Our Blog

You can listen to the reading and reflection by clicking here.

Romans 10:14-21

But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’ But not all have obeyed the good news;* for Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our message?’ So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.*
But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have; for
‘Their voice has gone out to all the earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.’
Again I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says,
‘I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation;
with a foolish nation I will make you angry.’
Then Isaiah is so bold as to say,
‘I have been found by those who did not seek me;
I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.’
But of Israel he says, ‘All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.’

I have gone back and forth with these verses for about a week now, feeling both overwhelmed with things to say and unsure of how to put them. I grew up very religious in a fundamentalist Christian church, but I really only think of my current spiritual development as starting a year and a half ago, when I started attending Holy Apostles with my family. It has been a process of both learning what I truly believe about God and Christ, as well as identifying and unlearning harmful ideas I carried with me from my earliest church experiences.

This process has also been very difficult to explain, both to myself and my friends. I cannot really enunciate why I wanted to come back to Christianity, and many of my friends who have traumatic memories of their own associated with Christianity have been perplexed and, sometimes, hurt. And I can’t help but think, when I find scriptures difficult to understand or infuriating, and when prayer isn’t doing anything, that things might be a lot easier if I just didn’t think about this stuff, like I did for so many years.

In the poet and theologian Christian Wiman’s memoir of faith, My Bright Abyss, he writes:

If God is a salve applied to unbearable psychic wounds, or a dream figure conjured out of memory and mortal terror, or an escape from a life that has become either too appalling or too banal to bear, then I have to admit: it is not working for me.

I laughed out loud reading this, because in the purely instrumental sense Christianity is not working for me. I am not necessarily happier, I am not more at peace. I feel as broken and anxious as I did two years ago, now I am just anxious about this.

With this in mind, I don’t know how to explain why I am a Christian, much less how to proclaim Christ, and in a world where mainstream white Christianity has hurt so many people - when the motivations behind a recent mass shooting have been characterized, offhand, as inspired by the murderer’s “Christian faith,” when Christianity in the public space is characterized by inequality and war and injustice, and when every year we must become more aware of the past atrocities that have used Christianity as justification - it feels impossible.

When I was a kid, I was told that everyone who did not belong to our incredibly tiny sect of Christianity was bound for an eternity of suffering. This horrified me beyond words. I couldn’t sleep at night; thinking about billions of people in pain forever while I would hypothetically be in heaven with my co-congregants, who I didn’t even like, made me feel sick, and it caused me to recoil from the people at my church who didn’t seem bothered by this prospect but actively enjoyed it. I don’t believe this anymore - I can’t - but if I can’t promise any benefit in this life or salvation in the next, what good news am I sharing?

But maybe, for me at least, that isn’t the point. Just existing in our society, I am constantly bombarded by messages about all of the different things I can do to make myself “better” - thinner, calmer, more effective - from standing desks to the pomodoro method psychedelic therapy. Maybe God is not a new meditation app for me to use to fix myself. Maybe being a Christian isn’t a magic wand but a calling, something I will struggle with every day but which will structure my life.

And maybe being honest about this - that I can be depressed and feel broken and be totally infuriated by the Bible and alienated in prayer - is a proclamation of Christ I can make. I can share the things that I love about my church community and the things I love about the Bible and even the things I struggle with in the Bible, with my friends within the church and outside of it. Maybe that can be beautiful news in and of itself.

You can listen to the reading and reflection by clicking here.

Psalm 102.1-2, 15-21

Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come before you;
hide not your face from me in the day of my trouble.

Incline your ear to me;
when I call, make haste to answer me,

For the Lord will build up Zion,
and his glory will appear.

He will look with favor on the prayer of the homeless;
he will not despise their plea.

Let this be written for a future generation,
so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord.

For the Lord looked down from his holy place on high;
from the heavens he beheld the earth;

That he might hear the groan of the captive
and set free those condemned to die;

That they may declare in Zion the Name of the Lord,
and his praise in Jerusalem;

My initial reading of this psalm brings to mind how humans cope with suffering.  We possess a natural inclination to reveal our pain to others and make it known to them that we’re not doing okay.  It feels good to do this. Pouring your heart out to another person helps us heal.  As lonely and isolated as we may feel at times (especially in the present moment!), it helps to be reminded that we are not alone and that our friends and family are there to help us get by.  
 
