Ep. 8: Your Woke-ness Is Not Worship with Sandra Maria Van Opstal
Hosted by Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu
Featuring Sandra Maria Van Opstal
This week, pastor, activist, and liturgist Sandra Maria Van Opstal challenges us to reimagine the intersection of worship and justice. She explores the impact of white supremacy on an evolving faith, worship, and justice work, leads us to learn from the global church and how justice is sustained. She then places a demand on all of us to move forward and engage. Then Sarah and Jeff have a conversation about the prophet Amos, the balance of contemplation with action, and discomfort.
P.S. There is some adult language in this episode. Again.
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Show Notes
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Sandra Maria Van Opstal
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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. Learn more about her books here.
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.
“You want to be sad. You want to be angry. Be sad and angry. But get off your ass and move. ”
[IMAGE CONTENTS: Nine graphics with quotes from the episode. First graphic: Blue and brown illustrated flourishes with a photograph of Sandra Maria Van Opstal. Text reads: “Your Woke-ness is Not Worship Episode 8. Now Streaming. with Sandra Maria Van Opstal.” Remaining graphics are white squares and all 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. All quotes unless otherwise specified are from Sandra Maria Van Opstal. Text for the remaining graphics are as follows: 2. “y’all are looking at an eight with a seven wing and we don't do anything half assed!” 3. “Western theology has been a theology of intellect and intention, not a theology of embodiment and action.” 4. “Speaking truth to power is not an elective, it’s a responsibility of my Christian faith.” 5. “Let your church close and make it a condo, I don't care! You're not doing anything.” 6. “You want to be sad. You want to be angry. Be sad and angry. But get off your ass and move.” 7. “Justice is the reordering of creation back to God's original intent where we were made and created to stand together in solidarity and mutuality as one humanity.” 8. “Don’t be discouraged. The Church is bigger than you!” 9. “Work with us, not for us.”]
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.
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SARAH: Welcome back, friends, to Episode 8 of the Evolving Faith Podcast! This week, we’re featuring our friend Sandra Maria Van Opstal, a pastor, activist, preacher, and liturgist who has been working for years at the intersection of justice and worship.
But before we get started, a reminder that Evolving Faith 2020 tickets are on sale. Of course our wilderness looks a bit different this year and so we have shifted to a live virtual event. It’s on October 2-3. But don’t forget that you will have access to the videos on demand until April 1, 2021. We are welcoming incredible teachers like Kate Bowler, Barbara Brown Taylor, Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Sherrilyn Ifill, Propaganda, so many more. Text a few of your friends, make plans for a safe, socially distanced get-togethe, block off your calendar for a thought-provoking, hopeful, hilarious, and powerful weekend with us. But first go to evolvingfaith.com for more information and to register now.
JEFF: Also, don’t forget, friends, we would love to hear from you! One of the things I love about this community is that we get to learn from each other. If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming episode of the Evolving Faith podcast, just call 616 929 0409 and tell us where you are finding hope out here in the wilderness. 616 929 0409. We really appreciate your wisdom and your voices.
This week, I have the honor of introducing you to Sandra Maria Van Opstal, who pastors at Grace and Peace Community on Chicago’s West Side. She’s a Latina preacher, liturgist, and activist, as Sarah mentioned, with such a huge heart for a deep reimagination of the intersection of worship and justice. Which makes all the sense in the world to me, because how can you worship a God of justice if there’s no recognition of justice in your worship?
Sandra’s influence has reached so many people through her leadership and preaching on topics not just involving worship and justice but also racial identity and reconciliation and global mission. In addition to her ministry experience, she holds an M.Div. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois and has been published in multiple journals. She has authored God's Graffiti Devotional, Still Evangelical, The Mission of Worship, and The Next Worship.
