Day 3 Mass Gathering - The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber | ELCA Youth Gathering

[Music] what's up Lutheran's sometimes people are like why'd you decide to become a lutheran I'm like well they're just so good-looking [Applause] so last week I asked my very own teenagers my personal teenagers what they thought I should talk about tonight and um they didn't say mom you should just tell them how cool you are unfortunately they said mom you should just tell them how uncool you were when you were our age so here we go my own experience as a teenager is not something that's always been easy for me to talk about I mean there's a reason why I covered myself in tattoos I mean I didn't have the hardest life but my pain is not what some of yours is for sure but it's just not always been easy for me to tell the truth about that time in my life I mean when I was writing my first memoir I did end up telling my editor about it about having a disfiguring autoimmune disorder from the ages of 12 to 16 that caused my eyes to bulge out of my face so far that my eyelids couldn't close I told her about the pain of my adolescence I told her how I had to live with it until I was 16 because the surgeons couldn't fix it until I stopped growing and it took me a while to stop growing I was just confiding in her and then unhelpfully I thought she suggested I write about it which I absolutely refused to do but once I'd given her a draft of the entire book for its final editing she read it and then she sent it back to me with a note saying Nadya read this again and tell me that that isn't an important piece of your story why else would you be such an angry teenager with a substance abuse problem be brave she said tell it and so reluctantly I did and of all the inelegant things I wrote about myself in that book publicly admitting to drug use and alcoholism deceit sexual indiscretion misanthropy pretending to be a hero the pain and alienation of my youth was the one thing that made me think if I tell this I might die if I show what's under the tattoos no one again will believe that I'm tough but the truth is that my daily reality at your age was name-calling and bullying and social isolation because I looked like a freak let's just say that if I was a teenager at this gathering I would not be the kid doing all the arm motions during the songs I would be the kid who refused to stand up when everyone else was I'd be the girl who when the adults say I'm saved by grace through faith would respond I didn't ask to be saved and what the hell is Grace and I'm not even sure I have faith so who cares I'd be the kid who didn't fit for sure I'd be the kid who believed so many lies about herself and her value that she heard those lies as truth I tell you this not to get your pity or to god forbid seem relatable but to say something super specific to you if your life totally sucks right now if you struggle with having friends or feeling like an outsider just know that your current reality is not your ultimate reality and also I'll tell you a little secret all the most interesting and creative adults had horrible time when they were a teenager I promise you who wants to peek in high school [Applause] I didn't even graduate from college till I was 36 all the hard stuff all the hard stuff now becomes texture on you for the future I promise you not for nothing but um so that memoir I was talking about was titled past ryx and I tell you that because the word past ryx was literally an insult that conservative Christian bloggers used to love my way because they wouldn't use my title passer Nadia bolt so ever because they didn't think girls should be pastors so as an insult they called me past ryx there are a million reasons I should not be a pastor but literally being a girl is not one of them so anyhow so I took that term of insult and then I used it as the title of my first memoir and that memoir was a New York Times bestseller so if you're keeping track at home girl people tried to make fun of one her haters zero what they intended for evil God intended for good I wrote books about my pain and about my hope and about my mistakes and I tried to be brave and I tried to tell the truth and that truth helped others and there's a words for that there's a word for when our tears turned to joy there's a word for when our own pain is a balm for those who also hurt there's a word for when our failings are redeemed into something beautiful in that word my Lutheran friends is Grace I wish someone had told the fifteen-year-old me what grace was because grace isn't some fluffy theological word that sounds good but really means nothing grace is the way in which God is like the great heavenly composter mean beautiful things out of total feces not only that but to me grace is God's source code it was grace that God even created the world to begin with I mean before creation only Gaza stood right so that means God had to like scoot over God wanted to share like the kind faced woman on the subway who takes her handbag onto her lap so there's room for you to sit next to her she didn't have to do it that's just who she is the kind face subway lady's nature is she makes room for others so then this God created every one of us in the male and female image of God God shared with us God's own image something so holy that it could never be harmed never be taken away an ever aloneness an origin a destination a source code of grace I was thinking this week that the thing that keeps me so obsessed with grace is the way that grace is related to truth because when we trust in grace were unafraid of the truth good or bad there's no reason to fear for example I'm supposed to be a so-called spiritual leader but the truth is I have never managed to feel spiritual for any extended period in my life not just a joke I literally put up a tweet at one point that admitted that I get what can only be described as Road when stuck behind someone walking slowly in a prayer labyrinth I'm like look no one's impressed by how into this you are speed up man they're people trying to pray behind you okay so that's how hopeless I am and well as a person like that I guess I only really feel connected to people who are also kind of like that like it feels good to be inspired by other people to admire their accomplishments and be dazzled by their virtues and there's nothing wrong with that but what I really want is to not feel so alone and while I might feel inspired by someone who's good I only feel less alone when someone shares their failures with me the things they struggle with the parts of themselves that are like more jagged than smooth there are many of us out there who know that well so much spirituality and religion and self-help is nothing less than an attempt to like smooth out our rough edges it just so happens that the jagged edges of our humanity or what actually connect us to God into one another those wounds and failures and misconceptions and mistakes those are the very things that create enough texture on us that God and our fellow humans have something to grab onto [Applause] but it still doesn't make it easy to tell the truths about ourselves I mean it's never easy and the thing that makes it hard is that it's like there's this other version of Nadia in my head one that's had all her problems removed that version of Nadia is tidy and organized and selfless and she's more physically fit than I am and she never gets angry in prayer labyrinths and she needs fewer hours of sleep and for some reason she can recite whole poems she's basically nothing