Liberation Walking Alongside Our Neighbors

Editor's Note: The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel is away this month on his vacation. While he is away our Associate Rector, the Rev. Anne Thatcher, will be writing for the Rector's Note.

“Is it about the liberation of the receiver or the redemption of the giver?” Robert Egger

Many of you have heard the announcements about our One Book, One St. Martin’s selection, Toxic Charity by Robert D. Lupton. We have copies available in the foyer of the Parish House and we had a wonderful turnout for our first discussion in late June. We have another conversation scheduled for Wednesday, August 14^th after SUPPER. All are invited: those who attended the last one, those who have not come to one yet, those who have read the book (part or all), and those who are curious to learn more.

The Monday after Bluegrass Mass, both Jarrett and I received an email from a Sunday visitor who heard my announcement about Toxic Charity. He said he was curious so he went home, ordered an e-copy, and read it right away. He shared that he found the book to be transformational in his understanding of ministry, and that as a member of the Diocesan Council (Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania leadership), he was recommending that the entire council read the book. What a ringing endorsement! I was delighted that he found the book as transformative as I did. 

I discovered this book a few years ago in Washington D.C. when I attended a Faith in Action series with the Consortium for Endowed Episcopal Parishes (CEEP). Our group visited D.C. Central Kitchen (founded by Robert Egger) where I saw a community engagement ministry that truly walks alongside to empower and liberate our neighbors in the communities in which we are situated. They do extraordinary ministry as a nonprofit that hires those who are homeless or released from prison, and trains them in job skills, character building, and community. I encourage you to visit their website and learn more. When I asked about resources to guide me in this different approach to ministry, Toxic Charity was recommended.

Both the trip and the book moved me to deeply reflect on how we approach ministry when we are working with different communities and individuals. Robert Egger asks, “Is it about the redemption of the giver or the liberation of the receiver?” Apparently, it was Robert’s participation on a midnight sandwich run to the homeless with a church in Washington D.C. which was the catalyst for his question to emerge. He noticed that the regular parishioners who participated in this ministry knew the names of the homeless to whom they were giving sandwiches. When he mentioned this observation to one of the volunteers, they said, “Why yes we do,” very proudly. They were proud of the relationship that they had built with the homeless community through this food ministry. But was giving out free sandwiches a liberating act to the homeless? This reflection let Robert (an experienced restaurateur) to found D.C. Central Kitchen as a place to liberate the receiver through employment, job skills training, and a caring community.

This summer Refugee Resettlement Ministry (RRM) is in the process of reflecting on our call to serve immigrants and refugees. What have we learned? Where is God calling us next? And how do we take a new approach to our ministry based on Robert Egger’s question and the learning examples from Toxic Charity? RRM has invited St. Martin’s to read this book and reflect with us on how these lessons apply to our daily lives: whether in church ministry, nonprofit involvement, or volunteer opportunities. Is this all about my resume, my desire to “feel good”, or about “doing good”? Are our acts of ministry purely for our own self-aggrandizement? Or are they truly selfless, seeking to empower and liberate our neighbors? Shining a light on our own intentions illuminates motivations that we don’t always want to admit are there within ourselves. But this illumination is what gives us the gift of self-awareness. Through this journey we can discover how to step out of ourselves and into the shoes of another. Jesus said to God, “Not my will but your will be done”. It is very difficult to remove our own agendas and desires for others and not only let, but actually askGod to step in and lead the way. In handing over the reins, we can discover discomfort at letting go but also relief in following a God who will surprise us and delight us while transforming us. We will learn how to walk alongside our neighbors and liberate them so that we may all be free from injustice and oppression.

Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. (Ephesians 3:20)

Blessings,
The Rev. Anne Thatcher

Associate Rector 

From Our Interim Rector: Emancipation Day

Today we are celebrating Emancipation Day with our Caribbean brothers and sisters. All the Caribbean islands have a festival to celebrate the end of slavery in their land, although the dates vary. The islands once under British control observe the anniversary around August 1, as it was on that date in 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 took effect. Islands under the control of other European powers abolished their slave trade according to their own schedule: the French Islands in 1826, which they celebrate at the end of May, the Danish ones in 1848, which they celebrate on July 3.

