Home By Another Road

 Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.

One of the familiar stories of this time of year is the story of the magi from the east or, as I knew them growing up, the Three Wise Men.

Most people probably associate the magi with the Christmas story as the two often get blended together in the popular imagination. In actuality, however, the magi are traditionally a part of an entirely different Christian holiday: the Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the nations.

Celebrated each year on Jan. 6 (after the Twelve Days of Christmas), the Feast of the Epiphany is actually the more ancient of the incarnational feasts. It was celebrated in the church before Christmas was ever observed. Indeed, in some countries, it is still the more important of the two celebrations.

There is one line near the end of the Epiphany story that I’ve always found curious, a line that often gets overlooked. After the magi find the child Jesus, offer their gifts, and fall down in worship, Matthew tells us something deceptively simple: “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”

By another road.

It’s easy to miss just how consequential that decision is. As we know from Matthew’s story, Herod was not merely curious about the child. He was a violent ruler who saw any threat to his power as something to be eliminated. The magi don’t seem to have known this at first – that’s why when the arrive in Judea, they go to Jerusalem, the capital city. The believe the star has been leading them to a new king and that is where they expect to find him.

What they encounter, however, is a grown man who is terrified of any threat to his power – even anything that might be perceived by others as a threat. He asks the religious leaders where the Messiah will be born and they are the ones who point him (and the magi) to Bethlehem. He sends them on their way, a sort of advance mission to see if the birth is true and asks them to report back so that he can pay homage (a promise we know is a ruse).

They find the family, offer their gifts, but then God warns them in a dream that they have drawn into Herod’s designs, urges them not to return to Herod. And so the magi listen, they don’t return, they choose not to cooperate, they go home by another road.

Make no mistake, the magi did not confront Herod. They did not overthrow him. They didn’t do any of the things we might be sure faithfulness demands (God doesn’t even seem to ask them to do that). They learn from God what Herod is up to and simply refused to help him. And that refusal mattered.

Epiphany is often described as a feast about revelation – that Christ is revealed to the nations, that God’s light shines for all people. And that part of the Epiphany feast is essential. By putting Persian astrologers at the feet of the Christ child while the Judean king murders and rages, it is clear that the boundaries of what constitutes God’s people has begun to shift and transform.

But revelation always carries consequences. Once you see clearly, you are responsible for what you do with that knowledge.

The magi could not unknow what they now knew. They had seen the vulnerability of God made flesh. They had glimpsed a different kind of power – one that does not dominate, invade, or destroy in order to secure itself. And once they saw that, they could no longer play the old political games as though nothing had changed.

So they went home by another road.

That phrase has echoed through Christian imagination for centuries because it names something deeply human and deeply difficult: the moment when conscience interrupts routine, when obedience to power collides with fidelity to truth.

We live in a world where the familiar roads are increasingly well-worn. Roads built on fear of the other. Roads that promise security through force. Roads that justify violence as necessary, inevitable, or regrettable but unavoidable. Roads that tell us we must cooperate, must look away, must accept “the way things are.”

And yet Epiphany insists that encountering the truth changes our direction.

The magi do not save the day and change everything by going home by another road. Their choice does not even prevent Herod’s violence in other arenas. Matthew makes that abundantly clear. But their refusal matters, nonetheless. It draws a line between participation and resistance, between inevitability and moral agency.

Sometimes faith calls us to dramatic acts of resistance, courageous moments of standing for justice, mercy and compassion. But often, faith actually doesn’t call us to be the dramatic heroes we might imagine ourselves to be. Rather, it invites us first, before even considering the dramatic and the bold, to first choose to stop helping Herod.

As a new year begins, many of us feel the weight of a world that seems increasingly unsteady – politically, morally, spiritually. There is a temptation to believe that we have no real choices, that the roads laid before us are fixed, that all we can do is endure. Epiphany tells a different story.

