I don’t often post my sermons here, for a variety of theological and practical reasons. Yesterday’s sermon on jubilee economics felt a bit of a mix of personal story, exegesis, and community-informed–perhaps how all sermons should be–and “translates” a bit better into this space.
Two years ago, Justin and I were negotiating a contract on our soon-to-be new-to-us house on Berwyn Drive in Madison. When we were here in Sept. ’19 for my candidating weekend, we spent several days touring houses and settled on one property in particular with its “blank canvas” of a front yard, the gorgeous oak tree out back, and with ideas that we could do some remodeling inside to achieve what we were looking for in a home…namely, a space that could hold lots of people for extended evenings and dinner parties and committee meetings where we would plot out paths of justice and agendas of peace.
Even at our closing, we never met the previous owners. We heard snippets about them from their realtor and a few neighbors. We occasionally still get mail for “Laura” and “Brian”. They weren’t the original owners—they had only lived there for a couple years. Our neighbor, Kelly, who has lived in her house for nearly 30 years, mentioned that we were probably the 5th or 6th owners since she’s lived next door.
Of course, we also know that this land hasn’t always been “owned” but is a 112′ x 83′ portion of a much larger story of colonization and imperialist expansion.
In late October of 2019, Justin, Maggie, and I moved into that larger story—aware of the Doctrine of Discovery and European colonization of this “nation”, but in some ways, too excited or distracted to reckon with that history.
And, of course, it wasn’t the first time that as a white, European woman, I found a home in a place once—and still—inhabited by people who have lived here much longer than my people. But Wisconsin was foreign territory to me, a land I had no connection to prior to summer of 2019; I didn’t know this land’s story. I hadn’t needed to. But there was something good here that I wanted to be a part of. And so we landed and put down roots.
Which is not too far off from the experience of the Hebrew people in Leviticus 25, as they lingered on the borders of the promised land.
As I read through the passage from Leviticus, I was struck by a common thread that runs through our scriptures these past three weeks. Yes, of course, they all revolve around Sabbath and why and how Sabbath is celebrated. Meanwhile, there’s another thread connecting these passages.
The early verses of Leviticus 25 offer their hint, “When you enter the land that I am giving you, …” “When you enter” implies that the Israelites are still wandering in the desert. The instructions from God about Sabbath, about Jubilee, are all given prior to entering the promised land. On this side of the story, the ordinances sound like a blueprint for living in the way of God. A blueprint which is intended for the Israelites’ flourishing, beginning with a 7-day cycle that culminates in rest and expanding to a 7-year cycle of renewal and finally, Jubilee, following the 49th year.
When we read the story from the vantage point of the Hebrew people, or how the authors of the text “imagined” that part of their history, Sabbath is a gift, clearly meant for a people who don’t have it all together. A people who have not yet arrived. And the concept of a Jubilee—for the land and for Israelites—beautifully imagines how good things will be and will stay in the promised land.
But what happens when that promised land is already inhabited? How does Jubilee work then?
Sarah Augustine, a Tewa descendant and Mennonite, writes in her book, The Land Is Not Empty, of her perspective of the Hebrew exodus story of the Old Testament. When she hears the 10 commandments of Deuteronomy 5 that we heard two weeks ago, she cannot help but remember that the land that the Israelites were “promised” was already inhabited. And the instructions God gives in Deut. 7 and beyond are for the elimination of the original inhabitants.
“The exodus story” Augustine writes, continues a cycle of “genocide” (124). She goes on, “[I]n my cosmology as a woman indigenous to North America, I am one of them invaded by the people presumed to be chosen of God.” (119-120) As an Indigenous Person, Augustine identifies most closely with the Canaanites. Her interpretation of these pre-promise land Sabbath texts is sobering to a white woman like me.
The challenge is holding both my story and Sarah Augustine’s story. For here I am, already settled in a promised land, and could easily live oblivious to the impact my presence has here. And as there is no evidence that Jubilee was ever truly practiced by our Israelite ancestors, it seems possible to imagine that those of the dominant society—of any dominant society—could live oblivious to the deeper truth and justice that Leviticus 25 so clearly outlines.
For starters, we today might question applying anything that comes out of Leviticus. That makes sense—there are significant portions of Leviticus that, when held in the light of the biblical story and the life of Jesus, fall far outside of the cosmic arc, or the “grain of the universe”, as Denny would say.
