Wesley Journal March 2021

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An Urgent Litany to Lord God LEADER: Lord God Almighty, Scripture says we can cast our anxieties on you.

People: We are deeply disturbed and confused; we feel emotional and spiritual distress.

LEADER: God of Righteousness, concern bounces around the edges of our mind; we try, unsuccessfully, to ignore it.

People: So, we come to you for assurance and comfort.

LEADER: Yet January 6, 2021, sits in our memory like an acre of briars.

People: If not already Christians, would we become one today?

LEADER: They prayed inside the Capitol, People: Then, they disbanded to their insurrection.

LEADER: Some carried Bibles; others wore tee shirts professing Christ.

People: They weren’t Representatives or Senators, staff, or police.

LEADER: Troubled, some wonder how those who don’t know God see you after the actions of some who profess to be your children.

People: Christians remind one another that you forgive us although we fall short.

LEADER: You call each of us to account for our choices and behaviors.

People: These were rioters, insurrectionists, people who believed what was false.

LEADER: You are a God of order and truth.

People: How do we explain these images to those who have lost faith in You? LEADER: You have gifted us humans with free will, allowing even Christians to choose immoral, lawless, sinful, and dangerous behavior.

People: After prayer and solitude, we are still troubled. SELAH LEADER: Where is the voice of your Church?

People: Almighty God, show us that those insurrectionists were wrong.

LEADER: Embarrassed by the Bible-toting, tee-shirt-wearing traitors, we are Christians who believe your word of justice and proclaim the love of Christ.

People: Lord, intervene in this situation. we know you are a God who intervenes in trades of deception.

LEADER: Let the world see that you are sovereign.

People: Then those who don’t know you will see your good, faithful, and just nature and seek your face.

LEADER: And we will say, Amen! Our sovereign God is righteous and just.

People: We will praise your holy name and will witness to anyone that only the light of Christ can push out darkness – even today’s gloom.

ALL: We declare these things through the mighty name of Jesus. Amen!

Judy Pelham, Ph.D., is a First-Year Masters Student at Wesley Seminary, has a passion for integrating writing with psychology and Christianity.

WESLEY JOURNAL STAFF Editor: Evan Taylor Contributors: Scott Bach-Hansen Dawn Wayman Rev. Raedorah C. Stewart Rev. Dr. Anna Adams Petrin Keisha R. Holmes Judy Pelham

Artwork/Photography: Centerfold: Wasaba 'SoulQueenWu' Sidibay Editor Photo: Lisa Helfert

STUDENT COUNCIL President: Everett McAllister Vice President: Kenia Vanessa Rodriguez Secretary: Lenora Whitecotton Treasurer: Hyungsuk Oh Parliamentarian: Kirk Freeman Elected Representatives: Trent Somes Apolonia Villanueva Jon Deters Adrian Graham RaShawn Hall Heidi Mills Techika Rhodes Mira Sawlani-Joyner Erik Slingerland Paul Thorne-Keziah Adrianus Yosia Scott Bach-Hansen Fernando Castro Simon Mwilima Faculty Advisor: Dr. Rick Elgendy

Editor's Note When I set out to serve as the Editor of the Wesley Journal, I never thought it would be a space that seminarians, faculty, staff, and the Wesley community would use to articulate the dimensions of living faithfully as seminarians, pastors, leaders, educators, and co-collaborators in creation. I thought and discerned the theme as I found myself challenged by the multiple pandemics, seminary education in an online environment, abandon and adaptation of long committed spiritual practices, transitions in responsibilities and roles, and what feels like at times an upending of the universe.

W GR

While the Wesley Journal has been a more traditional graduate journal, our times call for the journal to be more open to expression through poetry, reflection, prayer, litany, and more. The scope of this journal as an anthology of the wrestle we encounter in community and in theological education is deeply rooted in discerning the next most faithful step for the Wesley Journal. I hope you allow the words, stanzas, paragraphs, and prose of those who contributed to this issue to wash over you and provoke you to reflect on the ways you experience truth and tension in your living.

I want to name the tension of theological education in the midst of realities that create separation between our religious, spiritual, and physical selves. Truths are illuminated, voices become echoes that invade our consciousness, theologies are challenged, and wrestling leaves us empty and broken. Yet God is a mender of minds, hearts, spirits, and bodies. May you make yourself available to the mending power of God’s presence in your loneliness, the Holy Spirit’s comfort in your pain, Jesus’ power in your hopelessness, and God’s nature to heal, restore and renew creation in your brokenness, grief, and frustration.

Amen & Ase

Evan Taylor is a first-year seminarian and CEI Fellow at Wesley. She serves as a lay leader in Youth and Young Adult ministry at Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, DC and Community Chair for the Northeast Region for 4.0 Schools.

She is passionate about the intersections of youth and young ministry and equitycentered design thinking, community organizing, collectives, and cooperatives.

The Wesley Journal is a publication of the Wesley Theological Seminary Student Council. The Editor is responsible for the content. The views expressed are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Wesley Theological Seminary or the Student Council.

IN THIS ISSUE Inside Cover: An Urgent Litany 3 Editor's Note 4 Truth: All 5 Face to Face with Covid-19 6 Jesus, The Disabled Empath 7-8 Artwork by Wasaba Sidibay 9 I Trust Jesus 10 Moving Mary from the Margin 11 Truth in Tension: Lent in Light of Covid

Truth: All Truth: All Lives Matter Just like every ingredient within the cake batter Blended just right Polarization has kryptonite The possibility of unification Truth: All Lives Matters So, let us bring forth salvation.

Freewill to all humanity But because of particular disparities Tensions rise People Die Especially, people of color.

Truth: All Lives Do Not Matter When a group of believers Sun-kissed by Yahweh make their way to the altar From altar call to thoughts altered An unprovoked altercation they faced an eviction on holy ground violently reprimanded for kneeling! sounds familiar decades later another took a knee reconciling humanity Truth: All Lives Do Not Matter Because if they did then salvation would be inclusively celebrated instead ignorance is tolerated Even in church preaching as if God’s Kinship is segregated like water fountains during Jim crow preaching turn the other cheek go high when they go low Blessed are those who have been deceived by justice because the bullets are just for us!

Really?!

Why must we keep still? #Preach

For Zion’s sake we will not keep silent Suffering hate filled violence Corrupted systems Unlawful insurrections untethered racism we will not hold our peace God is not a colonizer Truth is: God is Liberator!

Breathing on the ink of the pen that wrote the laws to break the chains of social sins The words on paper of Absalom Jones who preached as we watched all night Salvation, Emancipation, Prophetic proclamation lifting the dark of night but not the color of our skin being black is not sin For to see us is to see the face of God! #Preach Truth: All Lives Matter When Black Lives Matter The church must take a stand work until scales fall from eyes, preachers preach the incarnation to the nation prophets speak truth to power and not lies!

We will fight until our Black sons and daughters are released from the bondage of body tags, toe tags and hashtags.

Truth: The Love of God is reaching to include the excluded All Lives Matter when All Lives Matter!!

Keisha R. Dukes, MDiv Student, Student Pastor, Pocomoke City, Md. Developing womanist who is passionate about the voices of the youth, missional church development, and integrating theology with the arts.

Face to Face with Covid-19 It was Inauguration Day, and as I finished sharing a homily for my cousin’s celebration of life, I could feel a cough coming on that I had developed. My doctor said I could anticipate a dry cough from the shingles vaccine I just received, but this seemed different. The challenge of wearing a mask while leading the service created a lack of comfort that had an impact on my breathing. Once I returned to my car for the hour-long drive home, I had this cough that was so persistent that I knew it was different. I remember getting home and sharing with my wife that there was something more going on than a shingles-related cough and I scheduled a COVID Test for the next day. That evening I began sequestering myself to the basement and the fatigue hit me like a Mike Tyson punch. That evening the cough got worse and then other symptoms began creeping in a fever of 102.6 was accompanied by chills that caused me to shake even though I was wearing a t-shirt, a sweatshirt and was covered with two blankets. A restless night of sleep with deep fatigue, a constant cough, trouble catching my breath, and something I will call COVID brain. For me, COVID brain is like being on autopilot where I was just going through the motions but, not really accomplishing anything. I started trying to read from a chapter in a book for one of my reading assignments in Hebrew Bible.