It suggests that faithfulness sometimes looks like quiet refusals: refusing to trade our neighbor’s dignity for our own comfort, refusing to repeat dehumanizing language just because it is popular, refusing to support policies or practices that depend on fear, exclusion, or violence – even when those policies promise us security in return.

Epiphany reminds us that revelation is not given so we can admire it, but so we can respond to it. God’s light does not merely illuminate the world; it exposes the paths we have been walking and asks whether we are willing to change course. The question this feast leaves us with is not whether we have seen the light. It is whether we are willing, when conscience demands it, to stop helping Herod – and to go home by another road.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com.

The Four Last Things—and the Advent We’ve Forgotten

Below is my column from today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune. 

One of the realities of this time of year for many Christians is that they experience Advent basically as “Christmas, but for a whole month.” We crank up the carols, deck the halls, schedule the parties, and treat these four Sundays as a long on-ramp to December 25—a kind of extended holiday season with a light religious glaze on top. 

But in the older, deeper tradition of the Church, Advent is something very different. Advent is not Christmas stretched out. Advent is preparation stretched deep.

Even those little Advent wreaths many of us use have shifted meaning over time. A lot of modern churches talk about the candles of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. Those are all beautiful virtues, and they certainly have a place in Christian life. But traditionally, Advent wasn’t focused on those four themes. It was focused on what the Church has long called the Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

Now that might sound a bit intense, especially when the rest of the world is piping “Jingle Bells” into every store and pushing us to be relentlessly cheerful. But the wisdom of this older pattern is that it takes the real world seriously. It acknowledges that the world is dark—and that sometimes we are complicit in that darkness.

Advent in this traditional key says: don’t rush past that. Don’t put shiny wrapping paper over a creation that is still groaning. Don’t cover your own grief, or anxiety, or guilt with another layer of tinsel and pretend you’re fine. Instead, let God meet you in the truth.

When we meditate on the Four Last Things, we’re not meant to sink into fear; we’re meant to wake up. Death reminds us that our time is limited and precious—that every act of love or cruelty really matters. Judgment reminds us that God cares about justice, that what we do to “the least of these” is not forgotten. Heaven keeps before us the promise that God’s final word is restoration and joy. And yes, hell—however we understand it—forces us to confront the reality of choices that destroy us and others, the ways we can stubbornly cling to selfishness instead of surrendering to love.

Taken together, that’s not morbid. It’s clarifying. It keeps us from using Christmas as a distraction and instead invites us into a holy longing for something more—for a world actually healed, for lives actually transformed, for a love that doesn’t just decorate the darkness but drives it away.

At St. John’s, we lean into that Advent depth in a few particular ways. One of them is liturgical: at our regular Sunday worship during Advent—the 8:30 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. services—we use Rite One from the Book of Common Prayer. The language in Rite One is more formal, a little older, and yes, a bit more penitential. It talks frankly about sin, about our unworthiness apart from God’s mercy, and about our need for grace.

We don’t do that to be nostalgic or fussy. We do it because Advent is about feeling that distance between the world as it is and the world as God has promised it will be—and then crying out, “Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.” Rite One helps us feel that ache. It slows us down, sobers us, and makes space for repentance and hope.

We also offer a quieter, more contemplative way to walk this Advent road: Compline by Candlelight each Sunday night at 8:00 p.m. Compline is the Church’s traditional bedtime prayer, a short service of scripture, confession, quiet, and blessing. In the soft light of candles, with gentle music and silence, you’re given permission to exhale—to admit where you’re tired, where you’re worried, where the world feels too heavy.

That’s very Advent. In a culture that shouts over our pain with canned cheerfulness, Compline by Candlelight says: bring your fatigue, your grief, your questions. Sit in the dark with other people who are also waiting. And together, we watch for the Light that the darkness cannot overcome.

So instead of treating Advent as a month-long Christmas party, I want to invite you into its older, tougher, and more beautiful truth: a season that refuses to deny the world’s brokenness or your own, and that teaches you to long—really long—for Christ’s coming, in judgment and mercy, in justice and joy.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer, Tribune community columnist, serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com. 