On St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a former Danish colony, I came across a most amazing church a few years ago. It wasn’t its architecture or its liturgy that blew me away, it was these words on the front of the bulletin:

The Cathedral Church of All Saints
St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
“The Virgin Islands Greatest Monument to Freedom.”
Built in 1848 by the people of St. Thomas in thanksgiving to God for freedom from slavery. Because of a severe drought in 1848, molasses was used to mix the mortar used between the stones.

Our family made jokes with one another about this being the “sweetest” Church we were ever likely to worship in. (Get it? Molasses in the walls?)

But then it struck me: molasses was one of the main reasons the people who built this Church were slaves to begin with. They were captured in West Africa and brought to the Virgin Islands to work the sugar plantations for the Danes, the French and the English. Their freedom had been taken from them for the sake of this sticky black liquid and the rum it could produce. They must have hated molasses.

I’d visited sugar plantations in the islands and been appalled at how horrible life was for the slaves who worked there. It was back-breaking work planting, cultivating and cutting the cane. It was crippling work, turning the mill stones by hand to crush the cane, when the wind refused to turn the windmill. It was hell-hot, dangerous work, tending the fires that boiled the crushed cane down to molasses. And the slaves were forced to produce this molasses with the lash on their backs and not much food in their stomachs. Their lives were a misery, all for the sake of molasses.

When the slaves had been set free in 1848, they couldn’t wait to erect a Church to give thanks to God for their freedom. There wasn’t enough water to mix the mortar, but that wasn’t going to deter them. They were going to go ahead with the project even if it meant using molasses. It was going to be something to tell their children: they had put the hated molasses in their monument to freedom, their thanksgiving to God.

Using the molasses that had been the symbol of their slavery to make a symbol of their freedom made sense to them, because they were Christians. They had grown up venerating the cross on which their Savior died a miserable death. They worshipped a God who had taken this instrument of torture and used it to bring his people freedom.

I guess that only makes sense to those of us who are Christians.

Blessings,Rev. Phyllis Taylor

Meditating on the Risen One and His Wounds

Before Easter, I spent every morning for two weeks meditating on the story of Lazarus. Since Easter, my meditation is on the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples in the locked room after his Resurrection.

In the Gospel of John (20:19-31) Jesus appears to the disciples who are huddled in a locked room for fear of the people of Jerusalem. Evidently, the city is still in an uproar after sending Jesus to be crucified and the disciples are afraid that they will share their master’s fate. Jesus enters the scene and says “Peace be with you” twice which underlines the terror of his followers. Then he shows them his wounds and breathes on them. 

Sharing this moment of Jesus breathing on his friends is fun in Children’s Chapel, because the kids immediately get the weirdness of the gesture. Yet this breathing is Jesus passing on his Spirit – the animating core of his life, his inner peace – to his followers. He is breathing them back into life. The locked room is the tomb their fear has created. The breath of Jesus is the ‘ruach,’ (in Hebrew “breath” or “spirit”) of God which moved over the chaos of creation and brought the world into being as told in the book of Genesis. Jesus is making them a new creation, a patch of new goodness in a sea of chaos, fear and violence.

Appearance of Christ to his Disciples by Anthony Van Dyck

Jesus also shows them his wounds. What an interesting detail. The one who is risen is the same one who was brutally executed. The signs of his death are not removed or healed by his new life. The wounds assure us that the life Jesus lived that led to his death is the life that God is vindicating through the resurrection. The way of life-giving sacrifice for the other is the risen life that God favors.

For me, meditating on these wounds is incredibly liberating. I can be incredibly punishing of myself. The hurtful and hateful things I think about myself on an hourly basis are as familiar as they are toxic. The same negativity – I hate to say – is something I too often inflict on the people and world I love. When I meditate on Jesus’ wounded hands and imagine the wound surrounded by and overcome by his risen body I can say, “Thank you Jesus for taking all of my negativity and toxicity into yourself. Thank you for absorbing and defeating it. Thank you for showing it to me, so I can grieve the pain I cause and learn to give life instead.”  

This is not masochistic thinking, but just the opposite. I am learning to recognize my hurtful fault in a spirit of hope and redemption, absorbed into a greater life that will lift me into a new creation.

I invite you to meditate on this story and to see how it speaks to your heart. Simply breathe in the breath of Christ and receive his peace. Breathe out your fear and all that keeps you locked away and stuck in an airless room. Follow the breath and see where it leads.

- The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel