I'm a part of a movement to anchor faith in neighborhood - or maybe to re-anchor faith in neighborhood. It's not a new movement. Just one more rediscovery of something wonderful and old that many of us had forgotten.
One of the critiques of this movement that I've heard is that we don't do spiritual formation well. We make a difference in our neighborhoods - but we don't really form ourselves as holistic spiritual beings connected to a God of intimate, welcoming love as well as liberating justice. 

So one of the first things I've been working on as a pastor in my neighborhood is a book of prayers I'm calling "Prayers for Morning and Evening in Everett." It will be a collection of scripture readings, quotes, prayers, reflections on historic saints, reflections on neighborhood saints, hopefully some art work, and an invitation to root ourselves in the depth of the Christian story and tradition as well as on the streets of Everett. I hope it will become a source of spiritual formation and nourishment for those seeking to live in the liberating love and justice of the way of Jesus in my neighborhood.

Anyway, that's all a side note to this: I've been reading the Psalms and writing prayers based on them as a first step in this work. And sometimes reading the Psalms makes me want to throw the Bible away or shout angrily at the people who taught the Bible to me as a child. Flight or fight. Or, if I am held in the moment of reading the Psalms and not fighting or flight-ing, I just want to weep.

You see, I was taught as a kid, at my "bible-believing" church, that the things God was interested in were, in order:

1. Did I believe the right things about Jesus?
   
2. Did I say the right things to Jesus?
   
3. Did I believe the right things about how the world came to be?
   
4. Did I convincingly tell everyone I knew the things that they were supposed to believe about Jesus, say to Jesus, and believe about how the world came to be? Bonus points for being Jiminy Cricket and also telling them all what they should do and not do.
   
5. Did I believe (and do) the right things about myself as a woman:
1. That I could not be a leader
2. That I must marry a man
3. That I must not have sex before I marry that man
4. That I must obey that man
5. That we must have children together
6. And that if I'm really good, I'd have lots of children and homeschool all of them so that they also learn to believe all the right things about Jesus, how the world came to be, and what limitations and responsibilities are prescribed by their binary gender.
   
6. Did I go to church every Sunday?
   
7. Did I read my bible every day?
   
8. Did I stand out like a maladjusted sore thumb in the evil culture that surrounds us?
   
9. Did I support my country, a Christian nation?
10. Oh! And did I vote republican - or would I if I were old enough to vote and of course if that man I married told me to.

But then every time I find myself doing #7 in that American Christian decalogue, I found a completely different set of priorities for God. As I read the psalms, again and again, I see a God who was interested in:

1. Justice
   
2. Love
   
3. Caring for widows (women made vulnerable by a lack of income and relationship)
   
4. Caring for orphans (children made vulnerably by a lack of income, provision, and relationship)
   
5. Caring for outsiders (people from other countries who have come to ours in desperate search for the things they need to survive)
   
6. Caring for the poor
   
7. Economics that are fair
   
8. Uplifting the downtrodden
   
9. Welcoming sinners
   
10. Liberation or the radical equality of a thing called Jubilee

I love the Bible. I love what it says. I love the stories of a God bent on love and justice going back and forth and round and round with a people who don't get it but are often trying. I love the commandments to care for those who are experiencing need. I love the promises that those who take advantage of those in need will one day get theirs. I love that there is a poem to tell us how the world came to be and that it is laced with goodness! I love how the stories always go so dark that Nigel of Spinal Tap would ask how much blacker they could get and the answer would be "None more black" and then from out of nowhere comes light! Redemption from death. Justice from injustice. Equality from abuse. Dear God I love the Bible!

But dear God it hurts to even look at that book!

