it, just in case... When they divorced in my 8th year, shell-shock mixed with intrinsic curiosity would set me on a life-long search that would eventually include an education in theology and, of course, what was in that little pouch. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

I wrote in a recent blog post that historically I have been obsessed with numbers as a church leader. Many of us are. We talk about church growth, and we are almost always talking about literally increasing the number of people associated with our community. And I understand that. I can't totally disown it. If we believe that what we're doing matters, that it makes an impact, and that our community can transform people's lives, why would we not want to increase the number of people who experience that? But this is not the growth we are talking about in baptism. In baptism, we are talking not about numerical growth, but about our maturity, our development, our spiritual growth alongside and towards one another as we see more clearly how to love like God loves. It is totally fine to love baptism because it means new members of our church. But I hope we can see past that as well and recognize that these babies, these nascent humans, these brand-new Christians, are pushing us to grow, to develop, to mature. God put them in our lives on purpose. How will we respond to that? How will we let them shape us? What will we learn from them about Jesus? How will we grow together? We talk about growth in our Vision Statement. There's a whole bullet point dedicated to it, and we will be focusing on that bullet point throughout this program year. In it we say that we envision a church that is "Growing with people of every age, race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic situation, and political persuasion." We wrote that four years ago, and I will freely admit that when we wrote it, I was thinking about numbers. I was thinking about increasing the number of people that are connected to Church of the Redeemer. But the language we used pushes us beyond that. When we say we want to grow not only in number but in the type and age and experience and perspective of our membership, we are saying we want our understanding of who we are to grow. We are talking about the growth, development, and maturity of how and where we see love.Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

Have you ever been transformed by love only after believing in it for a while? I have. Here's what I mean: Have you ever had an experience of transformation that is connected to a person, a belief, a moral idea that you have proclaimed for a time - months or years- and then suddenly in a clarifying moment you are, for lack of a better word, converted to the thing you already believe, or know, or have? Maybe I should give an example. When my husband Andrew and I were trying to become parents we were chosen by a pregnant woman to adopt her child, as yet unborn. For prospective parents in an infant adoption process in the USA this is an incredibly exciting and fraught moment. Exciting because the months of waiting and wondering if we would ever actually be chosen to parent someone seem to be coming to a close. Fraught because no woman can actually choose to give up a child until that child is born. This is both practically and legally the case - a woman cannot relinquish a child until she has given birth. In most states there is a waiting period after signing papers where the mother can revoke her relinquishment. This is a good thing. Giving up a baby should only happen if it must, and if the woman chooses. It's never a happy thing for a parent to lose their child. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

It was one of those mornings. In the labyrinthine hallways of the ministorage, where I was converted through the incredulous look and gentle words of Jamie, one of my dearest pals. I crutched around a corner with a pillow in my teeth to meet Jamie, who was returning to the unit for another load. He looked at me for a second with that look of surprise, and, then, with a measure of concern, said, "Jimmy, what are you doing." Through clenched teeth, I said, "I'm helping. I can still help." To which he responded something like, "if we need that kind of help from you right now, we are in real trouble." I was good at helping. I was good at giving. I was good at being there for folks in need. I was and still am almost always game for showing. I was no good at receiving. I wasn't any good at letting others give me a bit of help or care along the way, and my unwillingness to ever be set to receive, rather than send, impeded my real ability to experience the kind of community that I had envisioned to build in this new venture. It was a block for me, and my dear friends stupefied gaze and matter of fact words caused me to turn around and see how The capital K Kingdom wouldn't work without a real measure of interdependence. How we can't just give, give, give. How something loving like giving can become absurd under certain circumstances. A grown man, on crutches, with a pillow in his teeth at 7:30 in the morning with a hive of people working around me.

