Imagine my utter surprise when I get a news alert about something Ohio Governor Mike DeWine says, that I not only agree with, but am actively championing. Per our local paper, The Toledo Blade:

COLUMBUS — The state of Ohio should end the death penalty, Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday.

“I no longer believe that the death penalty is a deterrent,” Mr. DeWine said during a news conference at the Riffe Center. “The moral justification I had for voting for the death penalty simply no longer exists.”

The governor said the Ohio General Assembly should take action to end capital punishment.

“If the legislature does not want to make that decision, they can leave it up to a vote of the people of the state of Ohio,” Mr. DeWine said.

The fact that Gov. DeWine is calling for this is proof that no matter what, if you’re open, you can change. I appreciate that as for part of my life, I was a death penalty purist, if you did the crime worthy of it, your life is forfeit.

During the first year of marriage, my wife and I were reading Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s book, New Monasticism: What it Has to Say to Today’s Church. A former friend and colleague had recommended it to us as we were interested in the movement, and I will never forget how challenging the chapter on the death penalty was. Through many drives from Chicago to Toledo, we had argued and discussed it ultimately landing on, who are we to say when God is done with someone.

Today, the day that DeWine has come out against the death penalty should be one we remember. On June 16, 1944 George Stinney Jr. was executed via the electric chair in Columbia South Carolina. It was alleged that he murdered two white girls, and this poor 14 year old Black child, was tried, convicted, and sentenced in one day. Then, 82 years ago today, he became the youngest confirmed person to be murdered by the state in the 20th century America. George Stinney’s case was reopened, and in December of 2014 he was vacated of the crime due to new evidence.

Per the Equal Justice Initiative, an incredible organization founded by Bryan Stevenson, 202 people have been exonerated and released from death row since 1973, and 1,661 people have been executed in the U.S. since 1973. This means for every eight people executed, one person on death row has been exonerated. The odds are too high to not do something about it.

As the old adage goes, broken clocks are right twice a day, the same can be said of politicians, and today is one of them.

Ohioans, call your reps and ask them to support Governor DeWine’s push to abolish the death penalty in Ohio. You can find your State House Rep here, and your State Senator here.

Grace and peace.

By now I am sure you have heard about the mass shooting event that occured on Saturday during the Old West End Festival here in Toledo Ohio. This festival holds a special place in my heart, as my wife and I lived in the OWE when we were first married. The very first place we called "our" home together was an apartment on the corner of Parkwood and Acklin from 2011 to 2013. There are few places in the world where you get the understanding of what a neighborhood and neighbors are, and the first real time I experienced it was here.

While I was not present for this uncalled for violence, like most people in this wonderful city, I have friends who were. The church we belong to participated in the parade for the first time in years, and my son and I left hours before this occurred. For months members spent planning what was our Pride celebration kick off, and the two mile march was a great time. But the next day, Sunday, our annual Wear Orange/Gun Violence Awareness service which happens the first Sunday in June, was more somber than usual.

I pray and give thanks that no one was killed, the community and fest goers responded in the way we hope people will, I mourn the fact that it happened. At a vigil I went to with some friends on Sunday, I overheard someone say that they were surprised this hadn't happen here yet. And I am disgusted that I too found it surprising.

Ohio ranks 30 of 50 in gun laws, which is down from last year when we were ranked 29th, per Everytown's website. It was also no surprised that when I too posted about this on social media asking people to call their reps and demand gun legislation that there were people parroting the "it won't work" talking points. I'm tired of listening to them, or giving that point oxygen.

Gun legislation now,

gun legislation tomorrow,

and gun legislation forever.

I'm sure there will be more to come on this, but today my heart is weary. While as of writing, there is one suspect in police custody, an 18 year old kid that doesn't have a fully developed frontal cortex. My friend Alyx I think summed up my thoughts best in their post when they wrote, "You can't expect kids [or anybody] to care about a future we've robbed them of."

Flood your reps with calls, letters, emails, etc. demanding gun reform. If you happen to find yourself in Toledo this weekend, I highly encourage you to attend Unwanted Firearms Disposal event sponsored by the Multifaith Council of Northwest Ohio. If you’d like a sample letter to send to Governor DeWine to enact common sense gun safety executive orders, I’m happy to provide one.

We don’t have to live this way.

Grace and peace.

John’s account in 20:19-23 is the first meeting of the disciples, minus Thomas, after the resurrection all in one room. It is the first giving of the Spirit that recalls the creation story in God giving life to humanity. This experience with Jesus the Christ, is meant to give us that recall in the way we are seeing a new creation go forward. The church hasn’t started yet, but they are on the way. Even after Pentecost, the push is still to create a wholistic version ancient Judaism, which is why we see the disciples continue to worship and praise God in the Temple after these experiences.

The breaking apart of the Jerusalem community at the beginning of Acts, and the forcing out of these disciples turned apostles to the rest of the world to spread the Good News of Jesus is where the birth of the church really gets its legs. Right now, we are living in a time where this Good News is something to hold on to in a way most white Americans have not experienced. There have been some throughout our history that have stood by the oppressed and felt the power, might, and violence of the federal and local government.

Now is the time to hold on to this Good News and stand up for our neighbors. While we may not be seeing it on social media as often, these violent attacks by federal agents are still ongoing. On Tuesday, US New Jersey Senator Andy Kim was pepper sprayed by federal agents while protesting an ICE facility.The need to condemn these actions is there and should be ringing from the rooftop of any decent person.

In considering Jon 20:19-23, the celebration of Pentecost, and the prominence of white christian nationalism, I am also reminded that the work of the church is to call out these horrific occurrences in a way where we are forced to reconcile the dignity of those holding the pepper spray and giving out the orders.