Where faith and doubt sit at the same table

Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune. You can also read the column below. 

A few years ago, a parent stopped into the office to talk to me, a bit anxious.

“Father Jared,” she said, “my child told me they’re not sure they believe in God. I don’t know what to do.”

I smiled and said, “You know what? Sometimes, I don’t know if I believe in God either.”

She laughed nervously. “Father Jared, you cannot tell me that!” But I explained that this is simply part of the life of faith. Every one of us – including clergy – sometimes struggles with doubt. Because doubt isn’t a defect in the Christian life; it’s built into it.

We’ve sometimes been taught to treat doubt like a disease to cure, but maybe it’s more like a companion on the journey – one that keeps faith from growing rigid or self-satisfied. Any faith that can’t survive questioning probably isn’t faith at all – it’s fear dressed up in religious clothes.

So, when someone tells me they’re not sure what they believe, I don’t hear a problem to solve. I hear an invitation – to conversation, to honesty, to relationship. That’s why atheists and agnostics are welcome at my church. Because what matters most isn’t whether you can recite the Creed without crossing your fingers; it’s whether you’re willing to wrestle with the divine, to be open to wonder, to build community around love and truth.

John’s Gospel gives us two of my favorite examples of this: Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.

Some scholars divide John’s Gospel into believers and unbelievers – and say only the believers are invited into the kingdom. But that’s not what the story shows. Nicodemus, who first came to Jesus under cover of night, and Joseph, who followed in secret for fear of the crowds, are the only disciples who appear when Jesus dies. When all the “faithful” have fled, it’s the half-believers who come. They carry his body, wash it, anoint it, wrap it lovingly in cloth, and place it in the tomb.

They don’t proclaim the resurrection. They don’t yet understand it. But they love. And that love, John seems to say, is enough.

Faith and hope are important parts of the Christian journey, but St. Paul tells us the most important is love. Because even when faith fails, even when hope seems far away, love will still come to the cross and carry the body of Jesus to a tomb. Love will wash the body, anoint it with myrrh aloe and spices, wrap it in cloths and lay it lovingly in a tomb. Love will do all of this because love is stronger than even the feeblest of faith.

That’s one reason I’m so excited about what’s happening at St. John’s this week. On Sunday, Nov. 9 at 7 p.m., C3 Spiritual Community has organized an event happening at our church building. They are welcoming the folk duo The Rough & Tumble for a concert built around their album “Hymns for My Atheist Sister & Her Friends to Sing Along To.” The songs are raw and human – written for anyone who’s wrestled with belief, belonging, and meaning in a complicated world.

I was particularly struck by the way C3 described it in their own publications. “The Rough & Tumble are walking a tightrope – not of neutrality, but of radical love that appeals to the heartstrings of a wide array of audiences – most poignantly in a time of a country critically divided.”

And so, my own devoutly Christian church is naturally delighted to welcome our non-religious but spiritual siblings and their friends into our own space for this event. After all, that’s what I think church is at its best – a space where believers, doubters, and seekers can gather around beauty and truth, even when we understand those words differently. Because when people who believe and people who question come together, each brings a gift the other needs.

The Church needs that kind of shared table – a place where faith and doubt, belief and unbelief, can sit side by side and listen to one another. The questions of the doubter often sharpen the faith of the believer. And the honesty of sharing your struggles as a believer can build a bridge of relationship with those who may have lost faith in God, but are still searching for meaning and love in a world that sometimes feel so dark.

I’d like to invite you to come on Sunday night. Sit among people who sing, question, and hope. Sit among believers and unbelievers and that whole mess of humanity in between who is searching for love in a world where it often seems in short supply. You can get tickets in advance at https://form.jotform.com/C3Michigan/hymns.

Bring your faith, your doubt, your skepticism, your longing – all of it is welcome.

