MESSY INHERITANCE
Rev. Emily Meyer reflects on divisiveness inherent in hierarchical systems and inheritance - the one we’ve received, and the one we’ll pass on to future generations.
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Hymn suggestions:
O Christ, What Can It Mean for Us, ELW #431
Touch the Earth Lightly, ELW #739
Ezekiel offers a somewhat nuanced image of the Divine Sovereign character - a gracious shepherd who cares tenderly and lavishly for ‘my sheep’; a shepherd whose provision ensures that pastures will be green and lush, water will be cool and plentiful, and safety will be offered and accessible: ‘I will feed them with good pasture…’, ‘I will make them lie down…’, ‘I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed and I will strengthen the weak…’ Under the compassionate care of this royal shepherd, bullying, arrogance, greed, covetousness, and hoarding will not be tolerated. Growing fat off the suffering and deprivation of others will not be tolerated - indeed it will be punished with expulsion from the flock.
For a scattered and oppressed people, these are words of hope and comfort.
For a nation/people who are already comfortable, the warning against greed and bullying tends to fall on deaf ears.
Which problematizes reading Psalm 95. When read from the margins, it is a song of hope, of praise, of joy that the Divine Ruler is ‘our’ Divine Ruler; the one who created the cosmos and therefore is in control of the cosmos, and therefore is the greatest, most wonderful, most awesome God in the universe - this is ‘our’ God. Read from the margins, this is empowering, encouraging, inspiring.
Psalm 93 is the first in a series of psalms (93, 95-99) written to glorify God as King; likely all for the same high holy day (Oxford Annotated suggests the Feast of Booths) - a key time for the now-established Kingdom of Israel/Kingdom of David, to enjoy the lush and abundant provision of their Sovereign King, whose reign has indeed proven to be beneficial.
However, once read from a place of privilege, this collection of psalms - and all texts glorifying God’s sovereignty - create and lend support to notions of personal and/or national supremacy: our God is bigger, better, stronger, ‘badder’, than any other God. When sovereignty language and imagery proliferate and become exclusionary to other images, they create and lend support to hierarchical systems - invariably controlled by those who ‘look’ or act most like the Divine Sovereign, i.e., male, physically powerful, and/or weaponized to become physically powerful - and in most current global cultures, ‘white’ - or at least lighter skinned than ‘others’.
Unfortunately, our efforts to glorify God - and our limited creativity at doing so outside of deifying human traits associated with maleness, physical might, and racialized notions of superiority - can become weaponized theology that subjugates, colonizes, and oppresses ‘others’.
These texts become problematic when we forget that we are the sheep and God the Shepherd; we are subjects of the Divine Sovereign. There is something in us that rebels at that idea of being ‘subject’ (an argument to add to the list of reasons we can desist from using ‘king’ language for God, at all).
Our rebellion is too often full-blown as we sacrifice Christ - again and again - in our efforts to take over the throne.
Both Ezekiel and Jesus’ parables compound this problematization by using metaphors of duality and divisiveness: there is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ - whether sheep/sheep or sheep/goats - meaning ‘us’/’them’ and ‘me’/’other’ becomes more and more reified. When we can point to ourselves as the good who will inherit the ‘kingdom’, it just means we’re free to subjugate (and who likes to be a subject, again?) the ‘goats’.
Dualistic thinking hurts the ‘scapegoated’ - whether human or other-than-human - a lot.
Duality usually means some will inherit generational blessing (of a material kind) and others will inherit a mess.
Within a context of sanctimonious assumptions of sovereignty and dualistic hierarchy, ‘benevolent’, ‘shepherding’ congregations ripped Indigenous children - those ‘poor, straying sheep’ - away from their families, placed them in boarding schools, and trained them for/forced them into manual and menial labor, all with the premise that ‘we’ were providing ‘them’ with a better future, a better life, a more lush pasture in which to graze and rest.[1]
Yet the industrial complex social structures and economic systems into which we forced Indigenous children turn out to be destructive of our shared inheritance.
We created an enormous, terrifying mess of destruction.
In a bitter irony (and biblical justice sort of way) our colonizing ancestors: A) degraded Indigenous cultures and ways of life specifically to steal the lands on which they thrived; B) ignored, rejected, and demeaned Indigenous cultures until many have been nearly lost; and C) thereby destroyed the very ways of life that are most sustainable and harmonious in relation to human community and the environments in which we live.