Now, in a world with an incredible escalation of violence and technology in the aid of violence, from the gas ovens to biological warfare, perhaps we should be extra careful to find a language that is not violent. I’m not referring to what we speak about. I’m referring to how we speak… You feel more powerful when you lambast. That’s the fake prophet’s temptation.  – Krister Stendhal, Roots of Violence, pg 56,57

It is the work of the Episcopal Church to remind everyone that God loves them, no exceptions. It is our work in that midst to hold on and pray for the inherent dignity and image of God found in all her creation, even the ones actively arguing for our disbandment. But it is also our job to remind people the Good News of Jesus the Christ in that, all things can be reconciled to God. I often ascribe to the phrase of that was played off former First Lady Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high. I cannot remember where I heard it but the, “when they go low, I go to hell and drag them down with me” really spoke to the loud sense of injustice I have around what is happening. My impulse is to want to drag the oppressors down to hell with me and some privilege affords us the opportunity to say and do things like that with little consequence. But the truth is, Jesus is not found in that, and neither is the good news.

Like Stendhal says, it’s the fake prophet’s temptation because of how we feel when we lambast. It is how we talk about the violence and oppression that is occurring, not the violence and oppression itself. We can talk about the horrors of what the american empire is doing locally and aiding in abroad without giving into to the violent language used by empire. I know this sounds silly, but once you start substituting things like “I killed it in there” to “I did a great job in there” it is odd how much your language and frame of mind will stand out.

It is the work of the church to help breathe new life, to put new wine in new wine skins, to show up day in and out to show and say “God loves you, no exceptions, and therefore so do I, but there is a better way to live.”

It is our work to lock arm in arm and help show this new way of life that Jesus the Christ has set us on, and to sometimes, when necessary, use words to describe it.

Grace and peace friends

This is white christian nationalism in action.

This is the type of radical and blasphemous theology that leads to the horrific murders of our siblings.

Yesterday Mansour Kaziah, Nader Awad, and Amin Abdullah were murdered in a house of worship. Abdullah was acting as the security that made it possible for this tragedy to not have been worse. As of the time of writing, only one of the murderers has been identified, both were teenagers. Hate speech was written on their guns. Allegedly there is a suicide note that contains white supremacist ideology.

Last week in my post Ignorance Personified, I wrote about the kkk in America, and the fact that the leaders currently in power are still chasing those ideologies. For over a decade (and longer) the vilification of Islam, and the rampant Islamophobia that has been pushed by american leadership has been shameful.

While walking up to a podium at a press conference, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria was confronted by an incredible woman who yelled, “This is a fucking direct result of your leadership! Your leadership! Our Muslim brothers and sisters have been talking to you for how long? You had to fucking listen to them, Todd, just like you did with ICE... Zionist propaganda. And you’ll keep doing it as long as it lines your fcking pockets, won’t it? Show something! Worse approval rating than a fascist dictator with shit in his pants.“ She went on to say a few more things and you can watch the video here.

Christian national theology is killing our siblings.

I know I have been beating the drum of ripping out white supremacy wherever it takes root, and believe me I am tired of having to say it. But until all of us are free from this poisoned fruit, none of us will be free from it.

You can support the community and families of those affected by the nonsensical violence by donating here.

Grace and peace my friends.

There are some books that stick with you long after they are finished and one of my 25 of 2025 books, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad is one of them.

From the National Book Foundation:

On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.

As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.

The way that El Akkad writes, it is like you are walking with him through what is going on, and parts of this book still stick in my mind over a year after reading. El Akkad provides a harsh look at the reality of what has happened to Palestinians, and everyone needs to read this. The title of this post, "Not Soon Enough" comes from my personal view of not understanding the long history of apartheid, and other horrors Palestinians have endured.

Something I want to be very clear about is, the country of Israel that has been around since 1948, Judaism, and the ancient Israel of the Christian and Jewish Bibles, are not the same thing. I have spent most of my professional life in ministry working to weed out the anti semitic remarks, theology, and general view that Christians I cross paths with have unknowingly adopted. This is true in my writing, and academic pursuits as well.

I state this because what is happening in Gaza, and Palestine in general is atrocious, and the fact that my tax dollars are helping fund this genocide makes my stomach turn. If like me, you had spent time in the group of believing that supporting Israel was not only the most moral thing, but what God required of you, but no longer feel that way, this book is for you. Like I said previously, it is not an easy read, but one worth doing.

10/10, you can purchase it here.

In 1966, my father was walking with my grandfather from their car to one of the libraries in Dayton Ohio. While they were in route, my dad looked over and saw a group of people he didn’t recognize. So he asked my grandfather, “dad, why are those guys walkin’ around in nothin’ but their bed sheets?” The way my dad tells it, my grandfather shook his head and responded with, “Mike, that right there, is ignorance personified.” As the story goes, the white supremacists were showing up in hopes to intimidate the Dayton School Board to cave to their wishes. I was in early high school or late junior high when my dad told me about this, and it something I will never forget.

How my grandfather described the ku klux klan in those two words has latched on to my soul, and has shaped my implicit bias when it comes to white supremacy. Anyone who thinks they are better than someone else, that has to “other” a fellow human based on the color of their skin is ignorant. However this description doesn’t pertain to just white supremacy, but it is a great encapsulation of the concept of bullies as a whole.

It is not hyperbolic to say that we are living in a time where white supremacy is being enforced in ways two generations have not seen, but if we had only listened to black women and had taken them seriously it could all have been avoided.

Like most decent people, I have been feeling a mix of speechlessness, disgust, and dismay with how this current administration has carried itself for the past year and a half (as well as the first four years of it). Not because I am shocked by anything they have done, for over a decade those of us who have been paying attention and doing the work have been told we are overreacting. So while sitting with this puddle of emotions I started a new book that is uncomfortably relevant. Last year my wife read, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, penned by Timothy Egan, she told me I needed to pick it up, and I finally did. It is about the rise of the KKK in the early 20th century focused on Indiana, and it touches on how it shaped membership, American policy, and the murder of a young woman. Yesterday I was reading when I stumbled upon this little section:

To the major victories of outlawing alcohol, disenfranchising black voters, and closing the door on most new immigrants, the klan now hoped to set up a parallel government in the capital just as it had done in Indiana. The other goal was to prohibit the teaching of evolution.

