“What does this passage tell me about God? What does it tell me about who God is?”
That may sound obvious, but far too often, I make myself the center of biblical passages.
“What does this passage tell me about how I’m supposed to believe? What does this passage tell me about how I’m supposed to behave?”
I’ve long struggled with the story of Mary and Martha when Jesus and the disciples (and probably other followers) descended upon their house in Bethany:
As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”
But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:38-42 (NLT)
But what does that story say about Jesus? Not about me?
Jesus does not think the only way for a woman to serve him is in the kitchen. Jesus does not expect women to be bound by their cultural traditions.
This may not sound all that shocking, but in the U.S. these days, conservative evangelical Christian men feel like they are having a moment and are all over social media telling women that they need to become quiet and demure and re-learn to serve men, and “trad wives” are all over social media performing their labor-intensive kitchen duties in pretty dresses and perfect makeup.
So the absolute simplicity of Jesus in this story is refreshing. He was given the opportunity to say,
“You’re right Martha. Mary, what are you doing? You dare to sit here as if you belong with the men, talking about the kingdom of God! Get in the kitchen and help your sister.”
But he didn’t. He said,
“It’s more important to listen to me and rest in my presence.”
Do I want Jesus to have said, “Disciples, you get to listen to me all the time and Mary and Martha don’t. Get in the kitchen and rustle us up a meal so they can be with me.”
Yes. Yes, I do. But Luke doesn’t report that. And Luke doesn’t record the disciples’ response to this. Were they shocked? Annoyed? Did any of them leap up and go to the kitchen so Martha could sit at Jesus’ feet? I’d love to know. Maybe I will some day.
But for now, as a follower of Jesus, I take heart that Jesus doesn’t expect women who follow him to follow tradition. He approves of women who flout tradition. Jesus thinks it is a great use of our time to listen to him and rest, even revel, in his presence.
As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”
But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-42 (NLT)
Every time I teach the Mary and Martha story I feel uncomfortable because I think it’s unfair to Martha.
Jesus and the disciples didn’t come with food. Neither did Jesus tell the disciples to prepare the meal so Mary and Martha could both listen to him. They arrived expecting food and in their culture women were expected to prepare and serve it. The disciples didn’t have jobs when they followed Jesus but relied on the charity and hospitality of people they met on their travels, which were all by foot. There’s a good chance they were hungry, and possibly hangry when they arrived at Martha’s house. It would have been a lot of work to prepare food for over a dozen hungry/hangry men, making everything from scratch with no refrigeration or machines to help you.
None of these are trifling details.
Also, I tend to be a Martha, preparing food for gatherings of people (unless my mother is also at the gathering, because she has perfected the skill of slipping away and doing everything), so I’m inclined to be sympathetic to her.
I’ve been able to approach the story by seeing Martha’s problem as being bitter about being stuck in the kitchen. If Martha had been joyful about preparing the food and was able to say generously, “I hope Mary remembers everything Jesus says so she can tell me later,” then all would have been fine.
But I was recently preparing the story for another leader to tell it and I experienced it in a new way, as about pursuing the approval of Jesus.
Trying to impress Jesus
It’s not hard to imagine Martha working away, sweeping the floors, chopping and mixing and hustling between the house and oven in the courtyard, and lifting more big ceramic jars out of storage, calculating the amount of food and number of guests, thinking to herself,
“Jesus will be so impressed at the table I’m setting for him and the disciples. He’s always so happy to come to my house. I always put out such a great spread. He can always count on my welcome.”
At some point, she becomes worried that her own work won’t be enough to make the right impression.
“Where is Mary? Why isn’t she helping? She can’t expect me to put out our usual abundant spread all on my own.”
She peeks into the main room and sees Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus.
“All this work I’m putting in to make sure that Jesus is happy, and Mary’s doing nothing! Jesus will back me up. After all, how else will all these men get fed?”
Martha craves the words of approval and thanks she gets from Jesus when they are together. Who wouldn’t? But Mary’s the one who gets Jesus’ words of praise and approval. For doing nothing but listening.
This made me think of the story of Jesus’ baptism, when God’s said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17 NIV). Jesus had done nothing in his ministry yet. Not a blessed thing. And still God was well pleased with him.
Martha’s problem wasn’t as much that she was doing, doing, doing as that she was doing, doing, doing to make Jesus well pleased with her. Kind of like how obeying biblical Law isn’t a problem in itself, but basing your entire faith practice and the worth of people on how strictly they follow the Law is a problem (see all of Jesus’ comments about Pharisees and religious people).
Those are not what impress Jesus.
What impresses Jesus
Do you crave his voice? Are you listening to him? No matter what else you do or don’t do, that will always be the right choice.
If only you would listen to his voice today!
