Life After Leaven w/ Tamice Spencer-Helms
As a follow up to her debut book, Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin & George Floyd, Tamice Spencer-Helms is joined by folx from all walks of life and society to talk about picking up the shattered fragments of a faith we used to know. Life After Leaven is a podcast for those seeking to heal from the damage caused by toxic Christianity and rebuild something new and life giving in its place.
Life After Leaven w/ Tamice Spencer-Helms
Shattering Binaries with Michelle Higgins
When Michelle Higgins graced our studio, she brought with her a all the fire! In this session of Life After Leaven, we're taken on a transformative journey that challenges our perceptions of sin, atonement, and their ties to the oppressive structures of patriarchy. Michelle's theological insights invite us to consider a new understanding of Jesus' sacrifice and its role in shattering binary perspectives that have long fostered racism and misogyny.
The wisdom of black women takes center stage as we recount stories from a gathering of social entrepreneurs that resonate with power and poignancy. We traverse the landscapes of identity, race, and spirituality, drawing strength from the resilience of the black church against patriarchal constraints. Our dialogue uncovers the profound impact of womanism in shaping these narratives, offering a space for healing and reconciliation amid the complexities of navigating whiteness and embracing non-binary identities.
As we wrap up, the conversation shifts to the historic black church's enduring legacy in shaping salvation and judgment narratives where the marginalized claim their voice. We celebrate the interplay of worship and justice, highlighting figures like Ella Baker who inspire us to keep rising. And in the quiet moments of exile, we share the hope for new networks of solidarity, finding joy in tradition while boldly naming the divine in all aspects of life. Michelle's reflections leave us with an invitation to recognize God's presence more deeply, transforming our personal deserts into places of profound encounter.
Life After Leaven is sponsored by Sub:Culture Incorporated, a 501c3 committed to eradicating cultural, social, spiritual, financial, and academic barriers for Black College Students. If you are interested in giving a tax deductible donation toward our work with black college students, you can do that here. Thank you for helping us ensure temporary roadblocks don't become permanent dead ends for students with marginalized identities. You can follow us on Instagram: @subc_incorporated, Facebook: facebook.com/subcultureinco, and Twitter: @subcultureinco1.
Our episodes are written and produced by Tamice Namae Speaks LLC.
Don’t miss out on what Tamice has planned next! Follow her on Instagram and Twitter, or subscribe to her Patreon page.
All right, what's up everybody. Welcome to this episode, the special episode of Life After Eleven. I'm back with the one and only Michelle Higgins, and in the last episode Michelle was when we got into a little bit of stuff about Necessary Atonement and Patriarchy and all that kind of stuff, and so for the hero series, I kind of went into it a little bit how I met Michelle, why Michelle is in the hero series for me, but I would love for you all to hear sis go off theologically. So that is why we are here. That is what this episode is about. We are going to nerd out and obviously I'm just here to listen.
Speaker 1:So welcome back, friend. I'm so glad to have you and I'm just really curious. I something you said last time you talked about. You still believe in a Necessary Atonement, which was so helpful. A lot of the people who listened to that episode noted that that was really helpful for them in terms of figuring out where they stand, whether they're Christian or not, or how do they take Jesus with them, what is the meaning of Jesus, and so I think, because that went so well, I'd love to have you talk a little bit more about that and what you mean by the cross dealing with Patriarchy. I'm just here for it, so welcome back.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm so excited to share and, like I said, I do really nerd out around this stuff, but it's funny. The way that I really got into studying this was I did a sermon series on Genesis and one of the things that my congregation asked me to really dig into was this idea of original sin, this tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And we really expressed our perspective on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as a tree that forces the binary upon your vision. The binary on everything Right and wrong becomes black and white, and to the point that racism, patriarchy, misogyny, they're really all about the binary. And when we sat back and we began to do the hard work of allowing the Holy Ghost to queer theology for us, not applying the queer agenda, which I feel is holy, so human, not applying the queer agenda to the scripture, I'm allowing the Holy Ghost to show me the queerness that appears in theology itself. And this was our prayer and our sincere prayer from the start of scripture in Genesis, where we see the tree as the origins of the binary, and then to the end of scripture and Revelation, where we view an agreement with the theologian Brian K Blount, who views the lamb slain as a homeopathic cure.
Speaker 2:You get the COVID shot. It's a little bit of COVID in there. When I got the chickenpox vaccine is a little bit chickenpox in there. And so the homeopathic cure for all violence, all ill, for misogyny, for patriarchy, is in many ways the respecting of an amplifying of femininity and womanhood, by not crucifying those, but by moving all of the masculinity that has been so toxic and has toxified us, from Adam pointing at his wife all the way through David pointing at a naked lady on a rooftop All the way down.
Speaker 2:I mean we could. We could saddle back and go to Abraham and Sarah pointing at a black Egyptian woman, judah pointing at Tamar it's a whole bunch of people in Jesus's line right that are just subsumed by patriarchy and misogyny. And how much more of a precious sacrifice is the Rahab's great, great grand, ruth's great, great grand, tamar's great, great, great, great grand, bathsheba's great, great, great, great grandson, who climbs up on the cross to sacrifice himself and says I could wipe all your simple selves out, but I won't because I am your vaccine. It's Jesus's blood that goes into the shot that inoculates us, and that is why I feel the necessity of atonement, because human agendas cannot produce holiness, but God's holiness makes our humanity whole.
Speaker 1:My goodness.
Speaker 1:And so you're.
Speaker 1:You're saying essentially that Hold on one second, oh God, I hadn't even thought about being open to the cross, and that I think that way that you just frame that makes me open to going back and looking at the cross in a different way.
Speaker 1:Right, I was okay with the ontologically black and the lynching tree and all of that kind of stuff, but because of my you know my rearing and evangelicalism, pino, substitutionary atonement was just not it, because I would have to embrace some sort of sin nature that I just don't feel this just not rocking with me, because I think it it puts me in a position to outsource my intuition, to outsource even my, my agency in a lot of ways, and so to believe that I am deeply flawed without my own choice and without my own ability to rectify that, it can be taken advantage of and was taken advantage of. And so I just haven't ever heard anybody talk about what Jesus does or the meaning of the cross from the lens of binaries and patriarchy and misogyny. Like that is where, where, where did that come from? Like how you, you were just spending time in Genesis and it kind of popped out at you like you just built this, how did?
Speaker 2:you. I mean like good grief, you know, and I haven't really been able to find it because one it's the job of the preaching, like studious pastor, to presume that you ain't the first person to think of it, right? So I'm looking forward and I invite our listeners, our, you know, our siblings in the faith to really challenge me and hook me up with. Where I may have seen this before, because that's the last thing I want to presume, is people all over the place quote me, but because I'm toxic to evangelicals. I don't get that.
Speaker 2:I don't get the side take that part yes, but I will say that the more I thought about my own, you know what we, when I want to heal from is this idea of sin nature. But what? What the movement has taught me, as I've become ingrained in ministry and movement and movement is ministry is that accountability is healthy for us. And while I would, you know, I am deeply inspired by and was you know, still recovering from the loss of our beloved Bishop Carlton Pearson, his, his journey really has been something that I've not even striven to emulate, it just kind of happened. I remember saving money to put money in his offering basket when my mama and her friends and my dad, we said drive from Missouri to Oklahoma just to hear him preach one time in a year. Right, and his journey was amazing to me and his being found a heretic.
Speaker 2:I followed that, siri, I mean, I followed it, like you know. Big, bigger than any other celebrity news ever, was the Bishop being cast out. So when I began to discover the things that only God can hold, one of those things is the knowledge of the presumption that we can name something completely good or name something completely evil. And is that not what evangelicalism? And we don't even have to go to evangelicalism. Our own beloved Ken in the motherly, who would never call themselves evangelical, have decided that queer people are punishable by death. It's not evangelicals, let's not harp on them, but I do believe that people have decided that absolute something is in the hands of man and God said there are absolutes, don't get me wrong, but I own them. And the knowledge of good and evil is for you to look at and to respect. That God knows how to eat fruit. It's for you to to put in your own gardening and contributions into the soil of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's for you to sit under its shade, but the fruit of that tree is poisonous. To who God made the sacred limitation. I possess the limitation and I have to call my limits sacred after it's two main things. Number one that suffering is not the path to salvation. That is not how we get there, because the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would say when you discover you need salvation, automatically have to be punished, because if you need salvation, you must suck the Lord's creation. The tree of life tells me that to need salvation means that I need, I need a mediator between you and I when I make you man, so that when, when we anger each other, my expectations of you aren't lowered to the point of never trusting you again. They may be, maybe I build a boundary so that we don't move into a particular type of relationship ever again, but I will never get to the point where my disdain or disappointment causes hatred, causes me to terrorize. My judgment of how you live caused me to think that I'm better than you. Those of fruits, that is, the rotted fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But the tree of life says that I can believe and celebrate and join hands with my Israeli friends as I demand, encourage any, yes, even build boundaries when we disagree.