My cousin had somehow convinced me that we could get away with smoking in my Granny's bathroom. I have no idea why I believed him. There wasn't a chance that we weren't going to get snared. Later, when my mum questioned me, I knew that we were busted and there was no point trying to hide it. So I told her the truth. And -- as our conversation went on -- I told her the whole truth. It wasn't just the smoking. My friends and I had been stealing booze, getting drunk and putting ourselves in seriously dangerous situations. I knew I had screwed things up. I knew I had broken the rules. I knew I was in serious, serious trouble. My mum, as you can imagine, was devastated. It was heartbreaking to come clean and see what I was putting her through. What scared me, however, was what would happen my dad found out. I begged her not to tell him but she wouldn't keep it from him. He was away for a couple of weeks so I lived in fear of what was to come. When he came home, mum told him everything and he came straight to me. He told me to get in the car. Too afraid to ask any questions, I obeyed. I got in with no idea where we were going. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

Can we rest yet? Is it time? The dizzying, never-ending buzz, the exhausting, contentious election season, It feels like the answer is no, right? Because now we shift to our prayers and preoccupations over a peaceful transition of power, as well as our preparations for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and Winter. Who's got time to rest with all that?

It's not a very glamorous story. And to be honest, it doesn't reflect well on me. But I'll tell it anyway. About fifteen years ago, while working on being a more loving husband, (which, by the way, should be on the list of Official Spiritual Disciplines) I acted very impulsively and asked my wife how she would like to be loved. What could I do that would make her feel, really and truly appreciated? "Unload the dishwasher. Every day. I hate doing it, so if you could, that would make me feel loved." I foolishly believed she was going to ask for flowers. Or maybe a bracelet. Do women wear bracelets anymore? That's how out of touch I was (am). But, fine. The dishwasher thing was good. Simple, too. Not a problem. So, for the first two weeks I unloaded the dishwasher without hesitation. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

My Dad told me he was gay when I was 13 years old and I made the decision in that moment to accept him for who he was. That is not to say I actually did accept him for who he was immediately. I meant to. I wanted to. I made the decision to. But the reality was I had no idea what that acceptance meant, and I had no idea how that acceptance would change who I am. The teaching of the church in which I grew up was clear: Only heterosexual attraction was part of God's plan and anything else was sinful and unnatural. Any sexual attraction or activity that strayed from heterosexuality was abhorrent to God. And anyone who was gay was questionable at best - their orientation dubbed a "lifestyle", their very being called a choice and a bad one at that. I believed all these things when I was 13. I was taught them as a matter of fact, so I did not question them any more than I questioned that 1+1=2. And then my Dad told me he was gay. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

This podcast is about love, so let's talk about what the church preaches about love. We say that we should love others as Jesus first loved us. We say we should love our enemies. We say to should love generously, sacrificially even. But do we practice what we preach? Yes, of course we do. Sometimes. I've seen extraordinary love inside the church, and from the church toward the world. I've spent most of my life working in the church, and I've seen a lot of exemplary love in those years. I've also seen us fall short plenty of times. After all, the church is made up of people, and we're all sinners. So the church will never be perfect, at least not until Jesus comes again to sort it all out. For now, I wanted to celebrate a time I saw -- I felt -- the church practice what it preaches. It all happened in 2022 when I almost died. I was passing through Singapore airport on my way to Vietnam for vacation. But my body had other ideas. My heart stopped. And when I collapsed from my heart stopping, I hit my head and received a pretty serious brain injury. After 59 minutes of CPR, I was rushed to a nearby hospital. It turns out that the hospital closest to Singapore airport is one of the best heart hospitals in the world. I was in the hospital for two weeks, including several days of complete sedation so the swelling in my brain could go down. When I was discharged from the hospital, I was in a wheelchair. My brain wasn't quite working right, as it continued to heal. By then, Sherilyn, my spouse, had arrived. We couldn't go home until the doctors said my brain was well enough healed to travel by air. So we were stuck in Singapore for a few weeks.

I went to Italy for the first time in February of 2000. I was a 20-year-old Junior in college, and I was minoring in Italian. I had no Italian ancestry, and no cultural obsession with Italy or the Roman Empire. I was not in love with an Italian coed. I tell you this only because these are all the questions I get asked when I mention studying Italian. My reasons for studying Italian were much more capricious. I had taken Spanish, German, and Japanese classes at different points growing up, and heading to college I decided I wanted to try a new language. I also decided that I should try to become fluent in whatever language I chose. I was 18 when I decided this. I did not expect to advance any specific career or spiritual goal. I just wanted to be able to watch the Godfather movies without subtitles, and to listen to Italian-American singer Louis Prima and know what he was singing half the time. This was the depth of my decision making. During my sophomore year it became apparent that studying abroad for at least a semester was an expectation, so I set about looking at programs in Italy, and settled on one in the Northeastern city of Padova (we English speakers call it Padua) because all the classes were taught in Italian, and they had no lessons on Fridays, so students could have long weekends to travel. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