Leviticus 25 is a curious chapter and dips its toes into themes that permeate the New Testament — themes of healing, redemption, salvation (communal/cosmic sense), liberation, renewal, right relationship. In a nutshell, Leviticus 25 precedes and reflects the Gospel idea we’re so familiar with: the kin[g]dom of God being realized on earth. Granted, Leviticus 25 accounts for that realization in full every 50 years…a little less frequently than we believe is possible in Christ.
The portion of the chapter we heard focuses largely on land and land as property; the rest of the chapter expands into relationships between humans — debts canceled, manumission for those enslaved. Jubilee, that 50th year of extended Sabbath, is intended as a system that embeds economic justice into a society’s rhythms. Jubilee makes inequality temporary. This Great Reset is integral to the heart of Sabbath-keeping.
In the Jubilee system, land is not owned by any one person or household in perpetuity; rather, the setup more closely resembles a lease, where, during the Jubilee year, the land is returned to the “original” inhabitant (though “original” here is always assumed to mean the original Israelite). It’s a radical idea that, I imagine, would shape a community’s sense of mutuality—with one another, surely, and also with the generations that would come after, as well as the land itself. The Year of Jubilee, the Great Reset, is the reign of God experienced on earth.
But Sarah Augustine’s interpretation remains: The reign of God for whom? What of those displaced? Will the land ever return to them? Does economic justice have limits?
In the May 2021 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Dan Treuer wrote an article titled, “Return the National Parks to the Tribes” in which Treuer argues that land stolen from Indigenous Peoples of North America —now national park property—should be returned to Indigenous Peoples as restitution. He proposes,
”All 85 million acres of national-park sites should be turned over to a consortium of federally recognized tribes in the United States. … The total acreage would not quite make up for the General Allotment Act, which robbed us of 90 million acres, but it would ensure that we have unfettered access to our tribal homelands. And it would restore dignity that was rightfully ours. To be entrusted with the stewardship of America’s most precious landscapes would be a deeply meaningful form of restitution.”
Treuer is proposing a year of Jubilee.
Reparations of this scale have been successful in some places, including Australia, New Zealand, and between the US and Panama. Yet they are infrequent, often partial and tenuous.
Like buying our home on Berwyn Drive, the idea of reparations asks a lot of those in the dominant society who tend to feel entitled to what one privately owns.
It’s been longer than 50 years since white colonizers stole the land through trickery, manipulation, and military aggression. That could be an excuse to let Jubilee principles recede into myth. But when, in Luke 4, Jesus enters the synagogue in Nazareth, it’s clear that it doesn’t matter to him if it’s been 500 years or 5 minutes. Oppression, slavery, captivity are called out for what they are and sent packing.
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” …which is to say, for those who walk in the way of Jesus, to participate in Jubilee economics is an everyday action. Through Christ, Jubilee is a communal action that embeds economic justice into a society’s rhythms. Into a church’s rhythms.
In the Jewish calendar and according to Leviticus 25, Jubilee was to begin on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Friends, a year and one day from today—Oct. 4, 2022—is Yom Kippur. Over the next 366 days, I want to imagine with you, with this community, how we participate in the Great Reset. I want to imagine how we hold our diverse stories and stories like Sarah Augustine’s together: dismantling systems of oppression and fostering systems of economic justice. Will you join me? Will you let me join you?
In our backyard, a gorgeous, expansive oak hovers with a regal grandeur, providing shade and scurrying space for the squirrels, chipmunks, blue jays, and goldfinches. The last few weeks, the oak has been dropping thousands of acorns, which plummet to the earth with a powerful velocity. (One does not want to be sitting under her branches when there is any wind, lest an acorn drops with forceful precision on an exposed head…) It’s clear that autumn is arriving as the boughs sigh with relief as they lighten with each released acorn.
Tomorrow marks the autumn equinox here in the northern hemisphere of Planet Earth. In Madison, the weather has subtly shifted with the days still (mostly) bright and warm, and the nights cool and breezy. In this threshold between seasons, the earth reminds me to prepare for the winter ahead. The annuals and perennials alike are shifting their focus, nudging me, too, to let go of those things that were wonderful for a season, but now need to be put to rest…perhaps until next spring, or perhaps for good.