Speaker 2:Concerning the genocide that's going on in Palestine right now, I can look in the faces of every white person who not just history, but our very makeup, the homeo sapient in me who was, like all y'all, neanderthals. I don't have to get to a place where mockery or prejudice or rudeness or even evil separates me from that, our sense, the sense of, at base, being co-humans on this earth. I can actually live in a completely racist capitalist society and fight while I still have a meal, a feast, in the presence of my enemies. This is because the binary has been dismantled. This is because I know from my own identity that complexity is part of how God created us to come even more beauty, even in the midst of chaos. So I do.
Speaker 2:I encourage people, I encourage you to take the beauty of how God made you and apply that. And this is gonna be. You know, I graduated from a Presbyterian seminary. They gonna rescind my own.
Speaker 2:God made you to bring God's story into your context. What happened? Europeans forced their context upon the context of the Lord's commands to the children of Israel manifest destiny right. Our brother mark talks about this all the time. It is our job to see God's principles and God's love and God's essence as how do we, in our identity as black women, what did God give us that allows us to interpret scripture for our people, for our time.
Speaker 2:I can't interpret scripture for our Lebanese Christian friends, but I can join them in interpreting scripture in my context in a way that says we will always reach out for love, you, fight for you and alongside you.
Speaker 2:I can't interpret there are anti-racist, recently awakened white friends but I can interpret, sure, as I am from my congregation, where anti-racist, recently awakened white people may come and sit up in my team and it still has impact on their life because they are willing to come and learn about things that ain't about them, but the truth within it might be for them. And so that's where I think. When I began to really apply that and again it's really Dr Willie Jennings and Dr Brian Cape-Blaunt and a number of eco-womenists that I began to study I began to realize that our blackness and our femininity are gifts to us from God for the sake of reading the word in a particular lens. That is the lens via which and then queer, black feminisms, black, queer feminism. That is the lens through which I read the scripture, and it doesn't matter whether I say that it's the truth for me or the truth period. Those who don't like that lens will damn us anyway. So we may as well use that lens to protect all those who have been called damned.
Speaker 2:And that's where my reread of Genesis came from Shh.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, lord Jesus, hold on one second. Shh, oh my God, mm, Mm, mm, mm. It's just like my soul, like my soul bears witness in there. You know, what's so interesting is like you know, this whole series is about the fact that I'm turning 40 and I feel like I'm in a transition, right Like. I feel like I know who I am. I'm in a transition and I really want to honor the voices and the people who really crafted what matters to me at this point in life. You know, I feel like a different level of boldness and confidence and not being apologetic about certain things, and so, while you're speaking, I'm feeling a sense of validation, right Like, because I'm hearing you articulate things that have been budding or like that I've been perplexed by or chewing on for a really long time, and so it makes me feel like to have similar thoughts as people who I consider heroes of mine feels very validating as I enter into a whole new season of life. I really feel like this transition is about to be really powerful for me, and one of the things I wanted to bring up in that was you mentioned that there is a way that we read the text as queer femme or black femme, black womaness.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting, this past week and I was in Asheville with a couple of social entrepreneurs and, man, it just so happened there was so many black people in this room. So this was something that you know, you know the whole world, so like there was a cohort for future leaders and all this stuff right. So you know how those things typically look, the demographics. So I walk in and there are at least six other black people, six other black people in the room. Woo, and I was like I was not ready for this, I was not ready for that whole week. And so I'm at the table and there's a woman who is out in Seattle. Two of them were from Indianapolis and one is from Boston area and they're all doing really amazing things related to their context. But here we were sitting, a black woman that's Gen Z, black woman that's millennial, a black woman. Two of them were Gen X and one was a boomer and we had this conversation about woman, what it means to be a womanist, and I was able oh my gosh, it was so beautiful because one of the things that came up was we were talking through how do we navigate whiteness and teaching and leading.