The only symptom of pre-eclampsia that I knew of was swollen ankles, and my ankles were fine. I was 25 weeks pregnant, and running late to my follow-up ultrasound appointment...late enough that I almost skipped it. I had figured that the headaches and occasional blurry vision I experienced were probably related to the stress of my first year of teaching. I didn't realize that those were signs of a problem with my pregnancy. My husband John had to work late that day, so I went to the doctor's appointment by myself. I figured that it would be routine. I was thinking about what I would make for dinner that night. I didn't notice until later that the ultrasound technician was far less talkative than he had been during my last appointment, 6 weeks prior. By the time I opened the door afterward to return to the consult room, the technician had pulled my obstetrician from a delivery. The doctor was standing in the doorway in his blue surgical scrubs. He told me that the ultrasound showed that I had severe pre-eclampsia. He said that there was a 100 percent chance that my baby would be born premature. He said that I was in danger of having a stroke, and that the wait would be too long for an ambulance to take me to the hospital, so his nurse was going to drive me. Then he asked me to sit down so that he could check my blood pressure. It was...high. For the next ten days, I was on monitored bed rest at the state teaching hospital. I underwent treatment to prevent a stroke, and received two rounds of a steroid to develop the baby's lungs. After ten days, when my blood pressure rose to a dangerous level and stayed there, and the baby was showing signs of distress, the doctors delivered her. Our daughter Katherine Grace was born at 27 weeks' gestation. She was twelve inches long. She weighed one pound, four ounces. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

I was 41, standing in my kitchen with my hand in a bowl full of flour and water and salt, and I did not hear God talk to me. I didn't hear much of anything, other than the same Ella Fitzgerald album on endless repeat from the speaker on the kitchen counter. I was about 5 months into leading our church in a pandemic. I felt isolated and stir crazy and very tired of my beautiful family. I was insecure about the future of our church, which felt small compared to the fact that I was scared for the future of our country. On top of that, In the last month our dog had died, and we had moved into a smaller house. I was confused and exhausted and heartbroken.For whatever reason, COVID-19 did not bring about a crisis of belief for me. That is not a brag, just a strange statement of fact. It had been 21 years since the moment on the hillside when I heard God's voice and realized I believed. 21 years later, and I was pretty sure I believed in God at least once a day every day. But I was in despair because I wasn't sure I believed in people anymore. I mean, I knew people existed, I just wasn't sure why, or what we were doing with this gift of life. A lot of despair there.And though I believed in God, I did not hear their voice. So, I did what many sensible White men did during the pandemic: I started making sourdough bread.A parishioner I love very much gave me some of his starter and a basic recipe and I went at it. If the sea made me realize how small I was when my feelings were too big, making bread somehow made me feel like I could actually do something when I felt powerless in so many other ways. There are many feelings from the pandemic we have not processed. We have no idea, for instance, how to grieve over a million people dead - we just don't have the cultural mechanisms in place to process the enormity of that. Likewise, I don't think we have really dealt with just how powerless we all felt for so long. How little we felt we could do to make things better.I was no different. I may have been in charge of a church, but I felt powerless and useless. I would work 40-50 hours a week and not feel like anything happened.And then I started making bread. I loved it immediately. Like the first time I heard Sgt. Pepper or the first time my wife and I made eye contact. That kind of love. And I know. I know how ridiculous that sounds. How dramatic. And I am not saying I'm great at making bread. I'm just telling you that in the middle of every single thing being terrible, Love showed up, and it looked like carbs.