The clock went from 11:00 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. and I read two pages and was exhausted. The positive results from my COVID test were not a surprise based on what I was feeling.

Now that I knew I was positive I began journaling my symptoms which added a few new ones like loss of taste and smell and loss of appetite, which was strange because over the next six days, I ate one cereal bar and drank water and Gatorade as much as possible. Another symptom hit of having a dry mouth arrived and was one that I could not satisfy regardless of how much water I drank. That weekend, my employer (NBA) sent me in for a more advanced test and interviewed me for contract tracing questions and there must have been a hundred questions.

As I entered that weekend, I had a mandatory Zoom meeting for my UM Polity Class and online Zoom Candidacy Summit for the Virginia Annual Conference.

To say I was a zombie during those meetings was an understatement as my COVID brain had me just staring into the camera. That weekend, the worst hit as I battled a fever on and off and all the other symptoms, I now had a new challenge in having a difficult time catching my breath. It was at this time that my wife also tested positive.

Now both meal preparers, cooks, cleaners were down with COVID and soon enough all three daughters would join us. Our two older girls are being treated for Anxiety and Depression and we started getting questions about whether we would live or not. It is a completely different situation to watch the news about COVID and hospitalizations, deaths, vaccines, and all the news that comes with it when you have COVID versus when you do not have COVID.

So now the whole family has COVID, those that prepare meals for the family is fatigued and unable to prep or cook anything and we realized that we needed help, which is a helpless feeling when you are curled up in a ball trying to decide if you need to go to the hospital or not. We agreed to allow a friend to set up a Meal Train for us and this was life-changing for us.

Our community of family, friends, church family, work friends, and fellow seminarians showed out. In addition to having three meals provided each week, people donated money for groceries and to help with utilities that we needed since I was out of a paycheck for three weeks now. This group of people were lifesavers for our family. I prayed to our God to alleviate the symptoms from the family and give them to me, and that seemed to work for which I was thankful for my wife’s recovery but realized that I was getting worse. That Sunday and Monday night were the most difficult and we were within an hour of deciding to go to the hospital. A decision that my daughters begged us not to make because “people don’t come home from the hospital, Daddy.”

Thankfully, we were able to avoid the hospital. The second NBA COVID test came back and through their modern technology, it showed that while there was an improvement, there was still no quick solution and I had at least another week to go before I will test again (which is today). And as I write this today, I still have a lingering cough and fatigue, but feel so much better than I did a week ago.

The most important things I learned during these two weeks include the following: Listen to your body and do not overdo it at all or you will pay for it.

Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate It is okay to ask for help when needed.

The most important thing that I learned is that we live in a great community of faith as a family and that includes our new family at Wesley that have responded with accommodating and wonderful professors, thoughts, prayers, notes, texts, and amazing meals. It was a difficult month, but I am thankful to say we are back to normal except for the occasional cough and the fatigue. We are blessed.

Scott Bach-Hansen is a first-year M. Div. student at John Wesley and serves on the Student Council. He is a Certified Candidate in the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. He is scheduled to be licensed in the Virginia Annual Conference this spring and will begin ministry in his first appointment on July 1, 2021. He works for the NBA as a Courtside Administrator.

Jesus, the Disabled Empath A Disabling Lent Devotional by Rev. Raedorah C. Stewart, MA “Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed into the Heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our profession.

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16 (21st Century King James Version) Story I am an empath. Even prior to learning the language of the empath and the even more detailed six types of the empath, I now realize that I was an empath from childhood. I am such an empath, that my sensibilities and sensitivities traverse between that of the emotional empath, physical/medical empath, and intuitive empath.

(The other three major empath types to which I do not readily identify are the geomantic empath, plant empath, and animal empath.)

For instance, as young as in kindergarten I befriended “the girl who walked funny” because she wore metal braces and used odd looking crutches. Always tall for my age, I remember telling her to hang on to my back instead of use her crutches when we went to lunch and recess. I don’t remember her name, but the sound of her metal braces and crutches are sacred memories; and I recall the odd way we walked in sync as she hugged my waist from behind. I never knew, or cared, why she wore braces, I just knew that I could help her be more normal standing in line and walking to the swings.

When we returned after Summer break to first grade, she was no longer at our school. Still, this lingers decades later as a defining moment in my life as a helper--a primary characteristic of an empath.

Fast forward many years ahead helping others in various ways, I was appointed to be the Pastor of Prayer Ministries at a megachurch. What a perfect job for an emotional/intuitive empath!

In that role, I found myself prayerfully bearing the burdens of others in a spiritual way like I had carried the body of my young friend in braces. I never knew what person would come to the altar or which prayer request would come across my desk, still, I seemed to have the right words--not just trite scripture quoting--to speak comfort, clarity, and care. Sometimes, we were close enough for me to touch them as we prayed; other times, a lengthy phone call or handwritten prayer sufficed. Most often we shed tears and shared boxes of tissue. I was clear that I was called to this ministry at which being an empath proved to be a good vessel through which the Holy Spirit could comfort others. However, regardless of my awareness of being an empath, my type fails in comparison to the Divine Empath, Jesus Our High-Priest!

Scripture How often have we heard that Jesus was fully human and fully divine? This apologetic is usually recited when trying to explain that when Jesus wept, slept, got angry, and made wine for a party, that these human experiences were not anthropomorphic. Instead, Jesus was living a fully human experience with a definite divine calling.

As he agonized on the Cross, Jesus’ last cries sounded very much like our human prayers of concern, distress, and plea. Now, Jesus’ disabled body would be the last image of him the crowd of onlookers saw that day. The Most Divine Empath assumed our physical disabilities and spiritual infirmities. Jesus’ broken body was the holy sacrifice that made all who believed one with him.

Our High Priest, unlike other cultural deities, is not formed by hand out of matter or imagined by sages. These could not physiologically know the human experience of broken relationship or broken body.

But, Our High Priest, who was at the beginning before the beginning began intimately knew the limits of bodily suffering and disabled anguish. Jesus was in touch with what touched us! That is the good news! Therefore, when we gaze upon the cross, amidst some valid albeit competing narratives, might we see Jesus’ disabled body as essential to a community called to grace, mercy, and justice?

The word to able-bodied persons would be to not sin by looking away from the visual anguish and inconveniences of the disabled body just as Jesus did not abandon us in the Garden of Gesthsemene, on the Via Dolorosa, or from the Cross at noontime.

Yes, yes, the temptation to simply take care of disabled persons may seem to be benevolence; however, reconsider that the disabled person is sent to care for you with reciprocity. The temptation to find the loophole in the law to not make churches and public buildings radically inclusive may be cost efficient; however reconsider that keeping disabled persons out of buildings is a way of keeping us out of sight and out of mind. These are not choices Jesus would make. These are not the choices Jesus made with his broken body on display. Our High Priest, even while disabled, showed an aptitude for carrying out his calling and fulfilling his purpose.

The word to disabled persons is that Jesus knows when social systems fail us. Jesus knows when medical treatment is withheld.

Jesus knows the agony of pain and the longing for deliverance.

Jesus knows abject loneliness, public scrutiny, and openly displayed humiliation. Still, Jesus did not lose focus that he was not his mangled, maligned, and disabled body--he knew he came to the world that the world might be saved! The disabled body is part of the message of salvation. It was this Disabled Body upon which full inclusion into a restored relationship between humanity and God was established. It was through this disabled body that grace came to a mother, mercy to a repentant thief, and justice for us all. Even while tempted to look away from the Cross, hold your gaze upon the disabled body of Jesus the Divine Empath and see yourself as an agent of the message of salvation.

Together then, let us learn from Jesus the Divine Empath to show mercy and to be grace one to another regardless of how our bodies are framed.