Speaker 1:And so one of the women has a coffee shop in Seattle and had a young person experience a racist comment from this old white man I mean older than the boomer, like style generation type white man and so he comes in every day. He's autistic a little or he's on the spectrum, and so the lady, the boomer, is like she just is holding space for this man. He would come in every day and read a joke off of the newspaper. He ends up saying a joke that says something about a monkey, and so the younger black barista has a fit. He can't come back.
Speaker 1:We know all of the things and it was such a beautiful conversation to learn wisdom and to realize how weathered this woman is in the way that she handled it. She first sat a little up, just called John, sat John down and said that was problematic, like what happened? He's contrite. I'm so sorry, I didn't even think about the joke, but the other girl wants to fire the man. He can't come back, have a protest Like you're racist, you're not with the black people.
Speaker 1:And in the midst of that, realizing that she said something so powerful to me, she was like I'm trying to teach you what it means to be a black woman, and part of what it means to be a black woman is we don't throw people away. And the way she said that to me, the way she told this story, is like black women don't throw people away, we don't throw people away. And I was like you know what? Maybe God is a black woman. You know like, just say it. What happened to God then See what happens to me. And then I start thinking about how I start to share with them my own experiences.
Speaker 1:Being non-binary and always feeling like being a black woman was so elusive to me. It just felt like it's something, a box I couldn't fit into. But then to realize, I know, I bring my non-binary black woman self to this table. I can be a non-binary black womanist if I want to be. And so then we had this exchange where they're weeping and, like you know, we just didn't know, we just wanted to be right with Jesus. And there was this intergenerational confession and repentance and weeping about how black people have handled queerness Michelle, it was like being caught up in some sort of I mean the answer. It just felt so, so holy to be sitting at this table with these black women, with all of their pains and all of their stories. I mean, it was just I wish you could have been there.
Speaker 1:And when I hear you talk, it's like, man, this is the type of stuff that I feel like provides me with hope and it makes me feel that sense, not in the black woman sense, where you're Taking on too much of a burden, like you know. Yeah, I'm not the bridge, but like, but the sense in which you bring, you bring the holy black women, like. There was something about being there and being like. Black women are holy, like, like. So it makes sense to me why, yeah, when I think about a cross that deals with patriarchy and misogyny, there's something very, there's a south, a south to that, yeah, I, because we see that in our churches. Can you talk about that like, yeah, the black church, you can lean into that patriarchy, misogyny and like. I think people like myself would love to hear you expound on that a little bit more, about navigating that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think one of the most important potential witnesses that are queer, beloved, offer the black church and that women offer the historic black church is that if you die to misogyny you, you're gonna rise again. Yeah, jesus didn't die and stay dead, that was the plan from the beginning is eternal life. He said eternal life a million times before he allowed himself to become all of the isms that crush us Might. He was rejected and despised by men. Yet what woman at the well, every other Tuesday he was abused and scorned look, woman with the issue of blood. Yeah, that's a Monday. You know what I'm saying? Everything that his Four mothers, that some of his especially dark skin forefathers, that his cousins, cousins, cousins ten times removed, ishmael Certainly went through Jesus with those things and even took worship itself from both the holy mountain and the holy mountain that the Samaritan to you this holy, and he put the capacity to worship inside of us. And so I think that when we come to what is worship and what is community, then blackness itself has to remind us that our very history Places us in the hush harbor experience where we sing songs in a strange land. It places us in the balcony experience where we can't sit in the regular Sanctuary space. We got to go worship in the balcony and it places us in the historical Protest and resistance experience where the most historical black churches were founded either by people who were coming out of oppressed spaces. We could call Congo Square in New Orleans One of the black churches, and they didn't all lift up the name of Jesus and some of them had candles and the snakes and stuff you know. And we could also go to Philadelphia and DC in New York, where the AME and Baptist churches were budding, to Mississippi, to Georgia, where black churches were born from resistance, from protest, and this is where baby girl at the coffee shop is Introduced to.
Speaker 2:Yesterday was Ella Baker's birthday, so I'm, I'm.
Speaker 1:I know that's okay.
Speaker 2:National holiday, you hear me.