The klan backed a law in Tennessee that made it a crime for a public school teacher to explain any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible. The fear was that if evolution were accepted it would imply that all people have a common origin.

For the klan that meant that there was no fundamental difference from themselves and the race they pretend to despise.

I added the bolding in the quote above, but today people are still pushing klan ideology. None of this should be surprising, considering the moral majority and religious right were born out of the racist gripe of not wanting to integrate schools. Vouchers, and school of choice became the voice of this version of christanity before Roe v. Wade would be a glimmer in their eye. For myself, this is part of what makes the voter suppression and rights stripped over the past few weeks so hard to stomach.

In 2021 Georgia passed SB 202, which changed early voting, and prohibited anyone other than poll workers from handing out water, which is what many of us call voter suppression. As mentioned previously, the past week we have seen what remained of the Voter Rights Act of 1965 stripped away. In that time, the states that originally voted against this act, have responded quickly with suppressing black voices by gerrymandering new maps. All decent people watching this happen in real time are reminded how deep white supremacy runs, and how much it ruins. What our current Supreme Court has done to this country is not only disgusting, but continues to prove white supremacy is alive and well in the halls of "justice."

However, upholding white supremacy in these halls is nothing new, so why are we surprised when they come after the rights of people of color. The truth is, what is happening now is breaking norms we naively thought would not be undone. Did we worry about it? Absolutely. Did white people take seriously the concerns of people of color when it came to what was on the line for the past decade? Absolutely not. For over a year we have been living with the domestic terrorism that the federal government has sanctioned when it comes to the disappearance of citizens and migrantes. It reminded me of another passage from Egan's book:

The klan would be a major force at the national conventions, no one onboard… doubted that the future of the country belonged to an organization of shrouded men clinging to the past.

The fight over the last decade from the “America First” crowd has led us to this moment where the lives of our neighbors have been disrupted and destroyed by men in masks who are being led by others clinging to the past. Egan wrote in his book about the state elections that occured in just barely 100 years ago in Indiana that resulted in, “hundreds of small ways these [klan] loyalists could make life worse for those who were not white Protestants.“ For years we have been seeing people say the quiet part out loud, and in reading that line I was disgusted by how relevant it still is. What is happening in Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, and other southern strongholds to suppress black and people of color’s voice right now is exactly why we must not remain silent.

The reintroduction of Jim Crow voting districts, and the stripping of rights by christian nationalists, and others, does not reflect the values of Jesus. Groups like this do not want Jesus, because to follow him means to seek out the other and care for them. To be a good neighbor does not mean to have a mirror image next door, it is to welcome the diversity that makes all of us better. It is to say no to ignorance and yes to curiosity. It also means to practice the paradox of tolerance that Karl Popper made famous. This act where your society remains intolerant of the intolerant, by stamping out hate speech or othering, and uprooting white supremacy wherever it tries to flourish.

I know that I am not the only one who feels the weight sitting on their chest about what is happening right now in the United States, and it feels like nothing can be done. We are not alone, and we can do many good things together, we just need to be brave and curious. This is a time to make our voices heard, one way is to follow this link to 5 Calls. It will take you to their, “Protect the Right to Vote and Fair Representation” page where you can call your representatives and ask them to support fair voting rights. Get friends together and turn it into a party, you’d be surprised to find out how much easier it is to do this with a crowd of those you love and trust.

My friends, it is up to us to carry on this work, and I am asking you to do your part in this peacemaking. Non-violence resistance has worked in the past, and it will continue to work if we remain steadfast and curious.

Grace and peace my friends.

Hey, I am back after a bit of some time off. It was nice to take a short break from writing a few times a week and to observe Lent, Easter, and a bit of vacation without having to worry about this.

Now I’m back on my bullcrap, today’s post is brought to you by John 10:1-10:

The parable found here should give us pause and time to reflect because of how relevant Jesus’ teachings continue to be in our world. While I am sure we can all think of times when we have been involved in a conversation or situation where one of us is thinking, “there is no way this sibling in Christ reads the same Bible I do.” This has happened to me probably more times in the past 11 years than the rest of my life combined.

As I was reading and preparing for my noonday prayer service, two verses struck me which are, “the sheep follow him because they know his voice” and “they will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

For a few moments I just sat staring out the window, because all I could think of was, “this is the gap of the Gospel, and people who are stuck on the idea that it is woke propaganda.“

In an interview with NPR in 2023, Russell Moore, Editor and Chief of Christianity Today stated the following on the crisis of Christianity in these churches:

It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically in their preaching— “turn the other cheek” —[and] to have someone come up after to say, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?” And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios when the pastor would say, “I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ” would not be, “I apologize.” The response would be, “Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.” And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus are subversive to us, I think we’re in a crisis.

In his book, John’s Wisdom, theologian Ben Witherington writes:

Witherington goes on to write that:

Christian nationalism has ripped the mask off of the nice white gospel in a way that has not been seen or at least felt this public, since the Civil Rights era. When John writes about the confusion of the listeners, it is not so hard to believe how true it rings almost 2,000 years later.

When we are wake up to accepting our place in God’s family, we are called to give up some things, usually revolving around our ego. Not that we cannot use our talents, but I am thinking more about how we feel when there is a clear line drawn between us and the “other.” How we give into the class system that keeps our collective humanity separated, and the need and want to drive down “others.”

My friends, may we realize that there is a better way, and that as we shepherd others, we continue to not hop gates, but to seek learning and understanding from the one who reminds us to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Grace and peace my friends.

Today is a good day for coffee and donuts.

36 years ago this year, Twin Peaks, was released and the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer was all anyone could talk about. I was a late comer to the show since at the time, I was three years old, but the world of David Lynch is something I am still inspired by.

The weird and quirky world of Twin Peaks the original series, then Twin Peaks: The Return could not be more different, yet clearly a part of the same space. I remember sitting every week with my headphones in, glued to my desktop staying up too late for work the next day to get pure Lynch and this world into my veins. It was nothing short of exciting, especially when in Part 8 of The Return aired. Black and white, nuclear bomb testing, the birth of Bob, and everything else blew my mind.

