Episode 15: “Are You Prepared To Die?” with William Matthews
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Show Notes
Co-hosts
Jeff Chu
Find Jeff online: @byJeffChu on Instagram or @JeffChu on Twitter. You can also subscribe to Jeff’s newsletter, Notes of a Make-Believer Farmer on Substack.
Sarah Bessey
Find Sarah online: @SarahBessey on Instagram or @SarahBessey on Twitter. You can also subscribe to Sarah’s newsletter, Field Notes on Substack. Explore Sarah’s recent books on her website.
Featured guest
William Matthews
A singer-songwriter at heart, William Matthews brings a passion for artistry and advocacy to his genre-crossing work, including hit songs like “Deep Cries Out,” “Glory to Glory,” and “We'll All Be Free.” Those songs are among many that are sung in houses of worship all around the globe. He's appeared at the top of the Billboard charts, garnering well over 60 million streams. Through his documentary projects, he seamlessly blends music and cinematography and political messaging around antiracism, anti-voter suppression and climate change. His work has been highlighted by CNN, Relevant, ThinkProgress, and Yahoo. William was also a cohost on the The Liturgists podcast, and he's now the lead creative and music director at New Abbey Church, a spiritual community in Los Angeles growing together in celebration, healing, transformation, and maturity.
Follow @WilliamIrvinMatthews on Facebook, @WilliamMatthewsX on Instagram, @WilliamMatt22 on Twitter, or listen to William on YouTube.
“We must defend the marginalized and confront one of the greatest threats to our modern civilization: White victimhood and White supremacy.”
Thanks to our producer, SueAnn Shiah, who also provided the music for this episode, you can listen to her album A Liturgy for the Perseverance of the Saints on Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, or Bandcamp and find her at @sueannshiah on Instagram and @sueannshiah on Twitter.
Transcript
Part 1: Introduction
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WILLIAM: Here's a brutal truth. Power, religious or political, does not reward you for doing the right thing. Mary didn’t do the right thing in that moment. Power rewards you for reinforcing its hierarchy, its structure, its way of thinking, its priorities. If you attempt to dismantle power in order to redistribute it, you are being prepared to die.
SARAH: Hello, everyone. I'm Sarah Bessey.
JEFF: And I'm Jeff Chu. Welcome back to The Evolving Faith Podcast. We are on Twitter and Instagram as @EvolvFaith. That's E-V-O-L-V-F-A-I-T-H and on Facebook as Evolving Faith. Thanks so much for joining us today. And we're so glad you're here.
SARAH: We are indeed. And if you've been listening to and hopefully loving this podcast, then please take a few minutes to rate and review us on your podcast app as well as on Apple Podcasts. It is a small and free way to support us and the show, but also to help other wanderers in the wilderness to find us. And we really appreciate it, especially if you are going to give us five stars. But hey, no pressure.
JEFF: So Sarah, we have a fun one today full of pop culture references that are a little bit lost on me. A person who still lives in a previous century.
SARAH: Listen, I heard a Gen Z kid refer to us as people born in the 1900s, and I still have not recovered from it.
JEFF: So appropriately, we're also going to talk about dying today, sort of.
SARAH: Well, that's actually a pretty good intro to our guest, which is William Matthews today. He has such wide and varied interests that this jump from, you know, pop culture to talking about death actually makes perfect sense in his hands. Singer-songwriter at heart William Matthews brings a passion for artistry and advocacy to his genre-crossing work. His hit songs that you may know include “Deep Cries Out,” “Glory to Glory,” and “We'll All Be Free.” Those songs are among many that are sung in houses of worship all around the globe. He's appeared at the top of the Billboard charting albums, garnering well over 60 million streams. Through his documentary projects, he's seamlessly blending music and cinematography and political messaging around antiracism, anti-voter suppression and climate change. And his work has been highlighted by CNN, Relevant, ThinkProgress, Yahoo. William was also a co-host on The Liturgists podcast, and he's now the lead creative and music director at New Abbey Church, which is a spiritual community in Los Angeles, growing together in celebration and healing, transformation and maturity. William will also be back with us again this year for the conference. So make sure that you bought your tickets for that.
