The practice of Lent has been a newer experience for me. The emphasis in my evangelical church was always on grace and “Resurrection Sunday”.  Penitence had a very bad rap. However, the more I learned about Lent, the more I began to see that growth can occur and even a spiritual clarity through the practice of restricting oneself from things. The things that we abstain from are not inherently bad. Sugar, alcohol, meat, and social media all have their place in the celebration and enjoyment of life. When abused however, they can become controlling and unhealthy not only to ourselves, but others as well. In the giving up of these things that we take pleasure in, we oft come face to face with our weaknesses. Anyone that has suffered from sugar withdrawals knows what I’m talking about.

When I think of the meaning of this word, weakness, I think of the inability to perform or to carry a heavy load, a fragility and a tendency to break down. As a Christian, this makes my stomach churn. Like a movie, immediately what comes to mind is all the times I’ve been told in the church that this is my identity as a woman. Prone to being overly emotional, erratic, limited, inferior, delicate and manipulative. This teaching of weakness in the church has been used to silence and suppress many. I felt shame every time I experienced a strong emotion, spoke ‘out of turn’ or disagreed with men in leadership.
When feeling triggered, I turn to Jesus and his radical example in scripture, hoping to redeem this word, weakness.  In John 13:3-16 we see what this looks like:

“Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me Teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” 

Before posturing himself in service, we are reminded of Jesus’ power and his identity. Evelyn Underhill recognizes the beauty in this in her piece, The Divine Condescension when she writes:

“And indeed it is above all when we see a human spirit, knowing its own power, choose the path of sacrifice instead of the path of ambition: when we see human courage and generosity blazing out on the heroic levels in the shadow of death; the human agony and utter self-surrender of Gethsemane, the accepted desolation of the Cross, that we recognize a love and holiness which point beyond the world.”

Jesus is showing us something here about weakness by first calling attention to power. Power and the ways it is demonstrated in the world we live today is repugnant. It is self-serving, exploitative and brash. It seeks to control, separate, and ostracize ‘the other’. The power Jesus demonstrated is in such a stark contrast as it served ‘the other’, was redemptive, exalted the voices silenced by societal structures, brought people together and provided a place of belonging. It was a power marked by surrender.

So, it is during this Lenten season, I find that the weakness I am faced with is not actually the one that historically has been imposed upon me. I reject that misguided teaching within the church. In fact, the weakness I have come face to face with is the tendency to use my own power and privilege for self-interest, self-protection, self-soothing, self-loathing, and self-serving. Instead I am challenged to first recognize the power and privilege I hold in this world, and to strategically lay it down on behalf of the many others that are marginalized, alienated, discriminated against, and even silenced. This is what I am practicing and still learning and I hope that other Christians who hold differing forms of power and privilege will follow Jesus’ lead and do the same.


Anna Tesch has been married for 16 years, is the mother of three in betweeners, a daughter to supportive parents, a sister, an aunt, and a friend. She works for her local school district, volunteers in an organization providing food for low income students, cooks while listening to records, cuddles babies in her church and writes as a recovering evangelical. She is developing her skills as a photographer and a mixed media artist.
You can find some of her work here and follow her on twitter @AnnaBreeT. 

 Are you seeking a faith that will keep you safe from the world? A God who will protect you from all of the bad things out there? Perhaps you are looking for a faith that puts your happiness above all other things, or one that promises riches, power and health in accordance with the amount of faith you have?
If these are things you are seeking from a faith, let me tell you…
Christianity is not the faith for you.
Christinity is not easy.
Christianity will not keep you safe.
God will not make you happy, nor will God give you things in measure to your faith.
This is not how it works.
 
Over the past few months, as the ocnversations about immigrants and refugees have gotten louder and more vitriolic, as conversations about our neighbors at home and abroad have led to some Christians reaching out and some calling to build walls, over and over again I have heard people of faith say, “We just want to be safe.” “This is about safety.” “We can let in refugees, but only the safe ones.”
 
These are likely similar to the thoughts the priest and the Levite had while walking past the man on the side of the road, dying from his injuries. They just wanted to be safe, to be pure, to be clean. But the one that Jesus lifts up is the one who risked his own safety to help a stranger – a stranger who might be faking it, a stranger who might be unsafe.
 
The Christian faith is a difficult faith. We are called by Jesus Christ to follow in his footsteps, yet is seems that most people who call themselves followers of Christ skip past the crucifixion to the resurrection. They skip past the pain and sacrifice and focus on the glory. There has long been this strain in Christianity. But as of late it has gotten louder. The (already warped) conversation that used to center on personal salvation in the hereafter has somehow warped (further) to center the Christian narrative around the individual’s personal safety & satisfaction in this life alongside salvation in the life to come. This is the American version of the gospel. Individual salvation. Individual safety. A God fearing life that overflows with rewards for good behavior. In this version of the gospel, the rewards go to those who live their best life, who work hard, & who follow the rules. The poor, the infirm, the mentally ill, the stranger, anyone who doesn’t fit or anyone who didn’t start out with the same things I started out with be damned. This isn’t about you. Jesus loves ME.
 
This is not the gospel. There is no good news in this. There is no redemption, no radical reorientation of the world. Just a sustaining of things as they have been, a holding up of this so that it things will always be this way.
 
The gospel commands risk. The gospel is not safe. The Good News is not comfortable for many of us. Jesus calls us to be unsafe.
 
Christ says, “Pick up your cross and follow me.”
 
Christ says, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Christ says, “Give up all you have and follow me.”
 
What does it look like to follow Christ? It looks like hanging out with the undesirables of the world – in his time, the tax collectors, criminals, prostitutes, the mentally ill. In our time this might be the undocumented, criminals, prostitutes, members of the LGBTQ community, people who have HIV, the homeless, and the many other people our society pushes to the margins. It looks like breaking rules of propriety  and breaking down walls to show love to those society has deemed unworthy of love. It looks like caring for the least of these, wherever you are, however you can, without concern for safety, without interest in your own personal gain, without regard for your own personal happiness.
 
The God of Safety is a false God. This is not the God of the Bible, it is a golden calf, a thing invented by us to make us feel good – to make us feel as though when we put worries about our own safety first, we are doing the right thing.
But this is never something God promises.
This is never something God asks of us.
God never says, “Stay safe.”
 
God says, over and over again, “Pick up your cross and follow me.”
And on that path, before we reach glory, we come face to face with pain, with sacrifice, with death.
There is no getting around that.
Jesus points us to the cross, which is standing right in the middle of the path to glory.
 
We cannot honestly follow Jesus and stay safe at the same time. Jesus commands us out of our homes, and churches into the streets, into the places where the hurting, diseased and dangerous dwell.  Jesus commands us to tear down our walls and open our arms to the suffering, to hear the stories of the displaced and dispossessed and to have our hearts broken open again and again by the pain of others.
 
The road to the resurrection is filled with danger, pain and sacrifice.
And we make the road by walking. 


Rev. Elizabeth Rawlings is the Lutheran pastor for The Sanctuary, a Lutheran Episcopal Ministry to the University of Washington. She enjoys disrupting things and creating community, aspires to read more and play video games less. Her call caring for students in these times gives her life. Rev. Elizabeth blogs at feetinarmsout.wordpress.com & she is helping her students practice radical self-love this Lent through meditations that can be found at www.sanctuaryuw.org.