Jun 03, 2022 |
Rector's Blog Pride Series: You Are a Blessing
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog Pride Series: You Are a Blessing
Hey, friends, I am still recovering from COVID, and am in
need of rest, so I do not have a new blog/podcast for you this week. That being
said, we are at the beginning of Pride month, and I did not want to let this
week go by without stating clearly and unequivocally that the Episcopal Church
of the Redeemer – its clergy, staff, and lay leaders – stand in full support,
love, and affirmation of LGBTQ+ persons, all of whom are made beautifully and
powerfully in God’s image. This week I am re-running the first in a series of
blog/podcasts I wrote/recorded on Pride in 2019, and on the
blog page you will find a link to the Pride series for your continued reading/listening.
I invite you this month to support your local Pride festivities, and then to do your part in Jesus’ name to make sure that LGBTQ+ persons are more fully loved, heard, empowered, supported, and cared for in your community. Each of us has a part to play in making our world truly inclusive, and this work is central to our understanding of the Gospel of God’s love in Jesus Christ.
"We believe that the God that created you made you as you are on purpose. You are not a mistake. Your sexuality is not a mistake, a sin, or something to be cured, fixed, or healed. You are a blessing. Your journey to self-understanding is essential to the healing of this world. You matter tremendously to God and to the people around you. Your expression of love is even now teaching this world a deeper understanding of what love really is. When you are part of the Church community, the church is more of who God means it to be. When you are empowered, the Spirit is revealed. When you lead, we see Jesus."
I invite you this month to support your local Pride festivities, and then to do your part in Jesus’ name to make sure that LGBTQ+ persons are more fully loved, heard, empowered, supported, and cared for in your community. Each of us has a part to play in making our world truly inclusive, and this work is central to our understanding of the Gospel of God’s love in Jesus Christ.
"We believe that the God that created you made you as you are on purpose. You are not a mistake. Your sexuality is not a mistake, a sin, or something to be cured, fixed, or healed. You are a blessing. Your journey to self-understanding is essential to the healing of this world. You matter tremendously to God and to the people around you. Your expression of love is even now teaching this world a deeper understanding of what love really is. When you are part of the Church community, the church is more of who God means it to be. When you are empowered, the Spirit is revealed. When you lead, we see Jesus."
May 27, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: Bury The Rag Deep
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: Bury The Rag Deep
This blog is about Buffalo, New York. This blog is about Uvalde, Texas.
Each event on its own is catastrophically tragic. Taken together, along with the countless mass shootings about which we’ve already forgotten, we can no longer call them unthinkable. They are not unthinkable, inconceivable, or unexplainable. They are every day. They are a part of us. When we bury the rag deep in our face, it is not for one isolated incident, however awful it may be. The tears we shed are a collection of years of sorrow and rage brought on by our complete unwillingness to be transformed. We want these shootings to stop. We want to change nothing about our lives, our culture, our laws in order to make them stop. We throw up our hands. What can be done? This is who we are.
There is a tendency for us to treat Jesus’ crucifixion as if it is uniquely gruesome. But the stripping and beating and hanging of Jesus is no more gruesome than the endless AR-15 slaughter of innocents that makes up the fabric of modern American life. How is Golgotha worse than Uvalde? How is Calvary different from Buffalo?
May 20, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: We Don't Talk About Abortion
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: We Don't Talk About Abortion
We Christians who support reproductive rights are mostly silent. We may not be silent individually. Some of us may work at Planned Parenthood. Some of us may vote for candidates and resolutions in favor of reproductive rights. Some of us may attend rallies. But as Christian communities, we are mostly silent. Some of us may stand up and speak out for abortion rights, but we don’t do it in Jesus’ name.
And we should. We who belong to Christian communities and support abortion rights should be speaking up in Jesus’ name.
But instead, we choose not to talk about abortion. In part, this is because of how you felt when you read(heard) the word abortion on a church blog(podcast) just now. Many of us try to avoid making people feel that way. We often steer clear of hot button topics, and there is no hotter button in American culture than abortion.
During particularly polarizing times such as these, there is something attractive about creating spaces that do not broach sensitive topics. Having a church that doesn’t talk about controversial issues gives some of us a sense of respite from the endless cacophony of opinion out there in the real world. Some of us may think to ourselves that we need a community that acts as a timeout, an escape from those things that keep us up at night.
May 13, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: Learning What I Believe
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: Learning What I Believe
"I have to admit that my friend’s abortion began a shift in me even if I did not see it or understand it at the time. The shift that occurred was simple, and it came in the form of a question I asked myself. Did I think she was a murderer? I had been taught she was. But did I believe it? No. No, I did not believe that. It did not make sense. It did not fit. I did not know what to do with this incongruity, any more than I knew what to do with my own hypocrisy – which I could not see or accept.