I have been so mislead, malformed, and deceived by those teaching this book to me.
I have received so. much. harm. at the hands of people holding my favorite book. 
I have enacted so. much. harm. at the instruction of people teaching my favorite book.
I spent years excluding neighbors who were gay or lesbian because of some lazy interpretation people handed me at church. (If you don't think it's lazy interpretation, we can have a whole different discussion about that. I'm honestly quite happy to share the intellectual stops along my journey toward being welcoming and affirming of LGBTQ+ folks in the Jesus community).
Collectively, we have fought wars, defended broken American ways of living, shamed women for their gifts, forced men into a box of masculinity that fits few if any at the hands of people interpreting my favorite book through broken lenses. We have even used it to persecute the outsiders it tells us to care for!

At the church I grew up in, my mom was looked down upon for working outside the home. She was a teacher. At a low income school. With refugee and immigrant children. With children experiencing disability. She spent her days loving and teaching kids some of whom could not complete homework because the "home" they went "home" to was a car and when the sun sets, the lights are out.  She spent her days with the exact kids the Bible tells us to care for. My mom, according to what the Bible actually says, spent her days "outside the home" working as a saint. And, in doing so, teaching her children what it means to be a responsible citizen of God's Kingdom of love and justice. And my church told her the Bible said she shouldn't do that.

How do I even come to that book without anger? It's as though someone took Theo chocolate and made an atom bomb out of it. Theo chocolate is possibly my favorite thing on the planet, but if it were employed for destruction, I would lose all appetite for it. The Bible is my favorite book in the world and yet, when I see it, I am reminded of gut wrenching evil.

And so I toss and turn every morning as I read the Psalms. And so I listen to their beautiful call for justice and exquisitely raw honesty. And so I come to the Bible for morning and evening prayers every day and hope it roots me deeply in the Christian story and tradition but also on the streets of Everett. And so I hope every morning as I push back against the impulse to flight or flee and sit with that great and greatly abused book, it will become a source of spiritual formation and nourishment as I do my best to live in the liberating love and justice of the way of Jesus in my neighborhood.

And every day thus far, my hope is met and I am nourished to fall deeper and deeper in love with the Creator and to live in the way of Jesus among my neighbors. To worship by living in radically inclusive love and holistic justice...for the Bible tells me so.

I am a coward. I'm a six on the enneagram. Being cowards comes natural to us sixes. Someone told me that if you want to know something about courage, talk to a six because in every situation, we're dialed into what could go wrong and simply living in the world takes courage. And I often don't choose courage. I am often a coward.

Particularly, I have been a coward when talking to neighbors who have some level of housing stability about neighbors who are experiencing houselessness.

I'm generally able to understand where others are coming from with the things they say and their justification for their choices. And, neighbors with housing stability have louder voices and broader platforms. So I hear a lot about how neighbors experiencing houselessness are a nuisance. I hear a lot about how those neighbors might leave trash lying around. I hear a lot about how those neighbors get into fights. And, in an act of couragelessness: I listen well and do not challenge.

Last night, however, I heard some neighbors complaining about neighbors sitting on their church door step. Neighbors with no place to go have congregated at the literal doors of God's church in my neighborhood. And the people who are welcomed inside that church want them gone. 

Mind you, I've had conversations with these unwanted church stoop residents. Of all my new neighbors in my new neighborhood, they have been the most genuine. When I walk past them smiling in their direction, they kindly question me: "Is that a real smile, or a fake one?" When I say "Probably half and half" and smile more at the self-realization they invited me to, they rejoice with me: "That one looks real!" And laugh with neighborly joy and silliness.

These kind neighbors are unwanted at the church. I was told they leave trash, do drugs, and get in fights.

And for a moment, I wanted to be a coward. I wanted to be silent. I wanted to run away inwardly. I actually searched and searched my brain for a moderately honest excuse to leave the room immediately. I couldn't find one. And, thanks to the persistent prodding of a Holy Spirit who is close to those in need, just as I couldn't find an excuse to literally leave, I couldn't find an excuse to abandon the ship of this conversation with my silence. I couldn't step back and leave those neighbors who made me smile and welcomed me into their make shift living room undefended.