Speaker 2:Ella follow into those my holidays. But Ella Baker said when she, when she saw young people sure of Of the fight within them, she would show them every mind that that, that fight that they felt as individual Was a fight for this broader freedom of the people. And that's what baby girl the coffee shop was feeling at personal fight but that raised that anger. The Lord even says apply it to the power of the people. Bishop Carlton Pearson said that you can't have planetary peace until you have personal peace. And I find it very interesting that one of the most beautiful things about the black church, originally before capitalism, grabbed us and and I would also say that masculinity informed us that we could be equal with white men. Yeah, it was about social justice more than it was about personal piety. And it's interesting to me that the the scriptures that offer us social justice, racists and capitalists want us to apply those only to our personal relationship with the Lord. But then scriptures that ask us to walk rightly before God and the scriptures that we would call archaic, that speak to Sodom and Gomorrah and how a woman should wear her hair, the racist and the misogynist want us to apply those socially. There's a refusal and reversal of how we come after peace, because for me, there's no peace without justice, and I grew up in a Pentecostal space that sang songs of Zion and said this is how you keep your personal peace, so that you don't walk spaces and explode a planet. I'm the way to justice, mm-hmm. The way that dr King and Ella and Fandor, the way that they showed people how to hold their own, how to Keep singing Zion songs. For this sake of the power of the people, we want to have peace between us and God. That is a stark, a stark reversal from a lot of the spaces, even the queer, embracing predominantly white spaces, that will more quickly say to you Well, let's apply this scripture to your person and not say that the scripture is meant for us to learn the power of the people. So there are sacred gyms yet in the black church, and I do not think that we will move our spaces into that quote-unquote Progressive new age by saying, well, the movement says so, or the United Church of Christ thinks this, or you know Whatever. Fun right person decided that you know, queerness is cute.
Speaker 2:Before God, we have more ancient. We have to offer proofs that say that God, in the same way as God created us and called us exceedingly good. We have to put down that piece of fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and Receive the homeopathic cure to all of our judgment and finger pointing, to all of our rock throwing and, you know, trying to stone homegirls in the street. What if we picked up the fruit of the tree of life and realized but I'm not God, and I am so glad because when God said that they loved the whole world, they meant all of the people eat that I refuse to love. That's our message to the black church to show up, to look alive and to Give the compliment of all that they have given us and then to say but stop thinking that you're perfect. Hmm, we all need to eat from the tree of life.
Speaker 1:Oh, simple question what are we saved from what are we saved?
Speaker 2:for I will always. We have this idea that we need salvation from our own fear of ourselves, right we? Bill Hook says we grow up learning. Don't you lie, don't tell lies. And then the minute a young child points at someone and mentions a blemish or says you know how big or small this freckle is, or their body is, we say don't talk like that, what are we supposed to do?
Speaker 2:How? This is so confusing, and that kind of confusion follows us into adulthood. So we're taught to fear our thoughts, and I believe that real salvation helps us to communicate our thoughts so that if our thoughts are a mess, somebody can know that and want to teach us. If our thoughts are a message, then they won't be trapped inside of our fearful selves. We have to believe that we need to be saved from judging one another. It's natural and I you know I hate that it is, but it is part of God's perfect and glorious being that one of their traits is judgment, and all of God's traits have been given to us. My mom and I were talking about this this morning. The first person to ever be you know, in the Bible written was filled with the spirit of God, was the craftsman, the artist, and you know so. God is about creating. But what is the first thing we do with all art? We critique it.
Speaker 1:Critique yep, this is a natural thing.
Speaker 2:We need to be freed from that idea that your critique is so valid that it's absolute. And because I believe in so many different, you know, science tells me a thing or two about the actual creation story, I get that. But I do believe that the story of the eating from the tree, of the knowledge of good and evil, is based in something, and that too requires salvation. Had Adam and Eve just stuck with the tree of life a bit different, the salvation would have come. But it probably would have come from just feeling our need for God to live with us, god with us in order for us to love each other. But salvation is a requirement now because humans decided that we know better than one another, because domination has taken over our really our sense of dominion.
Speaker 2:Sharon Harper says this and God told us that dominion is our inheritance. And we changed some of those letters around to presume domination was our inheritance and we progressives have a long way to go in learning that forgiveness, although we can call people out and say I forgive you and you know I'm silent but I wish you the best. I'll be you judging them every chance you get. You got all the time and you still sitting at home, crying under your Christmas tree, because the friends that you lost when you came out you wish you had or you wish they had, looked at us. We're looking at you and jealous of your new life. God has to save us from from wanting so badly to chase down every snake that bit us and open our coats and flash ourselves. The Lord has to hold the knowledge of good and evil so that you don't think you do, and salvation is required for that.