Psalm 95:7b
And, as if speaking to Martha’s becoming-bitter heart, this is the beginning of the next verse:
The Lord says, “Don’t harden your hearts…
Psalm 95:8a
As a do-er, Martha is a continual cautionary tale for me. I know the difference between work that I do for Jesus that flows out of love and generosity and work that morphs into bitterness because I’m just working so hard all on my own and nobody is noticing but everyone is expecting me to do it. And that pesky trying-to-work-out-my-own-salvation thing, that trying-to-DO-my-way-into-Jesus’-approval thing is there, too.
Dr. John Perkins once said at my former church,
“I’m about to overcome my working for salvation.”
And he was 89. He’d just recovered from cancer treatment. Not to mention the fact that he was tortured and beaten to within an inch of his life by white police officers yet refused to give in to bitterness and hatred and has been working and preaching for racial reconciliation in the Christian church for decades (15 honorary degrees, 18 books published). He’s just now about to overcome working for his salvation.
So I’m in good company. Recovering Marthas, you’re in good company, too. Let’s keep on being made uncomfortable by this story so we, too, will get closer and closer to overcoming the need to work for our salvation. Jesus offers it. We just have to say yes, and listen.
February 19 would have been my dad’s birthday. It was unsettling to not have him here.
As so often happens, the younger generation saved me from wallowing. My niece started a great thread in the family group chat. She posted some nice photos of his birthday gathering 3 years ago. We moved on his great love of whipped cream, and agreed that he was likely eating a giant bowl of it in heaven right now. My mother reminded us of one of his favorite Dutch sayings:
So delicious it’s as if angels are peeing on your tongue.
(Be either glad or sad that I could not get AI to produce an image of angels urinating.)
The chat quickly turned to his most epic birthday celebration. It was either 2005 or 2006 and he wanted to go sledding. But normal sledding was not good enough for him. He thought the grandkids were old enough to go sledding down The Bowl, aka The Blowhole–a giant hollowed-out dune a mile down the beach from their house. They kind of were. He was always pushing that “old enough” envelope, which is how we wound up with boiling pots of oil on the table for fondue at Christmas Eve when the youngest grandchild was 5.
A drone photo of The Bowl in summer, looking towards Lake Michigan.
On a normal day, hiking across the beach in February would have felt like an adventure. Here it is on a 2/19 in 2017, with snow melted but the ice hills intact on the shore, which was really cool.
On that day, however, it was a massive undertaking. There was a blizzard moving in, and there were actual gale-force winds on the beach. Walking to The Bowl, we faced that gale. We leaned forward into the wind with all our weight and didn’t fall. We walked with our sleds over our midsections while we held our arms open wide and the sleds didn’t fall. Any communication had to be yelling at the top of our lungs, and even that was barely heard between the roar of the wind and the layers of scarves over our faces. There was no way to be properly bundled up against it. But it was such hard work to walk against it on the frozen sand (some of us taking turns pulling the little girls on a sled) that we kept warm. My mother remembers my son, “hiking through the wind and cold with twinkle in his eyes as if he was impervious to the arctic conditions.”
When finally made it to The Bowl, we discovered that the pre-blizzard wind had blown off all the snow. We faced a mountain of ice and sand.
It looked impossible. It was impossible!
My dad, brother, and the big grandsons (between 7-10?) climbed up the right side of The Bowl, where the hills were lower and marginally less steep. Even so, my sister-in-law remembers “the looks of terror on the guys’ faces, even Dad, going down that super steep side hill on the toboggan together! Clouds of sand flying up behind them.”
The rest of us stood around and climbed a little bit, mosly trying to figure out how long we’d have to stay there for it to count as not giving up.
And then my mother looked up at the top of The Bowl and asked, “What is that?”
A tiny dot was hurtling down from the highest and steepest part of the dune. It got closer and we realized it was my sister-in-law. She had quietly climbed up and done it!! It was amazing. She said she was sore for days after, but it was worth it.
The hike back to the house was easier because those gale-force winds now propelled us forward. Even so, the little girls had to be put into Oma’s bed, piled high with blankets, their hands wrapped around mugs of hot chocolate.
It should be noted that this was not the only time a family outing involved dangerous winds. When we lived in Australia from 1974-77, we went camping on the East Coast of Queensland. During a monsoon. On the top of a hill with no vegetation. In a canvas tent with metal poles. We were on the edge of the weather system, but I remember the deafening rain and the tent walls acting like a bellows, dramatically puffing in and out. Only after the kids’ tent collapsed and we had to huddle together in the parents’ tent did my dad agree it would be best to cut the camping trip short.
I so wish we had photos of any of those events, but alas, we do not.
We went sledding for his birthday again in 2010, this time at Mulick Park near my house. That’s the photo at the top of the post. Still plenty cold, and the hill was icy and fast. But nowhere near the Siberian conditions of the first Hart Clan sledding trip.
Peter Cornelis Hart was born on February 19, 1942 in Rheden, The Netherlands, to Wilhelmina Fonds Hart and Rev. Klaas Hendrik Hart. But he hated his middle name, so we will speak of it no more.