O Spirit of Change, prepare my heart for the winter ahead, but not before I have celebrated the fruit of summer. In this Great Transition Time, as the earth continues in its path, may I sense, like the Mother Oak, a lightening in my body, as the gifts of the long summer days drop to their earthen womb below. Amen.
At times I miss the wild spaces:
the cacophony and chaos
of bird songs, brambles, and entangled pines. In the racket of ravens
and the inquisitive gaze of the fawn,
I find my spirit’s home–
home, a quiet heart
clear vision
renewed hope– home is where the heron lands.
How do we “teach” the Bible to 8-year-olds when we’re not even sure what we think about it ourselves?
A family member with young children recently shared that their children had asked why they, as a family, don’t read the Bible. A recent experience at a church summer camp seemed to spur the children’s question, and the adult family member wasn’t sure how to respond. The family actively attends a faith community, participating in a wide variety of church activities and weekly worship. Yet, the children perceived a gap between themselves and others and were curious about it.
One evening a few weeks later, the adults of the family were sitting in our living room and raised this question: How do we “teach” the Bible to 8-year-olds when we’re not even sure what we think about it ourselves?
After talking around this for a while, I turned the question back to the parent. I asked, “Why would you read the Bible?” — asked not in a rhetorical way, but with an intent to draw out a positive Bible-reading ethic, if they felt they could.
In the progressive-leaning faith communities I’ve been a part of, attitudes toward the Bible have been mixed. There’s a desire that our children are exposed to the Bible, but we don’t want to gloss over that scripture is complex. We’re not interested in passing on the old legalism we were raised with, but we also think there’s a fair amount of wisdom in Jesus’ teachings. We’ve lost our naïveté that God’s a big guy up in the sky, but we’re captivated by a sense that there’s Something More.
And each time we do crack the book to begin reading, we come with an awareness that these texts weren’t written for us 21st-century readers. The Bible was written in many times and places, by many people shaped by their particular cultures. It spans multiple genres, is written in multiple languages (not English!), and includes no extended information on the authors or their motivations.
It’s a lot to hold.
Teaching the Bible from a place of uncertainty is really hard, especially when we’re trying to teach it to children. So, what is our responsibility, as adults in a faith tradition that values voluntary membership? (Here “adults” includes both a child’s parents and other adults in the faith community.)
I offer three main suggestions:
First, let children direct you. Follow what they’re interested in learning about. Equip them to ask questions and create a safe environment for them to ask. Ask other adults to help. Help other adults when they ask. Exploring the Bible can be playful, imaginative, and mysterious.
And second, following the wisdom of Celtic Christianity, allow the natural world — the “big book of scripture” — to shape your understanding of the Divine, of justice, of compassion. An awareness of the natural world is vital to understanding the written word of scripture, regardless of one’s age.
Meanwhile, within the Anabaptist tradition, rigid indoctrination of the young actually violates our core value of being a believers’ church.* That’s not to say that we should shield our faith from the next generations; rather, it is an invitation to live with integrity. Children (and youth especially) can sense when we find something is important, often through the way our words and actions align.
So, how do we “teach” the Bible to 8-year-olds when we’re not even sure what we think about it ourselves? We can allow—or even encourage—our children to explore sacred texts they’re interested in and to provide the tools they need to do so. We can notice and point out the ways that our everyday lives are deeply spiritual, as even some of our most mundane decisions are informed by faith, ethics, and/or our understanding of the Divine. And we can foster a sense of wonder about the good news we encounter in the very world around us.
All of this is centered in trust. Our relationship with a sacred text, like any relationship, is marked by seasons of distance and intimacy, of discernment and questioning…and we trust that the text can handle this. We also find trust in the Anabaptist practice of reading and interpreting the Bible in community, in which there is safety, accountability, and support. And perhaps it’s an opportunity to trust that our children will discover and discern on their own why they might (or might not) want to read the Bible.
*This is why I’m generally wary of things like Sunday School, especially for children.
A midsummer Monday morning has dawned. My muscles are a little achy today and my bones feel heavy. My mind and body show signs of hard labor as sweat gathers on my forehead. But I stoop again, to gently lift up the pea bush, eyes scanning for plump pods to snap off the vine.
My thoughts still in the garden, and it’s okay if I move a little more slowly here, listening to my body’s preferences for more comfortable positions. I find amidst the peas and tomatoes and basil a respite. A presence.