JEFF: So here's William Matthews speaking to us from Evolving Faith 2019 in Denver, Colorado.
Part 2: William’s Talk
WILLIAM: I'm an artist advocate, which is a fancy way of saying I am a singer-songwriter and I do justice work. I was born in Detroit, Michigan, grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Okay. All right. Midwest and Southern people here. Like so many of us, I grew up Christian and deeply churched. I grew up in a denomination called Church of God, but Church of God, Anderson, Indiana, not Cleveland, Tennessee. All right. My one Anderson, Indiana, friend.
Y’all, I grew up pretty, pretty religious. Like my mother was a choir director and my father was a preacher. My grandfather was a preacher. My uncle was a preacher. My aunt's an ordained minister, basically deep church. And we were kind of the church that was pretty Holiness without the Pentecostal. So we didn't get a lot of the fun stuff. Like my parents are so religious that they actually, when they got married, they exchanged wedding watches and not rings because jewelry was considered a sin. Yeah, that's, they don't even wear wedding rings to this day. I don't, I sometimes I wonder if they're married. I don't know.
I was a part of a very successful Christian music label, and that was really great until it wasn't. And I began to ask questions, mostly questions like, Who am I? Who is God? Theology? What do I want out of life? And those questions caused me to turn it into music like a good artist would.
I began to write an album called Cosmos and—thank you to the five people who bought it. Thank you. Cosmos was a record, is a record about spiritual deconstruction into reconstruction, about what does it mean to embrace the shadow and the light? And honestly, one of the first books that allowed me the space to deconstruct was Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans and, yeah, I read that book seven years ago, and that book really opened up a world for me and probably for a lot of you.
So who here likes horror films? You guys are a weird bunch, let me tell you. I have avoided horror films up until the last two years because a number of my friends in Los Angeles—I live in Los Angeles, by the way, and a lot of them love horror films. So they've drug me to horror films a lot in the last number of years. I don't know who here remembers. I mean, maybe if you shout out some of your favorite horror films—what have. We have It right here. What else? Psycho. The Shining. What about Halloween? All five of them. Anybody old enough to remember Scream? My favorite scene’s like Drew Barrymore cooking the popcorn on the stove. And then there's like a murderer that calls her, and there's, like, right at the door, and she answers it, like, who does that? It's funny that you mentioned It over here. I recently saw It, and I'm convinced that clowns are straight from the pit of hell. I mean, wow, that film was something else.
But have you ever noticed in the American horror tradition that it's common for people of color to kind of die first? Like, let's leave aside the long history of racism in Hollywood, which there's a lot, and simply point out that people of color, specifically Black people, are pretty problematic for the film genre.
Okay. So remember a couple of years ago when the Halloween film came out, right, the fifth one with like Jamie Lee Curtis and and Mike Myers, I don't know if you saw that one. I did. Because it's Jamie Lee Curtis. You got to go see her. Jimmy Kimmel, the late night show host. He like, he's on Hollywood Boulevard. I actually live very close to that. And he had a haunted house for like the film premiere, and they filmed it for the show. And they would have little kids or just random people, like run into the house. And then you see Mike Myers with like a chainsaw and then people just, like, scream, freak out, and run out. And there was one little girl who went inside of this haunted house on Hollywood Boulevard, and it was a little Black girl and when she went inside, she took one look at Mike Myers with the chainsaw, and she said, “Nope,” and she walked out nonchalant, very, very, just cool. I was like, “That's us right there.” I'm like, “Nope, not doing this today.”
See, the presence of Black people has always been problematic. Our presence debunks the myth that horror films love to perpetuate. Spoiler alert, this is the hidden message behind all horror films. Are you ready for this? The message behind all horror films is this: that violence is indiscriminate and it is random. I'll say that again. Horror films love to perpetuate the myth that violence is random and indiscriminate. But we, with the spirit of God, carrying the testimony of Jesus, we actually know how untrue that is. According to the highly reputable and credible source known as Wikipedia. Hey, they're just as good as Encyclopedia Britannica, okay? Remember those? Yeah. The stories in horror films are very central to White culture and lifestyle. The films cater to the fears of all people, but particularly those of White people, by drawing upon their deepest, darkest fantasies. Many horror films stem from a figure or an event interfering with a picturesque ideal or lifestyle, threatening to take away the comfort of the protagonists. Horror genres such as slashers, home invasions, and paranormal films are examples of the unknown other coming into the protagonists’ lives. This presence of the unknown other forces the characters to deal with pain, ultimately pushing the protagonist to the point where they must stand up to the monster, the beast, Mike Myers, whoever. And they have to become the hero.