It’s welcome at this event, hosted by a local spiritual community of folks who have stepped away from traditional religion. It’s welcome at my own church – a place of traditional worship and progressive action, a place full of faithful doubters and searching sinners.

Together, I think we can continue to find more meaning, more understanding, and more ways to love the way I think Jesus taught us to.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com.

Free Speech, Small Businesses, and the True Test of Faith

Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.

This week I would like to address a local situation that occurred and impacted two of the amazing businesses that have been a part of making the East End of Grand Haven a more thriving part of our community.

After the death of Charlie Kirk, one of the owners of Burzurk Brewery posted to social media a past comment of his: when it comes to gun violence, Kirk once said, “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” She noted the irony, given that he himself died by gun violence. She also explained that she did not mourn him because she also rejected his racist and homophobic views, as well as his unapologetic support for unfettered access to guns—no matter the cost in human lives.

She followed up with an insistence that we have now moved beyond mere political differences to fundamental differences in morality. She pointed out how his rhetoric has led her to feel personally unsafe in her own country and community. Current politics have even allowed legal racial profiling of the Latinx community. She said she simply cannot “agree to disagree” anymore. She also stated that she was quite comfortable with a business that reflected her own standards—and that it was absolutely fine with her if Kirk supporters chose not to patronize her establishment.

In response, the vitriol and hatred of the far right were unleashed upon this small business owner. I will not even repeat some of the vile things said by people who supposedly claim to follow Jesus. A group of local Republicans, one of whom had already launched a profanity-laced attack at her, even made plans to protest her business. Hundreds of neighbors reached out to her in support, but because of her commitment to safety and her fear that violence might break out, she closed her brewery that night—losing significant income—in order to keep people safe. In response, the far-right crowd boasted that they had “shut her down” and even hung a Charlie Kirk shirt on a sign outside her door.

One person then claimed that she had said she didn’t want Christians at her brewery—and therein lies the heart and rot (and I do mean rot, not just root) of the problem. Those who support Charlie Kirk have conflated loyalty to a political figure (and one with incendiary far-right views at that) with what it means to be a Christian. Furthermore, they apparently assume that they are the only Christians—entirely ignoring the many Christians who did not support Kirk and who have always been welcomed at this brewery with open arms.

Around the same time, another local restaurant in the neighborhood, the Unicorn Tavern, came under fire for planning to host an 18+ drag brunch called Pancakes & Wigs. To be clear, the event was originally designed to be family friendly, and allowed parents to choose to purchase tickets for their own children. After talking to the drag troupe, several weeks before the event, everyone involved decided to limit ticket sales to 18+ and refund the tickets purchased by families for their under 18 family members. But even after that, the hatred and opposition were profound, extreme, and devoid of any humility or recognition of the values of free speech in our country. 

Right-wing Christians who have long claimed that their only objection to drag shows is when children are present had their hypocrisy revealed as a bald-faced lie. Here was an adults-only event, exactly what they claimed to want—and yet it was still bombarded by hatred. The performers became so frightened for their safety that the event had to be postponed. The truth is obvious: it has nothing to do with protecting children (who, let us remember, are far more at risk from gun violence—the number one killer of children in our country—than they are from attending a family-friendly drag performance). No, this is about homophobia, transphobia, and the rejection of anyone who falls outside the cisgender, heterosexist norms of right-wing Christianity.

There are two things I want to say here.

First, I am embarrassed. Embarrassed that people who claim to follow Jesus can be so cruel and so quick to spew profanity-laced hatred. Embarrassed that they would threaten to try to deport someone who is a legal citizen. Embarrassed that they would attack a business that tried to do precisely what they had claimed they wanted when it came to drag performances.

I am particularly embarrassed because I know the owners of these businesses. They both pour out significant energy into nonprofit work on behalf of the poor and marginalized. Karen, one of the owners of Burzurk, serves on nonprofit boards and donates immense time and resources to charity work. Her husband left corporate life to try to build up a small business in a part of our city that needed revitalization.