SARAH: Sandra was part of what we called our justice session at that year's Evolving Faith. It included her Austin Channing Brown, who we all listened to back in Episode Two, Kaitlin Curtice, and Nish Weiseth, who are both coming up in future episodes. We should have probably renamed that one the lightning round because, holy smokes. It was such a good morning and I remember that after the session ran through, o it went, you know, included all these incredible powerful women, I was supposed to transition the morning into the next section and I just literally laid down on the stage. Like, laid down and said, “Good night, everybody.” Like, it could have just ended right then and there it was. It was powerful. So, friends, we are so honored to bring you one of my favorite Enneagram Eights, Sandra Maria Van Opstal, speaking at the first Evolving Faith gathering at Montreat in North Carolina,
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SANDRA MARIA VAN OPSTAL: Fully, fully excited that you told me it was okay to be angry, Austin, because y’all are looking at an eight with a seven wing and we don't do anything half-assed! So.
I'm so excited to be here. How a child of immigrants who were lied to about the American Dream, raised in a Catholic tradition, born again in the Southern Baptist church, delivered in Black Pentecostal churches, pastoring in a reforma-costal-brown-black multi-class, multi-ethnic church on the west side of Chicago is here, I'm not sure. But by the grace of God.
I have seen things in all of those spaces, and about the church and many different places. I have seen all sorts of things about the church. So I can only offer you what I see from my location. Because as a very wise Native brother of mine once said, “We think where our feet stand.”
We think where our feet stand. So the only message we can bring you is the one that we embody in our physical bodies and in the lives and experiences of the communities that we all come from, knowing that we come from a place and we have a heritage and a legacy. And so I want to sing you a song that I learned growing up in church and if you know this song, and you feel comfortable, you can sing it with me.
I love you, Lord. And I lift my voice, to worship you, oh my soul, rejoice. Take joy, my King, in what you hear. Let it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear.
Second verse.
I love you, Lord. And I want to live according to each command you give. Take joy, my King, in what you see. Let it be a sweet offering unto Thee.
Oh, you guys didn't get that second verse, huh? You didn't get that growing up?
Well, luckily, we had some correctives come into our worship songs. And later on another song came that I learned in my traditional churches that I went to, and it goes something like this. It corrects our theology. It says:
I’ll bring you more than a song. For a song in itself is not what you have required.
Don’t be afraid to sing!
You search much deeper, through the way things appear. You're looking into my heart.
I'm coming back to the heart of worship. And it's all about me. It's all about me, Jesus.
(laughing)
I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it. And it's all about me, and how I feel about you, Jesus.
Western theology has been a theology of intellect and intention, not a theology of embodiment and action. We have been about intellect and intention, not about embodiment and action. We have feelings, and we have thoughts, and we have words, so many words—but no lifestyle. ]
So I want to bring to you guys today the fact that true worship cannot exist without justice. And we hear that in the words and in the song of Amos, who so carefully talks to the people of Israel about the injustice all around them before he gets to them.
So get ready.
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals, your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them and though you bring me choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with your noise and your songs. I will not listen to the music of your hearts. But let justice roll like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” And in the words of Amos, as he goes through his book, you hear him call out to the people, “Seek me and live, seek me and live, seek me and live.” And this song is so clear.
I hope you've heard the lyrics of Amos, the lyrics that tell us that success and safety and self-actualization is not worship. The words that tell us that trampling on the poor, through our purchasing from companies that exploit workers or cause war for our luxurious jewels and cheap cotton and electronic batteries is not worship. That investing our wealth in funds that exploit workers or profit our 401(k) at the expense of incarcerated men and women is not worship. That self-importance, arrogance around our woke-ness, and the desire for significance is not worship.
Got real quiet in here. So.
While we were singing songs in the West and sending missions trip, people were living through apartheid in South Africa and genocide in Rwanda. And here we were creating the largest school-to-prison pipeline in the world. And we sang, It's all about me, and how I feel about you, Jesus.
So welcome. Welcome to joining the rest of us in the acts of justice as a part of worship.