Recently, Jordan Peele produced a masterpiece film that broke these norms called Get Out. Y’all so woke. I love this crowd. Okay, the plot goes like this. Chris and his girlfriend, Rose, have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of their, their dating issue. Now, mind you, if you haven't seen Get Out, anyone remember Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with Sidney Poitier? Did I just date myself? And I'm not even that old. But I remember that. Imagine Guess Who's Coming Home to Dinner, but they try to kill Sidney Poitier. It's ridiculous. Anyway, Chris and Rose, they go to meet her parents at a weekend getaway in upstate New York. And Chris reads, first Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their interracial relationship. But as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries leads him to realize that he's the target of a murder plot. Instead of ignoring race, like many horror films do, Get Out tackles it head-on, using racial identity as its philosophical cornerstone to show us that violence often has a target, and most often that violence is women and Black and Brown people. Get Out sheds light on the dynamics of racial identity and exposes collective violence while thoroughly debunking the myth that horror films love to perpetuate, which is what, that horror films’ violence is, you know, indiscriminate and random.
Here's the trademark of horror films. You know you're in one when you experience these things: dire warnings, premonitions of danger, and an internal and external sense that alerts you that death is coming. To those who are awakened to that fear, suddenly everything gets clarified and becomes crystal clear. But not everyone is aware that death is at their doorstep. Not everyone is aware that death in these films comes from firsthand accounts of their friends who are so numb and apathetic to the reality around them that they presume safety everywhere but only to their peril.
Let's imagine for a moment that America is a film genre. What kind of film genre do you think we'd be? Do you think we'd be in a romantic comedy like You've Got Mail or Shakes—Sleepless in Seattle? Somebody said, Fyre Fest, that is. That's good. That's real good. Maybe it's a Shakespearean drama like Othello or, you know, Leonardo and Romeo and Juliet. Or maybe it's the Left Behind series. I think that's kind of a horror film, or maybe it's one of those obscene Quentin Tarantino films like Django or Pulp Fiction. I don't know. I think if you were to ask Black and Brown people, though, I think our experience of America looks a lot more like Get Out. And if we're honest, this American life resembles this type of horror and tragedy in the same way that Martin Luther King knew that it resembled this type of horror and tragedy. Mind you, two weeks before he passes, what is he talking about? “I've seen the mountaintop. But guess what? I'm not going to get there.” I also believe Mac Miller, the rapper, knew this when he filmed that music video inside the coffin several months before he died of an accidental drug overdose. Spoiler alert, even the greatest wizard of all time, Harry Potter, was led like a pig to the slaughter, and the few closest to him forewarned that he had been prepared to die.
If we pay attention, I believe that there will always be signposts of a coming tragedy. And those who have eyes and ears to see and hear will always know what's coming. Now, can we have a family moment just real quick? We're all family here, right? White Christians, if you were to listen to Black Christians in 2016, we might not be in this mess right now. Because we are the people in the horror film. “Don't go in that house. That house is gonna get you. There's the evil orange Cheeto that's in the house that's coming for you. Nope, nope. Not going over there.” That little girl, “Nope. Just not going in.”
To me, one of the most underrated horror stories, including a dramatic premonition, actually comes out of the Bible. It's the story of Mary of Bethany. I want to read for a second. We read our Bibles here, right? Good. People were quick on that. Yeah. Okay, that was Sarah, that's why. John 12: “Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here, a dinner was given in Jesus's honor. Martha served, of course, because Martha is always serving something. Martha served while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table. Then Mary walks in. She took a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume. She poured it on Jesus's feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who would later betray him, objected. Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It's worth a year's wages.” He didn't say this because he cared about the poor, of course. He was a thief. “Leave her alone,” Jesus said. “It was intended that she would save this perfume for the day of my burial.”