A few years later I was working as a waiter. One of my coworkers got pregnant, and she was contemplating an abortion. She was a faithful Christian, and she knew me as a Christian too and wanted to talk with me about it. This was the first real discussion I ever actually had about abortion. It was not about laws. It was not about rights. It was about her and what was happening to her and within her. She decided to terminate the pregnancy.
It was the first time I remember not knowing what to think.
In full disclosure to you, I told her I didn’t think she should get an abortion.
And then, before I knew what was happening, I heard the words come out of my mouth, “But if you need a ride, or you need someone to wait for you or pick you up afterward, I can do that.”
So, what did I really believe?"
May 06, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: We Believe
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: We Believe
We believe that access to a safe, legal abortion is healthcare, and treating it otherwise serves to diminish the fullness of your humanity and weaponize your own bodies against you.
We believe you don’t need us to explain to you the complexity of carrying life within you, and the decision to terminate that life.
We believe that Christians can in good conscience disagree with one another about abortion without taking it out on you.
We believe that choosing abortion does not make you less faithful, less loved, less of anything.
We believe God knows this better than we do.
We believe God Is compassionate and understanding, and will never abandon or forsake you.
We believe that the church should not be a source of judgment and shame, but a community of love and support that stands with you unflinchingly.
We believe you.
Apr 29, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: Magnificent and Complicated
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: Magnificent and Complicated
Weddings are endlessly fascinating. They carry with them immense baggage – not just the hope of perfection, but the expectation of it. Unmitigated joy is assumed as the default feeling at a wedding even though no such thing has ever happened. We have never in our adult lives felt uncomplicated happiness, and yet we saddle weddings with this burden.
I had a mentor who would say that, as a pastor, funerals were easier than weddings. He said that at funerals people were allowed to feel anything, were allowed to have complicated, strange, hard, sad feelings, were allowed to laugh and cry and love and mourn and grieve and hope all at once. And I remember him saying at a funeral there is usually a coffin or an urn or a picture where we can focus all the complexity of our emotions in that moment.
But, he said, at a wedding, everyone was supposed only to be happy. Never mind if they’d recently been divorced or widowed, if they’d loved and lost, or if they wanted to be married but weren’t. Never mind if they couldn’t find clothes that fit, or if they weren’t sure what they thought about the institution of marriage or if they were uncomfortable in this church: Pure happiness is what they should feel
Apr 22, 2022 |
Rector's Blog Throwback Series, Hoping for Peace
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog Throwback Series, Hoping for Peace
Editor's note: This blog is part of our Throwback Series and
was originally posted on December 17, 2021.
"We talk about wanting peace a lot. We talk about our hope for a peaceful future, with peaceful relationships, a peaceful nation, a peaceful planet. But it seems like every version of peace we imagine requires everyone else to see things the way we see them. During the height of the Roman Empire, there was a time commonly known as the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace. It was known as such because of the relative lack of war and bloodshed that was being experienced in the major areas of the Empire. But throughout this Peace, Rome was in a state of constant battle and conquest on the margins of its empire, always fighting, always conquering, always subduing others and bringing them under Roman rule. And the internal peace and stability came under threat of great violence. That’s the kind of peace most of us understand: A peace that is achieved by constant violence and threats. So long as that violence is kept far enough away, we feel safe.
Do we really hope for peace? Or is our hope just to feel comfortable and unbothered?"
"We talk about wanting peace a lot. We talk about our hope for a peaceful future, with peaceful relationships, a peaceful nation, a peaceful planet. But it seems like every version of peace we imagine requires everyone else to see things the way we see them. During the height of the Roman Empire, there was a time commonly known as the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace. It was known as such because of the relative lack of war and bloodshed that was being experienced in the major areas of the Empire. But throughout this Peace, Rome was in a state of constant battle and conquest on the margins of its empire, always fighting, always conquering, always subduing others and bringing them under Roman rule. And the internal peace and stability came under threat of great violence. That’s the kind of peace most of us understand: A peace that is achieved by constant violence and threats. So long as that violence is kept far enough away, we feel safe.
Do we really hope for peace? Or is our hope just to feel comfortable and unbothered?"
Apr 14, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: For The Unprepared
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: For The Unprepared
I have failed at another Lent. It has become my new tradition, failing at Lent. I cannot seem to get it together for this season of penitence, fasting, and devotion. I have not been able to consistently give something up for years, I am literally eating a sleeve of Thin Mints while I write this blog – a blog that I was supposed to write a week ago. It’s fair to say I did not become a better Christian in the 6 weeks.
