God Does Not Leave Us ‘Earthlings’ Behind

DURING THESE LONG months of pandemic, I’ve returned to the 14th century writings of Julian of Norwich, a theologian who lived through seasons of plague as a child. She lost neighbors and loved ones. Later, as an adult, she almost died from a mysterious illness. After her recovery, Julian received visions from God that she wrote down in a book of theological reflections.

God “made everything that is made for love,” Julian writes, “and the same love sustains everything, and shall do so forever.” On page after page of Revelations of Divine Love, Julian dwells on God’s steadfast care for all of creation. She offers—to herself and to her readers—words of comfort and hopeful reassurances (“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”), while staring clear-eyed at a life of suffering (“all the pains and sufferings of all creatures, both in body and spirit”).

When I can’t sleep, I repeat Julian’s line in my mind. “All shall be well, and all shall be well.” Her words have accompanied me through night after night of pandemic anxieties and despair. Her repetitions (“all shall be well, and all shall be well”) remind me of Psalm 130: “My soul waits for God more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning” (verse 6). We wait and watch for the glow of morning, for redemption’s dawn when all shall be well.

June 6

Where Are You?

GOD TAKES AN evening walk in the garden to visit Eve and Adam, but they hid.

“Where are you?” God calls across the Eden landscape. “I heard the sound of you in the garden,” Adam responds, “and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10).

This is the first conversation between God and human beings in the Bible—the first divine-human dialogue, question and answer, call and response. This conversation will go on for generations, the beginning of God’s relationship with God’s people, with us. And the exchange starts with God
seeking out companions who conceal themselves from the presence of God because they are afraid. They think God will be furious. Adam and Eve have come to believe in a wrathful God, a disciplinarian who wants to punish them for eating the forbidden fruit.

In elementary school my dad would sit at his desk. When he thought his teachers weren’t looking, he’d slide his pencil from his right hand to his left so he could write with ease. They forced all students to use their right hands. Left-handedness, the teachers believed, was a sign of the devil’s work. But my dad couldn’t help himself, so he’d secretly shift the pencil in order to write naturally. Sooner or later, a ruler would crack down on the back of his hand, forcing him to release his pencil.

Is that how we think about God and sin? Do we believe that God makes up strange rules and commands us to obey them—and if we don’t, God will hit us with some form of punishment? We’re afraid of God because we misunderstand sin. It’s not about breaking an arbitrary rule. Sin is like eating something that isn’t good for us—a food that looks tasty but turns out to be toxic. In the garden, Adam and Eve eat what God warns them isn’t good food. And they get sick with shame and fear.

June 13

Our Migratory Life

MY PARENTS PLANTED a tree when I was born, then another when my sister was born. In those early years, she and I would gloat about our height in comparison to the young trees. Soon the trees overtook us. Their branches shot into the sky, leaving us earthlings behind. Several years ago, I drove by our old house. The two trees were much bigger than I had remembered them. They looked at home, glad for their decades of undisturbed growth. Unlike my migratory family, trees thrive when provided with a stationary lifestyle.

Despite what trees prefer, Ezekiel 17 describes a God who transplants. Sprigs from cedars migrate with God from hill to mountain, from one habitat to another. The calculus for these relocations defies the natural predisposition of trees. “I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree,” God declares. “I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish” (verse 24). The trees grow not for themselves, God reveals, but for the birds who come and go, nesting for a season then off again (verse 23).

Jesus picks up this imagery—although, in Mark 4, Jesus replaces the majestic cedars of Lebanon with a humdrum shrub (verse 32). The shift from the cedar in Ezekiel to the bush in Mark upends assumptions about the nature of God’s reign. Jesus promises the glorious presence of heaven in places that look more like a storefront church in a strip mall than the historic cathedral downtown.

The imagery in Ezekiel 17 and Mark 4 makes the same point: God’s trees and shrubs provide shade for “winged creatures of every kind” (Ezekiel 17:23) and branches “so that the birds of the air can make nests” (Mark 4:32). We are transplanted peoples, making homes for others wherever God replants us. God invites us to bear fruit wherever we land.

June 20

Christ Recrucified

SIX YEARS AGO this week, I saw a man walking slowly, as if part of a funeral procession, through our neighborhood. His hands stretched out from his sides, his body in the figure of a cross. I stepped out of my car and onto the sidewalk as he passed across the street. He gave me a nod, and I nodded back. I watched until he disappeared over the hill—a Black man, in the form of a cross, moving somberly through the streets. A few days earlier, on June 17, 2015, nine African Americans had been killed during a prayer meeting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina.

Every year on Good Friday devoted Christians around the world carry life-sized crosses on their backs, reminding themselves and others of Christ’s passion. The person in my neighborhood six years ago didn’t carry a cross; instead, his body was the cross. He was a walking reminder of the crucifixion of African Americans at Mother Emanuel, a living sign bearing witness to the legacy of white
supremacist terror in the United States. “The South is crucifying Christ again,” Countee Cullen wrote in 1922 about lynching—a poem he titled, “Christ Recrucified.”

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” the disciples ask Jesus (Mark 4:38). A storm engulfs their boat. Terror seizes their lives as the frenzied waters threaten to swallow them whole. They startle Jesus awake with a cry for survival, a supplication for another day: “Do you not care?”

The man who processed through our neighborhood as a cross presented his body as that kind of prayer—a plea, a demand for all of us to confront the legacies of white supremacy. A tidal wave of anti-Black violence flows through our society. We await the rebuke of Jesus, who has promised a reign of peace.

June 27

Jesus as Follower

JAIRUS COLLAPSES TO his knees and begs; he pleads with his whole body. Jairus is a religious leader, a person with authority in the community, someone with power. He’s probably more familiar with others asking him for favors than adopting the posture of a beggar himself. His daughter’s illness has brought him to this act of desperation. “My little daughter is at the point of death,” Jairus implores Jesus. “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live” (Mark 5:22-23). And Jesus follows him.

Over the past 20 years, I’ve seen ministry centers and publishing houses fund the “Christian leadership” industry. Their programs and books design an image of Jesus as a corporate leader, a quintessential manager, a visionary entrepreneur. Jairus’ story in Mark 5 calls into question depictions of Jesus as a model for CEOs or board presidents or executive pastors. Jesus, in this passage, is a follower, not a leader. He wanders as the Holy Spirit directs his work—and the leading of the Spirit takes the form of people such as Jairus who disrupt any pretense to a “purpose-driven” life.

Jesus welcomes disruptions because grand programs don’t rule his life. People redirect his attention. He drops everything to follow Jairus—and even that purpose gets disrupted along the way when he stops mid-course for a woman in need of healing. Jesus delays, he lingers, he searches for who touched his cloak. He postpones his mission to encounter her face to face, to be fully present to her (verses 25-34). Jesus reveals the presence of a God who is always available, never on a mission more important than our lives. We are never a distraction. Jesus displays the nature of God as a love that wanders through our world, awaiting our redirection.