A lot of us have heard this story preached many times, but, and I come from a charismatic background, so it's always about, you know, this adoration and worship thing and her just simple love and devotion for him. But I feel like we kind of miss this, this point that's going on here, this real ominous premonition that's happening in this text.
So I’d love to take a different approach. Let's stop and think about Mary of Bethany for a moment. Mary entered a space full of men, a space that demanded that she know her place. And instead of knowing her place, she violently weeps over a living body. She pours oil and washed his feet with her hair, snot, and tears. Imagine the horror of that scene. I believe Mary, as a woman, marginalized by society and religion, knew the trouble Jesus had caused by raising her brother Lazarus from the dead. Mary knew all too well the religious power structure that had just been interrupted. Just take a moment and imagine her gathering the oil and heading to the party. Mary, a woman, knows in her body what happens when you challenge the patriarchy. Mary knows what happens when you challenge the hierarchy, when you challenge the social norms. She knows that you can pay for it, not just with your reputation but with your life. Mary's disruptive act was a powerful act of premonition, a foreshadowing, and the Bible says she erected a public memorial over a body that had been prepared to die. Her act was a public mourning of a tragedy yet to come. I'm going to say that again. Her public mourning was an act of a tragedy yet to come. Mary became a physical signpost of a coming murder. Perhaps this is why Jesus said every time the gospel is preached, the story will be told.
You know, it's, there's this funny thing in our culture where we love to fantasize history, and we love to say, “Well, if I was there, I would have done this. If I lived in slavery, I would, I would have got free. If I lived in the Civil Rights Movement, I would have marched with Dr. King.” Right? “If I lived in the days of Jesus, I wouldn't have crucified him. Why did they betray him? I don't get it.” Right? We love to do those things. And yet the words of Jesus in Matthew 25 ring so true, “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build tombs of the prophets and you adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would have not been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ Therefore, you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.”
So let's remember where we are for a moment. Jesus was the honored guest at a party. The people there believed him to be a prophet, yet they were disturbed by the way in which Mary did her public act, to the point that they tried to ignore the dynamics at work in the room.
Have any of you ever been in a situation where folks refuse to see the dynamics at play? The underlying script that's happening? Maybe it's inside of a family structure, a church structure, a corporate structure. Have you ever called out racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia? Only to be told, “No, you're the problem. You're being too sensitive. How dare you say something?” Judas and some at that party came up with some really sound reasons as to why the scene was inappropriate. Yet no one could reckon with the horror story they were in. But denial of reality will do that. And under pressure, these same people would later betray him.
So what's the lesson here? Bring healing, equity, and justice to a violent system, and they will come for you. They will try and kill you. I wonder if we intuitively know this. Maybe that's why we stay silent and become the ones at the party in close proximity to Jesus and the miracles and the exciting movement. I’m at Evolving Faith; I’m buying the books. We love to be close to what's happening. But somehow we often stay a bit blind, so we don't have to be accountable to what's going on around us.
Here's a brutal truth. Power, religious or political, does not reward you for doing the right thing. Mary didn’t do the right thing in that moment. Power rewards you for reinforcing its hierarchy, its structure, its way of thinking, its priorities. If you attempt to dismantle power in order to redistribute it, you are being prepared to die.
But there's good news. Unlike those in horror films, the gospel shows us that we know what to expect when we disrupt power because we have been anointed to die. It's time we opened our eyes. American exceptionalism has blinded us to the complicity of our collective violence against marginalized communities and bodies. Political murder, violence by public policy.
Will you choose to see, like Mary, to weep with those who weep? Or will you choose to be like Mary and anoint the liberators for burial? Or better yet, will you be like Jesus and become a liberator of people, anointed to die? Or maybe some of us will play the role of disciples and be appalled at the expressions of justice that we clearly don't quite understand. They, can’t they kneel better? Can't they protest the right way? Why are they always so angry? Why? Aren't they being victims? They shouldn't be victims.
So what are the next steps? What do you do? I think it's time that people immerse themselves in the experiences and the histories of marginalized individuals and communities. White supremacy is not just an attitude that has been passed down through the generations. It is an inaccurate retelling of history. As James Baldwin loved to say, “The Black narrative and the White narrative in this country have yet to have genuine confrontation.” The history of the modern world lays on an axis of power enforced by violence. The founding of our American civilization is rooted in genocide. These are not noble beginnings, y'all. But the fallout is ours nonetheless, and they deserve to be reckoned with.
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes “To be Black in America was to be plundered.” I’ll say that again. “To be Black in America was to be plundered,” and “to be White is to benefit from, and at times directly execute, the plunder. No national conversation, no invocations to love, no moral appeals, no pleas for ‘sensitivity,’ no lamenting of ‘race relations’ can make this right. Racism was banditry, pure and simple. And the banditry was not incidental to America but essential to it.”
White people. It is time that you learn the cultural narratives of those who are not like you in order to be whole. White people. You must learn the Black and Indigenous narratives of this country if you are to be perfected in love.
America is living in a collective horror film right now, y'all. A collective horror film, one that none of us can seem to get out of. Which means we must name the beast that's living among us. We must unmask its script and begin the work of rebuilding a new world. Kids are being separated from their families and put into cages. Many are sick and dying because of the lack of access to healthy food and affordable health care. Could it be that God is calling all of us, whether you're Christian or not, to leverage our privilege and power for the sake of those on the margins of society?
It's time we once and for all kill the beast. We must dismantle systems of oppression that exploit God's image so we may reorder our society from the ground up. This requires us to have radical compassion on the foreigner, the refugee, and the stranger to be diametrically opposed, not just socially, not just relationally, but also politically. We must be opposed to the dehumanizing rhetoric and actions that are consuming our current political moment. Yeah. We must defend the marginalized and confront one of the greatest threats to our modern civilization: White victimhood and White supremacy. It is time that we acknowledge the horrors of the American experience. And the question is, if we do, are we prepared to die? Thank you.
<<<<TRANSITIONAL MUSIC>>>
Part 3: Conversation
SARAH: If you’ve been listening to and loving this podcast, join us for Evolving Faith 2022, the live virtual conference. It’s on October 14 and 15.
So many of us are engaging in good, hard, holy work right now to cultivate love and reimagine and build a faith that works not only for us but for the whole world, and to find our way in the wilderness together. We need to be reminded of what matters, who is alongside of us. We need connection, inspiration, good conversations, and laughter, and we need some hope too. We are gathering not in spite of these turbulent times but because of them. So please join us.
We have set a big, rowdy table in the middle of the wilderness, and together, we will have a feast. We’re saving a spot for you. Go to evolvingfaith.com and register today. You won’t want to miss this moment with this community. It's pretty special. Okay, now back to the show.
JEFF: So, Sarah, let's start from the beginning. I really thought of you when William asked the audience, “Who here loves horror films?” Because I know you adore them with your whole heart.
SARAH: The only person who hates and avoids horror films as much as I do is actually you. So we're uniquely unqualified to weigh in on that portion of the talk. I have never liked horror movies. This will surprise exactly no people. But I remember watching, I think it was Gremlins at a sleepover when I was a kid and literally having to call my mum to come and pick me up. I was just, I was not the kid who was built for that. It was the ’80s. I already had like enough nightmares from milk—the kids on the milk carton boxes. It was just, it was a wild time. So my question to you is if you actually had any exposure to horror movies as a kid, or is that just an instinct that you have to know to avoid them?
JEFF: Look, I live with enough fear in my life as it is. And my grandmother was very much against films in general because she believed them to be of the devil. So we're not even talking about horror movies. It's just any movies. She liked Mister Rogers and Animal Kingdom and Lawrence Welk, and that was about it. But not movies, never movies. And I actually have a ton of respect for folks who enjoy horror films because I am not there and will probably never be there. Reality is horrifying enough for me. And perhaps that is one of the things I can relate to in the way that William opens this talk, because he's asking folks to examine a captivating part of American popular culture, and he's inviting them, us, to be critical about what exactly is going on in this genre and urging us to question “What does this say about us?”
SARAH: Yeah. Well, as you said, I mean, reality is horrifying enough for us. I think I might need that phrase painted in a watercolor for my wall.
JEFF: How about a nice embroidered cushion?