People were trying to gasp for air under the foot of capitalism and American exceptionalism, and we were singing songs, and building buildings, and writing books, and hosting conferences, and creating podcasts. And all the while the church around the world and in our urban centers were getting stomped on at the expense of our singing.
True worship is not about intellect and intention. True worship is about embodiment and action.
When you live and have proximity to communities that are historically exploited and economically disenfranchised, you can see the brokenness and the violence and the deep sorrow that create environments of trauma. But I can also see real beauty— fathers and grandmothers, gifted artists and street vendors, who love and live in ways that inspire me. And when we are from communities of injustice and trauma, the call to justice in worship is not nice. It is not good. It is necessary.
Inequity and housing and education are not political issues. They are my pastoral realities. Immigrant children, detained and incarcerated and trafficked by our own administration, are not political issues to speak about. They are pastoral realities that we live in. The poor are not just people I drive to or speak for; they are my neighbors that I live with and the family that I love.
So speaking truth to power is not an elective; it’s a responsibility of my Christian faith. Justice must be pursued, but justice must also be embodied. So let me tell you right here: We don't need more justice seekers, disconnected from our communities, to fight for us. We do not need any more white people to relocate to our communities and gentrify us. We need communities that embody justice, and embody the justice they are pursuing, acknowledging that the ones who have the problem have the answer to the problem, and centering the very people who are most affected by the policies, and not seeing us as helpless or voiceless but as human—and mutual and equal contributors to the process of justice.
You want to start a nonprofit? That's awesome. Find someone in the group you are serving and make them the president of that nonprofit.
You already started your organization? Find a way to sit your ass down, find someone in the community to lead and be the president of that organization.
Some of us did not have an apocalypse or revelation in the last couple years where we suddenly were revealed to the injustices that we were living in. We carry this in our song, in our story, in our body, in our suffering, in our pain, and we do not need someone to tell us that this is America. Our faith has been surviving even through this syncretistic thing we call white Christianity. We have been surviving and thriving. On issues of faith and justice, for many people of privilege, it's evolving. And thank God, we welcome you, I'm so happy.
But for some of our faith communities, we have lived at this intersection for a long time. So imagine how frustrating it gets when justice gets discovered and Columbus-ed by white speakers and authors. Imagine how frustrating it is to see people getting paid to tell your stories and profiting on the things that you taught them. Imagine what it feels like to have people talk about justice and pursue justice in a way that doesn't embody the justice that they're talking about.
But in order to pursue and embody, we have to name the powers that are at play in that pursuit of justice. So I want to name just one, because I was only given 20 minutes. I want to talk about the power of white supremacy, and name that, because I want to say to you, brothers and sisters, that I, as a woman of color, cannot afford to come into these places without credentials. I cannot afford to come without my ordination. Without my masters, without my pursuit of a PhD, without my books already have been written, because you won't listen to me.
I can't afford to be casual with my power in a way that a white man can. I have to show you that I've studied at your institutions, that I've graduated with honors, that I've done the work, and yet I've learned yours and I've learned mine and now I have double degrees. That's white supremacy.
White supremacy is being able to come with a napkin to a podium, like I've seen so many white scholars do, and say, “Well, I didn't really prepare much. But you know, I was in the plane, I wrote a couple things down. So here you go.” And all the women, literally all the women in the car, are texting each other: Did this happen? Because you know we got our notes. And we checked everything. Cause we can't afford to make a mistake. That's the power of white supremacy.
The power of white supremacy is this: A friend of mine said, “Hey!”—
Oh my gosh, I’m not even on my second point.
A friend of mine said, “Hey! How's your book going?” I said, “Really good. Here’s what's going on.” I said, “How's your book is going?” to the person that writes a lot about justice and power and the pursuit of the kingdom and all these nice things. And I said, “How's your book going?” And he said, “Oh man, you know, writing a book is like sending a kid off to college, you know, you just, like, drop them off at the airport, and hope that all the work that you did is good enough.” And I was like, “What in the hell did he just say?” First of all, I’m Latina, we don't do that, okay? The whole family caravans with you to college, you know? And they stay overnight, and they go to all your informational meetings.
I was like, “What is he talking about?” I'm like, okay, white guy talking, okay, let me translate. Okay. That's rude. You just throw your kids? Second of all, I was thinking, but I did not say, You are real casual with your power, writing about power. You are real casual. Because women of color and people of color cannot afford to not hustle that book. We don't have that luxury. We have to stay in it. And be with that kid in college. And train them after their first year. And tell them not to come home when they're hurting and they feel isolated and alone and send them food. So I was like, “That's a lot of casual.” I went home, I screamed at my husband because I'm an Eight. So that's what I did. I took it out on him. He's like, “I'm a friendly!”
The power of white supremacy.
The power of white supremacy is when we talk about Pentecostalism as if it's strange. Because you know that only 11% of the church is located in North America. You know that, right? 11%! Most of the world is Pentecostal. They believe in the Holy Spirit.
And they actually know that I speak la Spiritu Santa?? She works on our behalf.
Arrogance, white supremacy, American nationalism, looking at the rest of the world like they're crazy and we have somehow arrived.
White supremacy is not out there. White supremacy is in here. It's in the way we all operate, in the air we breathe, the fact that we have different groups all over the country—conservative and progressive, having a conversation about the future of the church and the changing church and there are no people of color in there. There aren’t global leaders in there. I’m like, What church? The dinky 11% that's trying to survive in our country, mostly made up of immigrant churches and people of color? Let your church close and make it a condo—I don't care. You're not doing anything.
I'll leave that tidbit for “Still Evangelical.” You can read that book and read my thoughts on that.
But that's not why I'm here today.
So true worship cannot exist without justice. But I also want to say, in my four minutes, that justice is sustained in worship. Justice is sustained in worship. So when we think about worship, and we think about the solidarity and the mutuality that we have when we come together and gather and pray and hear one another, and tell stories, and sing songs, and review our weeks together, and come and just, like, we have just, like, just for a cold glass of water on a dry day, we come together across all of our differences. And I've spent the last two decades trying to reimagine worship practices that honor and acknowledge and embody the diversity that's in the local and the global church.
Solidarity and worship communicates, “We stand with you.” In situations where we are still moving towards proximity, maybe we don't live in my neighborhood, or don't have access to folks like Austin, aside from them books, we move, even in, in moving towards proximity, we include those narratives, and ask questions about how our community can stand with them in worship, in our prayers, in our liturgy, in our songs, in what gets said and what gets preached and in what is left out. We stand in solidarity in the way that we do our practices of worship. So if we spend 20 minutes singing songs about me or closing our eyes and just ignore that the rest of us are here and just with the lights off, just ignore everybody and stare at the glowing screen. And just you know, how do we expect to develop disciples that are willing to go and throw their bodies on the line for the sake of others?
I'll skip communion.
How about our invitations to public faith that we all grew up in? With all eyes closed, and all heads bowed, totally in secret in this dark room, you know, without anyone seeing that you're following Jesus, just saying, “Jesus, I want you in my heart.” And then you want them to stand up for justice? Then you want them to go out there and live a life of sacrifice? That was the invitation they got to the kingdom, you and God, when in reality, any invitation to follow Jesus has to be about his mission and all the things.
Now with all eyes closed— no, I'm just kidding. But beyond solidarity, we stand with you. We have this concept of mutuality, which to be frank with you, all white people are bad at, conservative and progressive. Sorry.
We want to help you. We want to lead you. We want to start this nonprofit to save you.
The reality is, we have been carrying that bag up the hill. And we have been smelling that body for a long time. So what you need to ask is, “What should I learn from you? Because I've been in this justice work for two years. I've been awoken for two years, and I can't even get myself up out of bed this morning.” And my answer to you is, Learn from us. Because we have been doing this for 44 years. There's something about the spirituality that we have.
