Ep. 14 Wonder, Welcome, and Communion with Kaitlin Curtice and Jonathan Martin

Sep 23

Hosted by Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu

Featuring Kaitlin Curtice & Jonathan Martin

This week, we hear from the Poet and the Preacher. Join us as Kaitlin Curtice leads us through a winsome and beautiful invitation to the light still glimmering around us and then gather with us at the Communion tradition for Evolving Faith as Jonathan Martin preaches about the welcome of Jesus to the Table. Then Sarah and Jeff talk about where they’re experiencing those glimmers of light right now, their own experiences with communion at Evolving Faith, and together recall some of Rachel Held Evans’ passion for the sacraments together.

One note: we apologize for the audio quality of Jeff’s microphone during portions of today’s podcast. We are having a stern word with his on-site producer, whose name also happens to be Jeff Chu. Thanks for your patience and your grace!

Now available and streaming wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Transcript

JEFF: Hi friends, I’m Jeff Chu.

SARAH: And I’m Sarah Bessey. Welcome back to the Evolving Faith Podcast.

JEFF: This is a podcast for the wanderers, the misfits, and the spiritual refugees to let you know you are not alone in the wilderness. We're all about hope and we're here to point each other to God. No matter where you are on your journey, no matter what your story is, you are welcome! We're listening—to God, to one another, and to the world.

SARAH: The story of God is bigger, wider, more inclusive and welcoming, filled with more love, than we could ever imagine. There's room here for everyone. JEFF: There's room here for you.

JEFF: All right, friends. Welcome back to the Evolving Faith Podcast. It is Episode 14!

We are also only one week away from Evolving Faith 2020! We’ll have more information on that later in the show but if you haven’t yet registered, time is ticking away. So get your tickets today at evolvingfaith.com.

Today, we’re featuring two incredible leaders. First, we’ll be hearing from a dear friend of the Evolving Faith community, Kaitlin Curtice. Kaitlin is a poet, author, essayist, and speaker. As an enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi Nation and someone who has grown up in the Christian faith, Kaitlin writes on the intersection of Indigenous spirituality, faith in everyday life, and decolonization within the church. Her newest book is NATIVE: Identity, Belonging and Rediscovering God. It’s about identity, soul-searching, and being on the never-ending journey of finding ourselves and finding God. Native is Kaitlin’s second book; her first, Glory Happening: Finding the Divine in Everyday Places, is a series of fifty essays and prayers focusing on finding the sacred in everyday life. In normal times, Kaitlin would be traveling around the country talking about faith and justice within the church, especially as it relates to Indigenous peoples. Right now, she’s getting familiar with Vermont, where she and her family recently moved.

SARAH: Then after Kaitlin, we’ll be hearing from Jonathan Martin who served as a chaplain during the first Evolving Faith. Jonathan is the product of what Flannery O’Conner called the “Christ-haunted landscape” of the South. He’s from the sweat and sawdust of tent revivals. But he believes in a really big, wide tent where everyone is welcome. He preaches a love that is hotter than hellfire and brimstone. He used to call himself a hillbilly Pentecostal, and I have to admit that when I’m with him, I just automatically default to calling him Brother Jonathan without even thinking about it. But that isn’t the sum of him either, because he is equally at home in art and in academia as he is in tent revivals. He has degrees from Pentecostal Theological Seminary and Duke Divinity School. He’s a pastor, author, speaker, podcaster himself, and a church planter. His first book was called “Prototype: What Happens When You Discover You’re More Like Jesus Than You Think,” and his second is called “How To Survive A Shipwreck: Help Is On The Way And Love Is Already Here,” which would likely serve a lot of our community really well right now, actually. He currently lives in Oklahoma City, where he serves as the lead pastor at The Table OKC. And for our comic-book lovers out here, his initial claim to fame was getting his Aquaman, Robin, and Wonder Woman action figures all saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Spirit at a young age.
Rachel and I invited Jonathan to join us at Evolving Faith as the chaplain so he was actually around a fair bit, offering devotionals in the morning, and he was a sort of steady presence to our speakers and leaders in the green room, but also to all of our community members throughout the entire two days. But at the session you’ll be hearing today in this episode, we were actually heading into communion. And this is Jonathan’s final sermon from that time there at Evolving Faith. This was his communion message. We won’t be sharing the entire communion service—some things simply need to exist in the moment when they happened—but we’ll be sharing his sermon from the service today.

