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Embracing Mara

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Jessica Tate and Jen James are curating a series featuring videos from National Gatherings and suggestions for how they might serve as resources for ministry. We’re revisiting speakers from this most recent National Gathering in Seattle as well as speakers from previous years. Our hope is that inviting you to engage (or reengage) their work might invite deeper reflection and possibly yield more fruit. What is taking root and bearing fruit in your own life and ministry? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

In her sermon at the 2019 National Gathering in Seattle, Rev. Dr. Kelle Brown preaches on the subject “Bitter,” referring to the name Naomi claims for herself in the book of Ruth. Attending to the truth told in this sermon might be a practice to consider this Holy Week as an individual practice of devotion, or with a small group.

Dr. Brown calls the church to take time for lament, viewing lament as a gift from God and a way to connect to God. Lament offers “the chance to weep bitterly at the state of the world, the circumstances and challenges that affect us all. Our neglect of lament has somehow changed us and thwarted our spiritual lives.” Dr. Brown challenges our desire to jump over Good Fridays and right to Easter. She contends that resisting the dissonance of lament and holding pain, prevents us from getting to the sacrifice or the liberation.

Take time in lament over the state of the world without trying to find a silver lining or a solution. Be present to the pain.

Naomi and Ruth are two of the first womanist theologians, Dr. Brown argues. When Naomi names herself Mara, she didn’t worry about comforting anyone else, but claimed her own space. She told her own truth. Dr. Brown exhorts the church to call her by her chosen name —

Honor her trauma.
Prioritize her.
Hear the words she is saying in between the words she does say.
Co-conspire with her.
Check our salaries and compare them with hers for equity’s sake.

Dr. Brown says there will be no forward movement if we do not embrace mara.

What is one way you can embrace mara this week, as Dr. Brown suggests?

Dr. Brown believes Ruth came from a womanist society “where she knew that being by yourself in the African context is the same as being dead. If she went back, Naomi would be alone. She knew Mara needed to have somebody to have her back.” Dr. Brown turns to the present day and says we need to learn how to have one another’s backs, to build trust, and to support the most vulnerable among us. The story of Naomi/Mara and Ruth is a story of redemption, but not for them, she says. “It is a story of redemption for the people who did not know how to welcome and listen to them. Solidarily is the order of the day.”

Reflect on the ways in which you turn toward individualism rather than solidarity.

A theme throughout the sermon is that we cannot be church together if we can’t tell the truth. Dr. Brown concludes that sermon by saying, she wants the church to be a place where nobody has to worry about what they have on or whether they have a degree or not or whether they walked up or drove up. She wants a church “that has a pastor that looks like me sometimes.” Her final line is, “I am loving you by telling my truth.”

Reflect on what defense mechanisms you use when someone else’s truth conflicts with your own. How do you overcome those defenses? How do you create the space to hear another’s truth and be changed by it?

Dr. Brown says, “The gift of the black sacred tradition is that you don’t want joy all the time. God will be the one to push you through to the otherside.” May it be so.

Jesus is Stripped of His Clothing: A Good Friday Reflection on Racism

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. During June, Therese Taylor-Stinson is curating a month of blog posts exploring Contemplation and Social Justice, featuring posts by member os the Spiritual Directors of Color Network, Ltd. Join the conversation here, on Facebook, or Twitter!

Editor’s note: This blog was first published in April 2012 on the author’s blog, Leslye Wrytes.

By Leslye Colvin

As a child, he was taught the history of his people and their ongoing relationship with the living God…a people created and loved by the one God…a people whose faith endured as they struggled in captivity, in exile, in slavery, in oppression; the same faith that inspired them to hope for a new day.

Living in an occupied land without privilege, he embraced his God-given dignity though never denying others theirs. In fact, he empowered others to do the same.

Yet, there he stood in his truth before this cross assembled by others—stripped of his dignity, standing in his nakedness, knowing the assault of lies, the weight of shackles, the sting of scourging, the absence of respect, the pangs of exhaustion, the judgment of unjust systems, the apathy of others, the violence of fear.

In spite of his compassionate teaching, centuries later, other peoples stood in their truth before crosses assembled and maintained by others—stripped of their dignity, standing in their nakedness as they faced the cross of racism.

For too many generations, peoples have known the assault of lies, the weight of shackles, the sting of scourging, the absence of respect, the pangs of exhaustion, the judgment of unjust systems, the apathy of others, the violence of fear—in the midst of it all, mindful of God’s love for them.

Grateful for the progress made, truth compels us to acknowledge that racism is neither a relic from history, nor a single cross. Instead, our nation’s original sin is a complex web of crosses deeply entrenched in our landscape.

Dismantling this web is an ongoing ministry dependent on moving beyond our apathy and divisions to work together in truth so that we may confront the unjust systems and fear that racism perpetuates. When we, who are people of goodwill, stand together in truth, no man or woman is stripped of dignity.


L Colvin

Leslye Colvin is a writer at heart and a bridge builder among peoples who respect the value of listening and engaging in dialogue. She embraces the lessons offered by diversity and views life as an ongoing invitation to compassion. Currently in the midst of a professional transition, her measure of success is to live a life of integrity. A JustFaith graduate, she also earned a Certificate in Social Justice from the University of Dayton.