So I spoke:
Do they do drugs? I see them a lot. I talk to them. I've never seen them doing drugs there.
          Well, they leave trash and they get in fights.
Is there a trash can? Can you leave one out for them so they have a place to put trash?
          There isn't. But a trash can would only encourage them. And they do get in fights.
Yeah. Here's the deal: there is no safe and welcoming space for people without homes to be in Everett during the day. So, these folks spend their day going from place to place that they aren't welcome. There are also no public restrooms and relieving yourself outdoors in a sexual offense. So they spend all day wondering where they can go to the bathroom. Or if they get caught, might they become registered sex offenders making it even less likely that they will find housing. Ever. 
Additionally, neighbors who live outside are generally sleep deprived, suffering from the lack of health from sleep deprivation, and much more likely than you or I to have been or become the victims of violent crime. 
So, if you were to spend the day pushed from place you are not wanted to place you are not wanted with no idea where you could safely use a restroom when you need to - because you will need to - you would get grumpy. If you were sleep deprived, you'd become irritable. If you were the victim of violent crime or were worried about when you might become the victim of violent crime, you might get into a fight. 
And, as a city, we're not giving these vulnerable neighbors options of where to be during the day.

This is what I said. And I am proud of it. Hopefully the folks at that conversation now have an ounce more understanding for the folks spend their days outside the locked doors of the church.

But this still isn't want I wanted to say. 

I wanted to look at them with total bewilderment.
I wanted to ask them if they knew Jesus?
I wanted to ask them if they had read the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures? 
Had they somehow missed the neighbor care threaded throughout them? 
Had they somehow missed the overwhelming theme of welcome for marginalized folks who are experiencing poverty? 
Had they missed the hardcore judgement in wisdom literature and the prophets for those who ignored the plight of neighbors in poverty?
Had they entirely skipped over Matthew 25?
I wanted to ask them if they knew what the big C Church is meant to be about?
I wanted to ask, as a pastor, why their pastor wouldn't treasure the fights that happen as a moment of calling to be a reconciling presence in the midst of neighbors in crisis and pain?
I wanted to ask how a Jesus follower could find themselves complaining about the trash rather than about the system that left these folks without a home and without a proper place to put their trash?
I wanted to look at them with total bewilderment. 

But I wasn't bewildered. I wasn't even surprised. 
Many people know Jesus and reject neighbors in need. 
Many people read Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and like a dyslexic with d's and b's, transpose passages about poverty to some spiritualized middle class faux poverty rather than the concrete realities of local and global neighbors who are suffering at the lower rungs of a domination system when Yahweh is about a Shalom system.
Many people skip over most of Matthew 25 but remember the sheep and goats part to apply to people who don't believe in the manner they believe.
Many people really don't know what the big C Church is meant to be about. Save people from eternal Hell - even if in the process we make a contemporary Hell.
Many pastors have schedules filled with administration, sermon writing, and serving the middle class so that, like a levite encountering a Samaritan, they just don't have the time to help someone who is being beat up. They worry instead, that middle class pew warmers might shy away from their pews on Sunday if they see neighbors fighting outside on a Tuesday.
Many church goers would prefer their church to look pretty than to be a place of rest for weary souls.

I wasn't bewildered.

But! O for the day when this interaction will bewilder me again.
O for the day when the Church rediscovers her first love: a man with housing instability who spent his days with marginalized folks - preaching holistic love of God and (all) neighbor(s), and proclaiming a kingdom where rich and poor are brothers and sisters. 
O for the day when we remember this and repent. 
O for the day when we live so completely in God's Kingdom of love and justice that I would find myself actually bewildered when a Jesus-claiming neighbor complains about a neighbor in need leaving too much trash on the steps of the place we gather to remember and worship that homeless preacher who taught us the way of love 2000 years ago.

I long for the day when this interaction would be bewildering. 