I was 20 years old, walking a trail on the side of a hill in Northwestern Italy when I heard God speak to me. I was by myself, having walked far ahead of my traveling companions, and I was stuck in my head. These particular hills are right on the edge of the Ligurian Sea, and every single view is breathtaking, and I was paying attention to none of them. I was too busy being heartbroken. Throughout college I was mostly involved with one person, and our relationship ended and began again a couple times. This was one of the times it had ended. I rounded a corner and looked up and outward despite myself. Water. So much water. And I remember thinking that this sea had been here so long before I was ever a person and would be here so long after I was gone. I was so small. My sadness was so small. There was so much more than me. Look, I know this was not the most profound or original thought, but I was a heartbroken 20-year-old in Italy. It was enough to shake me out of my doldrums and open me up to everything that was around me. And as I looked out on the sea, I heard God say, "You believe in me." It was not a command so much as an observation. God was letting me know something that was true about me. And it mattered. As I have mentioned, I was not, in that exact moment, thinking about God. I was thinking about a girl. And I wasn't praying or meditating or anything like that. I was not seeking spiritual enlightenment or comfort. I had not invited God into my heart or into the conversation at all really. But there God was. Telling me I believed.

How hard can that be? Get some ketchup from the grocery store. Problem was, there in front of me, staring at me like a Martian in a nightmare of inundation, were exactly fourteen different types of ketchup: classic, sugar free, spicy jalapeno, carrot ketchup, no-mato, restaurant style, chili-pepper ketchup, ketchup with a blend of veggies, curry ketchup, Tapatio, habanero, rainbow ketchup for kids, some fancy pants organic stuff in a glass jar, and the ever present Heinz 57. I stood there looking at each one. The list just said "ketchup." So, which one do I choose? I started reading nutrition labels and checking prices. I felt my heart rate increase steadily as I broke into a cold sweat.

Seven years later I returned to New Orleans. This time I was officiating the wedding. At the rehearsal dinner, the father of the bride found out I'd never had raw oysters. He told me tonight I'd be eating ten of them. So, I did. After the rehearsal dinner, I accompanied the wedding party down filthy funky Bourbon St. It was a Friday night, and I was in my clericals. Revelers and strippers threw beads at me and cheered the priest simply for being in their midst. What is this place and what am I doing here? As the gathering was winding down, I stopped by a nearby cigar shop and a group of guys from New Jersey celebrating their buddy's birthday told me I was their priest now and I was coming with them. I became their sober religious mascot for the rest of the evening. I still talk with some of them on Facebook. That wedding was one of my all-time favorites. The couple were natives to New Orleans, and their love and affection for each other, for their families, for their friends, for their city just poured out of them. The third time I went to New Orleans I had a steak so good I didn't eat red meat again for a month. That is not hyperbole. It was the literal best meal I have ever had, and like visiting the grave of Jesus, I don't like saying much about it because I don't want to sully something so meaningful with my pitiful words. New Orleans. It is both otherworldly and perfectly grounded. Magical and real. Gorgeous and grimy. Warm and scary. Joyous and dangerous. Poverty and wealth and theft and murder and marriage and joy and death and life and, dear God above, food and music and food and music! For all I've said here, I don't feel like I have a right to talk about New Orleans. It doesn't belong to me. The people I've since met who are from there, maybe it doesn't even belong to them so much as they belong to it. In some ways, my experience of New Orleans was not unlike my trip to the Holy Land of Palestine and Israel. Before I went, I had no experience and knew exactly what I thought. After going, I knew so much less and loved so much more. These places and these people - they don't need my opinions and they don't need me. There is so much life to be lived if I can love without judgment, if I can just go and see. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