The owners of the Unicorn Tavern consistently give away portions of their profits to a variety of causes—especially schools and educational needs. Garry is on the board of Walk the Beat and their family has also contributed to NORA and other West Michigan organizations that help those in need. They even have a food pantry outside their restaurant to serve the hungry. 

Christians should be praising these businesses. Even if some Christians disagree with their views on sexuality, gender, or immigration, those same Christians (who supposedly cherish the Constitution more than the rest of us) should be first in line to defend free speech. Even if they lack the expansiveness of heart and humility of mind to be in genuine relationship with those who hold diverse views, they should at least be able to stand for freedom.

To be clear, my criticism is not about the protests in and of themselves (that is a part of free-speech). Rather, it is the irony in the right using their free speech to protest another person’s free speech. And that the speech of those on the right leading up to these protests was so extreme that the business owners feared for the safety of their supporters.

Second, conservatives and moderates must take a stand against these kinds of attacks. They must make clear that their more conservative views do not mean they condone this kind of racism, these attempts to erase the queer community, or these attacks on free speech and small businesses. Until they do, until conservatives and moderates clearly refuse to stand with those who would shut down small businesses simply because they disagree with their religious views, the entire witness of conservatism will continue to be lost to a whole generation. A generation that will not—and should not—abide this sort of hypocrisy. 

And the same is true for conservative Christians. Though some Christians have acted in this hateful way, these individuals do not represent the totality of Christianity. But until faith leaders and everyday Christians who do believe in freedom and diversity of views stand up and repudiate this kind of hatred and vitriol, the witness of our faith will remain compromised. Christianity will continue to be confused with cruelty, and the gospel of Jesus will remain obscured by the ugliness of those who claim his name but deny his love.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer, Tribune community columnist, serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com. 

When Pride Turns Deadly

 Below is my column for today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.

A few weeks ago, someone once again stole the Pride flag that hangs in front of my church. Like clockwork, the incident sparked a familiar conversation online: “How can a church celebrate Pride Month,” people asked, “when pride is clearly a sin?”

The answer lies in language. When Christians through the centuries condemned “pride,” they weren’t talking about the joy of LGBTQIA+ people embracing their identity (like they weren’t talking about being proud to be an American). They meant arrogance – thinking of yourself as more important than others. The Greek word hyperiphaneia means self-overestimation; the Latin superbia means an inflated sense of self.

Ironically, condemning Pride Month actually commits the very sin Scripture warns against: placing your own identity and way of life above others. To insist that only heterosexual or cisgender identity is “normal,” and that others must conform, is to place yourself above your neighbor. It is to live out superbia.

That doesn’t mean pride is always harmless. The Bible repeatedly warns that arrogance leads to calamity: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16:18). Pride blinds us to our dependence on God, narrows our world to ourselves, and eventually produces violence.

Which brings us to today. We live in a culture that exalts personal rights over communal responsibility, that elevates comfort over children’s safety, that clings to “my way of life” even when others are dying as a result. That is pride. And its fruits are on daily display.

This past week, in Minneapolis, a person with legally purchased guns walked up to a Catholic church during morning Mass and shattered a sanctuary with bullets. Two children – 8-year-old Fletcher and 10-year-old Harper – were killed as they prayed, and nearly 20 others, mostly children, were wounded. One student, who was shot in the back, was using his body to protect another child.

Some headlines emphasized that the shooter was a transgender woman. But the overwhelming majority of mass shootings are committed by cisgender men. To make this horror about her identity is to miss the reality staring us in the face: our nation’s epidemic of violence knows no single political party, no gender identity, no neat ideological box. What makes this possible – again and again – is the sheer availability of guns, and our collective refusal to enact even the most basic forms of gun safety.