So when you're looking for hope in the midst of broken communities, and you want to see faith, and you want to learn hope through lament, and you stare racial evil and economic oppression in the face, and you don't want to be overwhelmed, travel alongside of your brothers and sisters in a 1,000 and a 7,000 person caravan about walking across countries and hold their calloused hands and ask them how they believe there's a God.
Help me! Save me!
I have to tell you about the women in Africa, but I'll be quick. I was in Swaziland working with women that were working with AIDS/HIV patients and they would walk an hour to two hours and we were doing a filming thing to try to help people understand. We were walking with them and they taught us songs. And they taught me this song as they walked to help the poor. And it says, “Siyabonga, Jesu, siyabonga...”
You walk with us. Oh— you walk with us. Oh— you walk with us. Lord, we thank you.
And the whole way, I cried. How in the world can these women believe that God is walking with them in the midst of the overwhelming majority of their husbands and sons dying to HIV/AIDS, and the strength they have in the way that they carry those bags, in faith and in lament and in hope and in sadness, and in anger and in joy all at the same time?
We need to learn from the church around the world and from the church in the margins. Who better to teach a self-focused, narcissistic, dying church to worship than immigrants who don't have anything? Yeah, give us a call to thank and praise God.
Who better to liberate us from our anemic experience of God's power than Korean grandmothers that pray as if God is going to show up because he always does?
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Ruth, David, Jesus, Mary, Joseph—the story of Scripture is about a displaced people and economic and political refugees and asylum seekers. So who better to theologically reorient our colonized understanding of Scripture than those who know that experience?
Don't be discouraged. The church is bigger than you. You don't have to save yourselves. You have every right to be sad and angry. But I'm here to tell you on behalf of my community: Move forward. I don't have time for you to wallow in your anger and sit in your room and journal; we have 7,000 people that are about to cross our borders. We have children dying in our neighborhoods. We have youth crying out and asking if you believe their lives matter. We have children in cages who have cried so much, they are numb. I don't have time for this narcissism.
You want to be sad? You want to be angry? Be sad and angry. But get off your ass and move. True justice, true worship, cannot exist without justice. And justice is sustained in worship.
Justice is the reordering of creation back to God's original intent where we were made and created to stand together in solidarity and mutuality as one humanity. And as a worship leader, my passion for diverse worship has nothing to do with a carnival of multiethnic sounds. It has everything to do with biblical solidarity and mutuality. It has everything to do not only with speaking truth to power but overthrowing powers.
Work with us, not for us. Don't pursue justice, embody it. And if you could have one takeaway, commit one year of centering the voices of women of color and the global church. Read people like Melba Maggay from the Philippines, and Bishop Zac Niringiye from Uganda, and Kathy Khang who just wrote “Raise Your Voice,” and Natasha Sistrunk Robinson with "A Sojourner’s Truth because we are the future of the church.
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JEFF: While I was cooking dinner last night, thanks to Sandra, I couldn’t get that “Heart of Worship” song out of my head. And it has never been one of my favorite worship songs.
SARAH: Once again, we're back to the fact that I think that you really, in your secret heart of hearts, want to have a praise and worship set at one of these Evolving Faiths.
JEFF: Sometimes you have such a way of misreading the situation.
Sarah: I really loved that moment. We all started singing along with her and then all of a sudden, she made the pivot towards “it's all about me.” And then we all just got it and just started to just cackle.
JEFF: I think it’s so tricky, because there are a lot of layers of complexity when it comes to worship music—and even the word “worship,” which has so much baggage for so many people. It’s probably one of the areas of church life that’s most worth interrogating, because music both reflects culture and has the power to push back against culture.
SARAH: Yeah. You know, I thought it was courageous for her to name so explicitly the things we do and don’t do and connect that actually to our worship. Right? A lot of us grew up or were introduced to perhaps a very anemic or weak view of worship. It's you know, singing two fast songs and then two slow songs with your hands.
JEFF:No, I think it's if you repeat the chorus of a worship song 5000 times it's more effective worship than if you just do it twice. God hears you better.