SARAH: For our naps! We're definitely the exception there, right? As the box office alone indicates, and even the response in the room indicated, people do find them very cathartic. It's almost like true crime in a way. There are these genres for working out these fears for folks, and yet, as William said, those fears are often very specific to who the movie is being made for or who it's being made by, which is, I think, part of what makes Jordan Peele so powerful. I had to laugh when William was talking about the little girl who said “Nope” to that horror house, because now Jordan Peele actually has like a whole movie out right now called Nope. Not that either one of us will ever see it.
JEFF: Nope. I love the mini sermon character study on Mary that William talks in, tucks into the middle of this talk. I really appreciate the way he takes a fresh look at what exactly she was doing and at the transgressive and even prophetic nature of her actions.
SARAH: I really love that story. It is such a weighty portion of Scripture where you know that there's so much more that is happening off the page as well. And so that's a connection that I never would have made, though. And so I really love that lens for understanding the gravity and the importance of the moment. Because he's right, you have to be prepared to lose everything if you do that kind of thing.
JEFF: Another way to understand it, though, is that Mary also had every sense of how much could be gained, how much her act, whether you want to call it prophecy or adoration or mourning or transgression, how much that act was worth. Sorry, Fozzie is like, groaning in the background, so he's really feeling the gravity of William's talk. Clearly, Mary’s cost-benefit analysis ended up on the side of so much more to be gained, which you can understand if you're reading this passage through a hermeneutic of liberation, and it's really chastening to reflect on how William was speaking these words in 2019 when there was a different administration in the White House. And here we are in 2022. And sure, there's a different president, but none of the things that William names have improved all that much, if at all.
SARAH: So I wanted to ask you about that, actually, because as you said, this was a few years ago, and now we're further into that, you know, quote unquote “horror film.” He talked about this from a uniquely American perspective, which, you know, that's the majority of our audience. So that makes sense. And yes, that isn't even unique to America, obviously. Right. Like, you know, we've talked before about Canada also has a history of genocide and plunder, as do many other nations. But there is something about his words that, “This isn't incidental to America but essential to” her. And I was wondering what your thoughts are on that.
JEFF: So many people from Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama have said some version of the line that slavery was the United States’ original sin. And I'm not sure that's correct, because it might actually obscure maybe a more core thing, because the ability, the desire, the permission to enslave another person is symptomatic of something else. I wonder whether the erasure of the imago Dei, the image of God inscribed on every beloved child of God as manifested in racism, and perhaps more specifically, White supremacy, if that's the core sin. White supremacy that contentedly disregarded the agency and the traditions and the presence of Native Americans as beside the point. White supremacy that was willing to traffic humans, White supremacy that so easily saw lands and peoples as something to be owned and bought and sold without regard for their inherent value. And that's deeply entangled with bad theology. We have mentioned Willie James Jennings’ The Christian Imagination on the podcast before, but I think it's worth mentioning again because Jennings unpacks far more learnedly than I'll ever be able to, the costs and the consequences of that core sin and all the sins that have flowed out of it. And every single one of us, whether we're Black or White or multiracial or Asian or Latino or Indigenous, every single one of us now pays some of the price, though obviously in different ways, depending on our bodies and on our stories.
SARAH: Mmhmm. You know, one thing that William said that I think is a very practical invitation for White folks is the importance of learning other narratives, that we need to be good listeners to narratives other than our own or the dominant one in order to be perfected in love. And I love that phrase. If you're to be perfected in love, it's one of my favorite parts in the Bible. It's over in 1 John 4. And I love that language because it's a practice, or a process of love. It also strikes me as very cooperative. And so that changes the invitation because it's not just learning for the sake of like, the woke Olympics, but out of a heart for love. And we learn and listen as an act of love. It's co-creation with the Spirit. As we learn and listen, we are made more loving by the Spirit if we approach it that way.
JEFF: Is there any part of the Bible that's not in your favor other than Job? I feel like we've pretty much covered it all.
SARAH: That's another episode.