Summary Sure, disabled people move too slow, need too much, and get in the way. Disabled people also afford others a pace to be more present, create ways to improve the quality of life, and are children of God. What you see in those within reach reflects how you ultimately view the sacrifice of the Divine Disabled Empath. You will either look for the grace in us or risk losing the mercy this is to be found to include us in the life of the church and accessibility in culture.

SELAH Jesus our Savior and Brother models for us the ultimate life of the Empath. For carrying our burdens of separation and exclusion, we have come to know that carrying the burdens of accessibility and inclusion is holy work. May we hear rebuke of the church espousing community without disabled persons in full communion and may we become the empath church that radically includes disabled persons in the next chapters of our church’s story. Amen.

Rev. Raedorah C. Stewart, MA is the Director of the Writing Center and is completing the DMin, in Story and Spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC.

I Trust Jesus The summer of 2020. I will forever recall it as the summer that could have been. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a church leader told me, "I know you wear a mask, but I trust Jesus. I am not scared of da Rona." I was incensed, and various responses quickly formed in my mind, yet I opted to remain silent. My tongue can cut, so to stay holy, it was best for no words to leave my mouth.

The truth is, I trust Jesus, and I believe in science, medicine, and public health. I trust Jesus can heal all of our soul's diseases, and I think our Creator gifted scientists and clinicians with the knowledge that continues to save the lives of many.

As an infectious disease epidemiologist, I am a public health professional. Early in my career, I worked for a local health department where my responsibilities included educating the public about bacterial infections like shigella or vibrio or salmonella or mycobacterium tuberculosis; writing emergency preparedness plans; and, monitoring the county's levels of reportable diseases for upticks that might be precursors to potential outbreaks. We looked for patterns and trends in disease levels, sought to understand why certain illnesses were more prevalent in the community than others, and ultimately developed solutions to protect the health and wellbeing of those we served. Those were great days.

In this season of pandemic, God called me to serve in a different way. While I no longer work in a public health department setting, as one called to ministry in the church, I feel an even greater sense of responsibility to care for those whom God has placed in my midst. That is why the insinuation that wearing a mask reflected my lack of faith in the Divine One bothered me so deeply.

Considering my professional knowledge and personal opinion, wearing a mask in the time of a respiratory pandemic is a beautiful demonstration of one's faith and love for humanity.

Wearing a face covering is a way Christians can bring life to the words of Jesus recorded in Matthew's Gospel, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"

To truly love my neighbor as myself, wearing a mask seems like a simple request and a small act of compassion. I do not want to catch the coronavirus, nor do I want anyone I love dearly to face the lasting effects of this virus or its accompanying illnesses. Unfortunately, it seems that American culture has normalized high infection numbers. Sadly, Christians are among those who dismiss the guidance offered by scientists and public health professionals.

Existing in the tension between truth and desire does not always feel good. Like many others, I long to return to my usual routine. Going out to listen to live music on a Friday evening, attending a large family gathering, or taking an extended vacation would put an infectious smile on my face. Walking into the sanctuary or chapel and hearing the choir singing would offer a refreshing mist in this season of drought and gloom. I want to feel shouts of praise from the congregation as the preacher delivers a stirring sermon, but I also want to trust Jesus in this valley moment. More importantly, perhaps, I want to love my neighbors as myself. For me, this means I will wear a mask, I will remain distanced from people whom I love dearly, and I will embrace the change of pace that we have been gifted with at this moment in time. I trust Jesus brought us to this time of the pandemic, and in due season, He will lead us out as well.

Dawn M. Wayman is in her final year of the Master of Divinity program at Wesley Theological Seminary. She received her Master of Health Science in Infectious Disease Epidemiology from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Wesley has reaffirmed Dawn’s passion to help young adults form their faith and personal theology, primarily through meeting them where they are and showing them God’s love.

Moving Mary from the Margin to the Center "In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth.

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

-Luke 1:26-45 (NIV) The text before me is Luke 1:26-45, The birth of Jesus is Foretold. I came to this text battling the tension between a hermeneutic of suspicion and a hermeneutic of hope. I questioned where was Mary’s voice, where were her questions, her decision-making process, even her own suspicions in this text. But yet, I hoped for her to be a willing participant in bearing the Messiah, for her to accept the challenge despite the costs and for her to be willing to give up her current reality for the one God had for her. This tension led me to write a paraphrase of the text.

While Elizabeth was in her 3rd trimester, God sent Gabriel, an angel to Nazareth to visit a virgin girl engaged to Joseph, Mary. He said to her, God told me to tell you that you are favored. Mary shirked, and questioned do I know you? Gabriel responded, I didn’t mean to startle you, I just have a message from God. You’re going to be pregnant with a baby boy named Jesus, he is not going to be Joseph’s son, but the son of God, and yet Joseph will raise him as his own. He will be powerful and become a king and assume the throne of David and reign forever. Mary asked, what? How is this possible, you do know that I am a virgin? Gabriel said, yes, I am aware, you will conceive through the Holy Spirit therefore, your son will be the son of God. Even your old cousin Elizabeth has conceived and is in her 3rd trimester, everyone thought she couldn’t conceive, but that’s the power of God. God makes the impossible, possible. Mary said if you are aware of how, then can you tell me why? Did you appear to Elizabeth the way you are to me? Do you know that my yes comes at a cost? will you protect me when someone finds out Jesus’ father? Gabriel said, God knew while you would have questions, and you only needed the answers I brought in order to say yes. All will be revealed in due time and Elizabeth’s story is for Elizabeth to share, go visit her. Mary said, wow. it would be my honor to conceive the son of God. I will visit Elizabeth and hear her story. Then Gabriel left. Mary went to visit Elizabeth and found comfort and affirmation for her yes.

When we bring Mary and Elizabeth’s lives into historical context we understand the juxtaposition of two women selected to bear the messiah and a prophet respectively. When we move Mary from the margin, we can center God selected a little village girl in Nazareth to birth the living word into the world. God has the power to move those on the margins to the center.

We are introduced to Elizabeth, an old woman in her 60s in a priestly lineage, who was married to Zechariah and was barren and we are introduced to Mary, a young girl in her teens from a small lowly village, who is betrothed to Joseph a man from the lineage of David and is a virgin. Enter the Angel Gabriel, who wasn’t magical, mythical, or even whimsical, in my sacred imagination, he was a small, stout messenger, who carried messages, scripts, and proclamations from person to person in the service of God. He didn’t appear like cherubim or seraphim or with halos and wings, he was seen and heard through the discernment of the listener. He was a man who rarely met a stranger, built trust and rapport with everyone with ease because of his spirit and his nature. I came to this text with my own context a young black woman, who was told as an 18-year-old that I was pregnant at my first gynecologist appointment. As Mary said, in the text, but how could this be when I do not know a man, I questioned how was this possible when I was a virgin. When we move Mary from the margin, we can center the mysterious and miraculous works of God. God and the Holy Spirit work through us and in community to call us to respond.

My suspicion was raised when Mary accepted this task willingly and some would say ‘submissively.’ As my 18-year-old self, only about 4 years older than scholars predict Mary was, shared her question but I had many others. My mother, who had urged me to fulfill the before college checklist, would lead to the discovery of a life or death decision. I had so many questions. I was replanning and replaying the trajectory of my life before I could even fathom saying yes or no to the task before me. I just needed confirmation, and I believe Mary did too. She went to see Elizabeth to confirm Gabriel’s message and to make sense of what was non-sensical. When we move Mary from the margin, we can center God’s ability to provide all of the information we need to take the next most faithful step. God knows the gift and the cost of your yes.

For me, the confirmation was the ultrasound that determined I had a dermoid cyst rather instead of the previous news of a pregnancy. For Mary, her questions were answered when she visited Elizabeth to find her pregnant and to experience Elizabeth’s reaction when John in Elizabeth’s womb leaped at Mary’s voice. Mary was comforted and affirmed by the words and presence of Elizabeth just as my mother comforted me and affirmed my life as I prepared for and recovered from emergency surgery.