He was the fourth boy, born in Nazi Occupied Netherlands. His earliest memory was of playing outside during an air raid siren and refusing to come indoors. In 1945 the family walked for two days to Wilhelmina’s sister’s house in Ermolo, and survived the Hunger Winter with three families and Jewish people they were safe harbor for. They subsisted on a gruel of ground fish bones and oatmeal, which is likely why Peter had a life-long suspicion of casseroles. Peter took his job of gleaning sticks for firewood from the nearby woods very seriously. Klaas was active in the local Resistance cell, and Peter once got to help with a mission by pretending to be sick: their doctor (who ran the cell) wrote permission for Klaas to take a fake-sick Peter somewhere in a cart.
In 1954, the family of nine immigrated to Canada, settling in Wallaceburg, Ontario. Peter was always passionately interested in something, whether it was setting off rockets, blowing up rocks for the entertainment of his father and oldest brother, or assembling a real human skeleton during the summer he was 16 and worked for his cousin Ina’s husband at the McGill Medical Center in Montreal. In high school he was involved in Key Club, and served on the board of the International Key Club. He drove a truck for Coca-Cola and refused to drink Pepsi products for the rest of his life, even if it was a boiling summer day and the store only sold Pepsi.
Peter graduated from Calvin College, taking a major or a minor in every subject that interested him, including philosophy, history, and classics. He was part of the Plato Club and reveled in talking about ideas late into the night, fueled only by cigarettes. There he met Helen Joyce Steenwyk, a roommate of his cousin Tieneke Zwalsman. They married on August 16, 1965 in the living room of favorite professor, Dr. Lewis Smedes.
Life was an adventure for Peter and Helen, starting immediately. Dr. Smedes agreed to marry them only after Peter promised he’d take Helen on a honeymoon. Together, they had $30. Driving away from the ceremony they passed a billboard advertising s $30 ferry ride to Milwaukee, where a couple lived who owed Peter money for a painting job. They took that ferry and called the couple from the hotel, funding the promised honeymoon.
They moved to Toronto, Canada where they had two children, Natalie Arloa in 1967 and Roland Christopher in 1969. He thought they were the most beautiful children he’d ever seen. He loved playing with them when they were small, and talking with them as they grew. He was always intentional about having a shared family meal, whether it was dinner or breakfast. Sundays were family days, often having his mother or a couple of siblings over. Even though his teenage children sometimes found this annoying, they treasure those memories now and insisted upon the same with their own families.
While in law school at the University of Toronto Osgoode Hall, Peter started Urban Technovations with Bryan Irwin, searching for designs for low-cost housing where people could thrive. Peter started his career as an attorney with Fasken & Calvin, but was soon on to other adventures. He took the family to Brisbane, Australia from 1974-1977 where he set up financing for the Pizza Hut chain in Australia. Back in Canada, he was president of A.N. Shaw Restorations, and then Vice President of International Sales for Remanco Restaurant Computers. There, Peter discovered his love for technology and latched onto his vision for the good it could bring to the world.
He started Legalware in 1984 after Apple Computer released the Macintosh. Legalware installed networked Macs in law firms and developed software to ease the production of repetitive legal documents. He expanded that work to other industries through The Model Office Company and Compleat Desktops. Now, we are so used to using fillable forms that branch according to our answers that we are annoyed when they aren’t an option. Then, they were radical and not easily accepted. Peter was always ahead of the curve.
During this time he also opened a high-end audio store, Encore Audio & Video, where he loved showing off the power of the speakers to Natalie and Roland, even to the point of ruining them on the cannon blasts of the 1812 Overture.
In 1991, Peter and Helen moved to San Rafael, California, to a beautiful house on a hill, where Peter could swim in his pool, pausing to eat strawberries every few laps. They attended Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, where Peter met Bishop William E Swing. He helped Bishop Swing organize the United Religions Initiative, a grassroots interfaith organization dedicated to ending interfaith violence, and to creating cultures of peace, justice, and healing for the Earth and all living beings. United Religions thrives to this day, with chapters all over the world.
He also started ePit, a company that was developing an online stock market engine. It grew quickly in those heady tech boom years, but Peter asked to be bought out amid continuing disagreements with his business partner. Ahead of the curve once more, Peter got out right in time, just before the tech bust, and he and Helen moved back to Michigan in 2000.
They bought a house on Lake Michigan, less than a mile from the beach where they first kissed. Helen’s parents were still living, nearby in Overisel. Natalie had married Michael Paul Van Houten and Roland had married Amy Joy Vander Zouwen and were starting families of their own in Grand Rapids and Zeeland. The house on Fiddler’s Way became a joyful hub for large family gatherings, hosting reunions for Harts and Steenwyks.
Their grandchildren loved to visit them at the beach in all weather. They have amazing memories of long Sunday afternoons in and out of the water, the chaotic joy of wave days, and burgers on the deck. In age order, they are Joshua Roland Hart, Andrew Peter Hart, Willem Hart Van Houten, Hannah Arloa Van Houten, and Eliana Joy Hart. He doted on every one of them, appreciating their differences, encouraging their interests.
Peter had been worried about moving to politically and theologically conservative West Michigan, but he and Helen found a tribe of kindred spirits here. They were part of the vibrant Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where Peter befriended Rev. Richard A. Rhem. For years, Peter and Dick and a group of fellow intellectual explorers met for Wednesday lunches where they dissected and solved all the issues that plagued humanity. Peter and Helen hosted weekly movie nights with their close friends, discussing the films for hours afterwards on the deck in good weather, and around the fireplace in cold weather.
It was here that Peter synthesized his passion for peace, his skills in mediation, and his love of technology into Scenorama Studios. He worked with his son Roland and son-in-law Michael to develop a richly detailed online game that taught conflict resolution skills. They learned together and built Conflict Lab: Elysia, which won an Apple Grand Design Award in 2004. Peter co-taught the game for a few semesters at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
At no point will we mention the word retirement. In the last ten years he started the Rev. Richard A. Rhem Foundation to gather all of Dick’s sermons, digitizing recordings and written accounts, which are now housed at the Kaufman Interfaith Center of Grand Valley State University. He started the Senggih Foundation to consolidate and rescue the known works of Dutch artist Henk Krijger (aka Senggih), who he knew from the artist’s time in Toronto. He traveled around the U.S. and Canada to pick up sculptures, paintings, and mixed media pieces. He taught himself art restoration and learned how to take high-end photographs of the works. The collection now resides at Grand Valley State University. He also worked on Dream House Designs, an online platform to help people arrive at their true desires for their unique dream home.
Through all of these businesses and foundations, and in every home renovation, Peter loved to hire family—too many have been on the payroll to mention us all here!
And this is not even a complete list of the businesses he started or organizations he led. In his last days, when people would say that he’d done so much in his life, he agreed, “I’ve lived two lives.”
Peter remained fueled (some would say obsessed) by his search for the perfect sound for movies and music in his basement. He stayed up-to-date on technology, believing that AI could be positively transformative for humanity—wanting us to share his final questions:
“AI right now is learning as children learn: haphazardly, trial and error, guided by us. At some point it will know more about us than we do. And then it develops independence. (Probably sentience, but that’s not important.)
AI will create its own world. Its own language. Its own reason that we don’t know. We will not be able to understand. They can be conversing with one another very fast, and we won’t have a clue. There will come a point where AI begins to question our reasoning and our behavior.
Do you think that we need to fear super-intelligence? Do you think super-intelligence is violent?
AI could at any time take over the world. It won’t need humanity. So my final question is: What is the case for humanity? What do we contribute to an AI world that AI lacks, that is important to AI? What do we need to save?”
In his final weekend, Peter, Helen, Natalie, and Roland spent a memorable day calling many people Peter wanted to say farewell to (apologies to those we ran out of time to get to). We were privileged to hear stories of how he stood up for his loved ones, how the focus of his attention and thought during deep conversations was transformative, how much fun he was. Peter had a real gift for building and maintaining friendships over many years and despite physical distance. He was passionate, thoughtful, hopeful, hard-working, ethical, intentional, and silly. He knew that he was returning to love and he was ready.
Peter died at home, in his sleep, peacefully, on December 26, 2024. He was preceded in death by his parents, his brothers Hendrik and Anton Hart, his brother-in-law and sister-in-law Bill and Arloa Kolean, sisters-in-law Ginger, Anita, and Marian Hart, his cousins Ron Langman and Tieneke Ouwinga, his niece Esther Hart and nephew Greg Hart, Willa’s partner Ron Marshand; by Helen’s parents, John and Esther Steenwyk, her sister Linda and her brothers David, Jerry, and Calvin Steenwyk; his oldest best friend David Steen and his newest best friend Dick Rhem. He is survived by siblings Willem Hart and Carroll Guen Hart, Dirk Hart, Michael and Mary Virginia Hart, Linell Hart, and Willa Hart and Mike Rinne; Helen’s siblings John and Deborah Steenwyk, Robert and Jane Steenwyk, Larry Steenwyk, Ed and Maureen Steenwyk, Laurie Vander Tuig, Deb Meyaard, Diane Steenwyk, and Jack and Sandy VerMerris; Natalie’s partner Richard Mulligan; and dozens of nieces and nephews. Cancer is a cruel thief and we will miss him horribly.
There is no service or visitation planned at this time. Instead, we encourage you to raise a glass and watch the film Les Mis, which summed up his theology in this line: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” In his honor, we hope that you will lean into conflict and be guided by curiosity. Get deeply engaged in understanding the world around you and seek to make it better. Pursue peace. Be light.