Speaker 1:It's so interesting because I've been thinking about you just when you talked about Genesis three. I've been thinking about that for a long time. I just think it's a very beautiful origin story. I think so much is going on there that explains so much about the way we are. I mean, it just is such a there are so much happening in that story that I hadn't been able to let it go either.
Speaker 1:And thinking about this idea when I think about Jesus as you know, an Adam archetype and stuff, about the choice to either be murdered or, like the church, to murder or be a martyr. Right, like these are the choices that are constantly. This is the way of Cain and able, like, will you be a martyr for love or will you murder? Like, these are the options that we have. And thinking about this tree was about will I take the knowledge or will I learn and be curious? Right, I'm just seeing this impulse and I haven't found that entry road, but it's like making sense to me now these binaries is patriarchy, this misogyny. I can see that now, like you said, you give the option, because love is a choice, but you have this option. Will you? Will you accept limitation where you embrace vulnerability, the fact that there's possibly something out there that you don't know, and will you trust. Yeah, you know I'm thinking they does.
Speaker 1:It all comes down to that choice. Everything does everything. How are you like? Okay, so my, my prediction is that there will be so many exiles who go the way of progressivism and find themselves missing meaning Eventually. What is, what is the back door to Jesus for those people who have already been in church? Anything that you might say that would be I don't even want to say triggering, but you know, we already know that, we heard that all the time. What could be a back door, entry into Jesus for some of those people?
Speaker 2:Well, I really believe in the work of some of our friends just unbound in fleshed cold. Arthur Riley is doing some incredible things, and they are all using the voices of people like James Baldwin, who was a youth pastor, who was like, was he not? Yes, well, kind of you know, did Jesus love me? And yet all his book titles were just scripted up. Come on, jimmy, tony Morrison, Maya Angelou, you know these people that loved the Lord.
Speaker 2:And so maybe we have some missionaries in our professors and that back door may very well be understanding that you may have to build that boundary and you know, you don't know when you can step back inside of a sanctuary. What is it? Community with the voices that you have found to become a salve for your own journey in salvation. And I do really, truly believe in that personal, that personal connection, that personal relationship, and, before you know it, you feel shielded and protected, even in the midst of a whole bunch of people saying things that might trigger you. You can feel instance, grounding for yourself and know that you don't feel bad if you just came to hear the music, but you can sit in the preaching, you don't feel bad at all. Let them wonder you know who you are. Let people wonder If God is really the one that judges you.
Speaker 2:Then we are no longer attached to trying to please or perform for others and I think that a lot more, a lot more of our people need to get into just oh, I miss this. I'm going to go to this choir concert. Not feel bad, I can't listen to no sermon. Oh, I know that, you know so. And so we got people who listen to our sermons and follow I'm sure both of us just to get like a little preaching. But I can't go sit in no church. That is okay. And I will say right now that it is a dry season, that we are in an exile period because many of us have experienced the exodus from foolishness. But we're in exile right now Because that greater home, that more broad community, has not necessarily been established and it was very hard to find those in person, locally, where we are.
Speaker 2:So let's not make it, you know, let's not really try to skirt over the fact that we are in a dry season right now, that we are, you know, maybe feeling like I'm in the grave, you know, resurrection day.
Speaker 2:Name it, just name it and then, I think, we'll begin to discover that communities can be built. It may be a decade or so from now, but my prediction is, knowing that I'm not the only pastor and teacher who was speaking in this way. My prediction is there's a network coming, you know, to them, exists, many of us have been blessed by it, and I think that there is yet another network on the way, and we'll do what we got to do. But, now if the people is really that's going to save the day.
Speaker 1:And I think that you are perfectly, just, perfectly poised to. I'm just thinking about so, oh my God, my brain is exploding with everything you say. So hold on, let me pick a string. So someone said recently I can't remember is some Buddhist philosopher, but they said the next Buddha is the sangha, it's the community, there is no more, there will not be another singular, it is the community. Right, and thinking about your work in the movement, I mean like power to the people, like the work that you do, where you're from and the track record that you have in that world and community organizing. And you've been to jail, like you know. I mean like how many. I'm just saying like who is teaching us about Jesus that's actually been to jail out here.
Speaker 2:I mean you know I mean they may not all be on podcasts, but they are there.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying, like I mean, you've, you've, you've done the work, so I do see you poised as as a leader for us, a person that can help us.
Speaker 1:I've been talking to Lisa too, Lisa Sharon Harper, about this, because the ways that you all are helping to remind us of the beauty of our history in this tradition and what we still so love about Jesus, in helping us keep and make meaning about the story of Jesus, from from birth to cross to resurrection and I just so deeply, deeply, deeply appreciate that, because it's for me and I think for a lot of other people like me, the idea that we might have to walk away from Jesus was devastating, and I was so sick by white evangelicalism that I was willing to walk away from Jesus. I could not do it, and so to find him behind every corner and to have come into so many different ways of making meaning about his life and death and resurrection has been such kindness. I think it's divine kindness, and the fact that people like you exist, I think, is a kindness of God to the world, and I'm just honored to know you and to be able to have conversation with you. Thank you, what's bringing you?
Speaker 2:joy. Oh, my goodness, so much. We finished our. I don't know how many years we've been doing this Christmas concert, but I love direct inquires, I love singing, I love just anything but the Kirk Franklin Christmas album. One day I told my choir what's going to do the whole album. Yes, oh my God, I didn't know what you were practicing.
Speaker 1:I didn't know the part, oh gosh.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's bringing me so much joy, to be honest, and it's just sort of overflowing because we had, you know, the babies involved. You know watching kids come and learn things, and my congregation is really committed to reading through the Bible together this year and asking God. You know, how do we? What do we do with these passages? We're in a really, really powerful point in our congregational history. So it'll be my third or my fourth year at the church and I'm, like whew, keep holding on but pastoring people and being and doing so in a space where, when the movement comes to town, they know they got to stop over at Michelle's church and to see the people that really I follow their lead, and that's probably been one of the most joyful things is knowing that I am proud to hold responsibility, to be at the forefront for the person who gets hit first. But in terms of ministry and in terms of vision, I want to follow them and that's been a real blessing is to be a pastor who is very seriously held accountable and pastored seriously pastored.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of joy. Oh, hey, I'm going to. We got five minutes. Is there any word that you have as we thinking I'm thinking about I'm holding right now? We're in the season of Advent. My partner and I just experienced our first miscarriage we have. Thinking about a baby in Bethlehem is hitting different each year. You have a word for us, you know what is so?
Speaker 2:just the grace of God that you just said, that we preached about hope and peace and the first, you know, sunday of Advent being about hope, and I preached about gender reveal events and how. How heartbreaking must it be for folks in situations like yours, for people who are just frustrated or weirded out by gender reveals. And I want us to think about and remember Annunciation rather than gender reveal. How do we hold on to God's message of Annunciation? Because when God gave Annunciation to Mary through Gabriel, that was not the first Annunciation that had ever been done. The first Annunciation came to Eve through God, amidst the blessing and the curse in the garden. Another Annunciation came to Hagar, in the desert, in the middle of her enslavement and hell on earth. The Lord appeared to her and when God gave Hagar an Annunciation, she named God, the first person to ever give a name to God.
Speaker 2:And so, in our times of, I need a word, I need a message, I need, you know, I'm tired of all the gender reveals, I'm tired of seeing the promises here and there. When the Lord shows up, name them, and that's, that's my word to you, that in the midst of you and your partner, knowing that no soul can die. That baby is in God's bosom. God's going to show up in this desert and when they get there you will name them. You've got a name, because this is what I believe we were made to do as co-creators with our Creator. We were made to sit in joy and in sorrow and celebration and in mourning, and to have God show up and to have God bring an announcement to us of hope and ultimately, justice is going to come and bring our peace and justice is going to show up and be our peace and move us into joy, right the third week of Advent, and all of these things will be grounded in love the fourth week.
Speaker 2:And to us maybe not to everyone that we love, but to us this story is grounded in the showing up and the message of Christ, and I really think that it is the more that we poise ourselves to admit what you just said I don't want to give up Jesus the more likely you will be to become less and less fragile, not only to welcoming all who call on any name of God, but you will be open to everything that God wants to do in your life to give you more of a story of Christ. We definitely, definitely have the opportunity to name God here. So, everybody, let God show up in your desert and then give God a name.
Speaker 1:Shae. Thank you, sis, it's my honor.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening To pick your money and your heart is donate to Subquatcher Inc and clear the path for black students today.