Investigators recovered more than 100 spent rifle casings, several shotgun shells, and a handgun that jammed. Four magazines had been emptied, with more ammunition ready. To say that restricting certain firearms or limiting magazine capacity would make no difference is to ignore the facts.

And yet, again and again, we refuse reform. That refusal is not neutrality. It is pride – pride that insists a person’s right to own any weapon they want outweighs a child’s right to live. Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in America – it surpassed motor vehicle accidents in 2020 and we did nothing. Seven children die every single day. We argue on social media, or we just become numb.

Nor is Ottawa County immune. Our local party has attacked Grand Haven’s Pride Festival, calling drag shows “adult entertainment” and portraying queer joy as dangerous for children. Commissioners have relaxed rules around guns on county property, one even carrying a handgun onto a campus that prohibited them. Hostility toward difference combined with lax gun laws is exactly the recipe Scripture warns against.

But Christ offers another way. Jesus taught that true life is found not in scrambling for power but in humility – recognizing others as just as beloved as ourselves. To affirm LGBTQ dignity is not to exalt one group; it is to reject the lie that some lives matter less. To support responsible gun reform is not to trample on freedom; it is to insist that freedom without responsibility is no freedom at all.

The choice is stark. We can cling to deadly pride while children bleed in sanctuaries. Or we can walk in humility – laying down idols of violence, listening across divides, building a society where every child can grow up safe and free.

The God that many of us worship is not indifferent. This is the God who hears the cries of parents in Minneapolis, who weeps with children crying while they hide under pews, the God who stands beside every queer and trans teenager told they are unworthy. This is the God who bears in Christ’s wounded body the cost of our violence – and still calls us to another way.

That way is possible. But only if we are willing to let go of our pride.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com.

Reflections on the mountain and the mushroom cloud

Below is my column in today’s edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.

Today is an odd and somewhat unsettling confluence of events. It is the 80th anniversary of the day our country dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, bringing World War II to an end. At the same time, Aug. 6 is also one of the major feasts of the church – the Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ upon the mountain.

At my own parish, we’ll be commemorating both tonight at 6 p.m. with a Requiem Mass for Peace. As a part of the service, we’ll hear four Hibakusha testimonies. Hibakusha is the Japanese word used to refer to those who survived the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As one NGO that seeks to share these stories explains, “The focus of Hibakusha Stories is to employ the testimony of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, Indigenous Peoples, Downwinders, nuclear test survivors and other affected communities to take action for disarmament.”

We’ll also pray for the repose of the souls of those who died in the second World War, including those who died in the bombings and their aftermath, along with victims of war in our own time. You’re welcome to join us.

As I have been working with our parish staff to prepare for tonight’s liturgy, I keep coming back to the juxtaposition of these two days: the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and the Feast of the Transfiguration.

The Feast of the Transfiguration commemorates the day when Christ ascended Mount Tabor with Peter, James, and John and was transfigured before them, his face shining like the sun and his clothes becoming as white as light itself. The ancient lawgiver of the Jewish people, Moses, appeared with Jesus, along with the great prophet Elijah. Both long-dead, we are told that they discussed Jesus’ impending departure in Jerusalem – that is, the coming suffering and crucifixion of Christ. A voice came from the cloud, commanding the disciples to listen to Jesus. And then, just as quickly as it began, the whole thing ended, and the three disciples were left alone with Jesus.

I cannot seem to shake the curious similarities between the two events. In both the bombing of Hiroshima and the Transfiguration on the mountain, blinding light blazed forth. The light that burst forth from the nuclear bomb was profoundly destructive – immediately killing between 70,000 and 80,000 people. Over the next four months, the effects of the bomb killed somewhere between another 90,000 to 166,000. So, hundreds of thousands dead, almost all civilians. It’s estimated that 38,000 of those killed were children.

In theory, the light of the transfiguration of Christ was not a destructive light. Rather, it was the revelation of Christ’s divine glory. And yet, those who decided to drop the bomb and unleash the horrors of nuclear warfare on the world were also Christians. President Truman was a devout Baptist. Secretary of War Henry Stimson came from a family of prominent clergymen.