My guest today is the Reverend Dr. Herschel Wade. Herschel is the Associate for Discipleship here at the Church of the Redeemer, and I am so grateful for him. He has been with us for just a few short months in this job and he's still relatively new to the priesthood, but he brings so much to the table, so much passion, so much energy, so much joy and laughter, and so much thoughtfulness. When he opens his mouth you are going to laugh and you're going to think that is going to happen. I'm so grateful for that. His sermons remind me daily. Every time I hear him preach, I am reminded of the importance of prayer. Obedience to Christ following Jesus no matter what. And he's lived that in his own life. He's lived out and he continues to live out the desire to follow Jesus. No matter what this position associate for discipleship is new at church of the Redeemer, but it's important for us. To focus as we move forward into the next chapter of our church's life, to focus on our following our discipleship, our decision to pick up our crosses and follow Jesus for our entire lives. And I believe Herschel is just the person to help us understand how to do that. I'm so grateful for him and grateful for him contributing to the podcast today. I hope you'll enjoy it.While growing up, my life at home was never peaceful or stable. My father ran the streets and slept around with other women. He spent little time at home. When he was at home, he physically, emotionally, and psychologically abused my mother and beat us regularly at the drop of a dime. My mother turned full-alcoholic and gave up on everything except trying to keep my father from leaving for good. The long fight to keep him and endure the abuse would effectively break her spirit and strip her of her remaining dignity. She never seemed to recover. Somehow through the beatings, I hit a breaking point. I grew tired of watching him beat my mother while courting and pampering other women, who could not have loved my father as much as my mother did. One night stands out in my mind. Like a crazy fool, I attempted to stop one of my father's attacks on my mother. He was beating her on our front porch for the world to see, again. "Leave my mama alone Goddammit. Leave my mother alone!" My father chased me down the street. You damn right to assume he did not catch me. Had he caught me, the chance of me being able to retell this story would be less zero! The effects were no less devastating. My father kicked me out of the house; my mother packed my bags. Sadly, my actions that night would have long lasting effects on my younger sister. She, too, caught the "I don't give a damn bug" and cussed my father out minutes after my departure. She would depart in the same way I did that night. She was twelve and would not return for years--yes, years.

My relationship with silence is complicated. I know silence is important. I know it's healthy. I know silence is conducive to prayer and meditation, to peace and reflection. I also just really like noise of all kinds. I like the sound of things happening, I like hearing people talking. Even when they're not talking to me: I like to go places where people are talking to each other and just hear different voices and snippets of different conversations. I love all accents - even the ones you think are ugly. Mostly I love music. It is playing most of the time I am awake, and even when at bedtime I often play music very quietly. My entire sophomore year of college my roommate and I fell asleep to the same album every night. It was Bob Dylan's World Gone Wrong. I would not say I'm afraid of silence - at least I don't think I am. I even enjoy it sometimes. But I forget about it. I forget silence is an option. I think I'm about to remember. As you are reading this I am on sabbatical. Don't worry: I'm not working. I wrote this before I left. But the very first thing I'm doing during this sabbatical is going on a 4-day silent retreat. Four whole days without talking to anyone or listening to anyone. No kids around. No spouse. No work. No music. I will be at a monastery and retreat center in Kentucky called The Abbey of Gethsemani. It is run by Cistercian monks who are apparently very serious about their silence. It's going to be very quiet. Maybe I am actually a little afraid.

If you had asked me growing up if meals were a big deal in my house, I would have shrugged my shoulders. My parents didn't look me in the eye and say, "This matters!" And I ate in front of the TV as often as they would let me. But looking back, I see it differently. My father loved to cook. And for the first 13 years of my life, when my parents were still together and especially before my older brothers moved out, Dad would try to get us around the table when he was home. Throughout much of the 80's he was away on business, sometimes half of each month. But when he was home, he would cook as often as possible, and we would all sit together around the kitchen table and eat. He would insist I take my hat off, no matter what kind of rat's nest was hiding underneath. I always thought he was doing that just for himself, that he loved to cook. And he did. But I'm Dad now, and I have a demanding job too. And now I know that part of loving to cook is the fact that I am feeding people I love, that I am potentially making something they will actually enjoy, and that I am nourishing them and caring for them in a real and practical way. I don't always feel it in the moment, and I don't say it every time. And my kids would love to eat in front of the TV as often as possible. But when I have the energy, I gather them around the table, and hats come off, and we hold hands, and someone prays. And sometimes they like it and sometimes they don't. But it's always I love you. I see that now.

As part of our When Love Shows Up Throwback Series we are re-posting this podcast which was originally posted on May 12, 2023 Where is God when things are terrible? Where is God when I pray for the healing of a loved one and they get sicker? Where is God when I pray for their healing and they die instead? Where is God when people are being torn apart by AR-15 bullets? Where is God? I ask this question a lot, and I get asked it a lot. A friend who is really going through it recently asked me, and followed up by saying they were not asking rhetorically. It's not a new question. Some biblical scholars believe that the Book of Job is the earliest story in our Scriptures. Which means not only is "Where is God?" not a new question - it might be the oldest question anyone who believed in God ever asked. And it's important to remember that "Where is God?" is asked most frequently by people who believe in God, because we often think it's a question rooted either in faithlessness or cynicism. But in my experience it is one of the most faithful questions anyone can ask. Where is God? I need to tell you that I will not answer this question in anything like a satisfactory way. So please know that going forward. Just the same, my first answer is that God is with us. This is the stated belief of the Christian - even when we don't understand, even when we question, even when we doubt, even when we are furious with God. God is with us. When I was growing up, the spectacular Bette Midler sang, "God is watching us from a distance." It was beautiful and it was believable, but it was also not true - at least not according to the Christian narrative. We say that God is here right now. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