SARAH: You are on my charismatic church toes. I do not appreciate it. I will back you off with my tambourine next time. One of the things that became really clear to me both then and in the year since then was that Sandra has just done such tremendous work around that passage of scripture. She read from Amos 5, which is a very convicting passage of scripture for the church in any age, but particularly right now, right? It connects justice to worship. Literally says you can't have worship without justice, embodied justice, not just justicey feelings or justicey choruses, but embodied justice.
JEFF: I just finished leading a Bible study at my church about the Book of Amos. And Amos is such a fascinating character. He’s talking to a religious culture in ancient Israel that was profoundly hypocritical, and the sins that he indicts most are sins against justice—against the needy, against the poor. It’s really an indictment of the privileged and of the comfortable. Amos is a guy works with sheep and with trees, so he comes from a different part of society than your average prophet does. He’s also a foreigner, a southerner from Judah preaching to the northerners in Israel. So he’s an outsider in almost every way. We might very easily wield Amos against other people, but I wonder what happens if we turn Amos’s words on ourselves. Which I think is what Sandra was doing to us. If we are to borrow some lessons from Amos for our times, I wonder whether one of them might be that there can be some comfort for many of us in our alleged progressivism—and I hesitate even to say that word to describe me, because for sure there are a lot of folks who don’t think I’m adequately pregressive—but also there might be a disconnect sometimes between our progressive thoughts and feelings and the reality and truth of our actions.
SARAH: That’s a really, really interesting perspective. Because when she said—what was that line?— “your woke-ness is not worship” I hollered the first time and the second time, because that is a word for us.
JEFF: It was such a good line. Because who is that wokeness for? Worship isn’t ultimately for or about yourself.
SARAH: I think sometimes that’s the temptation of deconstruction or a reorientation in our faith: that we think we’re trading one set of certainties or answers for a new set of certainties or answers, and she just says, no, no, that is not what this is. It’s not about proving you have all the right opinions now, it’s about worship. One of the real temptations we face in the more progressive or liberal lanes of Christianity is almost a performative wokeness. And she just calls bullshit on that. We don’t need your performances. We need your body, your life, here, right now.
JEFF: Adult language alert on Sarah Bessey. Adult language alert on Sarah Bessey.
SARAH: I blame your influence!
JEFF: Okay, so let's talk about this performance thing. Okay. This is, I think this is really important. There can be a tendency in progressivism not just in the religious manifestation of it, but also in the political—towards a rigid kind of rightness. As in, we have found the way. And it can feel and it can be pretty condescending. So how do we wrestle with the complexities of being in relationship, for instance, with the parts of the church elsewhere in the world that Sandra names that might not be in the same place with us on every issue?
SARAH: Right, right. Because she wove in the global church. I've often felt in a lot of rooms of progressive Christianity like a, like an anomaly, right? The token Pentecostal charismatic one.
JEFF: Like in this room, right now, right? Because I think you’re pretty weird sometimes. I love it, but…
SARAH: Is depravity contagious? Is that what’s happening right now? So um you know, true. I'm definitely weird and getting weirder.
JEFF: True.
SARAH: I think my goal in life is to be the eccentric crone.
JEFF: What does that even look like?
SARAH: Your depravity is at a high level right now. Seriously, a lot of times in a lot of spaces where I teach, I'm a curiosity because of it. Like my experiences and church experiences are, are portrayed as being super-rare. And yet that's not actually true. The global church is overwhelmingly charismatic and I was grateful for her corrective in that room. That narrative that we have, no matter you know, where we are located in terms of religious tradition or you know, wherever, our narrative isn't the only narrative. And we are often blithely talking about the church, but really what we mean is my church, my experiences of church, and we are losing the bigger story and even the possibilities then for connection, for growth, belonging, and renewal within and outside of those stories.
