Following the attack on the Capitol one week ago today, we asked our contributing authors to share a brief reflection or excerpt from what they were planning to say to their congregations in sermons, pastoral letters, and prayers.
As the calendar turns and an extraordinary 2020 concludes, advertisers for gyms and weight loss programs bombard us with some version of, “A New Year, a new you!” The fitness industry’s perennial pursuit of profit based on our short-lived desires for self-improvement is worryingly ingrained into the lifecycle of the American psyche. However, the annual call to honest self-examination is an important challenge that resonates. Nobody needs honest reflection and a “New Year, new you” campaign more than the American church after its response to 2020.
I am uninterested in living into the false image of the flawless pastor. I’d always rather be the authentic pastor, the one who has been to the valley and sits with another individual who is traversing those shadowy passages themselves.
We no more create truth and justice than we create ourselves. That is God’s work. We do not measure and define truth and justice. Rather, they measure and define us.
If humility means acknowledging when we are wrong, then humility also encompasses politicians accepting the results of elections, even when they cannot believe, or would rather not concede, the choices voters have made.
Ruth Everhart courageously shares her experiences and others in “The #MeToo Reckoning: Facing the Church’s Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct.” Everhart weaves in her story, the stories of other victims, and stories from Scripture of abuse and assault. She lifts up women’s and children’s voices who have often been silenced, concluding each chapter with questions of what the text asks us, and what her own hope is for the church.