Jesus goes to work, and he heals people. He helps people. He saves people. Then he heads to Jerusalem, the political, cultural, religious, social center of his people, and he goes there during Passover, when every one of these oppressed Israelites has Egypt and the Exodus and liberation on the brain. And he symbolizes for so many of them the possibility of deliverance - of salvation - not just from some abstract afterlife Hell, but from the things that are harming them here and now. Hosanna! Help us! This is a promising moment. It quickly disintegrates. After several days of teaching and fierce verbal confrontations with religious leaders and cultural influencers, Jesus is arrested, put on trial, and publicly executed. Among those who advocated so strongly for his death were the people who had cried Hosanna the loudest. The week between Palm Sunday and Easter is the grotesque illustration of what happens when we don't like how God wants to help us. What Jesus does is he reminds each person that they need saving not just from some governing power or corrupt system - they also need saving from themselves, from their own ability to sabotage their lives, their own resistance to God's love and justice, their own complicity in the things that push them further from God. And he's not speaking to them from on high, from above the fray, from a place of privilege. Like all good prophets, he's speaking to them as one of them. As you may recall, it does not go well. Want to support our podcast?Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

Conversion cannot be confined to the times and place I expect. I look forward to wherever it may be next. At the back end of the pandemic, we tiptoed back into real life. At Church of the Redeemer the very first gathering we had outside of masked worship was on the front porch of our church. We had a taco truck parked out front and we invited everyone. I will never my whole life forget that night. A hundred people showed up and ate tacos and just smiled at each other. "Look at us. We're sharing space. We're together. We're eating." It's all so simple isn't it? I don't ever want to take it for granted again, the being together. I was angry a lot during the pandemic. I may have believed in God but I wasn't so sure I believed in people anymore. I had hoped that this health crisis would be an opportunity for people to unclench our fists and look out for one another - to cross political lines, to take seriously the danger and uncertainty before us, to love one another in practical ways. I did not see that happening, and I found myself succumbing to my own judgmental nature and cynicism. The taco truck reminded me how much I love people.

There's a moment in The Lord of the Rings where a character stops to consider how he feels, and then describes himself as "stretched thin - like butter scraped over too much bread." That's it. That's what I feel like. It's not quite burnout. I'm not looking out the window for something else to do. Rather, my body and spirit are tired, and have been and keep being, and I am looking for rest and renewal. One thing I can tell you about being butter scraped over too much bread is that sometimes when everything is going well, you're not able to feel the joy and excitement of it. You can intellectually recognize that things are great, but not have the capacity to appreciate that reality. Another thing that happens is a bandwidth problem. During the height (or depth) of the pandemic, there was a point when both my wife and I were working from home, and all three kids were home with us. The oldest two were attending school remotely on their computers, and the youngest was too young even for school and spent a lot of time on a screen. I'm not going to bother trying to explain or defend that. Anyway, when we were all online at the same time, we would sometimes have a bandwidth issue - our internet would be overloaded and everything would slow down. Since the pandemic, I have noticed myself having bandwidth issues. My internal processing is overwhelmed and everything slows down. If you've been around me, maybe you've noticed that and maybe you haven't. I notice it. Butter over too much bread. I sometimes have difficulty admitting that I feel this way. First, it's never fun to acknowledge you're not operating at 100%. We're programmed to think of that as weakness, and to think of weakness as bad. But also, I worry that the people in my church community - the people with whom I share much of my life - will think I'm saying I'm not happy doing the work. And I'm definitely not saying that.Want to support our podcast?Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

