Ash Hillary

I both love and fear public speaking, so I jump at any opportunity to do so. When I was asked by my former campus pastor to do a 10-minute Bible study at this year’s Delaware-Maryland Synod Assembly, I jumped at it.

The Assembly theme this year was Centered in Christ: Church in Perilous Times, and oh boy, did (and still do) I have a word on that!

The text I chose to study is from Romans and is a common reading at ordinations. It’s also one of the less murky passages — in other words, I felt confident enough to talk about it without needing about 500 years of seminary first.

This study is best experienced by watching, but I have also included my written remarks at the end of the post, where it says “Read More”. My part begins at 37:15.

Doing this was both terrifying and exhilarating and I don’t think my heart rate went below 200 until well after I left the stage. The aftermath was incredibly affirming; so many people came up to me afterward to tell me how much they liked it. Actual pastors actually said to me in actuality that it was the best sermon they ever heard, which is RIDICULOUS because these were pastors whose own preaching I admire so much and have also been doing this for WAY longer with WAY more training like!!!!!!! You cannot say these things to me, I will fall over dead!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, if you do end up watching and/or reading, I hope you enjoy it as well, but more importantly, I hope that it speaks directly to whatever is in your heart and soul right now. As I say at the end of the study, these are indeed perilous times, but they are not the first, nor will they be the last. We will continue to hope, fight, love, and serve, together and with the help of a God who still, for reasons we will never understand, still so loves this world.

Read more: I led a Bible Study, but not before coming out to about 300 people.

Good morning, dear Church! Grace, peace and mercy are yours from the Triune God. Amen.

It is a true pleasure to be here this morning, and both very exciting and incredibly nerve-wracking to address you all from this vantage point for the very first time. I look forward to the Synod Assembly every year for a number of reasons, but mostly to hear about how the Holy Spirit has been hard at work through each and every one of you. Bishop Carrie preached a great word during the Friday morning service on the need for our stories, and we’ve been privileged to hear so many so far.

Before I get around to actually introducing myself, I want to thank Pastor Laura Sinche and Pastor Chris Schaefer for entrusting me with this Bible Study slash Devotion, especially for such a time as this. My belief is that the teachings of Jesus offer comfort to the disturbed and disturb the comfortable…and complicit. I also believe that while the desire to separate church and politics is understandable, we cannot fully appreciate what it means to follow Jesus without acknowledging that the central figurehead of our faith was a brown man executed by the state. Or that Jesus, The Bible, and Christianity exist not in a vacuum but in history, which contains unavoidable political context. And right here and now, we live in a time where people’s very existence is a political statement, through no fault of their own. I say all of that to really say: strap in.

Okay, now to actually introduce myself: my name is Ash Hillary and my pronouns are they/them. I am Lutheran, a lifelong member of St. Mark’s Hampstead, and currently in discernment for rostered ministry. I am queer, I am non-binary, and this past October, I married the love of my life, an out and proud transgender woman, on our ten-year dating anniversary. I never thought I would be professing these things in front of a live studio audience, but I do so because it is vitally important for me that you know that my wife and I are beloved children of God, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of our Creator, and not a single thing I’ve told you about myself will ever negate that fact. And thanks be to God that we are a Synod within a denomination that loudly and boldly affirms that truth.

On a lighter note, I’m a fairly indifferent alumnus of Towson University, but a very proud alumnus of The Table, the Lutheran-Episcopal campus ministry based out of Towson, UMBC, and Morgan State University. My faith formation is a product of many things, people, experiences, and ministries, including Mar-Lu-Ridge, despite my enormous preference for the great indoors.

But campus ministry easily had the most profound effect on my life. Pastor Laura and I actually both started at campus ministry, albeit in very different roles, at the same time: in 2009, which was also the year I attended my first Synod Assembly. It was my introduction to the concept of “safe spaces”, the first place of faith where questions weren’t just accepted but encouraged, where doubt was not something to hide away, or something that made you a bad Christian. In last year’s incredible film Conclave, the character Cardinal Lawrence, portrayed by *chef’s kiss* Ralph Fiennes, preaches a sermon before they gather for the first vote. He says that “certainty is the great enemy of unity. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore, no need for faith.”

And dear Church, it’s safe to say that we need faith now more than ever. And we need that faith to turn into action.

During this latest Lenten season, a group of young adults who are all campus ministry alums met on Tuesdays to gather around soup and Scripture, walking and struggling together to figure out the next right thing to do in our current *gestures broadly at everything*. We read stories about folks like Paul, and the disciples, and Moses, and others who had to figure out what their next step was in their lives of faith. Some, like Moses, were lucky and had the voice of God in a burning bush saying exactly what he needed to do. Others, like the Apostles, had Jesus Himself for a time…but Jesus liked his parables and it wasn’t always clear to them what He meant. And when Jesus was gone from them — happy belated Ascension — they had to figure out what to do on their own. Well, they also had the Holy Spirit guiding them, of course, but I’m sure they would have appreciated the occasional articulate burning bush.