As I pinch off the tomato suckers, growing at a 45-degree angle from the main stem, I smile as I realize that now my hands will invariably smell like tomato all day: a pungent fragrance born of the plant’s hard labor.
Pastoring during COVID has been a mix of joys and sorrows: from the explosion of creativity, learning new skills, finding unique ways to connect, and the deepening of ‘wilderness’ wisdom … to managing disparate expectations and needs, the loss of touch, knowing people are slipping through the cracks.
Yesterday, my spiritual director asked me, “Do you regret being a pastor, or does it feel right?” I paused for a moment and responded, “Depends on the day.” She laughed, and my face cracked into a grin.
We were talking about the challenges facing the Christian Church, both nationally and locally. Attendance at communal worship is decreasing. White supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism are fighting to maintain dominance. Distrust within our communities festers and threatens unity.
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, there’s COVID.
The odds seem ever not in our favor. Yet here I am, strangely called to pastoring.
Pastoring during COVID has been a mix of joys and sorrows: from the explosion of creativity, learning new skills, finding unique ways to connect, and the deepening of ‘wilderness’ wisdom … to managing disparate expectations and needs, the loss of touch, knowing people are slipping through the cracks. I have witnessed incredible courage and paralyzing fear. I have seen the inspirational strengthening of communal ties and the cunning creep of individualism.
In normal times, pastors are invited into the most vulnerable spaces of human life, where we see the beautiful and the horrific. COVID has been no different in this way, only the beauty is often blinding and the edges of the horrific are razor sharp.
Who would want to be a pastor, given all of this?! In fact, many are leaving parish ministry altogether. The cost of staying is often too high.
I’m not at that point, though I empathize with those who are. Rather, the confidence in my call—at least, the confidence I have most days—keeps me tethered to both relief and hope. There is relief that the church can actually change, and relatively quickly; the past year proves this. There is hope that pastoring will continue to allow me to witness the Divine in the mundane, in the transitions, in the crises. And, there is hope that our sacred texts will guide us toward loving our neighbors, inspiring selfless acts of collective solidarity.
Amidst the fleeting, if somewhat regular blips of questioning my vocation, there are enough moments where pastoring feels right. And if not today, then perhaps tomorrow.
Choice crumbs of daily living // Seedlings, Current Reads, and New Housemate
Seedlings, or lack thereof, 2021
Our seedlings are mostly a failure this year. Justin hypothesizes that it’s because our potting up mixture’s chemistry was a little off. It’s interesting to me: the more I care about starting things from scratch, the more likely it seems that results are mixed.
So, for the first time in a very long time, I’ll be buying tomato plants for my little garden plot.
One summer in college, I had enormous success with starting tomato seeds. I want to say I ended up planting upward of 90 plants—my dad would remember for certain. In preparation for living as simply/cheaply as possible, I and about ten friends planned to rent a house together and practice college-level intentional living. Clearly, one needed as many tomatoes as possible to ensure this.
I’m in the middle of five books. I’m not totally sure why I do this to myself.
I checked this book (Miracles and Other Reasonable Things by Sarah Bessey) out from the library on Tuesday. I’ll be done by tomorrow. It’s easy reading—kind of like reading through one’s old journal entries. The chapters are both deep and simple, approachable and distinct.
Then there’s this tome (The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler), which I’ve had for a couple months and maxed out the library’s renewal limit. The book was groundbreaking for its time (1988), and in many ways, still is. Eisler presents a more complex review of human history, the ample evidence for a Goddess-based “pre-history,” and the way such a worldview relied on cooperation and equality between genders. In other words, human history has not always been defined by dominance, violence, and war-making. I probably won’t finish the book before it’s really due back at the library, though I am trying.
The other three fall somewhere in-between. I actively read them—a couple pages from one in the morning, a few poems before bed. And lastly, there’s a draft manuscript from a congregant. I will absolutely finish it; it’s like an asynchronous pastoral visit.
In about a week’s time, we have a new housemate moving in. Justin and I have often lived with others during our married life, so this is nothing new. In preparation for this addition, however, we’ve really been stretched to get rid of more of our stuff to make room. We downsized when we moved here a year and a half ago, and yet it’s embarrassing how much crap we still have and how much we’ve accumulated since being in Madison.