Today at the gym I overheard a conversation. I did not mean to. I was not eavesdropping. Well not at first anyway. In my defense the person working out next to me was talking at normal volume on their phone. She was not using, as it's called in elementary school, her inside voice. And because I had misplaced my headphones, I could only mind my own business for so long. Even without knowing the context of the conversation, I heard pain. Then I heard her say these words to the person on the other end of the line: "Are you willing just to acknowledge your part in what went wrong, to be accountable and then move on?" I was taken aback by the direct and simple nature of the question. We don't often hear people speak this plainly. I actually stopped listening at that point, both because I was trying to lift a very heavy thing, and also because this stranger's question sent me deep within myself. It was as if she had asked me the question just as directly and simply. Phil, are you willing just to acknowledge your part in what went wrong, to be accountable and then move on? I delicately put the heavy thing on the ground, and then silently prayed for this person on her phone. I'm very religious, after all. I prayed with thanksgiving for her courage - because saying that to anyone takes courage. Then I prayed for, I guess you'd call it a happy ending, a resolution or reconciliation or whatever those two needed. I put the weights back on the rack, walked off and finished my workout. But that question stuck with me. Want to support our podcast?Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

This canceling business is not uncontroversial. It's also not new, even if the lingo is. I remember back in 2003 when the Country music trio then-named The Dixie Chicks responded to the US invasion of Iraq by telling a London audience, they were ashamed that our President was from their home state of Texas. The backlash was intense and immediate - with radio stations refusing to play their music and their music sales dropping dramatically. They even received death threats. So did the Beatles, of course, back in 1966, when during an interview John Lennon remarked that his band was currently more popular than Jesus. Aside from the death threats, some Christian groups organized public bonfires of Beatles records and paraphernalia. The Beatles considered ending their US tour early for their own safety. And then there was St. Paul, and even Jesus. Jesus, in describing conflict resolution at one point instructs his followers that if someone inside the community sins egregiously and is unwilling to apologize and atone, they should be treated like "a Gentile or a tax collector". Which is to say they should be treated as outsiders. Maybe Jesus was an early proponent of cancel culture. Want to support our podcast?Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

My preference would be to see evidence of God's presence when things are going my way, and evidence of God's absence when things are not. And I know I am not alone in this: Many people find themselves questioning the existence (or at least the efficacy) of God specifically when they see the mess we are in as a planet. The reasoning seems to go, "What kind of a God would allow all of this?" And when things are going right? "Oh, God is blessing me." It's worth remembering that all of Jesus' disciples died horrible deaths; that St. Paul was jailed repeatedly, stoned, and executed; that Job, who is most famous for his faithfulness, lost every one of his children, his home, and all his livestock in one day; that Moses died in the wilderness, never setting foot in the Promised Land. It's also worth remembering that none of these stories are told as tragedies: Every life is described as part of a larger redemptive reality at work in the world, played out in both the prosperity and the adversity of the faithful. The truth is that pretty much every single book of the Bible was written for, by, and about people who were in tough situations - living in exile, surviving under oppressive rule, being persecuted, their lives threatened, their religion made illegal, their lifespans brief and rife with danger, famine, and pestilence. Sometimes - especially when I'm in my head - I see things going wrong as evidence that there is no God; or that if there is a God, maybe they're impotent, or uncaring. Yet the words of hope that have most shaped my life come from people whose lives were objectively much worse, much more difficult than mine has ever been. Faith, it seems, may be more fertile in suffering than prosperity. Want to support our podcast?Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

We Christians believe in eternal life. Yet we still manage so often to think and speak of those who have died in the past tense. But Jim is a poet. And though he wasn't reading a poem here, it takes a poet's heart to lay bare the beautiful forgotten truth in such simple terms. A man standing mere feet from the ashes of his friend's body and speaking of him in the present tense. The words for what I came to understand that day did now show up immediately. But now I have them. When someone dies we do not stop loving them. Our love is not past tense. And it's not just grief or nostalgia or sentimental memories. It is love in the present tense. It is love that still manages to shape us. We continue to be transformed by love after their death. And I believe I know why. Our loved ones who died are still loving us. They are in eternal life. Right now. They are alive in Christ - not as a metaphor, but as a bare fact. They are in the present tense. Their love is in the present tense. And so is ours. Our love remains. And when I say our love remains, I am not saying it remains as a stubborn insistence to hold onto what was. No, our love remains because it is alive and active and we continue to share it with the dead who live in the present tense. Want to support our podcast? Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