But here's the thing: Cowardice is not the way to that day. Silence in the face of exclusion and marginalization doesn't get us closer to that Jesus way. Lending a sympathetic ear to oppressors, when oppressed people need our ears more, will only lead us further and further into comfort with injustice and a devastating lack of bewilderment when those in need of safe space are locked (literally or metaphorically) out of the church.

Holy Spirit, bless us with the flaming tongues that might speak truth in love to neighbors in affluence who have lost sight of neighbors in need. And, even more so, bless us with courageous lives that speak this truth in how we live. Day by day, bless us with renewed bewilderment and holy discomfort when we see Your church turning away neighbors in need. Amen.

I did it. It was down to the wire and required coffee, but I did it.

I am not a morning person. But I am a Jesus person. And these two have been at odds since I moved into my sweet little apartment in Everett five months ago.

Every morning the national anthem blasts into my home from the military base at the base of the steep hill that provides my extravagant view of the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountain Range.

Every morning I sit at my window with that hyperbolically glorious view to write liturgical prayers for morning and evening toward the coming of God's universal shalom with special attention to this peninsula called North Everett - nestled between the Puget Sound and the Snohomish River - that I get to live on.

Every morning, their rhetoric has competed.

Ok, side note/explanatory tangent/clarification:
This is not to say that I am against patriotism or America. 

I, personally, am a pacifist so military is always a hard one for me to swallow. But I'm not a proselytizing pacifist; I don't think less of those who think differently. And flowing out of my pacifism, I think we ought to extend love, grace, support, and welcome home to those who have gone out in service of military. 

The competing rhetoric of morning prayers and national anthems is not a disregard for my country. The competing rhetoric is in what comes first and what comes second (or third or fourth or tenth honestly). 

The competing rhetoric comes in that God's Commonwealth of liberating love and justice is my truest and eternal home. And it is a true and eternal home for anyone who wishes to become a citizen in it's boundless boundaries. There are no undocumented immigrants here. No one is here "illegally." No one is other or foreign. The truth is, the moment any refugee seeks refuge here, we are instantly called citizens - and even called "friend" by our servant-leader.

So the competition is not in some diminished respect of the country that is my home. The competition is in that I have a hierarchy of allegiances and my allegiance to God's boarderless Kingdom comes infinitely before any allegiance to America. And yet the American anthem was the first thing I was hearing every morning. It was the formative tune stuck in my head throughout the day. Thus, any national anthem turned wake-up-call for any country other than this mysterious global country would be in competition with the work of crafting a spiritual wake-up-call to friend, citizens, and neighbors in God's Commonwealth of Love and Justice.

And every morning, I have sat in this unhappy cacophony and inner turmoil of what comes first when my heart has always known what comes first.

Until today. 

I woke up early enough to let these prayer stand on their own and complete five of them before the bugle sounded. I was caught in the competing invitations to allegiance until today when I woke up early enough to pledge an inner allegiance to God's kingdom of love and justice before the invitation to a lesser allegiance.

And as I typed the last word, the bugle began and I remembered that I am first a co-heir to the Kingdom - that provides true liberty and justice for everyone (and every living thing) who might possibly fall under the banner of "all" - before I am a member of a broken country where "all" does not really mean "all." Though we seem to be trying to stumble toward "all" through endless generations of struggle. We're not there. We often take one step forward and two back, missing the trail markers that lead to liberty and justice and finding ourselves lost and stranded in some place where the language of liberty and justice for all seems like a foreign tongue. We do try and we do want to be there. But we're not there. 

But God is there. God invented there. And so I follow God first and country somewhere else down that list of people and things I follow. And so I pledge allegiance to God's commonwealth of love and justice first and to a flag somewhere much further down that list of places my allegiances are pledged to. And so I wake up early and write prayers first and listen to America's song later.

I am not a morning person. But I am a Jesus person. So, I will get up early enough to sing anthems to God's liberating love and justice before an anthem to a tattered flag begins.