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This past Sunday, we continued our sermon series on "Cultivating Fruits of the Spirit." In her sermon, Pastor Alison explored how some of the cultural messaging we receive around Generosity — like through popular children's books such as The Rainbow Fish and The Giving Tree -- can be confusing and at times problematic. Both The Rainbow Fish and The Giving Tree would lead us to believe that we should strive to be generous no matter the cost to our own well-being. That we should always say yes to helping others no matter what. But the problem is, pursuing generosity in this way is unsustainable. If we give in this way, over time, we will inevitably become burnt out, angry, and resentful — unable to embody the freedom and warmheartedness that true generosity entails. As we seek more sustainable perspectives on generosity, Alison encouraged us to consider the work of playwright and screenwriter Topher Payne. As part of a fundraiser for The Atlanta Artist Relief Fund, Payne created a series called “topher fixed it” where he created what he called “parody alternate endings to beloved but problematic children's literature.” For example, in these thought-provoking works The Rainbow Fish became The Rainbow Fish Keeps His Scales, and The Giving Tree became The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries. We encourage you to give these parodies a read and to consider the ways they challenge popular cultural understandings of generosity!
If it’s not through sheer willpower or by saying yes to every request, then how do we cultivate generosity in our lives?
To help answer this question, Pastor Alison drew upon the work of shame and vulnerability researcher Brené Brown. Brown and her team spent years studying compassionate, generous people. Going in, Brown’s hypothesis was that what compassionate, generous people have in common is faith or spirituality. But the pattern in the research data showed something else. Brown discovered that what compassionate, generous people actually have in common is boundaries. They respect other people’s boundaries and they are very clear about identifying, communicating, and enforcing their own. In Brown’s own words, “They assume that other people are doing the best they can, but they also ask for what they need, and they don’t put up with a lot of shit.” Brown defines boundaries in a couple of ways. The first is “boundaries are what’s okay and what’s not okay.” So, what am I okay with? What allows me to live in integrity with my values? And what am I not okay with? What prevents me from living in integrity with my values? And, borrowing from Prentis Hemphill, the second way Brown defines boundaries is: “boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” So, in other words, how do I actually live out Jesus’s Greatest Commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself”? How do I go about loving my neighbor and loving myself at the same time? According to Brown, boundaries are what help us to live out of a place of freedom. To be able to release our death grip on any number of things — our time, our resources, our sense of righteousness — and open our hands instead. Being open-handed does not mean that we automatically say yes or give what we are holding away. But it does mean that we are more able to make purposeful choices about how we want to be compassionate and generous. That there is more room to consider, both for ourselves and for our neighbors: What will bring love? What will bring joy? What will bring life? To be intentional about what we hold onto and what we release. What do you think about this idea that boundaries and generosity are connected? Is this something you have thought about before? To explore these ideas further, we encourage you to take some time to consider the resources listed below:
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This past Sunday, we continued our sermon series on Cultivating Fruits of the Spirit by focusing on Peace. We looked at Psalm 23, one of the most beloved and comforting passages in Scripture — but we explored it not as a static promise of stillness, but as a prayer we return to in the middle of real life.
Peace, we said, isn’t the absence of struggle. It’s something we carry through struggle. It’s found when we know who our Shepherd is, even when the path winds through valleys and shadows. To help us reflect on the tension between peace and progress, we turned to the discography of Jay-Z, who quotes Psalm 23 twice in his music. We listened to six songs and considered how his career arc might help us to reflect on the three visions of God put forward in the Psalm:
Jay-Z’s story helped us wrestle with the search for peace in a world driven by hustle, injustice, and change. It reminded us that praying the psalms doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine — it means bringing our whole selves to God, trusting that peace is found not by escaping life, but by walking through it with God. If you’re looking to go deeper this week, here are three resources that explore the power of the Psalms — and how they speak into our world today: 📘 Praying the Psalms by Thomas Merton Thomas Merton was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion. In this short but powerful book, he begins by asking: Why has the Church always considered the Psalms her most perfect book of prayer? Merton’s answer is that the psalms are not ancient and dusty — they are young, full of purity, sincerity, and spiritual vitality. He sees them as the means of full participation in the liturgy and the deepening of one’s interior life. Merton invites us to set aside modern prejudices and recover a more contemplative posture — praying the psalms not just with our minds, but with our souls. He believes that in the Psalms, Christ prays in us, and we are united with Him in praise, lament, and longing. The second half of the book walks through key psalms and invites us into their world, not just for study, but for transformation. It’s a wonderful read for anyone curious about how to pray the psalms not as poetry, but as spiritual practice. 📘 Psalms of My People: A Story of Black Liberation as Told through Hip Hop by Lenny Duncan In this powerful and creative work, black trans Lutheran pastor Lenny Duncan treats hip-hop as sacred scripture. Through exegetical reflection and stunning artwork, Duncan explores how artists like Tupac, Lauryn Hill, and Jay-Z are modern-day psalmists, giving voice to the pain and hope of Black America. This book is a brilliant companion to Psalm 23 — especially if you're interested in how music, race, and theology intersect. Duncan’s thesis is bold and deeply moving: if we want to understand the Black experience in the U.S., we must understand hip-hop. It is, in their words, “a conduit to tell the modern story of Black liberation.” 