While Truman remained steadfast that dropping the bomb was the only way to end the war, to avoid what many believed would be an even greater loss of life through a wholesale invasion of Japan. He did not believe it was an easy decision. In a speech after the bombing, he said, “You know the most terrible decision a man ever had to make was made by me at Potsdam. It had nothing to do with Russia or Britain or Germany. It was a decision to loose the most terrible of all destructive forces for the wholesale slaughter of human beings.”

As I noted earlier, many believed that the bombings were necessary to stop the greater loss of life that would be caused by a full-scale invasion… but I don’t know how to weigh the lives of soldiers fighting in a war against innocent civilians. I don’t know how to weigh the lives of those held captive in the military-industrial complex against children sitting at school who were incinerated in the blink of an eye.

And so, even as I celebrate the gift of the Transfiguration of Christ, I also must acknowledge that the followers of Christ have often used their power for violent ends. The divine light of Christ’s suffering thereby becomes twisted into the blazing and burning fires of discrimination, war, violence, and all manner of suffering.

At Hiroshima, humanity was revealed to be capable of violence that had at one time been unimaginable. Jesus was revealed as the Son of God, a son who choose to suffer. Perhaps that was a part of the divine equation – the knowledge that the only way to save a fallen humanity that would be capable of violence like nuclear warfare was for God himself to descend and let the full violence of humanity fall upon God’s own son. And as Christ carried the violence of our human race deep into the heart of God, somehow God’s love can perhaps heal our violent ways … if we will let him.

Perhaps what we’re left with is just the voice, the voice that spoke from the cloud on Mount Tabor so long ago, a voice that urged us to listen to Christ. The first disciples didn’t do a good job. They still thought Jesus was going to Make Israel Great Again. They didn’t understand that Jesus had chosen the path of suffering love – even though that was the path he was discussing with Moses and Elijah. But eventually they would. And eventually they would understand that the path of suffering love was the one they needed to walk upon as well.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, I hope you’ll spend some time listening to the voice of Christ today, asking what Jesus is calling you to do. Perhaps it is to find ways to support efforts at nuclear disarmament. Perhaps it is to learn more about the suffering of all those affected by the many horrors of war. Or maybe it’s just to take a step back, to consider that whoever you consider to be your enemy is likely not the villainous figure that exists in your mind, someone who deserves all the negativity and violence and anger that roils your mind. Rather, that person is just a broken child of God – just like you, just like me – also seeking to find their way in a violent world. Maybe if we could all find that truth, it is the light of dignifying and merciful love that would envelope us all.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com.

Ottawa GOP, reconsider what freedom means for LGBTQIA+ individuals

Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune. 

As I have sought to bask in the glow of yet another fabulous and beautiful Pride Month, and as my family (like many others) starts making plans to celebrate Independence Day this weekend, there is a pebble in my flip-flop.

Yet again, just as they did last year, our county Republican party has taken aim at Grand Haven’s Pride Festival. Last week, Ottawa GOP published a document (newsletter, essay, editorial, screed?) entitled, “Something Must Change in Grand Haven Based on New 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Decision for Naples, FL.”

The heart of their claim is that the drag shows at the Grand Haven Pride Festival are “adult entertainment” and should be hidden behind closed doors (as was recently decided in Naples, Florida). As I read their disappointing and painful claims, the words of Humpty Dumpty from “Alice in Wonderland” kept running through my head: “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’”

And as much as the Ottawa GOP apparently wants to believe that a drag show is adult entertainment, just saying it is over and over again in your newsletter doesn’t make it so.

Perhaps some help from the dictionary can assist here. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines drag as “entertainment in which performers caricature or challenge gender stereotypes (as by dressing in clothing that is stereotypical of another gender, by using exaggeratedly gendered mannerisms, or by combining elements of stereotypically male and female dress) and often wear elaborate or outrageous costumes.”