The Bible is our sacred text, our touchstone for figuring out how to be Christians now by reading about how Christians back then tried to be Christians. And while the Bible can be frustratingly murky at times on top of seeming like some folks like Paul were paid by the word, there are parts that are very clear: like the passage I’ve chosen to talk about today, from Paul’s instructional letter to the Romans on the marks of a true Christian. Quick aside, shout-out to Pastor AJ Houseman and the Ten-Foot Pole podcast for one of my favorite bits of commentary about the epistolary texts, which is that we’re reading someone’s mail and we’re not necessarily privy to what the letter is in response to.

And so, with that in mind, a letter from Paul to the Romans, chapter 12.

⁹ Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; ¹⁰ love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. ¹¹ Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. ¹² Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. ¹³ Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers.

¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly;^[b] do not claim to be wiser than you are. ¹⁷ Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. ¹⁸ If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹ Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God,^[c] for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰ Instead, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Yeah! Super simple, right? Thankfully, much of what is mentioned in the passage here already feels predisposed to who we are as Christ-followers, but also as generally decent people: we do our level best to hate what is evil and hold fast to what is good; we are hospitable, serve the lowly, and try to keep our arrogance in check. Most of that feels easy enough, or at least intuitive enough. But, to me, and perhaps to some of you, too — to be asked to bless those who persecute me, and to not curse them or exact vengeance when we are in a time like right now where every day there is a new onslaught of bad news about the latest ways our most vulnerable siblings are in danger…I could just as easily detach my own limbs.

Paul was asking the Romans, and now us, to defy our very human instinct to meet vengeance with more vengeance; not only that, but to also bless the very people who believe that my wife’s life-saving health care should be taken away from her and that the color of one’s skin is enough probable cause to disappear them from their families, friends, and neighbors with no due process, or to execute them publicly with a bullet or a knee to the neck. Who believe that empathy is a sin and that a plea to exercise mercy to the marginalized is somehow an inappropriate message to give during a homily. The breathtaking injustice of it all can make the assurance that feeding our enemies when they are hungry or giving them something to drink when they are thirsty is actually killing them with kindness, reaping burning coals on their heads, that vengeance belongs to the Lord…feel like a very cold comfort indeed.

We are all familiar with the Great Commission given by Jesus to the Apostles, to go and make disciples of all nations. We’re also familiar with the Greatest Commandment, to love one another as He has loved us. These instructions to the Romans here are parallel to the Great Commission and Greatest Commandment. Jesus gives us the What, Paul gives us the How. The way to make disciples of all nations is to follow what Paul has explicitly laid out in this passage.

As I said before, it can really be a struggle to figure out the next right thing to do, and so to have a text like this that is clear on what is expected of us as Christ-followers is reassuring, even if what is being asked of us is far from easy. To not believe that we are wiser than we are — in other words, to not assume that we know what’s best for other people instead of asking other people what it is that they need. To not just refrain from vengeance but instead really lean into love and goodness toward those who wrong you…phew. But I think that there is something to be said for defying the expectations of your enemies and not giving into vengeance instead. As Yoda tells a young Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice #1: The Rising Force — stay with me here — “To defeat an enemy, you do not have to kill. Defeat the rage that burns in him, and he is your enemy no longer. Rage the true enemy is.”

Defeating rage and hatred with love and compassion is difficult and frustrating…and it is holy. How exactly that is executed can defy expectations. If your enemy is persecuting marginalized peoples, if your enemy is disappearing brown citizens, immigrants, and refugees. If your enemy is taking away healthcare from people that will suffer and die without it, if you’re enemy is gutting programs that feed the hungry, cloth the naked, heal the sick; if your enemy is picking your pockets to fatten the wallets of the rich, then you reap the burning coals on their heads by petitioning your municipal, county, and or state offices to release your neighbors that are wrongfully imprisoned without due process, by marching in the streets demanding justice, by calling on the people in power to do something, anything…and in the meantime, while we wait for those various slow wheels of justice to turn, we start or continue creating mutual aid funds, co-ops and community gardens, clothing and toy drives; we connect our multi-generational believers with one another to share stories and wisdom; we make sure our church kitchens are well stocked and up to code so that we are able to serve meals to the hungry; we get involved with our local nonprofits to see what materials and resources they need and create connections that strengthen community ties and remind those around us and ourselves that we will, as an Easter people, continue to rejoice in hope, even and especially when it feels impossible.

These are indeed perilous times, dear Church, but they are not the first perilous times and they will not be the last. The church on Earth has been here for 2,000-plus years. Paul’s words to the Romans survive and thrive across time and space and languages and liturgies, and here in the year of our Lord 2025, they continue to guide us into doing the next right thing. We will, and we ask God to help and guide us. And let the people say, amen.