Really, nothing makes me feel like more of a failure as a Christian than Lent – which is funny since I am terrible at turning the other cheek, loving my enemy, praying for those who persecute me, refraining from judging others – all explicit directives of Jesus himself. My failure at these just makes me shrug and say, “nobody’s perfect.” But my inability to achieve a productive Lent, that 40-day feat of faithfulness – the one that Jesus had never heard of – somehow makes me feel guilty.
This happens, of course, because I keep thinking Lent is about being better, about self-improvement. But it’s not. Lent is about Jesus.
Apr 08, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: Proclaiming the Blessing You See
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: Proclaiming the Blessing You See
Editor's note: This blog is part of our Throwback Series. This
blog post was originally posted on March 17, 2021.
Proclaiming the blessing of LGBTQ+ people in this world will change us as Christians. It will change our church. It will change how we understand God. It will change how we understand one another. Every time we see blessing in someone, our experience of God’s presence is expanded and deepened. God’s magnificent Love becomes more obvious, more powerful, more clear in our lives when we see it in places we hadn’t before. And we are transformed in a way that glorifies God.
Apr 01, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: Thy Kingdom Come
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: Thy Kingdom Come
" I have been Christian my whole life, which means I’ve been saying, hearing, reading this prayer my whole life, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that I actually paid any attention at all to that first petition, to what it means. Plainly speaking, we are asking that God make this life, this place just like Heaven. That’s what we’re asking. And I don’t think Jesus was being hyperbolic, parabolic, symbolic, or idealistic. I think Jesus meant it, and I think Jesus wants us to mean it.
That this world be heavenly should be something we actively seek and desire.
The Episcopal Church is explicitly meant to be a visionary and driven body. Our catechism states that our mission is to restore all people to unity with God through Jesus Christ, and that we do this by praying, worshiping, proclaiming the Gospel, and promoting justice, peace, and love. At Church of the Redeemer we have our own Vision Statement that is likewise driven, and it seeks to focus us on how we live into that mission. It is worth recognizing that what we are really doing is trying to help our own petition to God come true. We are saying, “God we want Earth look more like Heaven, and we want to help make it happen.”
That this world be heavenly should be something we actively seek and desire.
The Episcopal Church is explicitly meant to be a visionary and driven body. Our catechism states that our mission is to restore all people to unity with God through Jesus Christ, and that we do this by praying, worshiping, proclaiming the Gospel, and promoting justice, peace, and love. At Church of the Redeemer we have our own Vision Statement that is likewise driven, and it seeks to focus us on how we live into that mission. It is worth recognizing that what we are really doing is trying to help our own petition to God come true. We are saying, “God we want Earth look more like Heaven, and we want to help make it happen.”
Mar 25, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: Incompletely White
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: Incompletely White
As we turned from the presentation towards the people at our table for a small group breakout discussion, one of our brilliant, beloved, thoughtful parishioners spoke up. “Well, I’ll just say it, and I guess I should be sorry, but I love our liturgy.” I love her. I love that she said this. This was exactly the right thing for her to say and exactly the right place for her to say it. And my immediate response was, “I love it too, and I don’t think you need to be sorry.” Because the point of the work of Becoming Beloved Community isn’t to make you feel bad or shame you for loving something that has shaped your relationship with God. The work is meant to open us up to the fact that, however beautiful our experience of God has been, it is incomplete because we have not allowed ourselves to be influenced by people who don’t look like us. The liturgy isn’t bad. It’s incomplete.
However beautiful our lives have been, they are incomplete because we have not allowed ourselves to be influenced, led, taught, pastored, challenged, pushed, transformed, forgiven and loved by people who don’t look like us. We are not bad people, finally learning to be good. We are incomplete people searching for the wholeness of God, and the wholeness of God’s creation as seen in the people we have historically ignored and marginalized.
Mar 18, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: Angry and Beautiful
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: Angry and Beautiful
"... Do we really grow out of not admitting we’re not ok? Do we really grow out of not knowing we need help? The most significant growth and maturity I have experienced has not come simply with age – it’s come through practice and intention. So if we do not practice the ownership of our broken feelings, how do we think we will ever actually get good at being honest with ourselves? If we only practice putting on the best face possible and moving forward as if things are ok, aren’t we just getting better and better at denial
Nirvana’s music, that grunge, that angry beautiful wall of sound, tapped into the part of me that was not ok and gave me something I couldn’t even ask for: It made it ok for me not to be ok. It made anger beautiful. It gave melody to my fears. We’re all so afraid of being alone. They made me less alone.