Now, that said, there are some problematic things that happen in this series, and The Return. How Lynch exploits the violence of women, how he treats the first woman of color in the series, all of it is an issue. So if you have not seen it, just prepare yourself for that.

When we moved to Toledo in March of 2020, I did an entire re-watch due to the pandemic, and one day my wife and I were driving around. She pointed out a restraint named Twin Peaks and I was really excited, and though it was odd to have a David Lynch TV show themed restaurant here of all places, and by a mall?

Just imagine my bitter disappointment when I found out it is not related at all.

In the times we live right now, inject some joy into your life. Like Special Agent Dale Cooper said, “Everyday, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it, don’t wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt in a men’s store, a cat nap in your office chair, or two hot cups of black coffee.” Today, my gift to myself is enjoying this work, and taking a break from a post about the horrors of the world, and how we must cling to hope and love. More on that later of course.

Just watch out for the potential fish in the percolator.

Grace and peace friends.

I love the horror genre, not the brutal torture and gore of the sake of it, but the jump scare, ghosts, monsters, and whatever in between. In the past few years have really delved into the bookish side. To be honest, I am not sure where the love of it comes from, maybe it was watching Ghostbusters as a toddler?

Could it have been going to the library with my grandmother and spending all my time looking through the Crestwood House Monster Series books. A series of books where the covers were black and white photos of the Universal Monster movies that captivated my eyes and mind at a young age. Either way, this has been my genre of choice when I find that I am bored, or looking for something familiar.

It should be no surprise knowing this about me, that when I saw the cover for, Ring Shout, by P. Déjlí Clark, I was captivated and knew this would be on my top of the year list. If like me, you were incredibly angry at the cancellation of Lovecraft Country on HBO, this will fill a sort of gap for now.

From Clark’s website:

D. W. Griffith is a sorcerer, and The Birth of a Nation is a spell that drew upon the darkest thoughts and wishes from the heart of America. Now, rising in power and prominence, the Klan has a plot to unleash Hell on Earth.

Luckily, Maryse Boudreaux has a magic sword and a head full of tales. When she’s not running bootleg whiskey through Prohibition Georgia, she’s fighting monsters she calls “Ku Kluxes.” She’s damn good at it, too. But to confront this ongoing evil, she must journey between worlds to face otherworldly nightmares—and her own demons. Together with a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter, Maryse sets out to save a world from the hate that would consume it.

American history is rich with the brutal treatment of people of color at the hands of white people, and while Clark does some really creative work with the revamp of the klan, it builds on the true and horrific history. The white legacy is of treating Black and people of color in this country would make you vomit if we taught the truth in school. That is also why this book is so important to read. After all it is easy to ignore that the United States and the way we treated Indigenous Peoples was an inspiration to Hitler and how he treated European Jewish people.

Not only is the concept brilliant, but the way that Clark weaves many genre’s is so well done. There are so many twists and turns in this book, you really need to pay attention while reading it.

Highly recommend this one if you are a fan of the genre, even if you’re not, get uncomfortable and read it.

At least purchase a copy.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and thus begins the season of Lent. It is with this in mind, I'd like to share with you something I wrote last year. On January 29th of 2025, I riffed off of First They Came by Lutheran Pastor Martin Neimöller. It is probably something you are familiar with, whether your know it or not, it reads as follows:

Pastor Neimöller’s words have been echoed in many places since he wrote it. It is one of those quotes that I thought I knew the history of, but in reality applied my own ideologies to. I was surprised to find out when I was reading up on Pastor Neimöller that he was a supporter of the early n*zi party. Not only that, but, he had remained silent on how the party operated early on because they were going after the left and leftists. He didn’t feel the need to speak up about it because he did not agree with their politics.

This may sound or feel familiar for some of you, if not now, perhaps in the future.

It was not until Hitler came for the Lutheran Church in Germany did Neimöller start to wake up. He had helped formed a group called the, Emergency Pastor’s Group, to help confront some of these issues. Because of the state of Germany, it was believed by the group that the protestant faith could only be compromised that someone could be in the n*zi party. The two were not compatible.

This may sound or feel familiar for some of you, if not now, perhaps in the future.

As we stared down the start of a second Trump administration, and the ramp up of the familiar hatred that defined his first term, I sat and Neimöller’s words. It isn’t perfect but it captured my fear of the moment, a fear that has continued to be re-enforced.

The last year has seen undocumented, legal, and American citizens who are immigrants disappeared by ICE.

The last year has seen the criminalization of our unhoused and friends via the Ending Crime and Disorder on American Streets executive order.

The last year has seen the almost complete dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion, not to mention the roll back of civil rights era legislation has been nothing short of monstrous.

The last year has seen false information about our trans siblings being spoken from the highest ranks of government, the attempt to throw out Obergefell v. Hodges, and many more targeted acts of legislation state and nationwide.

My friends, it is time, like Pastor Neimöller, it is time to find your voice. With tomorrow being Ash Wednesday, and the start of Lent, I pray you meditate on this.

If you are interested you can read more about him here.

Grace and peace.

The Gospel of Matthew’s recount of the infamous sermon that Jesus gives is my favorite. While it shows up most notably in Luke as well, it is in Matthew that I find my connection. It may be because when I first started reading the Christian Bible, I started at what I thought was the beginning, the New Testament, which starts with drum roll… the Gospel of Matthew.

I only started referring to people as “salt of the earth” consistently a few years ago. One of my co-workers says it all the time about people she adores and has stuck through osmosis. These are the people that make me want to be a better, and more consistent presence in my life. It is such a weird tension to hold right now, trying to be the salt of the earth as the world is falling apart around us, and I mean that, almost quite literally.

I am not just talking about the genocide still happening in Gaza, Palestine, Sudan, Myanmar, the Uyghurs in China, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The political violence we have seen in America over the past 10 years continues to rise to a crescendo with ICE abducting people off the streets and disappearing them to what an Irish immigrant referred to as a modern-day concentration camp. Not to mention murders of Alex Pretti, Renee Nichole Good, Gerardo Lunas Campos, and Keith Porter.