JEFF: Yeah, I also appreciated the mention of the global church because in some sense, I come from the global church. I'm a child of the global church. I went to Chinese churches for the first 13 years of my life. When I'm in Hong Kong, and I attend church with my family, I guess that's considered the global church? Even though my family just thinks of it as church. Just as if someone talks about Chinese food, there's a little part of me that just wants to say, “You mean food?” So I get that Sandra is trying to help orient us and maybe importantly, she's trying to recenter our picture.
SARAH: Right, exactly. And I think that there is more evidence of the white supremacy that she names and calls out, not out there but in here. And we talk about church, but we're usually really talking about white, American, evangelical Church. So to some measure, it always feels a bit off, perhaps, for you and me, because you didn't have that same experience. And I didn't either. And yet, it does still dominate the conversation. That's— that's the definition of white supremacy. Well, not the definition, but it's a function of white supremacy.
JEFF: Look, there was Christianity in China 1,000 years before the United States declared independence from Britain. So much of the history and the range and the reach of the Church has been erased from our understanding in the West.
SARAH: I think that's part of the repentance as Sandra's calling us to. The Chinese church, the church in India and Egypt and Palestine, and so many contexts and cultures, and we act like Christianity is doomed because our one expression of it has outstayed its welcome and is likely doing more harm than good at this point.
JEFF: So I guess one question is, How do we get to a place where we can honor that heritage and that diversity and that rich experience and also learn from and with the Church in the rest of the world, without falling into the trap of exploitation or maybe patting other siblings in the faith on the head as if they’re cute and exotic, especially if they don’t have the same quote-unquote progressive readings of things? How do we do that? At that moment, there was such a sense of urgency in the room, but also in the country, right? We had very recently learned at that point. mean that the US presidential administration was holding children in cages at the border. And there was a caravan of refugees headed toward the US. It feels now like such ancient history. But there was so much urgency in her talk. It doesn't mean it's any less relevant today. I think we've seen the costs of so much of society being inert about the suffering of the marginalized even as we tweet about it incessantly. Now we're in the midst of a global pandemic, which has made obvious the inequities of our healthcare system, America and much of the rest of the world is reckoning with racial justice, the Black Lives Matter movement is rising and sustaining, statues are toppling. So what is the kind of embodiment that Sandra's calling for look like at a time and a moment like this?
SARAH: It's interesting because a lot of people who are newer to this work are already asking questions like, “How much longer?” Or saying, “It's so tiring, being involved in justice work. Aren’t we done yet?” And trying to move on or just finding themselves already burned out and exhausted at the beginning of their journey?
JEFF: Yes, it is so exhausting and even more exhausting to have your life threatened, or your value diminished because of injustice and because of systems that don't treat everyone equitably, or even see people as fully human.
SARAH: Right, because even that's a position of privilege, like you can just opt out because we're tired. We talked about this a lot at our 2019 gathering, which we will eventually get to here on the podcast. But I think that Sandra offers a path for those who are tired or worn out or still perhaps doing it in their own individualized strength, because she talks about the women in Swaziland doing these impossible, hard, heartbreaking things and still singing, “You walk with us.” Or when she said that our justice work is sustained in worship, that it's solidarity and mutuality and coming together, gathering and praying and hearing one another, telling stories, singing songs— that is what sustains you for the work because it's worship too.
JEFF: I think those are beautiful things that she was calling us to. I do want to name that some of this talk was hard to hear and made me uncomfortable. And I name that at the same time as I acknowledge that I'm not sure I can entirely identify what my discomfort is.
SARAH: Yeah, you know, I remember there was certainly some discomfort in the room at certain points. You know, this is one of the reasons why I love Enneagram Eights so much. One in particular stands out that I heard from a number of people later on when she basically says, like, I don't have time for you to sit in your room and feel sad and journal. And because she's placing a demand on us, right on any of us who listened to her. And for a lot of folks that was hard to hear, and I think, I think it can be both. You can take your time to grieve and to be angry and to be sad or journal or blog or, you know, discuss things in Facebook groups. But at the end of the day, you do still have to be engaged. You can't take a mini-break to get your own faith and feelings sorted out when people are dying and the climate is changing and we need each other. We have to be able to have room for thoughtful reflection and embodied justice. It's not one at the expense of the other. And I did hear that from her.