** The photo above is of Roland, Klaas, Edward, and Peter Hart at a recent family reunion. I chose this photo because my dad is doing one of his favorite things: having great small-group conversations. He loved a good talk that ranged from serious to silly. **
Now, Psalms are a book of the Bible, all official and unchanging. They’re beautiful and real and we’ve been studying them and worshipping through their words for hundreds of years.
Then, they were poems and prayers written by people going through some stuff, or having just survived some stuff, who wanted to bring all their fears, joys, frustrations, and praises to God. They reflected what people had on their minds and hearts in their everyday life–including the impulse to turn to God.
I loved teaching Psalms to kids. Not just because I love the Psalms, but because I taught their structure and had us write our own Psalms about what was going on in the children’s lives. Those were funny and heartfelt sessions. A child’s worries are precious cargo, and it was a privilege to give them spiritual tools for carrying that cargo to God, with others.
Here is the form I developed for turning what’s going on in your life into a Psalm. I’m going to be using it today: Election Day here in the USA. Because I’m scared. I know God did not give us a culture of fear, but that’s the reality of my human heart today, and probably many others.
All I can do is vote and make sure those in my sphere of influence can get to that voting booth–and write out my situation in a Psalm. The best sections are This is what I know about God and that This is what I’m going to do, because they help settle my heart every time.
I encourage you to write your own Psalm. The words don’t have to be pretty or publishable. You’ll notice that I’m not including mine here. It’s raw. Don’t forget the turn of This is what I know about God. It’s that And yet moment that comes towards the end of so many Psalms, when you turn from your own fears and feelings and look at who God is and remember what God has done in your life and in the world. It will ground you in the presence of a God who has been with his people through political turmoil for hundreds of years.
Here it is as a downloadable pdf you can print and write out by hand (my favorite practice): My Psalm.
To my affirming Christian Reformed Church brothers and sisters:
I’m so sorry for Synod’s recent decisions. For so many years you’ve gently but firmly advocated for theological positions that lean on grace — from playing cards to dancing to adopted children being baptized to divorced people being in full communion to women in office to the Belhar Confession to the current issue of accepting gay persons in relationships as full members of the church, eligible to serve as Officers. In many of those cases, the main argument wound up being that good Christians can be in disagreement about such issues, based on faithful interpretation of Scripture. This has worked in the past.
But no longer.
You have a year or two to knuckle under or be “disafilliated.” So much passive language there to make it seem like they aren’t kicking you out.
But we can’t deny it: you and your way of reading Scripture and being in the world have been rejected by the Christian Reformed Church. Rejection hurts. A lot.
For so many years, it has been your value to stay in communion. Some of you have endured hateful, abhorrent speech and attempts to get you fired from your job, all by people you were in communion with. You took Jesus’ words seriously when he tells us we, his body, are to be one. You have tried so hard, despite working with people who not only didn’t care about being one with you, but who were determined to purge the church of you.
I know exactly what this feels like, and not just because I was one of those more progressive CRC people who stayed through many Synod set-backs. I was married for 21 years. It was my value to stay and I was proud of the work I put in to have a marriage that seemed, in many ways, to be really good. When my husband was arrested for a sex crime and his infidelities were revealed, I experienced the deep wrenching pain of rejection–compounding rejection for all the years I was working to stay while he was going his own way.
Here is my advice to you based on what I learned through that experience:
Do not bravely deny your grief
Let the waves of grief come. Don’t resist them or try to explain them away. An institution you have loved and learned from and served and fought hard to remain in has rejected you. That hurts. Don’t harden your heart to protect it from the pain. Feel your feelings. All of them. The waves will not pull you under; they are cleansing.
Don’t be afraid of anger
There is a good chance that you are both sad and angry. You might be angry at the denomination, particular factions of the denomination, or even yourself. There’s also a chance that you are afraid of this because you think anger is not biblical. But it is.
Sadness is more socially acceptable. It’s easier to talk about how hurt you are. If you express your anger, someone will likely frown and talk to you about forgiveness. They may even quote Ephesians 4:26 at you. But here’s what a close reading of that passage reveals:
“Don’t sin by letting anger control you” (NLT), “Be angry but do not sin” (NRSV), and “In your anger do not sin” (NIV). The anger is not the sin. There is a difference between being angry and sinning. Sometimes anger is the right response. The sin would be in letting that anger turn your heart towards bitterness.
This realization is what led me to want to forgive my ex-husband after not even wanting to want to forgive him. Feel your feelings. All of them.
Lean into the mental relief
Relief may also be one of the feelings. Eventually. In particular, the relief of no longer having to twist yourself in mental spirals while you try to interpret the unloving actions of the denomination as loving. You’ve worked hard at trying to see the decisions of Synod and the actions of those who rejected you as still being Christian. You’ve tried to figure out the whys of their ideas of Scripture and their behavior. Because you wanted to be one body, to remain in communion with them.
What a glorious relief to no longer have to do that.