The fact that all of this has this has led into the newest 3.5 million documents of the Epstein files that have been released, with still millions of pages to go has been more than overwhelming. Jeffrey Epstein has had his hand in more things that have shaped the United States in the past decade than anyone outside of his circles could have imagined. And it is horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. The cache of information that has come out about what he, other celebrities, politicians, and wealthy people have done to children, if 5% is true, should be enough to make every decent person in this world cry out in terror. It has been so disturbing following this story, I almost took out the prayer in the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation that I updated which reads, “The lust which dishonors the bodies of men, women, non-binary, and children, God Forgive.”

So, when I sit and think about all of this, a very small portion of what is happening in our world right now, to think of being the salt is a bit overwhelming. Something that has helped recently I found few weeks ago, when I was reading the Essential Writings of Brother Roger of Taizé. On page 33, I came across this quote of his,

The light that we shine forth, that we are not to hide in the bushel is helping light my way in my own darkness. It is helping me remember that salt we are supposed to be isn’t table salt, it is, for me supposed to be course, course and in your face. It is the kind that is brought out by the kitchen and given table side. It is what you see sitting on top of your meal that bring a blast of flavor. It is the people who continue to do their good works in a time of despair, as if it is water off their back.

It is seeing the weight of the world, and saying to yourself, I think I can bring some flavor to this bland story that keeps being repeated throughout history.

It is the same example of Jesus bringing liberation, and hope to the masses of people who are being held in oppression by the state.

It is the story we find ourselves in the midst of now.

It is who we are called to be in this world, now more than ever.

My friends, may you find the salt around you, and if you can’t, please remember that the salt may be you.

This is an Ohio specific post.

Yesterday Ohio Republicans in the State House unveiled what is called the, Cooperation Package, a list of bills that would create wider support for ICE and dole out harsher penalties for those helping or who are immigrants, which you can read about here. Rep. Josh Williams, who reps district 44, is the lead co-sponsor of the package.

Even if he is not your representative, you can still call and leave a message with his office about how you feel on these bills. Here is his number, I encourage you to call, because these bills go against our baptismal covenant as we continue to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. Here is a script you can use if you have never left a voicemail:

Hello, my name is [your name here].

I am calling to voice my opposition to the Cooperation Package, specifically HB 26, 200, 281, and 554 introduced on February 9th. As an Ohioan I ask that you withdraw your support from these bills as they go against any sense of decency. These bills are intentionally cruel and is not what Ohio stands for.

Thank you for your time.

[your name, phone number, and zip code]

His office number is 614-466-1418, and to call and leave a message, it takes about 60 seconds. If you would like to call your reps to let them know how you feel about this bill, you can do so by scrolling to the bottom of this website, putting your address in, and pressing enter.

Below is a list of the bill numbers and summary provided by Channel 6 of Columbus:

• House Bill 26: Mandatory Police Cooperation. It would prohibit local governments from enacting “sanctuary” policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration officials. The legislation mandates that all law enforcement agencies in Ohio comply with detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It explicitly removes the discretion local departments currently have to prioritize other public safety issues over federal civil immigration violations. The bill includes an emergency clause, meaning it would take effect immediately upon the governor’s signature, bypassing the standard 90-day waiting period. Municipalities that fail to comply could face significant reductions in state funding.

• House Bill 200: State Felony for Presence Modeled after similar efforts in Texas. House Bill 200 would make unauthorized presence in Ohio a state crime.
  Under the proposal, an individual found to be in the state without legal documentation would be guilty of a fifth-degree felony. This provision would grant local and state police the authority to arrest individuals solely on the basis of their immigration status, a power traditionally reserved for federal agents.

• House Bill 281: Hospital Access Perhaps the most contentious measure in the package. House Bill 281 Would require hospitals and mental health centers to grant federal immigration agents access to their premises for enforcement operations. Healthcare providers who refuse entry to agents could face penalties, including the revocation of state grants or Medicaid funding.
  Opponents, including the Ohio Hospital Association, have previously warned that such measures could create a public health risk by discouraging undocumented residents from seeking care during emergencies.

• House Bill 554: Obstruction of Justice. House Bill 554, expands the definition of obstructing justice under Ohio law.
  The bill would make it a felony to physically impede or interfere with federal immigration agents during the performance of their duties. This could include actions such as blocking doorways or intervening in an arrest, elevating what might currently be a minor offense to a serious state-level crime.

Our neighbors are relying on us to stand up and do what is right. I urge you to take a minute your of your day and call.

Grace and peace.

In 2025 I read two books by Percival Everette, Assumption and The Trees. Both of these should have made my personal best of list, but I just went with the one that stuck with me most. The Trees, for me, is up there with season one of True Detective, as a perfect piece of crime fiction. Here is the description from the publishers website:

Percival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.

The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in fast-paced style that ensures the reader can’t look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America’s pulse.

In what starts off as a typical brutal crime story, it evolves into a story that I don’t want to know the answers to. It is a rare thing for me to read or engage in something where I am okay not knowing all the answers to, but this is close to the top of the charts. Similar to how I would have been okay if season 3 of Twin Peaks never came to be, this could have ended a chapter early and I would have been just as happy.

The way that Everette is able to move seemingly effortlessly between genres and stories shows how much of a master of the craft he is. My wife and I still talk about this book probably once every 3-5 weeks and it is striking how many details stick out.

Walk don’t run to your local brick and mortar or library and get this book.

Grace and peace.

Jesus said to his disciples, “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world-- therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.”

John 15:17-27

Saint Jude is the patron saint for lost causes, impossible situations and despair. It is a hard time for those of us who don’t believe empathy is a sin. When holding all that has happened in Minneapolis, thinking about Keith Porter Jr being murdered by immigration customs and enforcement, the horrific details in the newly released Epstein files, I needed to think about, and create space for despair for a bit.