JEFF: So we’ll first hear from Kaitlin and then from Jonathan, both speaking at Evolving Faith 2018 in Montreat, North Carolina.
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KAITLIN CURTICE: In the early morning, when Nmeshomes Gises, Grandfather Sun, comes to us and throughout the day as he shines, he will not permit us to look at his face. As children we are told horror stories about going blind if we look at the sun, but many of us try to look anyway. And it's to no avail. We put on sunglasses. Maybe we can look for a moment. But we always end up losing that staring contest. The sun's face is too bright for us. So for the longest time this bothered me because I so badly wanted to see the sun. I wanted to look him in the eye. I wanted to see what kind of smile he has. But the sun, Gises, he knows his role in our world. He is the one who brings light, he is our illuminator.
One morning after I dropped off my boys for school in Atlanta, I went to my favorite outdoor hiking spot. I sit on land that was once inhabited by the Muskogee Creek and Cherokee people before they were forced out, land that was later taken over by Confederates. We have giant monuments built to honor white supremacy. But no matter how we try to control the land, no matter how many monuments we build or carve into her skin, she will not be controlled. She is sacred.
So I found a spot overlooking some water, a spot where birds conversed freely and squirrels gathered nuts for winter. I watched a women's rowing team making their way across the water. It was the first true fall day, a chilly 54 degrees in Atlanta. And as the sun continue to rise, I leaned my head back against a rock. I closed my eyes, and it got brighter and brighter and brighter.
And when I finally opened my eyes and I looked out across that wooded area, everything was glimmering. I couldn't look the sun in the eyes. But at that moment I didn't need to. The rocks were shining like hematite, the specks on their faces were reflecting back the sun's light. The dead leaves even looked golden. The water was rippling with that reflection, and so badly I wanted to look at the sun and I just wanted to say Migwetch—thank you.
But that is not what the sun wants from us. Mno waben. This is the Potawatomi phrase we use for “good morning.” It literally means that good time when things become visible. The sun's work is to point his holy rays across the earth and say, “Look, there is light. It is good to be seen.” And then we look and we behold, and it is good.
So I lay my hand against a bare rock and I ask him to help me, praying to God, Mamogosnan gche-mnedo—the Great Spirit—to keep me tethered to myself, to the work I'm called to the work of being a Potawatomi woman in Trump's America. And that sun, Gises, all the while shines on me saying, Look, there is light! Look, it is good to be seen! And so I wonder what we might learn from him as people. I wonder what kind of people we are when the light shines on us. I wonder how we glimmer. And when we spend our time laid bare to that light, we understand what grace is. So when someone looks to us, we can say, Look over there! Look at what is good! Look at Austin, Sandra, Jeff, Audrey, Wil, George, Gabriella, Carolina, Arjun, Rabbi Danya, Cindy, Rilke, Martin Luther King, Winona LaDuke, Kathy, Jackie, Isaiah. Look!
The light is everywhere. Look! Everything is glimmering! Because light begets light. Love begets love. Solidarity begets solidarity. And the sacred joy that created this world in the beginning covers all of it. And that sun, Gises, he reminds us. He is our teacher. And so I stop. And he continues to shine. And I say, Teach me.
I take a sip of my coffee. I watch ants graze on this rock. And I can deny no longer Leonard Cohen's long-sung truth: There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. Mno waben. You see, when Gises shines, we aren't saying that things never get bad or evil or unholy. We are saying that the good is there all the while because beauty is not canceled out by hate. We see that in the midst of white supremacy within Christianity, Black, Indigenous, people of color still lead the way. We are proclaiming that when things get hard, we point to that good to that beauty in one another and in this created world. We say, But look at what glimmers. The crack is what allows the light to get in—the vulnerability, the nakedness, the childlike wonder, the pain.
A few months ago, our president was at a rally and this is what he said. He looked out to his audience and he said, “Our ancestors tamed a continent.”
And they cheered. Of course. If ever there was a colonizing sentence, it's this one, right? The sun cannot be tamed. The sun cannot be colonized. The earth will not be colonized.
So when we say Mno waben—Mno waben—it is good to be called into the light, we're saying, It is good, they are good, we are good, you are good, I am good.
Many of you don't know me. But those who do might know that I really like Twitter. And I was telling a friend of mine the other day that the people I don't trust on Twitter are the ones who never retweet other people. Because they're not using their voice to say, Look over there! Look at what good is happening in a world gone mad. Especially for the privileged in the room, especially for the white people in the room, especially for those of us with a following, we have a responsibility. If Gises the sun literally is teaching us this lesson every day, we have a responsibility to use our voice to illuminate, to pass the mic. He is teaching us to see.
And when we see, we understand that those trees and those rocks, the water and that sky, those hills and those fields and those mountains, the tiniest ant, they are called good.And not because a climate-control scientist said it but because it's always been true and Indigenous people have always known it. And if we learn to hold that respect, if we can stop and learn those lessons, we will learn how to turn to our neighbors to say, This over here, it's good. The oppressed and the ignored are called good.So next time you're outside, and the sun is shining, remember Nmeshomes Gises. Remember the work of the sun. Remember what it means to be an illuminator. To use what you have to point to the light in others. This is the best we can do. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful, like naming out loud the people who came before us is beautiful. It's beautiful, like our children are beautiful. It's beautiful, like a gathering of people who want to grieve and rest is beautiful. Mno waben, friends. It is good when the sun shines on us.
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JEFF: If you’ve been listening to and loving this podcast, join us for Evolving Faith 2020, the live virtual conference on October 2 and 3, which is just a matter of days away. It’s so soon!

SARAH: I can hardly even believe how soon it is. So many of us are engaging in good and hard, holy work right now. We are working to dismantle white supremacy and to cultivate hope and love, to reimagine and build a faith that works not only for us but for the whole world. We’re looking to find our way in the wilderness. And I think we need to be reminded of what matters and who is alongside us. We are needing connection and inspiration, good conversation and laughter and, who are we kidding, probably (definitely) even some tears.

JEFF: We need some hope. We are gathering not in spite of these turbulent times, but because of them. Speakers this year not only me and Sarah but Jen Hatmaker and Sherrilyn Ifill, Audrey Assad, Kate Bowler, Padraig O Tuama, Propaganda, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Barbara Brown Taylor, and so many others. We hope you’ll join us.

SARAH: And don’t forget either that your registration gives you full access to all of the content until April 1, 2021. So even if you aren’t able to perhaps set aside October 2 and 3 in particular to be with us live, you will still have access to this big, rowdy table in the middle of the wilderness, and we would still be having a feast no matter what. So we have definitely saved a spot for you. Go to evolvingfaith.com and register today - we can’t wait to see you live next week. All right, let’s go back to the show.

JONATHAN MARTIN: I'm very mindful coming into this space in particular right now of just what holy things we've got to bear witness to these last couple days—today in particular. Honestly never felt more unworthy to be on stage. I feel like this whole time for me has been what I feel like my life is largely about right now, which is learning how to repent, right? Learning how to repent.
God has met with us and what we've heard today has been prophetic and powerful. A realMount Sinai kind of electricity and weight. That particular kind of gravity and gravitas of knowing that God has spoken.
So especially as we lead in this time, my prayer is just Lord, help me not to mess this up, you know. It's so sweet what God is doing here with this with all of us. I’m not going to go to a text per se but it's interesting even being the person to lead into a time like this because—and so many things I love about my tradition, but in my particular experience of it, communion, Eucharist, was not a huge part of what we did. We would, at my church growing up, maybe come to the table about twice a year. And it was an interesting kind of situation because, on the one hand, we understood what happened at the Lord's Table, largely in symbolic terms. So we were kinda like Baptists in that way: it's like, it's a ceremonial reenactment. Now the flip side of that is that we took very literally the words from Paul in Corinthians and we thought if you come to the table unworthily, you might actually die. So, and I've memorized these texts, if you want to know: I'm jacked up in a lot of ways for a lot of different reasons. But the first text I memorized in my life because I was so scared of doing something unforgivable, I memorized Hebrews 10: If we willfully sin after we received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no sacrifice for sin, but only a fearful expectation of judgment. And I've memorized in I Corinthians where Paul says, and I will go to the King James right here because you know, it's good enough for Paul and Silas. The King James says that if you eat and drink unworthily, he that does that eateth and drinketh damnation unto himself. I think about that phrase all the time, because sometimes like when I'm really misbehaving and people from the South will understand this but like when I want like a sundrop and zebra cakes, like something like Little Debbie, I will actually think I am eating and drinking damnation unto myself right now. And sometimes I choose it on purpose: Sometimes I want to eat and drink a little damnation unto myself.
But I took that so seriously, scared to death that God would strike me dead because there was some kind of an unconfessed sin. It's interesting when I came back and really studied that text, years later, you know, the idea that anybody would ever be morally unworthy of coming to the table of grace.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not one of these total-depravity people. I don't believe in any of that business. But for one, no one is worthy of the body and blood of Jesus. So no one's unworthy. Come on. Like, it's like it's like the way this worked in 1st century, what we see in the life and ministry of Jesus, the central scandal of the ministry of Jesus, was this table practice. Why is your teacher eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?
The grand reversal of the Gospel is that instead of purity codes, instead of you got to be careful not to touch something contaminated or it might contaminate you, is that now the only thing to be afraid of in the gospels, you know, if there's something that's not whole, and Jesus is about to touch a dead body, if Jesus touch anything to be unclean, he's about to impart wholeness and life and healing. There's no danger of contaminating Jesus. But I was scared to death that I would bring some kind of a contagion to the Table.
I have to believe and this might be a quirk of mine, because keep in mind, I'm Pentecostal and we do make things up sometimes. But— and happily and with authority, you know. You make things up sometimes.
I'm very gentle whenever I critique anything about the Christian tradition, because, you know, that's come to mean so much for me. But I will say this: I think we've honestly got it wrong in terms of table practice so often within the broader tradition, because I just have to think the very fact that the gospels are largely written after the epistles. These are written to communities that already have table practice at the center. Already it's what orients them. It's already the reason they gather. I have to think that there had to be a connection, intended connection, that the table practice of Jesus was supposed to inform the table practice of the early church. Does that seem like too big of a leap? Like, something has to be right about that. So it can't be about moral worthiness. And yet at the same time, what Paul does say is that there are those among you who are coming to the table in an unworthy manner. He didn't say the people were unworthy. He said they were coming in an unworthy manner. And what is that unworthy manner? He said, You've not rightly discerned the body of Christ. You have not seen the image of God in the people around you.
And apparently what was happening was that the table practice of the church of Corinth had started to mirror the table practice of the world, where the elite, the wealthy patrons of the community, could come in, and they could eat and drink as much as they wanted. They were able to feast. And then everybody else just got the scraps.
And in this way, Paul says, You've not rightly discerned the body of Christ. For all the ways that people like me agonized about getting right with God. And now it seems all along the only thing God has ever asked of us: You want to be right with me? Get right with the people around you. If you want to be in right relationship with me, be in right relationship with the creation. Be in right relationship with the people around you. That's all God has ever been looking for.
So the way that we come to the table in a worthy manner, it's not that we're worthy people. But we come with a sense of reverence, and specifically this, we come humble, and we come hungry. We come preferring the people around us over ourselves, seeing them, knowing them, being seen and being known. That's what God looks for when we come to the table, that kind of reverence. Reverence for the table has so much to do with whether or not we're able to reverethe people who are around us, who've been created in the image of God. That's what he's looking for. That's what it is to come in a worthy manner.
I'm not going to take too much time here, but it's been heavy on my heart today. Because I do know people are coming here from very different places in terms of their own experience of God and the church. And I don't know who comes in here, and when you see a table like this and like this, that it brings to mind immediately some memory of a table where you felt excluded. And I want to say for anybody who's ever felt excluded from the table of Christ, I'm so sorry.
I also want to tell you that if you've ever felt excluded from the table of Christ, from the table of grace, it was not the table of Christ you were excluded from. How do I know that? Because you were excluded. And if you were excluded from the table of Christ, then it was not yet the table of Christ. You know it's not yet his table when someone else is in charge of the guest list. If Jesus is not the one in charge of the guest list, it’s not Christ table.
I think a lot about these days when I pastored a Pentecostal church in Charlotte, very formative years of my life. We made this transition, being a Pentecostal church, moving in a more sacramental direction, which once again is awesome, because you get to make things up, just put all kinds of stuff together in the lab, see what blows up. The table became, that move of making the table more central, became so, so grounding. And I think a lot about a particular Tuesday night—my friend Teddy Hart, we had like a college and young adult ministry that met on Tuesday nights. And they also had made the table the center of that gathering. At the time, they had around 150 twenty-somethings who would come to the service. And Teddy tells the story—I keep thinking about it these days—where he was sitting on the front row, and he noticed that when it came time to come to the table that there was a young man sitting a few seats down from him who not only didn't come forward, but had his head in his hands. This just seemed so heavy. And he was crying. So Teddy goes over to him, lays his hand gently on my shoulder and introduces himself and says, like, Hey, I don't want to, I don't want to freak you out. I don’t want to put pressure on you. But I was getting ready to come to the table. Would you feel comfortable coming to the table with me? And his response was, Man, I'd love to but I just I just can't, I just can't. There's too much stuff going on around. I just don't think I feel comfortable.And Teddy said something off the cuff that to me just feels so much like the Holy Spirit and so much it's like the heart of God to me. Teddy's response was, Well, if you're not coming to the table, I don't want to go either.
Makes me think of the way my friend Chris Green summarizes the book of Romans: God would rather not be God than be God without us. If you're not coming to the table, if there's not space for you here, then I don't want to come either.
And so because we are Pentecostals and therefore we're able to be fluid and have a little room, he feels led to pray. And yeah, he says, Is it okay if I pray with you? Oh, yeah, sure. And this is what he prayed, feeling very prompted: His prayer was, “God, since my brother doesn't feel comfortable coming to the table for whatever the reason I pray that somehow you will bring the table to him.” And as he prays this, of course, he's thinking this is, you know, the metaphorical manna, some kind of an allegory, that somehow God would provide the spiritual food. But when it gets done saying the prayer he says, Amen. And a guy from our community, Brian, who'd been serving communion, is kneeling now in front of this young man and said, Hey, man, I hope this doesn’t bother you—they've got people still in the communion line—but the Holy Spirit just spoke to me across the room and told me that I need to stop serving everybody else and come and bring you these elements.
So if there's anybody here who doesn't feel comfortable coming to the table, that's my prayer for you: is that he would bring the table to you. And I believe that he'll do that.
But you know, I really am going to close here, as we come to this table of grace. Part of the agenda, I think, I sense, it seems to me—like that verse in Acts, it seems good to us in the Holy Spirit—I never know, but it seems like the Holy Spirit, in light of everything that we've heard and experienced here, I feel like there's just something about coming to the table this time in particular. That is, and I wish I had better language for this, I think it's about empowerment. That was something we sung a lot when I was growing up, and I still like to sing, and if anybody knows about this, that there's power, power— ring any bells? Anybody know about wonder-working power, Wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb? Power, power. Not the kind of power, the disordered, dominating kind of power, we see at work in the world. But the very real power of a real Holy Spirit.
I think that there have been some of us who have felt like that we've had to kind of make a decision. I hope this makes sense—that we had to make a decision to choose between love and power, like either be part of a community or connected to something that's robust and has a certain kind of energy right? Or where there's a sense of like power. Or somewhere where there's a kind of a broader theological framework and these ideas. You know, there's nothing wrong with bringing together love and power. We are facing real principalities and powers. And the stuff that we've been talking about today is not theoretical. The stakes are high. And it matters whether or not we're grounded. It matters whether or not we're connected to a source. It's going to take something with deep roots to sustain the work that God wants to do in us and through us.
I think about that story in the book of Acts where those seven sons of Skiva had seen Paul casting demons out of people like, Oh, we want to go perform exorcisms too. We'll try this.And if you recall that story, you know, the man full of demons just whips up on these boys.And the line in the text always hit me so funny: The spirits that speak through, that animate him, say, because you know they're saying, I adjure you in the name of Jesus Christ whom Paul preaches come out and the response is, Oh, yeah, Jesus do we know and Paul do we know, but who are you? Who are you?
My prayer specifically for our experience at the table today is it'll be one that, as we have our hands open, our hearts open, that we would freshly receive the power of the Holy Spirit. That there would be a fresh baptism of love. That there would be that kind of power that comes not to aggrandize ourselves, not to build up our own institutions, but the power to serve, the power to preach and to proclaim, to prophesy. Because I still believe that the same spirit that we've seen and heard at work on the stage, because we have been prophesied to that same kind of prophetic speech—tender, yes, but bold, unafraid to confront these principalities and powers that we're wrestling with.
I'm praying for that kind of power. So I ask you to stand with me if you would.
Okay, the really last thing I'm going to say is this: You would think I'm a Southern Baptist, wouldn't you? There's a third and fourth closing. This feels very important, though. The other reason I think it's especially weighty for us to come to the table in this particular moment is that one of the themes I think that's come out, I feel like in a very Spirit-led way during our time together, through everything we've been experiencing, is I think there’s a real invitation right now, to move away from any expression, any form of religion that is disembodied, that is detached, that is cerebral, and hear me say this in the most gentle way that’s possible: If you come out of a more conservative evangelical space, where everything was about beliefs as ideas, and you move from a heady, disembodied, detached conserative kind of religion to a heady, disembodied, detached cerebral belief-oriented more progressive kind of—you actually haven’t actually moved that far, if it’s about ideas, if it’s about beliefs. Following Jesus isn’t about shared beliefs. It’s about shared practices. Did you hear what I just said? It’s not about shared beliefs. It’s about shared practices. I’m not saying beliefs don’t matter, but it’s the practice that forms, it’s the practice that shapes.
So that’s what I also think part of coming to the table is supposed to mean for us in this moment, too. It’s part of our movement out of theory, out of idea, out of word alone, into practice. Whereas we receive the body and blood of Jesus that’s been broken for us, his blood that’s been poured out, we then become the body of Christ. In Nouwen’s phrase, broken, blessed, distributed for the sake of the world.
So just before we enter formally in the liturgy, would you just join me for a moment and just if you feel comfortable just to close your eyes, and I just want you to really, before we do anything else, just to feel the truth of this right now. You're here in the presence of God and in the presence of friends. You're seen, you're known, and you are loved. You are cherished, you are treasured, you are held. All of you is welcome in this space. All of you is welcome to this table.

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JEFF: One of the things I love about playing Kaitlin and Jonathan’s talks one after the other is that we see two very different styles of storytelling, two very different ways of proclaiming truth and pointing people to goodness.

SARAH: They could really have a roadshow—the poet and the preacher. They work so well together. I didn’t realize at the time how well they work together. I could listen to Kaitlin talk all day long. She has such a poetic and beautiful way of seeing the world. I find it very healing. I think it could really serve us well right now to see and pay attention to exactly what she was talking about there, and that is what is glimmering in the light still. What a phrase. I just love how she uses language. But I think that’s one of the hard things, maybe, about these days in particular, where a lot of us have been very overwhelmed in 2020. There’s the global pandemic that’s on; school is just going back on; there’s the west coast of the United States that’s burning; there’s unrest in so many corners of the world, elections and politics and racial tensions. There is just this heavy reality of our days right now. But she names that by saying when Jesus shines, it’s not that we are saying things never get bad or evil or unholy. She’s just simply saying that the good is there all the while because beauty is not canceled by hate. So my question for you is, What are some of the glimmers of light that you’ve been experiencing during this season?

JEFF: I don’t understand why you are so mean to me. Because you know I’m not good at finding the good in things.

SARAH: That’s why I asked you. I live to torment you. It’s my calling and my gift.

JEFF: Okay, so this might sound weird, but I’m experiencing goodness in the coming of autumn and then the winter darkness that follows. And I fully acknowledge that I am saying this as someone who has lived in Michigan for just nine months, so I haven’t experienced the full force of a Michigan winter; this past year was pretty mild. But there’s something about the change of the seasons, about shifting from London dry gin to barrel-aged gin, about trading tomatoes and summer vegetables for lasagna and stew, and on the trees, the green turning to red and orange and yellow and brown—I love all of that, and it reminds me that there is good in every season. Fall for me is apples and parsnips and that bite in the air, and then winter is like woolly blankets and down parkas and hot toddies and wood stoves. So the darkness of winter for me has its own particular and wonderful beauty. Okay, now your turn.

SARAH: I love that. I mean, obviously, as the resident Canadian here, I love the wintertime and the shortening of the days. I have to imagine that some of our listeners in the Southern Hemisphere and chuckling, like, No, that is not our experience of winter in Australia. But I genuinely do feel a thrill when the tips of our tree out back turn scarlet and I know that the seasons are turning, like right now. I think that’s been probably the biggest thing to sustain me during these days of a lot of upheaval and grief and turmoil. It has actually been the world. And I relate very viscerally to a lot of what Kaitlin says there because I have moments like that. I remember a few years ago when Brian and I, my husband and I, got to go to Rome to meet the Pope, as one does, and got to visit all these ancient cathedrals and places that had such deep meaning for centuries for so many people, and feeling so genuinely out of place there—and there are a million reasons for that. But I remember the experience of coming hom eand having this sense when I stood outside that this was my cathedral. Some of us do absolutely find God in those spaces, others can find cathedrals to meet with God in the pines or the ocean shore or the desert. So a lot of those glimmers of light for me have been in creation most often. I find it very healing and reorienting for me. But I could also talk for hours about how I’ve also seen glimmers of light in friendship - in our friendship over these last few years - in my marriage, in my children, in the lives and goodness of people we both work alongside of, who resolutely refuse to cede another minute to hopelessness or inaction. And so the glimmers can end up feeling overwhelming - like Kaitlin said, you can barely open your soul to take in all of the light - when you perceive it.

JEFF: Do we need to put a saccharine warning on this episode?

SARAH: I think people know by now that we are as earnest and sincere as we appear.

JEFF: Anyway, what you said is lovely—and I agree with everything. And I think it dovetails neatly with something I admire in both Jonathan and Kaitlin, and that is their sense of reverence—reverence for creation, reverence for other human beings, reverence for God.

SARAH: I did deeply enjoy Jonathan’s remark that he’s not one of those “total depravity people.” Finally! I have an ally!

JEFF: No comment.

SARAH: For once.

JEFF: For once! What are you talking about? I’m the one who wanted to quit podcasting before we even started! SARAH: And every single day since then. All right, so I do want to talk about something that Jonathan said there at the end of his sermon. Because he said that our invitation right now is to move away from any expression, any form of religion, that is disembodied, detached, or even just simply cerebral. So no matter what our background is, and we have a wide variety of backgrounds for people who not only come to Evolving Faith but who listen to the podcast or are present in our Facebook groups, whether that’s mainline, Protestant or Catholic, sloppy low-church people like me, we have a lot of Mormon listeners, people who are atheis and from, all kinds of experiences and backgrounds. But we can come from a space where it’s more about beliefs as ideas and then as he said you move from a heady, disembodied, detached conservative kind of religion into a heady, disembodied, detached, progressive religion, and then you haven’t actually moved very far. Which we’ve talked about a lot this season. It’s probably been a subtext for a lot of our episodes. It’s still about thinking, not about practice. That echoes back to I’m thinking of Episode 8 with Sandra or Episode 11 with Nish. So the invitation of the Table then is less about shared beliefs than shared practice. And it is actually our practice that shapes us. And so things like the sacraments, like Communion, are an opportunity for us to enter into movement, out of theory, out of idea, into practice. We are literally feeding and being fed.

JEFF: I guess I wonder whether it has to be so either/or. Maybe it’s more about finding the harmony—restoring the embodiment but not necessarily abandoning the thoughts and ideas. I think theology matters, and of course I would say that, since I spent three years in seminary studying theology. And I think it matters both in theory and in practice. Because we need both. We need an understanding of what communion is as well as a practice of doing it. We need an understanding of what love is as well as a practice of living it out.

SARAH: We’re less than a week away from our next Evolving Faith. And so one thing that I did want to talk about is actually communion itself. The Table. Because it might seem odd to a lot of people who are listening that Jonathan was preaching a communion message here. And we didn’t include the whole service with the readings and people coming to the table and how it was set up so I thought we could take a few minutes to talk about this and why we do it and why it’s such an important part of Evolving Faith, even this year when we’re going to be live and virtual and all across the globe, because maybe it doesn’t translate quite as well to a podcast format. We have a big wide table, loaded with wine and grape juice, bread and gluten-free options. And our speakers are the ones actually serving the attendees, and we stay there, all of us, just blessing each other and serving each other until everyone has been fed.

JEFF: The tradition of ending Evolving Faith with communion is such a beautiful thing to me.

SARAH: That was one of the things that Rachel Held Evans wanted for Evolving Faith right from the beginning. It was a non-negotiable for us right from the start. We believed in an open table, we believed in inviting everyone to the table, and we believed it was deeply important in particular for this community of folks who are often kept from the table or denied the sacraments to be the ones who are leading or welcoming to the table of the Lord. Rachel used to say that, when she was ready to give up on the Church, it was the sacraments that pulled her back. I have this quote here from her, where she wrote once, “When my faith had become little more than an abstraction, a set of propositions to be affirmed or denied, the tangible, tactile nature of the sacraments invited me to touch, smell, taste, hear, and see God in the stuff of everyday life again. They got God out of my head and into my hands. They reminded me that Christianity isn’t meant to simply be believed; it’s meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. They reminded me that, try as I may, I can’t be a Christian on my own.”That’s the end of that quote. Whether you call it Communion, or Eucharist, or the Table of the Lord, whatever you want to call it, however you have grown up understanding or practicing it, almost all of us see it as a sacrament and it is powerful. There almost aren’t words really for how it feels in that moment. Evolving Faith is an outpost in the wilderness when many of us can’t participate in communion the way we used to or were taught to, and so it almost has this feeling of this renegade, rogue feast.

JEFF: One of the most powerful things for me about it is that communion at Evolving Faith does live up to its name. I remember that in 2018, I was serving communion with Nish Weiseth and with Prop. I can’t remember if it was an email or a social-media post, but someone whom we served said later that she had never been served communion before by a woman or a Black person or a queer person.

SARAH: I remember that she said she would never see the Trinity the same way again.

JEFF: Which person of the Trinity do I get to be? Oh my gosh, that is so sacrilegious and heretical, we have to move on. Anyway, what a privilege to be a different face of the family of faith to her. And others too, because of their estrangement from the church, they hadn’t taken communion in quite some time, whether it was because of their sexual orientation or gender identity or because of some theological difference or because of something else altogether. So to see them hear and receive and absorb that they weren’t just welcome at this table but that they were wanted and that they were equal and that they were beloved—that was an incredibly moving thing.

SARAH: I cried from start to finish when we take Communion together.

JEFF: That is such a surprise to our entire audience. Everyone knows we’re criers, Sarah.

SARAH: I remember Pete Enns last year telling me that if we could bottle that feeling in the room, that it could sustain him for the rest of his life, and I felt the exact same way. Being in a roomful of misfits and wanderers, who are skeptics and believers, both hopeful and healing, but also still broken and wounded, all of us no matter what, running to the Table together, and “It Is Well with My Soul” is playing usually. It’s sacramental. I can’t ever get over it. When I close my eyes, I can remember that feeling perfectly. I think it’s one of the reasons, even now, we open and close the show with Audrey singing, “It is well with my soul,” because we are singing that out against the unsettling and the wilderness. It is still well with our soul. And this year, of course it’s going to be different. We can’t physically serve each other but we’ll still be at the Table of the Lord together for communion anyway. You have crafted and created such a beautiful communion service; I cannot wait for everyone to experience that together. And even though we’ll be scattered through time and space as we do that, some part of me almost thinks that’s incredibly appropriate. Because sacraments matter and they stretch through time and space anyway. So if I’m sitting in a studio in Vancouver with water and crackers and you’re at the TV studio in Atlanta with wine and bread and someone else is in South Africa ina totally different time zone and someone else is watching a month from now in Ireland and someone else five months from now in California, the miracle is that we’re still all at the table together anyway.

JEFF: I think this has been an area of growth and wondering for me, because I do find myself in a more liturgical tradition now, and one that can sometimes geek out about how we celebrate communion.

SARAH: Well, and let’s be honest, I can get really prickly with you about hierarchy and authority and ordination stuff as the sloppy anti-institutionalist I am at heart so I’m sure that doesn't make life easy for you.

JEFF: No, it’s fun. But Coronatide and the fact that we can’t worship together as we once did has been important in terms of teaching me about the implications of this conviction: That our little tables, scattered everywhere, are just small pieces of a much larger table, and that God and God’s work and God’s presence do transcend time and space. But I will say, there is still something significant about a shared loaf and a common cup, and I really long for the day when we’ll be able to do that together again.

SARAH: Me too. Me too. I know that we’ve often spoken about Rachel during this season of the podcast and I don’t make any apologies for that. As we said in Episode 1, her fingerprints are on all of these moments and on us. But this is one particular area where I feel Rachel’s presence the most. And so I thought we could wrap up the episode with some of her words about Communion because I think it connects what we’re doing here so well. So Rachel said: “The Church is positively crawling with people who don’t deserve to be here...beginning with me. But the Table can transform even our enemies into companions. The Table reminds us that, as [siblings] adopted into God’s family and invited to God’s banquet, we’re stuck with each other; we’re family. We might as well make peace. The Table teaches us that, ultimately, faith isn’t about being right or good or in agreement. Faith is about feeding and being fed.” So may you feed others and may you be fed, friends.

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SUZIE: This is Suzie from Spokane, Washington. I am cultivating hope through this wilderness of evolving faith through many lovely conversations with fellow wonderers, especially those in my small group here in Spokane. We have been with this small group for about three years and journeyed together through reading Inspired, Rachel Held Evans’s book, as well as many other good books. Also so thankful for our church here in Spokane, where I have felt safe enough to ask hard questions and felt loved enough to be held, and how we all feel comfortable to share what we’re learning and growing. And i’s just a lovely community here in Spokane, called Emmanuel. Also, I just love being able to talk about my faith with my parents, who are also going through a similar evolving faith journey, and it’s been so fun send podcasts back and forth and to ask these questions with the safest people I know—my parents. As well, I feel like there’s just hope everywhere I turn. Okay, I’ll cut it short: There’s so much more, but I just wanted to send in a little love. Okay. Take care. Bye.

SARAH: Hi, this is Sarah calling from Maine. I come to you from a small Baptist church, having grown up in the Pentecostal movement in the U.K. Sarah, my flags are ever at your service. And having married a Methodist, I am finding my hope in the wilderness by clinging to Psalm 119 right now: I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. Open my eyes that I might see wonderful things in your law. My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word. Your word, O Lord, is eternal. It stands firm in the heavens. I can have knowledge and grace. I can have facts and statutes alongside the miraculous and the holy. And thank you so much for sending Science Mike my way; my brain has never made so much sense to me. Keep it up, guys. This is awesome.

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JEFF: You can find all of the links mentioned on today’s show as well as info about Jonathan and Kaitlin and their work in the world and a full transcript in our show notes at evolvingfaith.com/podcast. Sign up for my newsletter at jeffchu.substack.com and find photos of my dog Fozzie and me on Instagram at @byjeffchu. The Evolving Faith Podcast is produced by us, Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu, along with Lucy Huang. Thanks to Audrey Assad and Wes WIllison for our music.

SARAH: You can find me at sarahbessey.com for all my social media links, my newsletter Field Notes, and of course my books, including my latest Miracles and Other Reasonable Things, where I talk more about the whole Pope thing. So join us next week as we listen to our friend, rapper and artist and marvellous human being Propaganda in a truly unique and compelling talk. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Evolving Faith podcast, friends. We’ll see you live at the conference on October 2nd and 3rd. And until next time - remember that you are loved.

Sarah Bessey

Ep. 14 Wonder, Welcome, and Communion with Kaitlin Curtice and Jonathan Martin

Hosted by Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu

Featuring Kaitlin Curtice & Jonathan Martin

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Show Notes

Kaitlin Curtice

Jonathan Martin

Other links mentioned in the show:

Transcript

Ep. 15 Terraforming with Propaganda

Ep. 13 Navigating an Evolving Faith in Relationships with Cindy Wang Brandt and Kathy Escobar