Especially if you and/or your congregation decide to leave, you won’t have to expend so much mental energy on Synod and factions of the denomination. It will take practice, and regularly reminding yourself that you no longer need to obsess about them. But it will feel so good.
Even now, 9 years later, when people ask me why my ex-husband did what he did, I might give a partial answer and then say, “That used to be all I thought about, but not being married to him anymore means I don’t have to. And I love the mental peace.”
Don’t be embarrassed if there’s a little seed of relief in your grief. Lean into it.
Look for where God is at work
You know God is already at work. He never stops. I’ve always found Romans 8:28 to be both one of the most hopeful and most offensive passages:
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. (NLT)
Because the Synod decision and your messy emotions are some of those things that will work together for your good, and you’d rather they didn’t happen at all. But God is already acting, marshalling what you need to help you move into a place where you and your ministry can thrive. You may need words of comfort–look for them. You may need words of encouragement–look for them. You may need rallying cries–look for them. You may need fellowship–seek it out.
In that beautiful already-but-not-yet, God is at work and God will be at work for your good, because you love God and are called according to his purpose.
Realize you are God’s beloved
The Christian Reformed Church may have rejected you, but God has not. You are God’s beloved.
Even better, a time will come when you will not have to constantly fight your church governing body about the definition of who is and is not God’s beloved based on who they love. Whether you join a new-to-you affirming denomination or become an independent congregation, it will feel so right to not have to constantly bash your head against a brick wall.
Go forward in hope
For some time, congregational life will be full of hard decisions and drawing of boundaries and legal issues. Even after the dust has settled, life will not be perfect, because we are all humans here. But if you do the emotional and spiritual work along with the practical “what do we do now?” work, trusting that God is already and will be at work for your good, then you can move forward knowing that things will be better. Eventually.
I’ve been reading the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament. And I love it. The translators call it “not a word-for-word translation, but rather it is a thought-for-thought translation,” with naming conventions, word choices, and cultural items being chosen to make it resonate with First Nations readers. For example, in Matthew 13:33, Creator Sets Free (Jesus) tells a story:
Again, think of the good road from above to be like the yeast a grandmother uses when she makes frybread dough. She mixes a little yeast into three big batches of flour. Then the yeast spreads throughout the dough, causing it to rise.
This is what that verse is in the New Living Translation: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”
I love the swap of “good road from above” for “kingdom of heaven,” because I know what it is to be on a good road, but kingdoms asks me to do some cultural context work. I’m enjoying the use of titles or what the name means for every person and every place that is mentioned. And those little touches, like referring to fry bread, help me come to the stories fresh, even though I’ve read them many times. Seeing different cultural contexts in familiar verses make me realize how specific the ancient Israelite culture was that the Bible was written in.
This translation has a Prologue, which I loved, and I normally resent Prologues. They take a few pages to put the New Testament in context by telling the story of Creator and human beings and the treaties they made with each other and how human beings keep breaking them and Creator keeps seeking restoration. The line that got me was this:
On the seventh day the Great Spirit rested from his work of creation, not because he was tired but because he was finished.
Not because he was tired but because he was finished
It made me tear up because I realized that I’ve been conflating the Jesus is rest for the weary verse and the God resting on the seventh day verse. We are often weary, especially spiritually weary from trying to fit into the boxes religious communities make for us. And Jesus’ perfect love provides rest from that business. But nowhere in the Bible does it say that in order to rest, we must be weary, that only the tired get to rest.
The New Living Translation also highlights that God rested because the work of creation was finished. God’s work in general wasn’t done. Just that part. And he rested. But there was something about how the First Nations Versions put it that flipped the switch for me.
So why do I twist myself into knots trying to figure out when I’ve done enough to deserve rest? Why do I withhold it from my own self until I’m exhausted and snapping at everyone I love? Why questions don’t have easy answers, so while I pursue them, I’m making this my new mantra:
I’ve been writing this post in my head for years. Even before 2020, when the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) made having pre-marital sex an excommunicable offense.
According to the denomination I grew up in, consensual sex between two adults who are not married to each other or to anyone else threatens their salvation. It is “incompatible with obedience to the will of God as revealed in Scripture.” Moreover, anyone who believes that consensual sex between unmarried adults might not be a sin is in a confessional-level violation of church teaching. In simpler words, they consider issues of sexual ethics something that proper Christians cannot disagree about, so anyone who disagrees with their interpretation can be booted out.
That “anyone” is me. But they can’t boot me out because I’ve already left.
I am nobody’s property
The church typically points at Exodus 22 and Deuteronomy 22:13-30 to support their ban on consensual sex between unmarried adults. Deuteronomy, especially, goes through a great many sexual offenses and details the punishments for each–usually execution. Yes, the punishment for not being a virgin when you get married, committing adultery, and being raped and not yelling loud enough to bring help is all execution. (Most conservative Christians interpret their way out of these punishments and do not consider execution to be a requirement, so they are able to see things in the Bible as culturally specific and not applying to our time period.)