like me and I think if I just try hard enough I can become more her and less me it's this burden that we carry of always knowing the difference between like our ideal self and our actual self the difference between our ideal body and our actual body between our our ideal friends and our actual friends between our ideal hobbies and like you know our actual hobbies it's like an emotional and spiritual Pinterest board just always mocking us and you have to know that we come by this little pathology honestly our culture colludes in this lie of self perfection but if you think about it no one's ever become their ideal self it's a moving target it's a false promise your ideal self is a lie [Applause] so the bottom line is like the reason to be unafraid of being honest and just tell the truth about ourselves and to be our actual selves is your ideal self doesn't exist the self that God has a relationship to is your actual self the self God loves is your actual self and there's a word for this and that word is Grace [Applause] God isn't waiting for you to become thinner or more spiritual or better athlete to love you I think the more distracted we become by our projects of self-improvement the less we really even experience the love of God because we're too busy trying to earn what's already been freely given to us so here's the deal your ideal self is not real you are you and all your inconsistencies and beauty you and your Center and Saint miss you God beloved you are magnificently and perfect [Applause] but but there's so many lies out there trying to tell us about ourselves not for nothing but there is a reason why in parts of the Hebrew Bible the devil is called hasit on which means the accuser and look no matter if you believe that the devil is an actual being or just the human forces of evil or the shadow side of our own beings I don't care man it is the voice of the accuser that tells us lies about ourselves and other people the voice of shame in our heads that's the accuser the accusing voice is the voice that continually updates me on the distance between my ideal self and my actual self the one that repeats harmful things said to me as a child that voice makes us eat less than we should or more than we should that voice makes us go to ridiculous lengths to prove it wrong or to prove it right and sometimes we try and shut that voice up with alcohol or sex or shopping or carbohydrates or perfectionism the accuser is not the conscience by the way my conscience says you were rude to your co-worker and hopefully I listen to my conscience and I go apologize what I'm talking about are the crippling messages on repeat in our heads the things we say most often about ourselves to ourselves that's something different that's shame not a guilty conscience so know this my friends when the accusing voice is on repeat in your head that is not the voice of God God's voice God's voice is a warm sing song of a mother to her newborn the one that says you are mine God's voice declares us worthy and there's a word for having worthiness that is in no ways based in our efforts or our accomplishments or some ridiculous idea that we can become an imagined ideal and that word is Grace [Applause] I like to think of grace not as when like God is a good enough guy to forgive me for my failings but when God is a source of wholeness and redemption and healing which makes up for my failings a source which is more powerful than my failings grace is the only place of true rest because every other thing in this bankrupt world is about worthiness in all fairness I should warn you that this grace thing isn't all wine and roses because if you think about it grace is a double-edged sword because it pushes me to a place I don't want to go a place where mercy and forgiveness are true for me awesome but are also true for those I can't stand you know those who don't deserve it God's grace is for me and for everyone who's ever hurt me it's for me and my haters I don't like that I resist that and yet how could it be true for me if it's not true for them and so the salvation of my enemy is so completely wrapped up in my own salvation this is why grace isn't the central message of most Christian churches you understand because Jesus Christ lifted up draws all people to himself not just the worthy not just the likely not just the lovely all means all which means with my luck I'll be seated at the heavenly banquet between Harvey Weinstein and some racist Cup [Applause] and the two of them will hand me some bread and a glass of wine because I'm pretty sure in heaven I'll be able to safely drink again and they will say welcome sinner join us and that breaks my heart and that makes me uncomfortable and yet it's what I really need I need that kind of mercy and forgiveness more than I need to hold resentments I need that kind of mercy and forgiveness more than I need to be self-righteous because self-righteousness feels good for a minute you know but only in the way that like peeing your pants feels warm for a minute you know and then it goes cold and it doesn't smell good you understand grace is why we have Christian community you know that right because we help each other shut the voices up we tend each other's wounds we show each other our scars we see and forgive each other shortcomings we let each other cry we make each other laugh and are absolutely adamant about grace for everyone we insist on freeing each other from the chains of the accusing voice and we totally have a secret weapon to break those chains because Jesus of Nazareth was a chain breaking man [Applause] our Lord went about healing the second setting the prisoner free and everything you saw the caused harm to human beings he put in its place he shut up that old accuser from the first day of his work on earth he took a spiritual machete to the tangled mess of lies and sickness and systems that harm people to the forces of evil and domination and the powers and principalities in this world that sought to destroy the well-being of God's children which is why my favorite part of the baptismal liturgy is when we are asked do you renounce the devil and all his empty promises because there is another name for empty promises and that's downright lies we Christians who follow the chain break in Jesus of Nazareth we stand up and we renounce lies so in closing let me ask you something beloved of God do you renounce the accuser and all his lies and empty promises if so say I renounce them do you renounce the lies of white supremacy and it's demonic legacy in this country and at this moment at our borders do you renounce the lies that if you get a B in chemistry it means you are suddenly consigned to a grim future do you renounce the lies that your body isn't already perfect and made in God's image do you renounce the lives that only able-bodied people are worthy of taking up room on this planet do you renounce the lives to try and convince you that your current reality is your ultimate reality do you renounce the Lord that queerness is anything other than beauty do you renounce the laws that tell you that graces are real that there is even one thing God can't redeem well me too Oh [Applause]

Channel: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Views: 114,224

Keywords: ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Lutheran, youth gathering, ELCA gathering, nadia bolz-weber, sinners and saints, famous lutheran authors, denver lutherans, rocky mountain synod

Id: YBtyZbauH0g

Length: 22min 33sec (1353 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 03 2018