JEFF: It is a reminder that we can do multiple things at once, right? As I’ve been listening to you and as I've been pondering my discomfort, I have realized Sandra's doing what a lot of voices in Scripture do, including Jesus. I think she's doing this anyway. She's using hyperbole. She's using some degree of exaggeration, some drama, to wake us up to some self-examination. She's asking us to do a candid assessment of what we're doing. So if we're tweeting, what are our tweets worth? If we feel paralyzed, why do we feel paralyzed? I didn't hear it as prescriptive in the sense that we all have to do exactly the same thing. I did hear it as prescriptive in the sense that we're all called to do something.
SARAH: Yes. And I think that it needs to be said to that, of course, not all of us are able to do at the same level as others. You know, I personally, I live with chronic Illness now that restricts a lot of my capacity and capability. But I heard those words and know that I’m not excused from the work of shalom because of that, but actually invited into it. Like, I look for ways now to embody that shalom and that goodness and wholeness of justice and worship. And my vantage point from this place also matters. Maybe I can't physically be in the caravans, but I still have good and necessary work to do in the world. And that matters. It's not less than.
JEFF: Absolutely. Like you, there are things that I can do that I as a gaysian will be able to do more or less effectively than you and we have to be honest and candid about that. I also want to name that for some folks part of that candid assessment will be a recognition that, for there to be sustainable action, rest will be needed. Rest will be needed. As well as time and space for reflection. But I think the takeaway might be, You take what you need, not what you want. You don't make excuses and you don't rationalize your way back to inertia.
SARAH: I feel too that there is always an invitation in our discomfort, just as there's an invitation in our anger or our joy or our grief. So if we feel disquieted by something or even— here's some old Pentecostal language for everyone. Brace yourselves— Convicted. If you feel convicted, I think there's an invitation there to sit with it, to not rush through that, or explain it away, but instead to inquire of it and examine it. Skipping over our discomfort is not how you grow or are transformed. And Sandra does this so well. She challenges and convicts and calls us into our discomfort. Because there is a blessing in that space waiting for us.
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RUTH: Hi, This is Ruth from Illinois. And this summer I posted on social media that I was affirming of LGBTQ people. And because of that, I was asked by my church to step down from leading the youth group and teaching in general at the church. It's been a really hard, sad summer because of that and feeling very much like I am out in the wilderness. But the Evolving Faith Podcast has been a special bit of hope for me this summer and has made me feel less alone, less isolated, and like I'm not out in the wilderness alone. So thank you so much for putting it out and for being out in the wilderness with me.
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SARAH: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Evolving Faith Podcast. You can find all of the links that were mentioned, info about Sandra and her important work in the world, along with a full transcript in our show notes at evolvingfaith.com. You can buy all our speakers’ books on our new storefront at bookshop.org/shop/evolvingfaith. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @evolvfaith. And I'm on Twitter and Instagram as @sarahbessey.
JEFF: Find me on Twitter at @jeffchu and on Instagram at @byjeffchu. The Evolving Faith Podcast is produced by us, Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu, along with Jordan Gass-Poore. The Evolving Faith After-Party is on Facebook so come join us to discuss the ideas in each episode and meet some new friends.
Thanks to Audrey Assad and West Willison for the music. And friends, we hope you'll join us next week for an episode featuring Pete Enns.
SARAH: If the Evolving Faith Podcast has meant something to you, please review it on Apple Podcast. It really does make a huge difference. Your likes, subscribes, shares, and honest reviews set up a candle for other people to find us out here in the wilderness. Thanks for taking the time to do that. It could make a world of difference for someone who is lonely out there.
JEFF: And until next time, friends, remember that you are loved.