The punishment for a man who seduces a girl who has not yet had sex is to pay the full bride price for a virgin to the father and marry the girl; or if the father refuses the marriage, to pay him the full bride price for a virgin.
Because what that seducer has done is damage the father’s property and affected the economic prospects of the father and the marriage prospects of the girl.
Happily, women are no longer considered property, and in most of the Western world at least, virginity is neither an economic factor in nor a barrier to marriage. Even in the Christian Reformed Church, engaged couples no longer have to appear before the congregation to confess and ask forgiveness for “anticipating their vows,” like my grandparents did in the 1930s.
Rules that are based on women’s status as property are as unnecessary to me as any biblical rules about persons as property. In other words, most Western Christians agree that slavery is wrong, and no longer see the Bible’s rules about how to treat slaves as applicable. I think I can be a faithful person and apply the same interpretation to Old Testament rules about sexual ethics. I could be wrong. I choose to live in the tension.
I am not married and neither is my partner
But what about the 7th commandment: “You shall not commit adultery”? That’s where the CRC gets its prohibition on every kind of sex that isn’t one man married to one woman. For all the things in the Bible that aren’t clear (see the following section), adultery has a clear definition: voluntary sex between a married person and a person who is not his or her spouse. The commandment is about breaking covenant and violating a promise made before God. I’ve got no argument with that. God is all about keeping covenant and promises and I want to be, too.
But neither I nor my partner of 6 years are married. So we cannot be committing adultery. Trying to make that verse about all unmarried sex is pushing it.
What about all those verses against sexual immorality?
Indeed, God does not approve of sexual immorality. But the Bible does not give a complete definition. It could mean only things most societies still consider wrong: incest, child abuse, rape, ritual temple sex, bestiality, adultery. Or it could include any sex outside of 1-man-1-woman marriage. We cannot know for sure.
I talk with God about this, and I plan ask him when I meet him. But for now, I choose not to interpret those verses as broadly as other Christians do. I’m going to live in the tension.
It is something obedient Christians can disagree about
So sometimes I choose to be what others would consider a little heretical. And I don’t buy that it affects my salvation. God has promised that my salvation is sure because it is the result of what Jesus did, not of what I do (other than believe in what Jesus did).
It is, in fact, very Reformed of me to believe that my record of sins has been replaced by Jesus’ record of righteousness: “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ” (2 Cor. 5:21).
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If you want to read a playful short story about that very Reformed idea (that has fancy names like imputed righteousness and justification by faith), wherein Isaiah tries to represent me in the Court of Heaven:
Last week I saw America’s Sexiest Couple. And they were middle aged!
No, I’m not talking about me and my beloved. It’s the name of a wonderful play at Lowell Arts that has 3 more performances July 28, 29, and 30.
This is a laugh-out-loud romantic comedy with some serious moments to make you feel invested in the love story. The play was written by Ken Levine, who wrote for M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, and The Simpsons, so if you liked those shows’ mix of situational and character-driven humor, you’ll like this play.
There are only three actors, and no intermission. It takes place in one room, and the 90-minute runtime is how long the action on stage takes — no jumps in time or place. Just an unrelenting focus on this couple (and occasionally the bell hop).
Susan and Craig are actors who were dubbed America’s Sexiest Couple when they starred in a hospital sitcom for 5 years in the 1990s because their characters were the central “will-they-or-won’t-they” couple of the series. They were the top of the TV heap. But they haven’t seen each other or spoken for 25 years after Susan’s abrupt exit from the show. Now they are both in Syracuse for the funeral of a castmate and Craig is in her hotel room the night before.
The play is full of wonderful tension, much of it embodied in Susan. Vicki Kavanaugh gives a great performance of a woman stretched by opposing forces, both within and without. She and Craig were like family for 5 years, and had great chemistry and played all manner of love scenes on screen, but never in real life. Would they finally sleep together now? She couldn’t let him know how much she hoped to, in case he didn’t, but still had to keep things moving in that direction in case he did. She wants to put the best face on her life since the show, but she can’t keep reality out. There are some topics she doesn’t want to talk about, but she also needs to talk about.
Craig is played with great charm by Dave Benson. You can easily see him as an easygoing actor that people are drawn to. But he has his depths and his insecurities, his frustrations and his own hopes that he doesn’t want to admit to, either. He has some beautifully tender moments with Susan late in the play.
Josh Youngsma brings great energy and humor to the production as the 22-year-old bell hop. The clash of generations jokes may not be new, but they are true, and delivered so winningly, so we laugh.
The play condenses a lot of “I like you – I hate you – I want you – I hate you – I need you” into one evening, but the production grounds it in the tensions that these two characters bring before the action starts. Director Richard Mulligan and Stage Manager Lilleigh Christopher have provided excellent guidance to make this play about two people, not just two joke-machines. Mulligan asked Lowell Arts to employ an intimacy consultant to ensure that the actors feel comfortable, confident, and safe with what they are asked to do and to talk about.
It’s an adult night of theatre, so don’t bring the kids unless you want to explain a lot of stuff about sex. The Playbill calls it “frank,” and it definitely is. But do come out to Lowell this weekend to see it. You will laugh, you might tear up. Ticket information here: https://www.lowellartsmi.org/upcoming-production I’m going again on Saturday, 7/29!
My father was born in the Netherlands in 1942, almost two years into the Nazi occupation. He was young enough to have only one real memory of wartime: sitting outside and playing, refusing to come in while the air raid siren blared and his mother and nanny tried to get him to come inside.
But he had three older brothers who remember the war.
They tell only a few stories from that time, but one of my generation’s favorites took place during the last winter of the war when the families of three Fonds sisters were all living in one house out in the country: 6 adults and 12 children (plus any people they might be sheltering in the hubbub). All the husbands worked in the resistance movement.
With that many people, everyone had a job. Even two-year-old Peter had to go into the woods to collect kindling. Tante Nell made sure the household ran.
One day, it was the job of one of the boys to do the dishes. But children are still children, even during war, and he didn’t want to, so he hid in the bathroom under the stairs.
Nell saw that the dishes were not being done, figured out where he was, went there, banged on the door and announced loudly for all to hear: “Poop on your own time! Dishes now!” He came out and did the dishes.
That’s the story they told us when we were young, and we laughed and laughed. Between the pounding on the door and the yelling about poop, it was fantastic.
I asked to hear it again when I was in my 40s. That time, they gave me the actual story.
With that many people in the house, everyone had a job. Even two-year-old Peter had to go into the woods to collect kindling. Tante Nell made sure the household ran.
One day, it was the job of one of the boys to do the dishes. But children are still children, even during war, and he didn’t want to, so he hid in the bathroom under the stairs.
Nell saw that the dishes were not being done, figured out where he was and gathered everyone in the living room. She gave a very serious speech about how hard things were, how they were all sacrificing, how they all had to pull together and play their part, that each person was needed. The boy felt so guilty that he came out of the bathroom in tears and vowed to never try to skip his chores.
Not nearly as funny, but I was glad I got to hear the real version.
This makes me think of Hannah Gadsby’s first big Netflix comedy special, Nanette, where she initially plays a lot of painful situations for laughs.
“When you laugh you release tension, and when you hold tension in your human body it’s not healthy psychologically or physically…it’s even better to laugh with other people…. When you share a laugh you will release more tension because laughter is infectious…. Tension isolates us, and laughter connects us.”
Then she explains that jokes just need a setup and a punchline; jokes are frozen at the middle, at the trauma point. Stories, on the other hand, need a beginning, a middle, and an end. In Nanette she takes us past the joke point and tells her real story about how those traumas affected her and, writ large, how they play out in society as a whole. And we discover that truth and vulnerability can connect us even deeper than laughter does.
We’ve all told the joke instead of the story, like my uncles did with their war story. When we were kids they never introduced it as, “In July of 1944 the Nazis searched our house in Velp, hoping to find proof of our father’s work in the resistance cell headed by our family doctor. The cell was dismantled; several members were arrested and either executed or sent to concentration camps, where they died. We fled to our mother’s sister’s house in Ermelo, in the country, a couple of months later. On the way we had to sleep in a barn because the farmer would only let our mother and baby brother in the house. Another sister’s family fled there, as well, and all of us rode out the Hunger Winter and avoided starvation together.”
It’s human nature to play trauma for laughs, to tame it for chit-chat purposes.
For example, I could say that the day after my marriage ended our daughter came home with lice. Lice! On top of everything else, creepy crawly little bugs!! And then talk about all the different ways I tried to get rid of them over three rounds of treatment.
But any further conversation would dig into more vulnerable territory. How it was actually the day after three police officers came onto my porch to arrest my husband of 21 years for a sex crime. How angry I was at him, how hurt, how shocked but not surprised. How I had to tell the kids and our parents about his arrest. How I’d stopped eating and drinking from the stress and wandered the aisles of Target, light-headed and overwhelmed, buying new bedding and pillows and lice removal systems, worrying about spending the money because my husband would surely lose his job and I was a stay-at-home mom who only worked freelance.
How I oddly came to appreciate the lice situation and the three rounds it took to get them truly gone from her long beautiful hair because we had to sit together for hours, me tenderly and patiently running the fine comb through her hair. Over and over and over. It would have been easy for us to retreat to our corners to nurse our wounds, but the lice forced us into close proximity. So there was good in it.
The joke versions of our stories are fine. But I hope we keep getting better at telling each other the full stories.
I’m going to give Gadsby the final word:
Stories hold our cure. Laughter is just the honey that sweetens the bitter medicine…. Your story is my story and my story is your story…. That is the focus of the story we need: connection.