It’s been a humbling experience, and I wonder how much is related to the deep-seated insecurity we have as white folks.
In conversations about “returning to church,” one of the key questions that I think each church needs to reflect on is, “How has the church been changed by the pandemic?” It’s also an important question for followers of Christ to reflect on for our own spiritual growth.
When COVID Changed Me
In conversations about “returning to church,” one of the key questions that I think each church needs to reflect on is, “How has the church been changed by the pandemic?” (In a forthcoming essay to be published in the Anabaptist World, I offer why I think this is a necessary question.)
I also think it’s an important question for followers of Christ to reflect on for our own spiritual growth and formation over the last year. Here are two personal takeaways from how the pandemic has changed me.
Losing Control / Needing to Surrender
One of the first things I and others came to grips with was just how little we could control. Facing the virus meant facing the façades we have built in Western civilization, namely that of individual power.
White folks especially don’t like losing control or recognizing the truth about how little we actually control. We might be okay with losing control if we feel like we’re choosing it (playing into a martyr complex), but to choose to lose power is to still be in control.
Sadly, I have not escaped this malformation, either.
But somewhere, in the midst of 2020, I felt a nudge to surrender. To let trust develop, particularly in my relationship with God. It was/is hard to relinquish a sense that “I’ve got this,” especially when I’m supposed to be leading a group of people. But the truth of the matter was I couldn’t do much. It was a wake-up call to my finitude and mortality.
It’s hard to surrender (the fallacy of) control, even in order to open oneself to the Divine within and around us. Letting go of controlling outcomes requires vulnerability, another thing white folks often feel a “right” to be shielded from (due to white privilege).
But a life of vulnerability and yieldedness (Gelassenheit) is actually at the heart of the gospel–a challenge that changed me in 2020 and changes me still.
Worship and Trauma
Webinars proliferated in the early months of the pandemic. Everyone and their mother was offering spaces to gather and process the pandemic’s effects. I signed up for a lot of these webinars—some better than others. One, featuring my pastoral care professor from seminary, changed me.
He mentioned that in any given Sunday worship, a pastor should expect that about a third of the congregation is actively grieving something. With COVID, though, he said that number was now a full 100%. That was the first inkling I had that worship planning, and specifically preaching, needed to take our community’s grief and trauma into account more thoroughly.
With the murders of Breonna Turner and George Floyd, my attention turned to the trauma of white supremacy. Reading My Grandmother’s Hands and Words That Heal: Preaching Hope to Wounded Souls, I started taking more care to craft sermons and services that attended to the unhealed trauma that nearly all of us carry around. I have been challenged to honor my own traumatic experiences and to confront the deeply embedded trauma of white supremacy within me.
One result of these two things: COVID has changed my sermon writing process.
Pre-COVID, I had a neat, day-by-day order of what I did when.* When COVID hit though, each day was full with a week’s worth of uncertainty and disorientation. I found myself having a lot more to emotionally process before I could start writing. Many weeks, I only felt ready to start writing a first draft on Saturday afternoon.
This was a shock to my careful (semi-perfectionistic) process. I had lost control of comfortable patterns and expectations about how sermons come together. Instead, I felt nudged (or sometimes forced) into relying on the Spirit’s presence in my writing. It felt dangerous. I felt vulnerable.
In its place, I experienced a heightened awareness of speaking carefully and gently to the wounded souls on my screen. I knew what weighed many of them down; we were hitting refresh on the same data dashboards and newsfeeds. The sermons probably weren’t “great” in a classical sense, which provided a necessary check on my ego. Yet, it surprised me every week that a sermon came together, and the process was still marked with joy.
As time has gone on, I’m closer to my original sermon prep process; I’m not changed to the point of always waiting until Saturday to write my sermons. (I do like doing other things on Saturdays other than work.) But my attitude toward sermon writing has changed. I pay more attention to centering in the Spirit before I start writing.** I’ve also mellowed a bit, having less to prove and more to care for. I’m hopeful that this will prove to be growth.
*I typically read all the lectionary texts a week in advance to familiarize myself with them. On the Monday before a service, I would muddle around the texts again and then hone in on one or two of the texts and formulate themes. (Parts of) Tuesday and Wednesday were spent in reflection, research, and perhaps writing an outline. Thursday was my writing day with the goal of getting a rough draft completed. Taking Friday off, I returned to my draft on Saturday morning to smooth the edges and clarify my main points. Sunday, I print it off, practice running through it a few times, and scribble changes in the margins.