This act of catharsis is so much more profound when we open up ourselves to God.  The psalm reminds us that God not only listens, but provides comfort to those who need it and some order to the world around us. Of course, his love and mercy applies to everyone, especially the neediest cases.  He “looks with favor on the prayer of the homeless” and hears “the groan of the captive.” 
 
It’s been a little over a week since my wife Mandy gave birth to our beautiful baby girl, Juniper Lee Garklavs. Juni’s a perfect little person with big bright eyes that are full of wisdom and wonder.  The past week has been a whirlwind of emotions for the three of us!  Our lifestyle has become exhausting and monotonous, but full of joy!  
 
So it is with the weary mind of a new parent that I write this reflection. In this respect I was particularly moved by the verse “Let this be written for a future generation, so that a people yet unborn may praise the lord.” I wonder what kind of relationship Juni will have with God and how she will handle hardships.  Of course, we want her to have a happy life that’s free of pain, but ultimately she will suffer as we all do. 
 
Juniper’s name makes a cameo in the Bible that is fitting to the message of this psalm.  In the first book of Kings we see the Prophet Elijah in a state of duress.  He’s a loyal servant to God and for that reason he’s at odds with local authorities who follow false prophets. At one point he flees to the desert to escape the wrath of King Ahab and finds himself at the end of his rope:  
 
“But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers. And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat.” (1 Kings 19:4-5)
 
When Elijah was at his lowest point it was a lowly juniper tree that brought him refuge. This unassuming place is where God provided him sustenance and the fortitude to carry on. What a hopeful and lasting image! Our daughter Juniper will grow and inevitably endure some suffering in her life.  But she’ll have her family and friends to support her through those troubles and a loving God to watch over us all.  

You can listen to the reading and reflection by clicking here.

A reading from the Gospel of John 8.1-11

While Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

This passage is one of the first I remember hearing in church as a young child, sitting in a pew and it made a deep and fearful impression on me as imagined the angry mob ready to stone the lone woman. The crowd is raging and out of control, goading Jesus to order the woman’s death, as mandated by the Law of Moses. Deep in concentration as he writes on the ground, Teacher Jesus is pulled away from his mission by the rants of the crowd and their calls for him to address their taunts and cries for vengeance. Jesus knows what they’re doing and skillfully bases his response, not on the letter of the law, but rather on the second great commandment-- to love others as we love ourselves. He disperses the crowd by challenging them to throw stones at the woman only if they themselves are sinless. And, of course, they’re not. When they disband, he tells the woman to sin no more but wastes no time in returning to his mission to teach and resumes writing on the ground.

In our world we are all too familiar with lynch mobs, out-of- control crowds claiming righteous causes and easy access to public shaming. We witness the piling on of accusations, the perpetrating of scandals both real and imagined and myriad attempts to rile up the crowd around hateful and divisive causes. Our public square is now the whole world, with social media making the destruction of peoples’ lives easy and clickable. Political motives and financial gains most often motivate people to grandstand, condemn and co-opt causes that are often self-serving and destructive to both the planet and the people most in need of good intentions. Like Jesus, we are called to turn away from all these facile judgments and unholy distractions and get back to our essential work of loving God and taking care of our neighbors.

Raised in a family for whom criticism and judgments were as natural as Friday night fish suppers, I’ve worked hard for many years to leave those habits behind. Instead, I have been taught by my children, my friends, my work and the books that I cherish to show me what kindness means, in imagining others’ lives and re-imagining my own. John’s words, “Whoever’s sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, whoever’s sins you retain, they have been retained” are inscribed on my heart and in my mind, causing me to rethink the meaning of forgiveness in living a life filled with grace. Those words made it possible for me to strengthen my ability to make a life with less judgment and more charity. And to get back to the essential work this lent in following Jesus in paths of prayer, love and caring for our neighbors.