Our culture’s collective mastery of denial has been made manifest during the last two years. We have made a practice of denying the seriousness of the virus, denying its magnitude, denying its impact. We have many times chosen denial of the obvious ways to stop the spread, denial of simple ways to save lives, denial of the fact that all this uncertainty and death has taken its toll on us."
Mar 11, 2022 |
Rector's Blog: Practicing Promise
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog: Practicing Promise
If you had not thought about that before, please take a moment simply to sit with it. Attainment of God’s promise is not found in the central narrative of God’s people. The bulk of the story is located in the wilderness - wandering, wrestling, and wrangling.
In this moment, it might be tempting for us as Christians to differentiate ourselves from the Israelites. But we’d be kidding ourselves. Even if we ignore for a moment the centrality of the Torah in Jesus’ life, we’d have to admit that our New Testament leaves us here on earth waiting on a promise. No, this Torah is our story, and we would be wise to locate ourselves within it.
We would be doubly wise to find ourselves in the wilderness alongside the Israelites, because it is in that wilderness that God’s people most consistently recognize God’s presence and power. While they, like us, are attracted to stability and seduced by certainty, they cannot deny that their most potent experience of God’s loving kindness comes to them in the wilderness of struggle and uncertainty. To take the narrative of the Torah seriously is to recognize where God shows up – and it’s not in the perfect places. Far from it.
Your life is not defined by the attainment of all your dreams. Your life is not shaped by the consummation of all your desires. Your life is composed of uncertainty and struggle.
Mar 04, 2022 |
Following Love, Finding Transformation
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Following Love, Finding Transformation
I have been married for almost 14 years. I didn’t get married because I wanted to change. I didn’t get married because I wanted to become a different kind of person. I got married because I loved this woman named Krista and I wanted to be around her as much as possible. That, and I come from a tradition that says when you find someone you want to be around as much as possible, you probably should marry them. So I got married. It will not surprise you to hear that marriage has changed me a lot in the intervening years. It doesn’t matter that that was not my goal. My goal was to follow love. Transformation happened...
We commit to things that will transform us when we are drawn towards them despite the work involved: when we feel a sense of love and excitement. So it goes for the Church, I think. We exist for Love. It’s why we are here.
We commit to things that will transform us when we are drawn towards them despite the work involved: when we feel a sense of love and excitement. So it goes for the Church, I think. We exist for Love. It’s why we are here.
Feb 25, 2022 |
Holding Space for Frustration and Hope
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Holding Space for Frustration and Hope
We are entering into a time of hope. I’m not talking about the religious season of Lent, though that is wonderful: I’m talking about this time in our church in relation to COVID-19. Transmission of the virus is dropping dramatically in our area, and vaccinations continue to increase. We are all hopeful that we are seeing the end of the pandemic. Of course, we know that this does not mean the end of COVID-19, which will likely be with us for the rest of our lives. But, understanding that, we are seeing a shift from pandemic to endemic, we are shifting slowly out of crisis mode, and beginning the work of creating our new normal. This is quite a gift.
I am very excited that the recent case surge is coming to such a rapid end. With current case numbers finally dropping from "High Transmission" to "Substantial Transmission" for the first time in months. We are excited to reintroduce congregational singing to our worship, and to allow eating indoors again: These developments are life-giving for our community, and they are a sign of things to come!..
At present, we are on the downslope of the Omicron surge, which you know. What you may not be aware of is that during this surge, children aged 0-4 were being hospitalized for COVID-19 at 4 times the rate they had been during any other time in the pandemic. This recent surge has, in plain terms, been the most potentially dangerous for the youngest members of our church and school community – who are not yet able to be vaccinated, and we have taken that very seriously.
In casual conversation, many people have referred to the Omicron variant as not dangerous or not that bad. It’s true that it has been generally less vicious than Delta. But our hospitals have been full during this surge, our healthcare workers have been overtaxed to the breaking point, and deaths have been astronomical. We are tired. I know it. And we want this thing to be over. But we want to be careful in our fatigue about how we understand the severity of recent events.
Feb 18, 2022 |
Make You Odd
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Make You Odd
Hey, friends, welcome to my podcast, When Love Shows Up. This week we’re going to rerun an episode from last year because I find it has held its relevance in terms of our community response to COVID-19. While some of our guidelines have changed, since this was written/recorded, our guiding principles and philosophy are the same. Our Christian beliefs put our care for each other at the forefront of our priorities, and this can sometimes put us out of step with the world around us. With COVID cases dropping dramatically, and vaccinations on the rise, we believe we will be seeing some big changes in the next few weeks. I am meeting with Redeemer’s COVID Advisory Response Expert Team regularly as things unfold, and we continue to make decisions based on the data, and on the best practices available to us. Assuming a continued downward trend in case numbers, we are expecting to loosen some of the restrictions we’ve placed on our gathering – as it is safe to do so. In all this, I welcome your questions and feedback, and I ask for your prayers for sound and loving decision-making.