In my first parish job, my rector told me it takes audacity and humility to be a priest. He said it take audacity to actually believe that the God who made all things has called you to preach and administer sacraments, to speak in God's name. Who do we think we are? And it takes humility, he continued, because once you're called you have to get out of the way of the Holy Spirit. 13 years into this work and I think he was right. I also think that this combination of audacity and humility is not something that is confined to priesthood. It seems to me that it takes audacity and humility simply to be Christian. It takes audacity to believe that there is a God who made every single thing in all of the history of the vast creation and that this God knows and loves you. It also takes humility to be a Christian, because you are admitting that you cannot do this life all on your own, that you need help, that there is something out there that is bigger and stronger and smarter than you, that you may be beloved, but so is everyone else. The audacity and humility of a Christian life. What I did not know, and could not know early on in my ministry, is that this tension between audacity and humility would be messy and uncertain, and that it would reveal itself in all aspects of the work. I thought, for instance, that I would spend my entire ministry above the fray of politics. For most of my priesthood I have not considered myself a political preacher. We all know preachers with that label. In the Episcopal Church we usually code them as social justice preachers, but we know what we mean: We mean people who bring a political perspective to the pulpit. I actively sought to avoid politics in my preaching and teaching until just a few years ago. Jesus changed my mind. Want to support our podcast?Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

Kindness is not a Hallmark card. It is not a cloying call for a so-called return to the civility of the good old days that never really existed. Kindness is ferocious and powerful. Kindness is salvation. To devote myself to kindness is to recognize the beauty and belonging of every person on this earth. Kindness is the practical application of acknowledging that each person is made in the image of God. Kindness is what it means to love my neighbor as myself. Sometimes I forget the truth, and I start to think that kindness is weak. But kindness is strength, because kindness insists that the person to whom I am speaking carries holiness within them, bears the image of God. And to believe this is true takes strength and to act like it's true takes courage. Because if I'm honest, I don't always think someone has the image of God within them. I don't always believe that a person is connected to God. I can believe in monsters just like anybody. Hatred, spite, and demonization is dehumanization - the misguided belief that someone does not belong to God, was not made by God, is not magnificently loved by God. To let hatred have a voice is a direct decision to give in to the darkness of the powers that seek to corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. The skeptic in me immediately points to the times Jesus says things that I see as harsh or brash. I can then say Jesus isn't always kind, so why should I be? But when I pay attention to the words of Jesus, I see that every single one of them insists that the person to whom he is speaking belongs to God. Jesus' words, even the rough ones, are kind because they acknowledge the inherent humanity and dignity of their recipients. Jesus does not think of anyone or speak of anyone as trash - not even his enemies. When Jesus critiques, when Jesus stands up and speaks out, when Jesus is angry, it comes from his conviction that the person in front of him is fully human. Jesus carries within him a deep yearning for even his enemy to see their own humanity and live into it. I cannot blame Jesus for the times I don't want to be kind.

In November of 1984 my parents threw an Election Night party. I still remember the little elephants on the cocktail napkins. I was five years old and understood nothing about politics, but I knew that Ronald Reagan was president, that he was about to be for four more years, and that this was both inevitable and very good. It is odd now to think of the outcome of a presidential election being a foregone conclusion, but it was. In 1984, Reagan carried all but one state and the District of Columbia in what is still the largest electoral landslide in modern history. Moments like this implanted within me not only a strong political identity, but also a sense of clarity and certainty: My family's guy was the good guy, he led the right team, he would win obviously and convincingly, and we would celebrate. When my dad came out of the closet as gay in 1992, he remained a Republican - as he would until his death in 2006. When questioned over the years about his political loyalty he would point out, correctly, that neither major party had at the time a pro-gay platform, that it was Democrat Bill Clinton who signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act and Don't Ask Don't Tell policies, and that since he wasn't going to get any real recognition from either party, he might as well vote for the candidate that best represented his other beliefs. His gay friends in particular were not persuaded by this argument. For what it was worth, neither was I. I was not interested in complexity - or compromise. I have always been a more difficult and idealistic person than he was. So I was excited in high school when my likewise contrarian brother introduced me to libertarianism.Want to support our podcast?Give Here https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast