Episode 3: The Theology of the Compost with Jeff Chu
Hosted by Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu
We make Jeff super-uncomfortable as we return to his universally beloved Evolving Faith talk on compost and healing. He takes us to the Farminary at Princeton Theological Seminary and shares about being a gay, Chinese, American, Reformed Christian whose journey has had more than a few unexpected turns. And spoiler alert: almost everyone in the room cried.
P.S. There is adult language in this episode.
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Show Notes
The Evolving Faith Podcast After Party on Facebook - a place to discuss episodes and ideas with other listeners.
Jeff Chu
Book: Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search for God in America
Notes from a Make-Believe Farmer - Jeff’s free newsletter
You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Join our podcast community over on Facebook, The Evolving Faith Podcast After-Party.
You can find Jeff Chu on Instagram and Twitter. You can also subscribe to his newsletter Notes of a Make-Believer Farmer at jeffchu.substack.com.
You can find Sarah Bessey on Instagram and Twitter. You can also subscribe to her newsletter Field Notes at sarahbessey.substack.com.
Special thanks to Audrey Assad and Wes Willison for the music on this episode. And thanks as always to our producer, Jordan Gass-Poore.
If you’d like to be featured on an upcoming episode, just call our voicemail inbox at +1 (616) 929-0409. Leave your first name and state or province and answer this question: How are you cultivating hope in the wilderness right now? It can be something small - a song, a poem, a practice - or something big. There are no wrong answers. Just please try to keep your answer to under a minute so we can feature a few of you every episode.
“We must help write a narrative of hope amid the world’s narratives of despair.”
[IMAGE CONTENTS: Six graphics with quotes from the episode. First graphic: Blue and Green illustrated flourishes with a black and white photograph of Jeff Chu. Text reads: “The Theology of the Compost . Episode 3. Now Streaming. with Jeff Chu.” Remaining five graphics have the same illustration of blue, green, and maroon illustrated dots and a line drawing of an open book with a plant growing out of the pages. Text for the remaining graphics are as follows: 2. “We must help write a narrative of hope amid the world’s narratives of despair. - Jeff Chu”. 3. “Isn’t the story of compost really just the story of God? Turning fear into courage, sorrow to joy, death to life? - Jeff Chu” 3. In our acts of love, we participate in preparing the soil in which God’s reign of love and justice can take root. - Jeff Chu.” 4. “Anger can’t be our final destination. - Jeff Chu.” 5. “We are God’s beloved. You are so loved. And nothing, nothing, nothing in the world can change that. - Jeff Chu.”]
Transcript
Sarah: Hi, friends. I'm Sarah Bessey.
Jeff: And I'm Jeff Chu.
Sarah: Welcome back to the Evolving Faith Podcast.
Jeff: This is a podcast for the wounded, 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 fellow wanderers 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.
Sarah: Well, I'm just so happy that we're playing your episode next and not mine.
Jeff: I am not.
Sarah: Normally when we're introducing an episode, the actual speaker isn't here with us. But I'm such a lucky duck because here you are. So how tell me how on a scale of one to 10, how awkward will you feel if I just read your bio? Your official bio right now?
Jeff: 10,000. But I guess I always feel awkward anyway. So what difference does it really make?
Sarah: Well, I'm going to enjoy myself. So let's go. Jeff Chu is a writer, reporter and editor. He wrote the critically acclaimed book Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Search for God in America. He is also the teacher in residence at Central Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he and his husband recently moved. He is an elder and candidate for ordination in the Reformed Church in America. He's what I call a pretend farmer, and he calls a retired farmhand and aspiring farmer. He is also the co-host and co-leader of Evolving Faith, along with me and our partner, Tim Chafee,
Jeff: I feel you can't get through this without laughing at me.
Sarah: I know! I'm sorry.
Jeff: You're not sorry. You are absolutely 100% not sorry.
Sarah: From the front now. I'm gonna go from the top. I’m going to wipe the smile off my face. I'm sorry. I can literally feel how like how hard you're cringing when I'm doing it. That's why. I just know it's going to come back around on me when it's my episode.
Jeff: Oh yes, it will.
Sarah: So I can talk you finally into not playing it. So he's what I call a pretend farmer, and he calls a retired farmhand and aspiring farmer. He is also the co-host and co-leader of Evolving Faith, along with me and our partner, Jim Chaffee. Jeff is the son of immigrants from Hong Kong, the grandson and nephew of Baptist preachers. Husband to Texas-born Tristan and universally beloved by people with good taste in friends. He loves to grow things and then cook them, especially if there are a lot of people around the dining-room table. English is his second language. The first is Cantonese. Like all reasonable and wise people, he believes in the Oxford comma. Jeff is an introvert and an Enneagram.Six. He loves the Bible, even if he interprets it differently than he wants did. And for those of you who love Schitt’s Creek like we do, even though he wishes he had David's sartorial boldness, he really is more of a Patrick.
Jeff: Thanks, Jocelyn.
Sarah: Low blow.
Jeff: But so true.
Sarah: So true. I wish that we could say that we were Moira and David but we aren't. We’re totally Jocelyn and Patrick. Oh, it's just been a morning. So now before the weekend that we are going to be listening to right now, because this is from Evolving Faith 2018 ,you and I hadn't even met, and you were Rachel's friend first. You and her had been friends for a little while then. So I had never heard you preach. I hadn't even read your book yet. And yet, when we were planning Evolving Faith, Rachel was just adamant that if you were not there, she either couldn't or wouldn't do it. I wasn't sure which one.
Jeff: She was very stubborn.
Sarah: Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I think that her obstinacy is one of the things I love most about her. So even in her intro, because both Rachel and I made a point of doing, you know, an introduction to each of the speakers, as you were all coming on, she was doing your intro and she actually told everybody that she said she would only do Evolving Faith if you could be one of our speakers. Rachel really, really loved you. And she knew that the thing that we were trying to build here with Evolving Faith had to include you. And she was so right. Because after this talk, and after that weekend, her and I came back and we were talking through but the next gathering and really knew that we needed another voice at the leadership table with us. And without even planning it, we just looked at each other. And both of us at the same time said, “It's Jeff.” Like, it just had to be you. We just knew it. Right? You were our person. And so that's, I think, when we did come to you and ask you to go steady with us.
Jeff: And honestly, I wouldn't do it for any other women, as a self-respecting gay man.
Sarah: Well, I take that as very high praise. Since we lost Rachel, I have often said, and felt really deeply in my heart that I think one of the best and last gifts that Rachel gave to me was you. You’re just a real gift to me, even if you're still trying to convince me of the doctrine of depravity.
Jeff: See, one of the things you refuse to recognize is that your doubts about depravity are probably just an indicator of your depravity. So you are not going to win this argument. It has been predestined. And honestly, it's been one of the great and life-giving miracles of the last 18 months to have our friendship, Sarah. It has been an honor and a lifeline in more ways than I can say. And I don't want to get all weird and mystical and Holy Spirit about it, because that's your game. But it's almost as if Rachel orchestrated my friendship with you because she knew how much I would need it. When Rachel first invited me to speak at Evolving Faith, I had no idea any of this would happen. I was just honored and instantly nervous at the invitation. I still don't think of myself as a speaker, which is super-weird that we're now doing a podcast. I think of myself as a reporter and a writer. Much more comfortable with a pen and a notebook in my hand than at any microphone. And I always want to hide behind someone else's story rather than tell anything of my own. I think part of that is cultural. The way I was brought up, you never ever do anything to draw attention to yourself. And when Rachel invited me, she told me the two of you were going to speak first. And then I was going to speak. And then Jen Hatmaker was going to speak. And my instant question for Rachel was, “Why do you hate me?” And she just laughed in my face. And I think she found it deeply, supremely satisfying to make me so completely uncomfortable.
Sarah: This is one of the ways that Rachel and I just shared deep joys. I think I said probably no less than 13 times that weekend how grateful I was that I was the first one out the gate, because I just got to set the bar nice and low. And everybody just went from there on out. So it was, I definitely feel you on that one. I'm going to offer, though, to our listeners a little bit of a warning. I think that this is only really fair as someone who loves this community. I feel like everybody just needs to know right out the gate that whenever Jeff speaks, people cry. And not just like middle-aged white ladies like me. People always cry. So it was one of the things that I think we were, well, here I'll say this. I think a lot of us came into Evolving Faith that weekend with a particular person that we wanted to hear from, or that we needed to hear from, and universally on the other side of Evolving Faith, in our attendee surveys, and in the feedback we got, the words that you had to share it Evolving Faith in 2018 just really were what needed to be heard, and what people needed to hear. So I'm just going to put everybody including you out of your misery and let's get to your sermon at Evolving Faith 2018 entitled “The Theology of the Compost.” I do want to mention really quickly that if you happen to have any little ears in the room that there is some grown-up language in the sermon and so this is just my little disclaimer, so you don't write me a note complaining about your three-year-old saying naughty words because they probably got that from you and not us anyway. But this is the disclaimer.
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Jeff: I want to echo what Rachel and Sarah have basically already said, You are loved.
If you are angry, you are loved.
If you're tired of this world, you are loved. And honestly, I'm tired too.
If you're overwhelmed to be here and delighted you are loved.
If you're an extrovert who is so excited to be with 1,500 people, every single one of whom you desperately want to meet, I say to you as a shy introvert, from whom you are sapping the life force at this very second, you are still loved.
If you doubt that God exists, you are loved.
If you're not sure where your journey of faith is going, you are loved.
You are loved. And we are so glad you are here. If you hear nothing else that I have to say today, hear that.
Each of you should have two index cards. I'm hoping that you do. If you do not, please raise your hands and our index card elves —index card elves, I hope you didn't disappear—will distribute notecards. Some scraps of paper work just fine as well. But you will need to have two of them, scraps of paper or index cards.
I warned Sarah and Rachel I might take an extra little bit of time. But, you know, queer people of color have been waiting a long time to be heard. So we're going to do this.
Two scraps of paper, two index cards. Whatever works for you. We're going to do a little writing exercise together. It's going to be a quick one. I'm not going to give you a lot of time. I'm going to give you 15 seconds to write whatever comes to mind for each of these prompts. You're going to go with your gut. You're not going to write your name on these cards or on these pieces of paper. Just 15 seconds.
I know we all have carried a lot with us into this space. On the first card, I want you to think about one of the things that you probably carried into this space, which is fear. What do you fear? There are no bonus points if you willfully misunderstand me and give me a Sunday-school answer like, “I only fear the Lord.”
No, I want to know what's weighing on your heart. What are you afraid of as you sit there? As you're moving through this world wrestling with your faith, what do you fear the most? 15 seconds.
All right, pass those scraps of paper and index cards to the nearest aisle, and I would like my collection elves who are back there somewhere with bags to come down the aisles and collect those and bring them to the front, please. Pass them to the nearest aisle.
As we're passing those, I'll give you a little time to think on the second card. Write again what you feel deeply in your gut. Maybe I'll give you a logistical moment here, folks. Collecting, collecting, collecting. On the second card: What do you hope for? You wouldn't be here if you didn't have some hope. What are you afraid to hope for, for fear of disappointment? What might make you whole? What is your hope? I'll give you 20 seconds since we're still collecting.
What do you hope for?
I want you to hang onto those second cards. If I could get some of the first batch, that would be super-helpful. Awesome.
So let's have a look at what we've got here. Let's see what some of your fears are¦
Being wrong.
Failure.
That nothing will change.
Rejection.
That the church won't be a place where I or my child will find community.
That I'm too much.
That I'm doing too little.
Complacency.
Cynicism.
Rejection.
That God is disappointed in me.
That God doesn't love me.
That they were right and God is really an asshole.
That it won’t get better.
That I’m wrong and I’m really a bad person.
You start to hear some of the themes in those, right? You start to hear themes of fear, of rejection, of failure, of divine-level failure. Really human kinds of failure. Fears of not being enough. Fears of not being worthy of love, of other people's love, of God's love.
I feel those. I fear not belonging, not being enough. I've honed my fears over a lifetime spent in the back of rooms and on the side walls of rooms, rooms like this one. I know this may shock those of you who have stereotypes of Chinese people and what we're good at, but I grew up a nerd and a loser.
I also grew up Southern Baptist, and the grandson and nephew of preachers. But now I'm in the RCA, as I mentioned; I'm a short gaysian amidst tall Dutch people. I've been a journalist most of my career and now I'm studying at Princeton Seminary because I had to find a less lucrative career in journalism.
I arrived at seminary with a lot of anger. Some was anger at systemic injustice, and that I was able to talk about. But some was personal anger. And those were things I couldn't.
Society has told me that this body is not beautiful, that it's not manly. I carried in this weak, little body heavy stories too. Stories that I feared made me unlovable and irredeemable. It wasn't until about a month after I started seminary, for instance, that I could say out loud something that I kept silent for over 20 years: that I'd been raped when I was 15. And I believed I was permanently damaged goods.
Yet oddly, I would not have been in that seminary without some hope, just like you wouldn't be here without some hope. When I got to Princeton, I unexpectedly landed at the Farminary, which is 21 acres where we dig in the dirt and introverts don't have to talk and it still counts as class.
You come down this long gravel driveway. And you'll see a pond to the left where the geese like to rest. And early in the morning, a cloud of mist hangs over it just as the sun begins to peek over the trees and it looks soft enough to wrap around you like a blanket. And to the right is our garden. It's 100 by 100 now and we'll expand it next season. Our peppers did pretty well and so did our dahlias this season. Our tomatoes did fine, but the soil isn't rich enough yet for some heirloom varieties. We need compost to enrich the soil and we're making it. It's being made on our compost pile, which is, to me, the most beautiful place on the farm. It's just past the far garden fence.
I didn't know much about compost before. But now I know that it preaches a hundred Sundays of sermons about death becoming new life, about God's abundance, about how these things that seem useless—moldy fruit, onion skins, eggshells, coffee grounds—these become rich soil.
The more time I spend at the compost pile, the more I wonder whether one thing we might need is a robust theology of compost. The more time I spend at the compost pile, the more I think we must help write a narrative of hope amid the world's narratives of despair. And the more time I spend at the compost pile, the more I ask, Isn't the story of compost really just the story of God? Turning fear to courage, sorrow to joy, death to life.
As I said, I'm Reformed. So I am supposed to adore John Calvin. “And what can man do,” Calvin wrote, “man who is but rottenness and a worm?” A version of this story of wretchedness still thrives today, a version that's been weaponized against many of us. Especially those who are deemed more wretched than others: women, queer people, trans people, people who are labeled Other. And for much of my life, I believed this bad news and this lie.
A robust theology of the compost reminds me of this good news: A long-dead theologian who apparently knew little about farming but chose to mansplain it to us anyway—what Calvin had to say about worms was wrong.
Worms can be magic. Worms can be engines of redemption. Worms devour things of death and poop out life. And God gave their poop that power.
A robust theology of the compost reminds us that death and the things of death, our sin, our suffering, the ways we hurt each other, the ways we harm ourselves— These things are never the end of God's story.
A robust theology of the compost reminds us that we are still in the process of becoming, and God has written redemption into the story of creation itself.
A robust theology of the compost reminds us that God has empowered us, lowly worms, to turn what is ugly and festering and dying into what is lovely and beautiful and life-giving.
A robust theology of the compost testifies to the fact that we can't do this alone, but we need others, because a single worm can't do very much but in community they have such tremendous power.
A robust theology of the compost testifies that we who have been told by society that we are worthless can act in the confidence of the knowledge that we are worthy.
And a robust theology of the compost testifies that God urges those of us who have been shamed not to shame, but instead to love. Because in our acts of love, we participate in preparing the soil in which God's reign of love and justice can take root.
You all know love is risky. The payoff might not come for years or in this lifetime. I want to read you a story I wrote a few years ago about that kind of love and how I learned about it from my mom. Turns out sometimes we're emotionally composting and we don't even know it. This story is called “The Meaning of a Meal.”
For lunch today, I had some steamed spareribs over rice. The ribs have been in my fridge for over a week—and not a word from you food safety hardliners. My stomach is not just fine. It is also full, and so is my heart.
My mom cooked these ribs when she was visiting, and they were some of the best I've ever eaten. I don't know how to make ribs like my mom's. Part of it is, I think, that something tastes better when someone else has cooked it. That's especially true if that someone else is my mother, by far the best cook in our extended family. I love my grandma but anything she may try to tell you about those culinary genes being passed down is a lie.
Another part of it is my mom's secret sauce, some elixir containing Shaoxing wine, black pepper, black bean sauce, salt, sesame oil— I can't really remember. I'm sure she's told me before. “It's easy,” I hear her say.
She’d probably add that, as usual, I just wasn't listening. I could ask for a recipe but she would just sigh, because she doesn't have them written down. They're all in her head.
A third part of it, though, was something that has nothing really to do with the food itself so much as what the food represents.
Last winter, my mom emailed me to ask whether I might like for her to come to New York and “cook a dinner for you for your birthday.” When I read her words, my heart leapt into hyperspeed, and I broke out into a sweat. She hadn't been to visit in years. Not since my boyfriend and I moved in together, not since that boyfriend became my husband. She’d met him only once. And that meeting was, to be generous, awkward. She didn't come to our wedding. Some months later, she did send that email.
Food is, in our family, so many things. It is what we fight about. We started taking cruises together partly because there's no debate about where to have dinner. Eating is our most beloved group activity. And it's the one thing we can always talk about when we have nothing else. If I'm at a loss for something to say to my mom, I can always ask her—and genuinely because I always want to know—how to cook a particular dish. For my mother, food plays a specific and important role, saying things that she cannot.
Even the paraphernalia of mealtime has significance. When she arrived in New York, one of the first things she did was to pull a gift out of her bag. It was an antique pair of ivory chopsticks. Everyone in our family has a pair inscribed in red with our names. And these were for my husband.
Dammit. I wrote this story years ago and I still can't get through it!
She told him it was my job to figure out where to get the inscription done. I reminded her it was her job to help me come up with a Chinese name for the white boy.
Note that my mom never asked if she could come visit. The question was whether I wanted her to come cook. We took her for other meals while she was in New York, but this was about one meal.
Eleven friends joined us, dear and patient people who have played their own supportive parts on our journey, and who knew that this meal wasn't just about the food. That Saturday, it turned out my mom had prepared a dish for each of us.
At 5:30 p.m., they began coming out of the kitchen. First the starters: freshly grilled scallion pancakes, spring rolls, seaweed-wrapped sticky rice balls with Chinese sausage and dried shrimp. And then the mains: scrambled egg and tomato; a half-dozen types of mushroom braised with abalone; big piles of Chinese greens dressed in oyster sauce; slivers of pork tossed with crisp triangles with two kinds of tofu. Two chickens, one steamed and one poached in soy sauce. Shrimp stir-fried with a multicolored medley of vegetables. Two whole black bass steamed with ginger and green onions. A beef stew with big gooey chunks of tendon. And those spare ribs.
This was her gift. Her gesture of lavish love. Her way of saying that she is trying. She started cooking more than 24 hours before the first guest arrived, standing and stirring and chopping and tasting until her arms and legs ached and her own appetite was gone. She wanted nothing more than for us to simply receive.
Where do we go from here? I don't know. It was one visit, one big meal, several smaller ones. We ate well. We were on our best behavior. There was some laughter and nobody cried. It does not mean that we agree on theology or politics or that she is running for president of her local chapter of PFLAG. It does mean she's working hard, and so are we, to love as best we know how. In some ways, it was a big event and in others it was just baby steps.
But there is, I suppose, a lesson in the way my mom cooks, something that I want to remember as we keep walking with each other. In my mother's kitchen, nothing happens quickly. You plan, you marinate, you stew, you wait. And then, eventually, you feast.
So fast-forward five years, to this August. I got to take my mom to the farm. And there we were in fields I love so much. And all I could think about was how she and my dad, who grew up poor ,worked so hard to send me to college. And now she got to see her son as an overeducated peasant making $9.25 an hour. This is every immigrant parent’s dream.
I showed her the yard-long beans that I planted, a vegetable that I grew up with, which she would dice finally and scramble with eggs, a homey dish you'll never find on a restaurant menu. And of course, she chided me, examining the beans ,asking why it left them on the vine so long.
We just slaughtered our first chickens at the farm—don't judge, vegetarians. And I had saved a chicken to cook with my mom. And we salt-baked it, in the way of my father's tribe.
I don't really talk about my dad publicly, but we're going to give it a shot. My dad still won't meet my husband. He doesn't think I should be in seminary. Honestly, I'm afraid of hurting more. But I also love my dad and I know my dad loves me.
So when I carved the chicken, I saved a drumstick to send home to him with my mom. A reminder to him that even if we disagree on many things, we can agree that we're father and son. We love each other. I honor him. And dark meat is much better than white meat.
In the compost pile, my resentment at my parents, at the church world I grew up, at how it treats people like me, at how it treats people unlike them— my resentment is turning. And I say turning because it's slow progress.
And anger can't be our final destination. Jesus calls us out of isolation and into community, out of fear and into grace. And acknowledging God's grace helps me to show grace. Grace for my former self. Grace for my present struggle. Grace for neighbors I don't want to love. Grace for people who are where I once was. Grace helps me to say that I am grateful I grew up evangelical, because it made me me. Grace helps me to see that the theology of the compost always points us to the hope of the eventual feast.
Let me be clear: I am not telling you to risk physical or emotional harm. But I am challenging you to surrender the comfort of your fears. Because those fears can be— they can grow up and become so familiar. So comfortable. And I want you to consider this dangerous gospel: dangerous to our inclination to dehumanize other people, dangerous to our desires to stay comfortable, dangerous to our bigotries, dangerous to our insecurities, dangerous to our idolatries, dangerous to our ungodly fears.
So let's talk about those ungodly fears, those things you wrote on your index cards and turned in. You surrender them here and now. They will go back to the farm with me. On Monday, I will take them to the compost pile. And there, these ideas, these little bits of death, these fears that are not of God, they will go to die. And in their death, they will give new life and new soil and new growth.
And the cards that you hold onto with your hopes, you will take them with you to remember. Read them when you need reminding of the hopes that you have and the hopes that God has for you. Maybe you'll find new hopes that you want to scribble down. Your hopes testify that God is planting something good in you and growing something powerful in you.
My faith is still evolving. Sometimes it feels like it's shrinking. At moments, it feels like it's not there at all. The ghosts of my demons can come storming back and I'm 15 again, asking whether this little body has any room for hope when it's so full of pain and doubt and grief and fear.
I still don't always believe that I'm enough. And on some level, I'm not, not by myself, not in my isolation, not in my captivity. We need others to hold onto hope for us when we can't hold onto it ourselves.
Two weeks ago, the morning I had to preach the most challenging sermon of my life, a friend left a note on my doorstep. We had just gone to see the musical Dear Evan Hansen two days before. So if you know that, these words may have special resonance.
Dear Jeff,
Today is going to be a good day. And here's why. Because today, today, at least, you're you. And that's enough. I know you and I love you.
God
I carry that note in my pocket right now, which is a scrap of hope that helps me get through tougher moments in the day, because someone knew that I needed help holding onto hope. This friend shone a light into my life because I couldn't do it myself.
Maybe you need that here today. And many of us here can do that for you; we would be honored. Or maybe you have the chance to be the one to hold onto hope for someone else. Someone here definitely needs to hear that.
All of this just echoes Paul again. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers, nor height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This is true whether you believe in that God now or not. This is true whether you are, wherever you are on your journey. This is true whether you think you've done right or whether you worried you fucked it all up.
We are God's beloved. You are so loved. And nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing in the world can change that.
Amen.
--
Sarah: You know, it's funny because you were a bit of a sneak attack, right? I think equally for me as for a lot of people in the room maybe who weren't as familiar with your work just yet. Because a lot of people bought tickets to this event for the big names and then at the end of everything, when we did our attendee survey, you were far and away the top-ranked speaker, the one that people couldn't shut up about.
Jeff: I honestly didn't expect the outpouring of emotion. My husband teases me sometimes that it's on-brand for me to cry. But that doesn't mean I expect other people to cry. And I don't really know what I'm doing when I'm writing a talk. You're the Pentecostal one, not me. But if the Holy Spirit is real and present, and most days I think the Spirit is, I felt that presence while I was writing this talk. I meant what I said. And after the gathering, I took all the scraps of paper and the index cards that folks turned in, and I went back to the farm, and I added them to the compost pile. I posted a picture of the pile on Facebook and Instagram and you could see all the pieces of paper mixing in with the soil and the vegetable scraps and the banana peels. I didn't fully understand until then, I think, when I saw people's comments under the photo, how much it would mean to people, and I think it confirms for me that compost really is magic.
Sarah: Mm-hmm. I think part of that too is just even— you know, you and I often joke that we are like pathetically earnest. But I think even the earnestness and sincerity of the fact that that wasn't a stunt for you, that wasn't a, you know, here's a sermon illustration. But it was something you actually believe and embodied. And then you took the gift of all of those people's pieces of papers. And you actually did what you said you were going to do. And I think that that means something to people, to know that those words, those pieces of paper, the thing that they had held in their hands, was sitting there in in the compost, right, that it mattered, right. So can you talk to me just a little bit more about what you have learned about the theology of the compost pile since then? You know, is there anything that you would add maybe to the message now? Is there anything that you would change or that you've maybe shifted your thinking on or maybe even experienced evolution on?
Jeff: I think I would add that there are limits to the metaphor. Like any metaphor, if you stretch it too far, it gets to a breaking point. At a certain point, the theology of the compost pile, though, compels us actually to accept how death is a part of our lives. Death is more of a part of our reality than I want it to be, if I'm honest about it. We've seen that too much over recent months. And I guess the hope I draw from the compost pile is that God is always pointing us to new life. God is always pointing us to resurrection. And God is always pointing us toward the great feast. Not just metaphorically, but really, and truly. I don't think I believed that when I said those words on stage in the way that I do now, just because of the degree to which I've had to confront the reality of death in my own relationships and in the world around me.
Sarah: I think that that's just it, right? I mean, there's, there's a version of this story that can sound very tidy and like an illustration. But then there's a reality, right? There's a thing that actually has a smell to it and a heft to it. And when you begin to embody that, I think that's what really shifts into saying, Okay, what does this actually mean in my real walking-around life, right? Because I was really taken aback by the almost like visceral or like embodied reaction that I had while you were giving that sermon. You know, I was on stage with you. We had a couch and a couple chairs with me and Rachel there with you and Jen. And I remember literally having to take a minute just to catch my breath. Like, just the tenderness in the room, and the sense of something holy, was really palpable there. You opened up that sermon with the very words that you actually, um, you know, wanted to make sure that we ended every single one of the episodes of the Evolving Faith Podcast with. You wanted to make sure that the last thing that people heard from us was that you are loved—that you're loved. And you're always so intentional to say those words, to make sure that they are included in every interaction that we have with our community, in every gathering that we have had and now here in this podcast. Can you tell me why you're so intentional about that? And why why those words in particular are ones that you always want to make sure are said?
Jeff: I think it's because they're the words that I rarely believe. I know what it's like to struggle with believing someone when they say, “You are loved.” But I don't want anyone else to doubt for even a second that they're loved. Because I know what a number that does on your soul and your spirit when you do doubt it. And it's that simple, by which I mean actually really complicated. So I came across a video the other day of a worship song that's been going around called “The Blessing.” I have a pretty complicated relationship with contemporary Christian music and a lot of praise and worship music, because it was such a fixture of the kinds of churches I've spent a lot of my life in. But, full disclosure, I'm also still kind of drawn to some of that music. So it's super-messy, and a theologically indefensible guilty pleasure.
Sarah: Listen, I am still here for a Jesus is my boyfriend song. Still here for it. I feel this down in my soul. But carry on.
Jeff: Depravity. But anyway, there's a part of “The Blessing,” which like a lot of Christian music doesn't exactly have the most complex or poetic lyrics, where the song is talking about God. And it says, “In the morning, in the evening, in your coming and your going, in your weeping and rejoicing, He is for you. He is for you.” And then, like any good contemporary Christian song, it repeats “He is for you” a gazillion times. And as I listened to it, I realized it's hard for me to hear that, because many days I am truly not sure that God is for me. And sometimes I wonder what it would feel like if I believed all the time, in my bones, that God is for me, and that God loves me. So that's why I say those words. That's why I want people to know they're loved, because, like coming to the Lord's Supper, like so much of what we do in our lives, we need that repetition. We need the reminder for us to begin to believe it and to begin to accept that it's real.
Sarah: Hmm. That’s so beautiful and so true. I think that that's one of the great gifts that you've brought, you know, to our community is that sense of belovedness that is specific and not in general. Right? That there is something very specific about the “you are loved,” not, you know, something that's broad and general. That is just really incredibly beautiful. So you're saying, basically, you want to add a whole praise and worship set to our next Evolving Faith gathering. That's what I'm hearing you say.
Jeff: So as a preacher, I have learned that people will hear what they want to hear. So let's just file that comment in that department.
Sarah: I’m just saying I still have my tambourine. I still have it—and my flags. One last question I have for you, before we let everybody go is, what is Tristan’s Chinese name? Did you ever end up deciding that?
Jeff: He still doesn't have one. It is one of the failures of my marriage that he still doesn't have a proper Chinese name. And so thank you for the reminder, I need to put it back on my to-do list. I do, before we go, I want to say one other thing in relation to the compost pile. So you mentioned Schitt’s Creek earlier. And that's another thing our friendship gave me. I remember after the gathering going back to my room and googling it, because I'd never heard of Schitt’s Creek before. Nobody should be surprised by this because when you grow up at the intersection of Chinese culture and conservative evangelical Christianity, well, my pop-culture knowledge is basically zero. So anyway, I Googled it and obviously misspelled it the first time. And then Tristan and I started watching it and we adore it. And the story of Schitt’s Creek really is the Rose family's compost pile story. It's a story of finding new life when you think it has all gone to shit. And I wish I had the courage to be a David but really I am still Patrick and I can't shake my annoying earnestness that you've already talked about. I think it's almost pathological.
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“Hi, this is Megan from Snoqualmie, Washington. And what is bringing me hope in this wilderness is my friendship with my friend Tammy. We've walked the path of deconstruction together. And it just feels so wonderful to know that I can share my wondering, my joyful recognitions, and even just a sarcastic memes with somebody who gets where I am.”
“Hi! My name is Bailey and I'm calling from San Diego, California. I'm a pastor and also a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. I see hope in the queer community coming together for Black Lives Matter during Pride Month. I see hope in some moments of my life where I'm able to sit down with good friends even over Zoom in quarantine. I see hope in the walks with my dog.”
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Jeff: Thanks, friends, for listening to this episode of the Evolving Faith Podcast. If you want to keep up with what I'm doing, I recently started a free newsletter where I am annoyingly earnest. You can read it at jeffchu.substack.com. The audio version of my book, Does Jesus Really Love Me?, came out not too long ago. And you can hear me do really bad Southern accents in that book. The print version is still available everywhere good books are sold, if fake Southern accents offend you. Ask at your local independent bookseller and they'll be able to get it for you. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @evolvfaith. You can also find me on Twitter at @jeffchu, and on Instagram at @byjeffchu.
Sarah: Your newsletter really is something remarkable. I look forward to it every week. We also actually have a podcast community over on Facebook. So you can come and hang out with us by searching for the Evolving Faith Podcast After-party. And I'm also on Twitter and Instagram as @sarahbessey. All of the links that we may have mentioned are in our show notes along with a transcript of the episode.
Jeff: If you would like to be featured in an upcoming episode of the Evolving Faith Podcast, just call 616-929-0409 and leave us a message. Tell us where you're finding hope out here in the wilderness. Again, it's 616-929-0409. I feel like a televangelist asking you to call in. But we're not asking for any money. Just call and let us know where you're finding hope. We would love to hear your voices.
Sarah: You can head over to evolvingfaith.com to sign up for our newsletter so you don't miss any announcements about our upcoming Evolving Faith conference. Jeff, I just want to say thank you again for being here with me, for being part of this, for doing this with me, and for being my friend. I love you.
Jeff: I love you too, Sarah. And friends until next time, remember that you too are loved.
