Seeking Authentic Voice

It’s never been easy, or simple, for me to answer the question that Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do YOU say I am?” I’ve often wondered, “Who is Jesus to me?” Messiah. Savior. Redeemer. Jesus.  These words are heavy baggage in my lexicon.  As a child I was taught about “right” and “wrong” and that God was counting every infraction. What I heard was, being a person of faith was all about “following THE rules.” The rules were not necessarily the ten commandments, and I didn’t even hear about the greatest commandment to love God, love self, and love neighbor, until I was an adult. What I learned was God was counting my sins and holding every one of them against me. So I better follow the rules or else. My response to the idea that God was counting my sins and keeping track of every one of them, even the one’s that stayed in my head and were never said out loud or acted upon, was to try and be absolutely perfect. As if perfection is possible. The effort to f

This week our Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and our diocesan Bishop Wendell Gibbs invited all Episcopal Churches to participate in an ecumenical movement to work toward ending racism.  We were asked to dedicate this day to pondering the sin of racism and how we can work for reconciliation. Many years ago when I was in seminary the students and faculty had to participate in an anti-racism workshop. At the time anti-racism training was a new concept. One common refrain from a number of seminarians was, “I am not racist.” We all wanted to believe that and to believe that we really wanted equality and justice. The thing is, blatant racism is easily recognized and usually met with outrage, but more often racism appears in subtle ways, so systemic to our institutions, culture, faith, and politics that we fail to recognize it. For example Christians often speak of the “dark night of the soul.” It’s meant to describe a desolate time when God feels distant and life feels p