Jul 4

Jul 4 Hamilton and the Idea of America

There are multiple times when EA and I were watching Hamilton last night when I felt my heart expand inside me. To be sure some of those moments revolve around the musical’s beautiful snapshots of love, camaraderie, parenthood, and forgiveness.

Yet there are also moments—primarily in “My Shot” and “Yorktown”—in which my heart swelled with pride for my country. As you see brave women and men of all ethnicities struggle for one another’s freedoms, you cannot help but think, “This is what it should be like.”

“Should be” is the operative phrase and it always has been. Hamilton is historical fiction (If you have a friend who is non-ironically wet blanketing people with this fact, pray for them because they don’t have much fun in life). With People of Color playing the founders of this nation, it is consciously more concerned with the Idea of America, where that idea has failed, and the continued struggle for it today.

Jun 28

Jun 28 A Psalm in Someone Else's Shoes

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

The psalms give us a language for praise and lament. Usually when I read a psalm of praise, my heart surges because I feel that praise towards God. When I read a lament it is because my own soul is downcast because others have hurt me or I have strayed in some way. Sometimes I will try to get in the mind of the psalmist. I’ll think about what that person was experiencing when they composed their cry to God.

But when I looked at this week’s psalm, it did not connect to my own experience and I did not find myself wondering what the psalmist might have felt. I immediately thought about the family of Breonna Taylor. She was murdered over three months ago and justice does not seem near.

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Jun 27
Jun 27 What I Wish the Evangelical Church Would Believe About Me

Chris Cox

Here is what I wish my friends in the evangelical church would believe about me (for that's the only person I can speak of) as someone who has gone outside the doors of that brand of Christianity: It was never about leaving Christ.

When I finally had the guts to say that Black Lives Matter, support rights for LGBTQ+ individuals, criticize the ways American nationalism compromises the church, and push back against biblical inerrancy, I wasn't trying to leave something. I was trying to move closer to Christ.

I want to follow Jesus the best I can. Sometimes I am awful at it. I get things wrong. But to paraphrase a song: I want to be a Christian in my heart, my head, my actions. So very badly. And where I am is where the journey has taken me thus far.

I have not strayed. I have not left the church (in fact I work as a minister in a local congregation). I have not capitulated to culture or been brainwashed by the media. I have thought and fought and prayed and studied. Though it looks different I probably cling to God more now.

Jun 6

Jun 6 Remember

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

There is so much going on in the world right now and it all can feel kind of overwhelming. Let us keep it simple and straightforward.

Jesus is with you. Always.

It’s Trinity Sunday and I am not going to strain any of our tired minds diving into the deep end of what that means. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great. Sit under the stars some evening and talk about the three-in-oneness of God the Creator, Son, and Spirit.

Here is what I find life-giving about this mystery way of being called the Trinity: it shows that God loves community. God is always in community, this divine dance. It is not good for anyone to be alone and God proves that within God’s own being.

Jun 6

Jun 6 Scenes from a Protest

Chris Cox

The first thing you must know is that you need to hear the stories. You and I cannot begin to understand, but their stories help. You need to hear of the deep wounds; not for your edification but because you need to know this is happening. You need to feel the heat from righteous anger. You need to hear the exhaustion. A child should not be so tired yet when you hear the stories you know why they are tired.

A child. That was one of the reasons why we felt drawn towards this protest; that we told our youth that we’d be there if they were there. This protest was organized by six high school girls: Jade Fuller, Nya Collins, Zee Thomas, Kennedy Green, Emma Rose Smith, and Mikayla Smith. Six young women dreamed this and it conjured 10,000 people to downtown Nashville. These young women led. They shared their hurt. They bared their souls. They told a crowd of thousands that this would be a peaceful protest and thousands followed their lead. These six want peace. They want justice. They don’t want to see one more death.

You need to hear them. You need to listen to the catch in their throat. You need to hear the spoken word performance from a young man in which he shares what it is like to grow up in this country as a black man. It will nearly rip your heart out just as it did mine. The only thing that kept it tethered to my chest was this young man’s beaming friend standing behind him full of pride. You need to hear that the world is vastly different for him than it is for you. Maybe you know that, but knowing and hearing are two different things. You need to hear these young leaders map out something better than what was handed to them.

May 27

May 27 Superman, Destroyed Bodies, and All Our Tomorrows

Chris Cox

When the Ku Klux Klan was trying to recruit new members in post-World War II United States, the Anti-Defamation League reached out to the producers of the massively popular Superman radio show and proposed a story that pitted the organization as villains against the Man of Steel. The 16-part series “The Clan of the Fiery Cross” was a ratings hit and seriously damaged the Klan’s recruitment efforts and membership numbers. The way this superhero radio serial dealt a blow to hatred is an awesome example of why stories are so powerful.