The article included pictures of some of the drag performers, with an expression of alarm that children are there. However, the performers are not nude. They are not even scantily clad. The drag queen’s rear end in the photo they highlight is actually covered with tights in addition to her glittery costume. One wonders if they have walked the boardwalk in Grand Haven recently, because there is far more skin on display on the boardwalk than was ever displayed by performers at the Pride festival.

They seem unable to draw the distinction between medium and content. Drag is a medium of performance that can have a variety of content suitable to different ages. In the same way that all movies are not R-rated, not all drag performances are inherently adult-themed in content. The medium is simply performance art that bends gender expressions and expectations.

One does not have to read that far behind the lines to discern what their actual objection is: the fact that the performers are dressed in clothes from a gender other than the one they were presumably born into … and those performers are dancing. Not pole dancing. Just ... dancing.

It is precisely this kind of language – particularly raising claims of danger to children – that continues to put not only drag performers at risk but also trans and other gender non-conforming individuals. By portraying people who are not gender conforming as dangerous to children, they dehumanize and vilify anyone who is not gender conforming, insisting that this sort of thing simply has no place in the public square.

And when an official political party in our community takes up these attacks, they embolden other forms of transphobic hate. I wish the leadership of the Ottawa GOP would spend some time listening to the experience of trans and gender non-conforming people. Listen to Sadie, a member of my church, sob as she recounts people at her job calling her gross and leveling all sorts of insults at her. And her management does nothing, because the Ottawa GOP has already said people who are not gender conforming are dangerous to kids – so you are free to do anything you want to them.

I can show you screenshots of the vile, hateful, and violent attacks on our festival on social media. Let me share just a few comments that people made on content that was just telling people that the pride festival was coming:

Get hit by a bus.

Proud to be a child molester.

Nobody cares. Get the F&@ out of here.

Filth always. Pray the gay away.

I see attacks starting to happen with this kind of crap.

Demons.

There was one that was just an illustration of someone wiping their naked butt with a pride flag.

And what breaks my heart is that so many of these people claim to be followers of Jesus. I consider myself friends with several pastors in the area and I cannot imagine they would be encouraging their congregants to treat LGBTQIA+ people this way.

As we approach Independence Day holiday, I would urge the Ottawa GOP and the others who have attacked our festival to reflect upon what freedom means and what it means to cultivate a society in which people who do not fit their own gender norms or follow their own religious beliefs for sexual orientation are free to exist – not hidden behind an 18-plus payroll as though they are something prurient. But free to walk down the street, wearing the clothes that represent their own sense of gender identity, free to hold hands with the person they love, and not worrying about someone hurting them.

Sure, I know that the Grand Haven Pride festival may not be something the leadership of the Ottawa GOP will want to attend (though I think they would learn something if they attended and sought to listen to the lived experience of participants).

But it would be great if the party whose leadership changed our county motto to “Where freedom rings” also cared deeply about the freedom of LGBTQIA+ individuals.

It would be great if they cared about the freedom of families like mine who bring our kids to the festival because we want our kids to grow up knowing that it’s OK to be who you are – who God created you to be – and we want them to grow up in a community that doesn’t stigmatize those who are different.

Because kids are in danger, absolutely. The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently found that firearms remain the leading cause of death for children and teens. So, let’s have a conversation about how to balance freedom, the Second Amendment, and the safety of the seven children who die every day from gun violence.

And kids are in danger from hateful rhetoric that says it’s dangerous to break gender norms or have a different sexual orientation. That’s why 43 percent of LGBTQIA youth considered attempting suicide. It’s why 1 in 5 attempted it in the past year.

Kids are in danger, but it’s not from the Grand Haven Pride Festival and our drag shows. It’s from a culture addicted to violence and weapons that marginalizes, excludes, and attacks those who are different. And kids deserve to be protected from that.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com.