Yoked

This Sunday I will celebrate the seventeenth anniversary of my ordination. It took place in the congregation that persisted in urging me toward the ministry of word and sacrament. They helped pay for my seminary education. They walked with me, prayed for me, and encouraged my slow and stubborn recognition of their external call until it came alive in me, too.

Even though pastors and mentors and professors and fellow parishioners said it clearly and often while I was coming of age, it took some time to believe that this call to parish ministry was not asking me to diminish or dismiss parts of my personhood. Rather, God was calling my whole gifted and flawed self into the daily work of practicing pastoral care and public voice. The church already had pastors who were other people. God was calling a pastor who was specifically, uniquely me!

When I knelt in that familiar chancel, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, the Holy Spirit was invoked and a stole was placed around my neck. That’s when I first and finally tumbled into a way of living that trusts what the bishop spoke over me.

It’s a beautiful thing to be called to be who you already are, to do so in community with others according to God’s love and help.

And. It’s also a burden you bear in daring to be all of who you are, fiercely mortal and trying so publicly and for the sake of the gospel and the communities to which you are called.

I put a stole on nearly every week since then, vesting for worship and festivals and funerals and public actions. It’s a yoke I wear to help me remember that this work is a labor of love; a responsibility to the least and the last and the neighbor I’d rather not neighbor; a trying of public faith; a proclamation of Christ and a kingdom coming; a good struggle that yields long after and in spite of me. It’s a symbol that reminds me to trust that, with integrity and intentionality, my ministry can can help God and the church produce a generous harvest.

Ask a pastor about their stoles and you won’t be able to get them to shut up. Each one has a sacred memory; the fabric, the maker, the giver, the design, the color and shades. I still look forward to each new liturgical season, the symbols and stories I get to wear. Some of these are public and obvious to the congregation. Others are quiet and personal and I treasure them in my heart.

All this to say, symbols matter.

They speak to others by even while saying something specifically to and uniquely for the individual who holds it dear.

Recently, someone asked me about the keffiyeh, what it symbolizes and why I wear one.

I should first name that I grew up perceiving the message and meaning of the keffiyeh through Western media and American political interests, but this story does not aim to address that public lens or my critique of it. These things remain penultimate to the actual symbol, culture, and invitation that the keffiyeh holds for Palestinian people and all who work to realize their freedom and fullness of life.

The scarf displays symbols inspired by the natural beauty and history of the Holy Land, the people and their sacred connection to place. There are different color patterns for different regions, but always shapes that depict trade routes, fishing nets, and olive leaves.

These designs declare that migration is holy, water is life, and God provides; that knowing where and to whom we belong can keep us rooted. It can bear good fruit.

The symbolism reminds me that there is freedom in connection and community; the way people in Gaza are taking care of one another in such extreme circumstances, committed to the land of their ancestors, sharing the last of their food with each other, practicing dignity even while the powers of this world reject their humanity with inaction.

For all the ways I am tempted to fend for myself and get what’s mine before the goods are gone, the keffiyeh tells a truer story about our interdependence; with God, the land, and one another.

So when I wear the scarf, it helps me remember that my privilege within systems of scarcity isn’t actually freedom. And it’s not the good news of Jesus either. It helps me remember my own humanity and that all of my neighbors are human beings, too. It helps me remember to practice another way of being in the world that honors these things most of all.

The keffiyeh holds such simple imagery and gentle proclamation. But then again, symbols claiming that our allegiance is to God (not kings) and reverence for the land (not its abuse) has a habit of threatening empires and being called problematic…or worse.

My Advent stole depicts the town of Bethlehem with a bright star overhead, a scene that tormented King Herod; my Easter stole an unapologetic and empty cross declaring that death cannot contain what’s good and true; my Pentecost stole is covered in hot purple and orange and red flames, a threat to everything we try to keep and save…even while the Holy Spirit is urging, Naw. Let it burn.

It’s all beautiful and sacred and true.

And offensive.

It’s all a labor of love, the good struggle of freedom by way of connection.

And that’s not always well received.

But I wear my stoles and keffiyehs because I believe in the stories these symbols tell. I put them on my body because I want my whole being to be transformed by my relationship to God and my neighbor and the natural world. The yoke changes the way I show up in my own skin and in my connection with others. Their symbolism can root me in what’s real - to whom and where I belong.

It’s becoming more of a hassle, and sometimes even dangerous, to be your whole self in daily life. But I’m going to keep trying and I hope you will, too.

When language and symbols are causing real harm, let’s address them directly and with good intentions.

And let’s make more room for one another to practice our faith and live our values, trusting that to look a lot of different ways.

Symbols and yokes are different for everyone, so maybe you don’t resonate with these. And that’s okay. I hope you have a few of your own that help you, your body, and your whole personhood remember what’s true:

When you are free to be who you actually are, you experience love and connection and belonging and liberation that is not scarce. And you want it for everyone else with so much fervor that you put on the yoke and labor with love for a freedom that is exponential and generous and shared by all.