Colonizers - weaponizing texts like Ezekiel 34 and Psalm 95 - set us on a path to destroy the ‘glorious inheritance’ God means for us all to share.
We created a mess.
The key lesson we missed in our desire to be ‘the king’ - shared by Ezekiel and reiterated by Jesus - is that sovereignty lies in humility, in grace, in caring for and serving with others - especially the ‘least, lost, and lonely’ - not from a place of knowing better (supremacy/colonizer attitudes), but from a place of mutuality, respect, equity, and with-ness - what Jesus reveals as the ‘Christian attitude’ in today’s parable - an attitude that is antithetical to the white supremacy and colonizer models, systems and structures white-bodied people have inherited from our ancestors.
But as is true in all areas of justice: when we work to liberate the oppressed, we will also liberate the oppressor. Ezekiel’s and Jesus’ dualistic judgment - sheep vs. sheep or sheep vs. goats - means there are either people among us who will be cast into eternal condemnation - or there is something within all of us that needs to be winnowed away.
If our ‘glorious inheritance’ is the ‘power’ of the risen Christ, then there must be hope for those of us still suffering in these systems of oppression - both oppressed and oppressors.
In her interview with Church Anew’s Leadership Lab, Rev. Winnie Varghese asserted that people (especially religious leaders) have a deep, though naive, desire to be ‘good’, ‘that there [are] bad things out there or bad ideas out there, but we are good’. She refers to this duality of, ‘I’m good; bad is outside of me.’ as ‘an American identity’ that is ‘not true’, saying that identifying wrong-doing as a ‘mistake’, ‘where we wouldn't have meant genocide or slavery or class oppression’ does not mean that , ‘We're good and our hands are clean.’
‘I think it's part of the fallacy of the American identity that because we didn't mean it then it doesn't matter, it's not part of us. I think a true Christian identity is much more about standing in the truth of who we are, and what we inherit, and what our responsibilities are, and then seeking the guidance of the gospel message; seeking to be followers of Jesus as we find our way. That's always going to be messy. There's not a way to step out of that mess.’[2]
If we hope to secure an inheritance that includes lush pastures, clear water, and safe spaces to rest for our children and grandchildren[3], white-bodied people are called to wake from our stupor, set aside notions of our own sovereignty and supremacy, and dig into the work of caring and tending, serving and learning with - our neighbors, God’s children, the least, lost, and lonely of the world, and all of creation.
It’ll be messy - but we’re good at making messes!
It’ll be messy - but that’s where Jesus is found.
ALLELUIA
God is in the mess.
Originally written by Rev. Emily P.L. Meyer for Green Blades Rising Preacher’s Roundtable.
ministrylab@unitedseminary.edu
Find more from Emily Meyer at www.theministrylab.org
[1] Learn about the ELCA’s Indian Boarding Schools Truth-Seeking and Truth-Telling Initiative and find the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report here [https://www.elca.org/IndianBoardingSchools].
[2] Leadership Lab: Winnie Varghese: Church Anew, October 17, 2023; [https://churchanew.org/blog/posts/winnie-varghese-leadership-lab]; accessed 10.23.23
[3] See Rasmussen, Larry, The Planet You Inherit: Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty’s a Sure Thing; Broadleaf: Minneapolis, 2022.
Rev. Emily Meyer
The Ministry Lab
Minneapolis, MN
Rev. Emily Meyer (she/her), Executive Director of The Ministry Lab
As an ordained pastor in the ELCA, Emily interned in Seaside, OR, served as pastor, liturgical artist, and faith formation leader in suburban, ex-urban and rural Minnesota congregations, created and directed the multi-congregational affirmation of baptism program, Confirmation Reformation, and was pastor of Fullness of God Lutheran Church in the retreat center, Holden Village. She currently serves as executive director of The Ministry Lab (St Paul, MN), where she consults and curates and creates resources for progressive UCC, UMC, and PC(USA) congregations throughout Minnesota and the United Theological Seminary community. Rev. Meyer leads contemplative and creative retreats and small groups. Between pastoral gigs, she has enjoyed costume designing, choreographing, and performing. She lives in Minneapolis, MN, with spouse Brian, daughter Natasha, and two Wirehaired Pointing Griffons, Kiko and Zip.