When we move the teenage unwed mother of Jesus from the margin, we can center the power and nature of God. When we move the virgin girl whose lineage didn’t save her from poverty from the margin, we can center the mystery and miraculous works of God. When we move the mother of the Messiah from the margin, we can center the lead and example of God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus to take the next most faithful step.

This is a sacred story of how God enters time and space through angels, known and unknown, to reorder realities and re-orient our understanding.

Are you ready to move the mother of the Son of God from the margin?

Evan Taylor is a first-year seminarian and CEI Fellow at Wesley. She serves as a lay leader in Youth and Young Adult ministry at Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, DC and Community Chair for the Northeast Region for 4.0 Schools. She is passionate about the intersections of youth and young ministry and equity-centered design thinking, community organizing, collectives, and cooperatives.

Truth in Tension: Lent in Light of Covid The last liturgy over which I presided in Oxnam Chapel was Ash Wednesday, approximately one year ago. We gathered – those of us still on campus before spring break – for a short time of breaking open the words of Sacred Scripture and breaking bread together in Holy Communion. We gathered to begin the traditional Lenten journey by recognizing our frail humanity with ashes and by acknowledging the mercy and grace of God, who meets us in word, bread, and wine.

We imagined together how the forty days of Lent – a period in which we undertake the three spiritual disciplines of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving – could be for us forty days of intense spiritual searching to find and embody the wonderful truth of God’s compassion for humankind.

Little did I know that this would be my last liturgy in Oxnam Chapel for many months. Little did any of us know that we were on the verge of a “Lent” much longer than forty days.

As we received our ashes and set out into the wilderness with Christ, we may as well have been setting out with the ancient Israelites for forty years of wandering in the desert!

When we prepared for the season of Lent last year, many of us considered sacrificing some small habit or preference, and many of us committed ourselves to making a special effort to help those in need. Some of us even considered giving up a little extra sleep to spend more time with God in prayer.

None of us, however, intended to sacrifice our daily routines for the sake of other people. None of us planned to become “prisoners” for the sake of the gospel. And yet, amid the tensions of the past year, our small Lenten disciplines have helped us to live and to endure and, yes, even to seek God’s truth in the time of Covid.

Every year, when we commit ourselves to our Lenten disciplines, we do so not only for our own sake, but also for the good of our neighbor. And every year, our ashes remind us not only of our own frail humanity, but also of the frailty – and preciousness – of each human life with which we come into contact.

Last year, our experience of Lent was different from usual.

We began the season by planning to make certain small sacrifices, such as not buying coffee from a shop, but within a couple of weeks we all gave up a great deal more. We chose to give up trips, to give up seeing friends, and to give up spending time in person with our families. Why did we do this? We did it for the sake of others. We did it for our parents, for our grandparents, for our co-workers, for our parishioners, and for countless strangers who we will never have the chance to meet. We did it for our friends and neighbors who, like us, are not only creatures of dust but also made “in the image of God.” Our jump between a small discipline and a greater imitation of Christ was thus made not over the course of a lifetime but within a matter of days.

As the pandemic has continued, we have continued to live in this tension between safety and solidarity, between health and hospitality, between holiness and health – and it has felt to me like the longest Lent I have ever experienced. And yet, if we take a bit of a spiritual inventory, perhaps in the course of this last year we have received the grace to enter this year’s Lent with certain kinds of wisdom that might otherwise have taken us a whole lifetime to gain. With this new perspective, this new awareness of the frailty and preciousness of human life, we can ask once again, as we do every year: What disciplines would you have me undertake, God? How can I grow in my relationship with you? And how can I grow in the love that I show for my neighbor?

As we undertake our preparation to celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ, let us once again ground our Lenten disciplines of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer in the great mercy and compassion of God, who has opened our eyes to our profound interconnectedness, to the preciousness of our neighbor’s life, and to our utter dependence on the boundless grace of our Savior.

Rev. Dr. Anna Adams Petrin is Assistant Professor of Worship and Chapel Elder at Wesley. She is is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and a scholar who specializes in the history and practice of Christian worship.is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and a scholar who specializes in the history and practice of Christian worship.

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