📰 “Jay-Z on Therapy, Marriage, and Being a Black Man in America” (Interview by Dean Baquet, The New York Times) This long-form interview offers a rare, vulnerable look at Jay-Z’s evolution as an artist, husband, and human being. Baquet (then executive editor of The New York Times) asks thoughtful questions about race, identity, therapy, and legacy. Jay-Z reflects candidly on his childhood, his marriage, the weight of Black celebrity, and the spiritual cost of hustle culture. If you were intrigued by the sermon’s use of Jay-Z’s music to explore Psalm 23, this interview offers rich context for how his life mirrors the psalmist’s journey — from green pastures to dark valleys and back again. Peace isn’t something we stumble upon. It’s something we cultivate — with honesty, prayer, art, and reflection. This week, may these resources give you new language for the journey and remind you that even in the midst of chaos, God is still leading us beside still waters. Most of the time when we think about Patience we are thinking about the ability to wait well. But is that all there is to it? In her sermon this past Sunday, Pastor Alison explored a deeper meaning of patience, "quality of suffering," rooted in the word's etymology. Patience is certainly about waiting well — after all, waiting can be a form of suffering — however, it's also about much more than that. As much as we may wish it weren’t so, suffering is an inescapable part of the human experience. No matter how hard we may try to avoid it, in the end, in one way or another, suffering touches us all. Many of us here in this community — in New York City, in our country, and around the world — are hurting right now, for reasons personal and public, individual and systemic. And so it seems that there is great value in considering how to suffer well. How to improve the quality of our suffering. Not to prove our mettle or our holiness, but for the sake of unconditional love. So that we may be more able to show up for ourselves and for others in the midst of pain. In order to improve the quality of our suffering, Pastor Alison encouraged us to practice sitting with and welcoming all of our emotions — especially the ones that seem difficult, overwhelming, embarrassing, or shameful. She also spoke about the practice of acceptance (in times when we cannot change our circumstances) and the ways that it differs from approval. For example, we can accept that we are experiencing an emotion without believing that it is pleasant or comfortable. And we can accept that a situation cannot be changed without saying that it is good. Two resources that can help us with these practices are a poem by Rumi called "The Guest House" and the famous Serenity Prayer. We encourage you to spend some time this week reflecting on the poem; sitting with your emotions; and praying for more serenity, courage, and wisdom in your life! May we grow together in patience — the quality of our suffering — so that we may love ourselves and others more deeply.
 On Sunday, Maddie preached about how comedy helps us to navigate the tension between Joy and all the reasons why we shouldn't feel it. In a moment when there are so many reasons not to be joyful, humor can help us to see another perspective that God is offering us. Sometimes taking ourselves less seriously can allow us to respond to our circumstances with more grace — for ourselves, for other people, and for the rest of God's creation.
This week's two resources build on these themes: an article about how we might read the book of Esther as a satire and a comedy special that navigates the tension between joy and deep personal pain. Our first resource is an article in the Christian Century by Pastor Debbie Blue about the book of Esther. On Sunday, we looked at how many scholars read the book of Jonah as a satire. In this article Pastor Blue explores why we might read the book of Esther similarly. The Book of Esther tells the story of a Jewish woman named Esther who becomes queen of Persia and, with the help of her cousin Mordecai, courageously thwarts a plot by the king’s advisor Haman to annihilate the Jewish people. Though God is never mentioned explicitly, the narrative highlights themes of divine providence, hidden identity, and courageous advocacy. The Jewish festival of Purim commemorates this dramatic deliverance and celebrates survival through cunning, bravery, and solidarity. According to Pastor Blue, the book of Esther is a comic farce that mocks imperial power, gendered expectations, and human egotism through exaggerated characters, bawdy humor, and absurd political drama. Rather than offering solemn moral lessons or divine mandates, it invites readers to laugh at the powerful, question the pretensions of empire, and find grace in human courage and wit. Purim, the festival inspired by Esther, preserves this spirit of joyful subversion — celebrating hiddenness, survival, and laughter as sacred acts. This reading of Esther is politically subversive. By laughing at the Persian empire — the pompous king, the sycophantic advisers, and the ridiculous laws — it undermines the authority and permanence of empire itself. It shows that the structures we’re taught to revere (royalty, gender roles, power) are often absurd and fragile. The humor becomes a weapon — a way to reclaim agency, especially for the marginalized. Esther, a woman with no power on paper, uses wit, timing, and beauty to save her people. That’s not just a story of survival — it’s a satire of how power works, and who gets to wield it. In that way, reading Esther as satire is a kind of resistance. It invites us to take joy seriously, to question seriousness itself, and to see comedy as a theological act. Our second resource is a groundbreaking comedy special by queer comedian Tig Notaro that some people call "Live," but that others remember as the "Hello, Good Evening, I Have Cancer" set. This set was not intended to be a recorded special, but someone at the venue thankfully happened to tape it. The audience was so moved by the set that night that others convinced Notaro to release the recording. As the alternate title suggests, the set begins with Notaro taking the stage and saying "Hello. Good Evening. Hello. I have cancer." The following thirty minutes are a hilarious and cutting exploration of Notaro's fresh cancer diagnosis, her mother's death, and her recent breakup. At various moments, Notaro attempts to comfort the audience members who seem concerned for her, assuring them that they will be ok. Her humor plays on the bleakness of her own situation as she attempts to make meaning of recent events. At one point, towards the end of the set, she apologizes to the audience for being so depressing and asks them if they would prefer for her to switch to jokes. But you can hear them yell in reply "No! No! Keep going!" This is one of my favorite comedy specials that speaks to the power of the genre to navigate tension well. As you head into this week, may you open yourself to the possibility of seeing God's joy, even in the midst of so much sorrow. I'm praying that you find a moment to laugh as well! |
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