JEFF: So I guess my question, though, is this, right? What comes after or even alongside the learning and the listening? Because it can be frustrating sometimes to see folks devouring the latest book about the cost of racism. And then what you get is essentially a chorus of crickets, unless you're talking about sad tweets and Facebook posts. And sometimes I just want to ask folks and sometimes I have to ask myself whether love is a more—whether love is more than a feeling.
SARAH: That's maybe been an unexpected theme to emerge this season. We've talked a few times about how we each feel and also experience love, how we feel loved and express love even. And yeah, it's, it's more than words and feelings, even though those are so important. And so part of how William begins to wrap up this talk is with the phrase “Be prepared to die,” which is perhaps what comes after the learning and the listening and the feelings. But that's something that some of us have heard in various churches for various reasons, with differing degrees of trauma attached to it. You know, William and I both come from charismatic spaces. And so that kind of apocalyptic language, like that's our mother tongue, you know, for better or worse sometimes. And so sometimes it's hard to revisit that language or that understanding after we've deconstructed it. And other times, it does still make a hell of a lot of sense. And he's right. Power doesn't reward you for doing the right thing. If we're going to run up against that power, political or religious, we have to be prepared for the consequences. And I think we see that in a lot of churches or denominations or political movements right now. There is a cost and it's high. It's a very steep cost for attempting to disrupt the power play. Many of us have paid those costs at varying degrees. We've paid a steep price. But his good news is that we were anointed to die, which might not sound like good news. So what does that feel like to you in that moment or perhaps now, even now that a few years have passed? I think especially in light of what you just said about Mary and what she had to gain in that encounter with Jesus. Do you think there's something to be gained as well as lost here?
JEFF: I honestly don't remember how I felt in that moment, but this is where my convictions about the resurrection really matter, I guess, to me right now. I think about this on two levels. I know that many of us have struggled with the biblical concept of dying to yourself, of denying yourself, because that's been misinterpreted and misused. What if, as William suggests, being prepared to die to oneself means to surrender the ego for the sake of communal good? What if it's, in fact, a way of putting things into proper perspective, a way of understanding our interdependence over and above our independence, and maybe a way of loving God and one's neighbor. And then there's the level of actual death. And this is no less challenging because so many of us fear death. I take comfort in a Jesus who was able to bring his friend Lazarus back from the dead. And I draw strength from a Jesus who rose from the dead and conquered the grave or whatever phrasing you want to use. So sure, maybe we’re anointed to die, but that's not the end of the story. If it were the end of the story, that would really suck. It wouldn't be good news. And I, I honestly don't know what the end of the story is exactly. We use words like resurrection and redemption and restoration. And sometimes the images look pretty fuzzy to us. They're certainly low-res to me because we don't know. But somehow, against all odds, I find myself believing God when God makes claims that there will be resurrection and redemption and restoration. And against all odds, I trust. Or maybe it's more fair to say that I want to trust that, as Julian of Norwich said, all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
[ Instrumental Music: It Is Well With My Soul by SueAnn Shiah ]
JEFF: You can find all of the links mentioned on today’s show as well as information about William Matthews and his work in the world as well as a full transcript of this episode, in our show notes at evolvingfaith.com/podcast. Please sign up for my newsletter at jeffchu.substack.com and find my pictures of tomatoes and Fozzie on Instagram at @byjeffchu.
SARAH: You can also find me mostly over at my newsletter, Field Notes, which you can find at sarahbessey.com. But I do still show up on social media now and then as @SarahBessey in all the places. The Evolving Faith Podcast is produced by us, Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu, along with our wondrous colleague, SueAnn Shiah, who also wrote and recorded our music. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Evolving Faith Podcast. And until next time, remember that you are loved.
[ Instrumental music: It Is Well With My Soul by SueAnn Shiah ]
JEFF: Throughout our time together at Evolving Faith, there is one thing we’ve heard over and over from you: We need community. Being in the wilderness can be really lonely. You can feel too isolated—even those of us who are profoundly shy introverts. We all need companions for the journey. And we need folks to accompany us and be alongside us.
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It is free to join the Evolving Faith community. Our desire is that you might find some fellow travelers in this oasis with whom you can feel a renewed sense of belonging and maybe even some hope. So come, explore, and share. All you have to do is go to community.evolvingfaith.com and sign up. We can’t wait to greet you. See you there.