**In a worship class in seminary, the professor taught us to have a prayer that we say each time we sit down to work on a service. I use the following prayer, which is adapted from Annie Heppenstall’s book, The Book of Uncommon Prayer. It is a prayer for the season of Epiphany.
Loving God, be a lamp to my feet, the brightest star in my sky; guide me to what is of true worth, and give me courage and diligence to keep searching until I find for myself that which draws forth my delight and awe, the revelation of your presence within me. Amen.
NPR’s All Things Considered is inviting listeners this week to reflect on when they “first realized COVID-19 would change their world.” While I didn’t submit a response, this one-year anniversary of stay-at-home orders and the recent glimmers of hope out of the CDC have me pondering both those early moments of the pandemic and the ways I/we have changed since.
When COVID Changed My World
NPR’s All Things Considered is inviting listeners this week to reflect on when they “first realized COVID-19 would change their world.” While I didn’t submit a response, this one-year anniversary of stay-at-home orders and the recent glimmers of hope out of the CDC have me pondering both those early moments of the pandemic and the ways I/we have changed since.
I had traveled east in late February/early March 2020 to visit family. Making my way through various airports, I noticed a handful of passengers wearing face masks.
My last indoor Showalter family gathering, Feb. 2020.
I remember one curious, unmasked person called out to another who was masked, “Do you have the virus or just playing it safe?” The person responded, “Wearing it just in case.” I washed my hands a lot on that journey, the primary advice I remember hearing in those days.
A few days later, I was meeting with the pastoral team from Orchard Ridge UCC, the church Madison Mennonite rents from. It was Tuesday, March 10, 2020. We were navigating what to do about their Sunday service that week, where I was slated to guest preach. My sermon was titled, “Singing Our Faith: Songs of Liberation, Lament, and Praise.”
(How little we knew, then, about singing and COVID.)
One of the pastors, away on vacation, called in. She had spoken with the executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches, who, having spoken with state-level health officials, had said we should expect March 15 to be the last Sunday of in-person worship, at least until Easter.
(How little we knew, then, about how long this would last.)
On Thursday afternoon of that week, I met with the worship leader for the Madison Mennonite service. We had planned to meet at a coffeehouse, where they had stopped letting people bring in travel mugs. You were supposed to ask for any drink accoutrements when ordering; there was no longer a self-serve area.
The worship leader and I sat and talked for a little while about what the emerging news about COVID meant for our Sunday service. A state of emergency had been declared, and uncertainty was growing very quickly. After a little while, I said, “I think the safest thing we can do, based on what we know, is to meet online.” Maybe it would be a blip. Maybe it was overkill. But we knew we could gather with absolutely no viral risk.
(How little we knew, then, what it meant to plan virtual worship.)
Thursday night, I had a conference call with our church board and I relayed the discernment from my afternoon meeting. We were, somewhat surprisingly, in full accord with one another to move worship online and to cancel all other in-person activities. My guest preaching gig was soon canceled as well.
(How little we knew, then, how much would be canceled.)
In the weeks that followed, I was thirsty for wisdom on how to be the church online in the midst of a global pandemic. I was fazed less by the technological side of gathering as the Body of Christ, and more by a general loss of control as speculation about time frames and viral transmission shifted hour-by-hour and day-by-day. In a now-forgotten NPR story, probably mid-April, I heard about the likelihood that vaccines would be the way out of the pandemic, meaning we were looking at a year or more until some semblance of “normal” returned. This was my first “a-ha” moment—where the uncertainty about “Are we going to be worshipping in-person by Pentecost?” turned to “What does it look like to be in this space for a year?”
When I mentioned my shift in thinking to colleagues, saying that I thought it was possible that we wouldn’t worship in-person until Fall 2021, they looked at me quizzically. “Do you mean Fall 2020?” No, sadly, I had meant what I said.
That was a second “a-ha” moment. We were all thinking about this in a dozen different ways. The politicization of the pandemic was leaking into our churches. It was changing us.
(How little we knew, then, that we were already changed.)
Our set-up for the Maundy Thursday Love Feast with Madison Mennonites.
#TheMoment, Part 2: When COVID Changed Me will be published tomorrow.