When I read this Gospel passage, which is specific in the lectionary to St. Simon and St. Jude (who both share the martyrdom on 10/28), it really had my mind going. See, when I read of Jesus in this passage talking about not being of this world my context, historically, of this passage is much different than what I believe now.

For a long time I feared the idea of the day of judgment, specifically because of the language around it. I grew up around the apocalyptic concept of fire, brimstone, etc., but then I found out that apocalypse literally meansuncovering in Greek, as in, learning something new. When I found this out, I dove deeper into the Jewish roots of Christianity. Because of this new information, I was deeply curious about what this day of judgment would mean. After some time, I became much more comfortable.

The idea of the day of judgement, is the work of God setting things right, the way they were supposed to be.

It is creating justice in an unjust world, and for those of us who seek justice, who seek the safety of others, who seek after the words of Jesus, it really isn’t a scary thing. Sure, there are aspects of our lives where we are continuing to hone and align the way we believe with how we live our daily life, but on the whole, the setting of things in their correct manner shouldn’t be that scary.

When we strip down the concept of wanting to live in a world where everyone is safe, no one has to worry about food, healthcare, being othered, bombs, and genocide as seen in Sudan and Gaza to name a few. These things that make us feel fear in our daily lives, these systematic issues that cause us to live into despair. As I sit with this, I feel connected to the despair that St. Jude is the patron saint of. It’s not hard right now to let those feelings consume us, but cynicism is easy.

Then I remember, despair is easy.

Hope, love, and taking care of one another in community is hard.

It takes bravery to love someone.

It takes bravery to stand up for someone.

It takes almost nothing to cast someone aside, and not only deny their humanity, but the image of God that is interwoven through their very being.

So when I read and sit with the part in Luke where Jesus says, if the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you, my mind goes to the lie that is christian nationalism. Those I have heard prosecution stories loudest, come from those that uphold white Jesus. And we know that they cannot be the people Jesus is talking about here.

May you find some hope in these words my friends.

Grace and peace.

Yesterday was the feast day for Saint Thomas Aquinas, who died in 1274. A Dominican priest, he came from a rich family and was the youngest of four boys. It was not uncommon for rich families to send their "expendable" children into religious orders at the time, and those same families gave heavily to the Roman Catholic Church. They supported monasteries where their kids lived, and it was also expected that they would rise to high points of leadership within the church.

Thomas's family had hoped he would also move up the ranks of the catholic church, and when he told them he was going to join the Dominicans, they were surprised. Well, surprised may be an understatement, because they kidnapped him and held him hostage in their family castle for a year. Even after that time, he still wanted to join so they let him go, and their dreams of an important child in the catholic church went with them... not. It's a joke, get it, because today he is a saint!

The reason why his family responded this way, was because the Dominicans were a newly formed group, barely 15 years older than Thomas was at the time. However, it was during the 13th century when Dominicans would start to be hand picked to replace judges and others, and the inquisition would be up and running. While Thomas wouldn't be picked to find them, he started making a name for himself within the order because of how smart he was.

What Thomas clung to during his studies, was reason, and he began to show his aptitude for reading various "heretical" works and working out how they fit within his religion. The greatest example of this, is Aquinas' work Summa Theologiae, a large work he had started after he had a mystical vision but then died three months later leaving the work uncompleted. I have not spent a lot of time reading about the saints, after all, I'm a retired evangelical, saints weren't our thing, they were idols. The irony of that, and the rise of the celebrity preacher is not lost on me.

Since being received into the Episcopal church, I have made this a practice of mine, as we celebrate the saints and their lives of faith who came before us. Personally, it has been a fruitful endeavor as it has helped me feel more connected to the story of God. But what I enjoyed reading about St. Thomas Aquinas was the importance of reason to him. For those who do not know, the Anglican/Episcopal church rests on a three leg stool, one leg is scripture, one is tradition, and the final is reason.

Using our brains to wrestle with the world in front of us is crucial, especially in the days we find ourselves. It is because of this that I personally struggle with understanding how self professing Christians can support the policies being acted out. What the Trump administration is doing is monstrous, and there is no way we can reason ourselves into supporting it while reading Jesus' words. The federal funding for USAID being cut, to the violence enacted by the immigration and customs enforcement agency, and everything in between is cruel and monstrous. Reason forces us to confront the parts of us that seek power over one another, and give it over to God.

There are so many things my soul cries to scream about, but instead of that, I will leave you with a poem from the hand of St. Thomas Aquinas. Found on page 127 in, Love Poems from God, by Daniel Ladinsky:

Grace and peace my friends.

One of the first books I finished this year In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership by Henri Nouwen, and while it is a short book, it may be one of the most impactful I have read in years around leadership. This is something that should not have surprised me consider who Nouwen was, when he was still walking this world. A man born in the Netherlands, became a Roman Catholic priest, taught at Notre Dame, Harvard, and Yale for over twenty years, but walked away from the prestige to serve at L’Arche’s Daybreak Community in Ontario.

In this book he writes about the shared life, humility, and importance of walking the downward path in leadership. Now, I am not a fan of leadership books, and I have been through my share of programs that seem to be a one size fits all. But this book, in the less than 120 pages, packs more moments where I have sat back in silence than all other leadership books I have read combined. His entire life was rewritten during his time at L'Arche, and this book is one of the the results of that transformation.

What I consider the incredibly important parts of this book, are broken up into a three sections. I phrase it like that because of course there is a conclusion, and while it is helpful to read, you could stop there. The three sections are as follows:

1. From Relevance to Prayer

2. From Popularity to Ministry

3. From Leading to Be Led

All of these sections are obviously impacted by the previous one, but what is so interesting about how Nouwen sees the world and this type of leadership, is how it should be pulling us downward, and not in a bad way. My concept of leadership in the church has been tainted by the evangelical money making house of cards it has always been. So to say leadership can be a motion downwards, feels antithetical to what it means to be a good leader. But what Nouwen latches on to, is that relevance for the sake of relevance, and the idea of entrepreneurship or silo ministry, this chasing of saying yes to what is happening now could be pushing us further from the presence of God in our midst.

The weight and power of saying no in ministry is not something that should be overlooked. We live in a society right now where the news cycle changes almost hour by hour, and the fears that are ratcheted up continue to find no ceiling. This can create an environment where we must say yes to everything, in order to not get lost in the shuffle, but Nouwen in this book invites us to a deeper sense of knowing. Not just knowing who we are in the family of God, but who God is calling us to be in our context and strength.

It wasn't until the end of this book where I felt Nouwen succinctly formed his argument about not going alone, and standing where your call is at in order to lead people into the next age. He writes:

To say no in the face of fatalism, defeatism, accidentalism, incidentalism, despair, luck, resignation, indifference, pain, suffering, and even death pushes us to a radical limit.

To say no to how the world would normally respond is to say yes to hope. What I am not saying is that we should ignore the pain, consequences, etc. that come from these instances. I am not saying that at all, recognize and hold it.

To say no to it is to reject the acceptance of it, it is to say yes to the accountability of the people around you, and to seek justice for those who have been harmed.

To say no is to hold fast to Jesus teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, and to elevate ourselves past what is popular, and plant ourselves into what is everlasting.

To say no is to shake off the burden of societal expectations, and to say yes to a deeper way of being.

Grace and peace my friends.

This post was originally scheduled for next week, but considering the climate, I thought I’d move it up a bit.

In late fall of 2025 I decided during my quiet time in the mornings to start reading Hebrews. The truth is, I don’t think I have looked at it, or thought much of it since I preached on chapter 11 back in 2013, so it seemed like a good time to read it. I had been trying to find a part of the Christian Bible to check out after burning through Amos, James, Exodus, and some other random parts.

When I was reading Amos, it was when there seemed to be a push by Isr**l to continue in committing war crimes by murdering journalists and medical workers in Gaza. A push that has been successful as I am sure most of us, unless we are intentionally looking, are unaware of the many times they have continued to murder innocent people in Gaza during this “ceasefire.” I bring this up because I have written in my margins how sitting with the words of Amos and the actions in that land made me want to vomit.

This has happened a few times in the past few years, reading something in the text I hold central to my religious beliefs, and looking at the world around me, local and internationally. The Ending Crime and Disorder on American Streets executive order comes to mind, where the president criminalized being unhoused while evangelicals and christian nationalists defend something Jesus would have pushed back on.

This week I was reading Hebrews 11 and I came upon this passage:

For so long, people have come to the United States looking for a country of their own. It is how my family got here, and I guarantee how yours did too. So far this year there have been six confirmed deaths in ICE detention centers, one of which was a homicide, and as of Saturday they murdered another innocent person:

• Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 1/24, homicide

• Heber Sanchaz Domínguez, 1/14

• Victor Manuel Diaz, 1/14

• Parady La, 1/9

• Renee Good, 1/7, homicide

• Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz, 1/6

• Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, 1/5

• Geraldo Lunas Campos, 1/3, homicide

What ICE has been doing in our streets to our neighbors, citizens or not, is nothing short of terrorism. Using fear, intimidation, and unlawful violence against citizens as a political means is almost literally the definition of terrorism in the Oxford Dictionary. Many people have pointed out this is how white people have acted against Black Americans throughout our history is exactly correct. This is masked terrorism supported by our countries love of white supremacy, and the inability to quit it.

What is happening is not normal in America for white people, which is why this is so jarring for most of us. I saw an Instagram reel today of friend of mine, who is a Palestinian activist rightfully lamenting the people now wanting to show up. It is a similar thing I have seen time and again when white people start to realize that the systems of violence we have upheld because they’ve been good for us start to turn on us.

It is never too late to show up for your neighbors, and I urge you to do it now.

It is hard work, and it takes a toll. But there are many ways we can do it, what I beg you to do, is not turn your eyes away again. Do not harden your heart once ICE is abolished, because this is only the beginning of the work needing to be done. We have the opportunity to make our corners of the world a heavenly country for all, if we choose to do this long term hard work.

Stay safe out there friends.

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen was one of my first books out the gate in 2025, and I still think about it. When I think of the detailed research of this book, what comes to mind is, The Holocaust: A New History by Laurence Rees, another one worth your time, because of the minutia Jacobsen goes into.

If you are unaware of Operation Paperclip, it was the name given when the United States government brought n*zi scientists into the US to work on military projects, health and medicine, and the space race. The lengths of which the government forgave the acts of despicable men in the name of “fighting” communism made me almost physically sick while reading. One doctor who was working on hypothermia continued his work in the US that had been conducted on prisoners.

Per the books description:

In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich’s scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis’ once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler’s scientists and their families to the United States.

Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War?

Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich’s ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century.

I enjoy a hard read, and this one was difficult. The complicity of our government to do horrible things is not a secret. After all H*tler was influenced by our treatment of Indigenous people and eugenics is a very American science. But to see how quickly people are willing to throw away morality in the name of power makes me physically sick.

This meme is still true, especially when we consider the cruel actions of our current administration.

That said, 10/10 read, you should read this book. It will drop scales from your eyes in a very needed way. Some of it may be old hat, but even portions of that

Grace and peace.

I enjoy reading, a lot. I do not care if it is physical, digital, or audio, books are a constant companion in my life. To the point where I have averaged reading about 73 a year since I started tracking them in 2020.

I just love the concept of them, how words can contain multitudes of worlds. The smell of them, the thrill of finding one you’ve been looking for. This is not always a relationship I have had with them. Growing up I also liked the idea of them, I would read almost any of the Great Illustrated Classics I could get a hold of. As someone with a reading disorder, that was incredibly embarrassing, those classics were perfect for me. Every other page was an illustration, and it helped immerse me in the story.

The only books I remember reading that was required in high school were A Tale of Two Cities (which I love) and A Catcher in the Rye (which I hate). When I joined the navy, I spent time out to sea reading in the tower I worked in, and would get through maybe a book a month. Then I found out about audio books, which started my practice of purchasing two copies, one to listen to, one to mark up and use for rereading/bettering comprehension.