Last year, MacArthur Foundation Fellow Gene Luen Yang and the artist cohort Gurihiru adapted this 1946 radio story into the graphic novel Superman Smashes the Klan. My parents shipped it to me last week as a birthday present and I loved it. The only way this mixture of superheroes, justice issues, and American history could be more in my wheelhouse is if it featured a lengthy scene in which Superman and Jimmy Olsen discussed theology.

The graphic novel has not been far from my mind since I finished it. The story is beautiful, fun, and well-told. Yet its continued presence in my mind is due to recent events demonstrating how little the world has changed since 1946. Maybe the violence is not committed by men in white hoods who burn crosses, but violence against those who are not white still persists.

May 24

May 24 Up and Here

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

I can’t remember if the question was “Where is God?” or “Where is heaven?” But it was a question that the pastor of the church I grew up in asked frequently and he wanted the congregation to physically respond by pointing to the ceiling. I remember one time him encouraging folks to hold their fingers aloft when not enough initially responded. He cited this week’s passage—the Ascension of Jesus—as the reason for the belief that heaven is up.

I never pointed up. This is probably my dad’s fault. He drilled into my siblings and me that words and specifics matter. If Jesus ascended to a heaven that was literally up then it would posit that somewhere out in the vastness of space was heaven. It would also be an up that was up from the Middle East at a certain moment in earth’s daily rotation and revolution around the sun. Odds are the up-pointing of a 1990s congregation in upstate South Carolina was lightyears in the wrong direction from the literal up of Jesus’ ascension (this is giving you some insight on what a strange kid I was).

I am not sure whether our pastor believed that heaven was literally up out there in space or in some kind of sky bound pocket dimension or what. It wasn’t a malicious act, but it bugged me. Beyond the logistics of literalism, it galled me that everyone was told to point up as if heaven was some kind of fixed point that we could comprehend. Much later, I also realized that casting heaven as the sky neglected a major theme of what Jesus preached throughout his ministry: that heaven is also breaking through here on earth.

May 18

May 18 To Jim on His 10th Birthday

Chris Cox

Jim,

Time is a strange thing right now. As we celebrate your birthday, we have been sheltering in place for 7 or 8 weeks and the days kind of blur together. The weeks simultaneously fly by and seem to stretch on for eons. So the attempt to convey what it feels like for you to be 10 years old seems odd. Yet as I write this down, it feels all too appropriate. Because it seems like your first decade with us started moments ago and it also feels like you’ve always been here.

I can still remember sleeping on a hospital couch as we waited for you to be born and holding you for the first time. I can close my eyes and picture the radiant May morning when we brought you home with “Strawberry Swing” playing over the stereo and the world feeling like it was nothing but infinite possibility. And I find it hard to believe that beautiful baby boy has now hit double digits.

Yet you are 10 and we’ve seen the tell-tale signs of growing up in the last few months. You’ve gotten a little bit taller. It’s getting a little bit more difficult to heft you up to hug you like I used to. And then we gave you a quarantine buzzcut and you seemed to immediately age a couple of years in minutes. Part of me wants to pump the brakes on it. You can’t really play tug-of-war with time though I know many a parent has tried.

May 4

May 4 All Who Believed Were Together

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

Adaptation has been the hallmark of this weird season that we’re in. The important things in life have to continue even as the world as we’ve known it has ground to a halt. We try to do school from home as best as we can. We reach out and connect with friends and family over FaceTime and Zoom calls. We keep going where we are able.

My ministry with my students is the area where I have had to adapt on the fly the most. I am not always sure how we’re doing. The hallmark of a youth group is community and while we can see each other’s faces on our screen, I know that it is not the same as being in a room together or sitting down to a meal with friends.

But you do all you can to try and meet the needs of your community. We’ve kept meeting on Sunday mornings and nights over the internet. We have Bible studies through the weeks and gather once a week to just hang out and play some games. It has been encouraging to see those faces pop up on the screen to still talk about faith and share stories. You adapt. You keep moving forward.

The first Sunday of May at our church is traditionally Youth Sunday in which our students lead in morning worship. As the days of sheltering in place stretched into weeks, it became evident that we were not going to be able to follow the usual script for this capstone to the school year. But cancelling was never an option in my mind. Our church has been doing virtual services for weeks now, so we were going to put our spin on the service.