"You know what we do is odd, right? We who worship God in the church. One of the things we’ve missed the most these last months is one of the things that makes us odd: the weekly gathering for the purpose of honoring an invisible God and asking that God to care for us, to heal and reconcile us, to give us all that we need. It’s not really comparable to anything else"
"You know what we do is odd, right? We who worship God in the church. One of the things we’ve missed the most these last months is one of the things that makes us odd: the weekly gathering for the purpose of honoring an invisible God and asking that God to care for us, to heal and reconcile us, to give us all that we need. It’s not really comparable to anything else"
Feb 11, 2022 |
Your Presence
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Your Presence
As I write this, many of you have not yet returned to worship in the physical space of your church. Many of you have come back, but have not made it a regular practice again, as it was for you prior to the pandemic. Every single one of you has your reasons, and I have no interest in judging them...
We are a church: A people who belong to one another in Jesus’ name. Your presence transforms us, and it transforms you...
If you are a part of Church of the Redeemer, you have memories of this space – of what it has meant to you. Perhaps you love it because of those memories. Perhaps you love it because of what it has meant to you.
I am interested in what the Church of the Redeemer’s sanctuary will mean to you going forward. I am interested in your continued presence and pilgrimage. I am interested in making Church of the Redeemer holy again and again. I am interested in this place helping to shape your future, as you help to shape its future. This happens when we are together, under whatever circumstance.
Feb 04, 2022 |
For the Bengals
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
For the Bengals
"Cincinnatians are often curious about me moving here. They ask me why I, a Californian, would live here instead of, well, California. I like to ask them what they love about Cincinnati. They unfailingly have a list ready to go, their passion and pride clear and unabashed. And they usually list several things I love too. And then I ask, “Well, why wouldn’t I love those things too?” Sometimes they believe me. Sometimes they are flattered, or appreciative. But oftentimes, a lifelong Cincinnatian with a deep sense of loyalty for their beloved town will just shake their head and say, “I don’t know, though…you came from California…” and then immediately complain about Cincinnati weather and the sports teams. Cincinnatians love their city in a way that I find really beautiful. ...But then there’s Cincinnati sports. I have not seen anything in my time here that contains the pride, frustration, hope, and misery of a people quite like their relationship with sports. Inviting me, challenging me to root for Cincinnati sports teams was a crucible. It was as if they were saying to me, “You don’t get to love us if you’re not going to suffer alongside us.” And that makes sense to me. That’s always been my favorite part about Jesus: That he’s all in on us, and not just here for the good parts."
Jan 28, 2022 |
Sibling Rivalry
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Sibling Rivalry
Though sources differ on just when the split occurred, the Jews and the Samaritans came from the same family. Even the fact that there are different versions and understandings of the fracture sounds like family, doesn’t it? The Samaritans, like the Jews, were colonized and subjugated by the Romans, and just like their Jewish siblings, they were waiting for a messiah at the time of Jesus’ arrival. Knowing how close they were, how much they shared, how slight were their differences, their rivalry makes more sense to me – not less. Nobody can push your buttons like those to whom you are closest. The strength of their anger testifies to the depth of their connection.
The first Christians were Jews. I wrote about this last week, but it bears repeating, that the first Christians were in fact Jews that followed Jesus, who is Jewish.
And yet no group of people in the history of the world have been as destructive to Jews as Christians have. There’s no escaping this fact. Christians have othered and marginalized and oppressed and murdered Jews on a level that would horrify the Pharoah of Exodus – and we’ve done it in Jesus’ name.
Jan 21, 2022 |
Jesus is a Jew
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Jesus is a Jew
"I have learned that I have not listened to marginalized voices enough. I have learned that I have been conditioned to decide what racism is rather than deferring to People of Color on the matter, that I have been conditioned to decide what sexism is, rather than deferring to women on the matter, and so on. I am learning to listen, to defer to the expertise of others, to allow myself to be transformed by listening.
For the non-Jew, this kind of listening absolutely must extend to our Jewish siblings. We have to listen to them. They are telling us they experience antisemitism with stunning regularity. They are telling us they are scared simply to be themselves. They are telling us they don’t enter a synagogue without searching out the nearest exit just in case. They are telling us they feel the need to defend their very right to exist."