As my interest in theology deepened so did my insistence on reading physical copies of books. This allowed me to destroy whatever book was in my path; underlining, writing in the margins, dog-earing, whatever. I still do this, then pull out whatever half filled moleskin I thought would fix me to start writing the ideas and thoughts that came with whatever I had just read.

During the pandemic, my wife encouraged me to try out more fiction, which was something I did not really want to do. Do not get me wrong, I was not taking an elitist position, it was just that fiction wasn’t something I liked outside of my comic books or graphic novels. At the time I just preferred to read non-fiction or theology if I was going to dedicate the time to picking up a book. I wanted to learn something true about the universe/world/life/whatever, if I was giving up anywhere from 5-12 hours of my time. It was when I started back to school to finish my bachelors degree, and after we had our kid that I took her advice.

I was so wrong for waiting so long.

With all of that in mind, please enjoy the top 25 books I read in 2025. These are listed in no particular order, and over the next year I will be posting about each one individually. Some posts may be long, some will be short, but in the dark time we find ourselves in where Americans are being abducted by masked police, a white kid who has no business podcasting are trying to break into daycare’s, and abducting a leader of a foreign country, sometimes a book recommendation will help provide some balm to the soul.

1. Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen

2. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé

3. We Uyghurs Have No Voice: An Imprisoned Writer Speaks by Ilham Tohti

4. Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

5. The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy by J. Russell Hawkins

6. Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

7. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning

8. Monk and Robot: A Psalm for the Wild Built and A Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers

9. One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

10. Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobs

11. The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness by Gregory Boyle

12. Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

13. Ring Shout by P. Djéli Clark

14. The Trees by Percival Everette

15. The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers & the Struggle for Equality by Anna-Lisa Cox

16. The Burning: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 by Tim Madigan

17. The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby

18. The Black Wolf by Louise Penny

19. Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America by Robert B. Reich

20. Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery by BROM

21. Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley

22. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

23. King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby

24. Bringing the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew

25. Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum

Grace and peace my friends

This past Sunday, Episcopalians across the world reaffirmed our baptismal covenants as we celebrated the Baptism of Jesus. For me, it is always a special occasion when I get to stand with my fellow faith siblings to say out loud who we are, how we show up, and who we hope to be in God’s creation. However, there is something about this passage that has stuck in my crawl for years. In verse 6 it states, “and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” At one point I wrote a series of blog posts I can no longer find about Jesus attending and participating in a baptism for the forgiveness of sins as it states in Mark 1:4 and implied here in Matthew. It is something I had never hear about in church, and I seemed to gloss over in my readings.

Having grown up evangelical in America, there are some hooks that are still in you that you are unaware of, and for me this was one of them. I cannot imagine how many times I had heard that Jesus was a the only perfect human to live, sinless in every way, which is part of the reason why he “didn’t need training” to preach, teach, and make disciples. But after reading these passages and letting it sit I had a few questions.

· If Jesus was sinless and perfect, then why participate in such a baptism?

· If Jesus participated in this type of baptism in good faith and not needing it, wouldn’t that make him a bad person?

· If Jesus didn’t need to be baptized because of his stance with God, then why did he do it?

I drove myself around in circles with this, and argued about it whenever I got the opportunity because I wanted answers that were satisfying. In her book, The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism, Joan E. Taylor writes on page 262:

That Jesus was baptized by John has been a problem almost form the beginning of Christianity, and not only because his being baptized indicated that he might have been subordinate to John. Jesus apparently turned away from sin and, as Michael Grant notes, this “set the theologians of subsequent centuries a conundrum. For how could Jesus have been baptized for the forgiveness of his own sins, when according to the Christology which developed after his death, he was divine and therefore sinless?” Often the solution is given that he wished to humble himself by participating with the sinful in this important ritual. As A.M. Hunter has stated: “He [Jesus] discerned the hand of God in John’s mission, and by His acceptance of John’s baptism identified Himself with the people whom He came to Save.” Some scholars have sought to deny that John ever baptized Jesus…

[In the Gospel of Matthew 3:14-15] Jesus comes forward to be immersed, but John tries to prevent him and says, “I need to be immersed by you, and you come to me? Jesus calmly reassures him, “let it be so for now, for it is right for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’ Jesus therefore does the decent thing, but he does not really need to do it.”

When I read that for the first time I just kind of sat and scratched my head. Then I read it again.

And again.

And again.

And, yet, again.

Finally, it started to sink in for me personally, that it does not really matter why Jesus was baptized, sin or no sin. What matters in the end is that Jesus did the decent thing. Following his call, Jesus did what was right. This argument that I had developed within myself, and thought so much rode on did not matter, because at the end of the day, it was an excuse to keep Jesus at arm’s length.

It is the same argument we always make to get out of doing the decent thing, that we are sinners, or are prone to fail and mess up. When we do that, we keep the Jesus of the gospels at arm’s length.

When we yell at our kids and don’t apologize, we keep Jesus at arm’s length.

When we spend time bickering on social media about how we are right and “they” are wrong, we keep Jesus at arm’s length.

When we standards that are supposed to be universal, but we make exceptions for people because we like what they stand for, we keep Jesus at arm’s length.

When we see injustice in the world and wait for someone else to act or say something, we keep Jesus at arm’s length.

When we ignore the plight of our fellow image bearers living in Palestine, Yemen, Congo, and Sudan, we keep Jesus at arm’s length.

On Thursday and Sunday of last week, I attended two protests to abolish ICE. I am compelled by my faith to act in times of injustice when innocent people are killed. In the same way I am compelled every Sunday morning to wake up early and cook food for the unhoused and marginalized. It is the everyday act of doing the decent thing where we can be the hands, feet, and voice (at times) of God in a world where it is so easy to choose hatred, or as I have seen it lately, “intolerance.”

By walking the path and getting covered in the dusty road of Jesus’ teachings, may we find the decent way to be in the times when others need to be served before ourselves.

Amen