In this episode I come face to face with the law. Seriously. My guest is Tim Fall (Twitter: @tim_fall) and he’s a judge. Now, many of you may think that this might be my first time in front of a judge, but it’s not! I’ll save those stories for later…plus, a little allure never hurt. For now, let me talk about what Tim and I discussed. I’ve known Tim strictly through Twitter and have thoroughly enjoyed his Gospel-centric approach to the way he does theology: oriented toward the comfort for the beleaguered. Now, most of my beloved readers/listeners will know that I’ve a penchant for all things distinguishing Law and Gospel. So, when I found out that my Gospel-peddling friend, Tim, was also a judge my interest was piqued. How does one who is the categorical symbol of the law (a judge) proclaim the gospel so well? How is the distinction between the gospel and the theological function of the law struck when one spends the majority of their time upholding the civic function of the law? What I found out from my conversation with Tim is that it is important to maintain the distinction between the Law and the Gospel. One needs to let the law of the court and of society operate as the law and being detached here is key. Tim told me, wisely, that a judge is not in the role to be judging the personhood of the person, and it’s this that Tim carries with him to the bench. A good judge keeps control and remains open (neutral, as neutral as any human can be). But when Tim is not in the courtroom, he spends all of his time looking for ways to speak of the event of the cross, to proclaim Christ crucified, the judge judged in our place (to borrow from Karl Barth), the longed for rest for those heavy laden. So come and listen to this conversation with Tim and take away a wealth of good information offered from the perspective of one who upholds the law as well as a word of comfort for your mind and body.
A huge THANK YOU to my friend and producer Sean Duregger (Twitter: @seanCduregger) and Screaming Pods (Twitter: @ScreamingPods) for hosting Sancta Colloquia (Twitter: @SanctaColloquia).
Tim is a California native who changed his major three times, colleges four times, and took six years to get a Bachelor’s degree in a subject he’s never been called on to use professionally. Married for 30 years with two kids (both graduated, woo-hoo!) his family is constant evidence of God’s abundant blessings in his life. He and his wife live in Northern California.
Tim does not normally talk about himself in the third person.
Recommended Reading/Works Mentioned in the Podcast:
If there was a day to feel the most human, I know not one better than the 24 hour period linking the event of death of Good Friday to the event of life of Resurrection Sunday. Yet, I believe most of us rush through Saturday, not paying any attention to tension embedded in this day.
We know what happened: Jesus died on Friday and was raised on Sunday. Saturday is just the day I run those last minute errands, color eggs, plan for tomorrow’s dinner celebration, and lay out my “Easter best” outfit. My day to day productivity attempts to eclipse the possibility of eventful reflection. God can break through the clutter and cacophony of a regular day just as God can break through stone hard hearts and closed off minds. But if we are too immersed in the demands of our worlds and lives, we could miss the silence of Saturday; missing this silence and the very pregnant space-time pause, steals from the abundance of tomorrow, Easter Sunday. Might as well just be a celebration of the fertility of the Spring solstice.
In my opinion, Holy Saturday, the divine silence of this 24 hour period, is the center of the chiastic structure of massive event proportions. While everything feels normal here, nothing is actually normal. Everything is different but then none of it is. It’s the entire book of lamentations jammed into a day; it’s the moment between Adam and Eve stepping out of the Garden per divine decree and the settling in of the cherubim and seraphim who will forever prevent return. It’s the between of the walls of water dropping and drowning the Egyptian soldiers and the arrival at Mt. Sinai. It’s the deep dark of transition before Mary pushed Jesus into the world and held him to her breast. It’s the pain of Dinah after her rape and before her brothers find out; it’s the harrowing moment between the last few breaths of the Levite’s concubine of Judges 19 and the door opening the next morning. This is where we are; it makes sense that we run through it.
There’s nothing easy about Holy Saturday. It’s filled with questions with no answers. It’s filled with crisis and confrontation. It’s filled with darkness no matter how bright the noon day sun shines. The demand of what in the hell just happened? weighs down on human skeletal structures, and there is no reprieve of an answer. This is loss; this is sorrow. Our bodies are forced into a conflict of feeling and thought: he was here, and now he’s not. The longing to touch him still courses through the nerve endings of the skin of my finger tips, but I cannot touch him anymore. The grief of desiring to lay lips on his that are now dead and gone, cold and lifeless. Substance was here and now it is seemingly vanished; the vacuum pulls my body into it: where I could not lie and sit and stand because he was there, I now can and that awareness of absence is crushing.
In the midst of this palpable heaviness that feels like divine silence, God isn’t actually speechless. The kerygma floats on the warm breeze: who do you say that I am? On Good Friday humanity answered with a conviction and judgment that ended in death. On Sunday, God will do the same but it will bring about life. But even if answers have been given, the question spoken long ago still demands an answer today; we aren’t off the hook because we’re being addressed today. And today, Saturday, the question haunts us as faith goes searching for her desire: what we knew and believed is being met with a radical upheaval of the unknowability of the future.
Today, law failed. Today, religion failed. Today, piety means nothing. Today, faith feels like a farce. Today, bodies long and hearts faint. Today, prophets only sigh. Today, love mourns. Today, grace feels beyond reach. Today, we are naked. Today, we are forced to be human, to reckon with what was and confront what will be. Today, we must wrestle with the demand of the eternal question in the divine address: who do you say that I am?
In this episode of Sancta Colloquia, I had the honor of listening to Susan Vincent (@susanv) tell me her story. All of our stories are rather remarkable and the remarkable aspect of Susan’s story (for me) was that she was raised in an evangelical, conservative, charismatic environment, home-schooled by evangelical academics. And here she is now working to defend the voiceless, the oppressed, and the disenfranchised, working to dismantle systems of injustice and systemic oppression. I believe the Lord works in mysterious ways and Susan’s story encourages that belief: out of a conservative evangelical environment is born a woman who asks the important questions and thinks critically about her faith and how faith and life and social and political ethics work together. Susan explains in beautiful terms that the events that challenge and interrupt us and our status-quo are better conceived as invitations to experience God and others anew, to experience life anew. Rather than defensive reactions and clinging dogmatically to things as we once knew them, we should ask, “Can I make my response one of curiosity?” Essentially, according to Susan, when events encounter us that challenge and interrupt our way of seeing things, we are encouraged to take up the invitation to open ourselves and broaden our conceptions. I don’t know about you, but this is death into new life; and I’m all about dying to the old and finding life in the new. And not once but daily. I am grateful to Susan for her willingness to sit with me and chat on a Saturday afternoon. I learned so much from her and am very excited to share this sacred conversation with you. To quote Susan, “Faith allows us to open ourselves to the unknown.” Damn straight it does.
And, as a heads up, I took copious notes as she was talking. So, I’d recommend getting a pen and some paper and feel free to pause the track if you need you…and you may need to.
A huge THANK YOU to my friend and producer Sean Duregger (Twitter: @seanCduregger) and Screaming Pods (Twitter: @ScreamingPods) for hosting Sancta Colloquia (Twitter: @SanctaColloquia).
Here’s the video I referenced by Liam Miller featuring The Rev. Dr. John Flett:
Susan grew up in Huntsville, Alabama (aka Rocket City USA). She was homeschooled K-12 with her three younger sisters. During that time learned to play several instruments and developed a love of reading. Growing up she attended a non-denominational church with her family, where she learned to speak the language of Christianity with an evangelical/charismatic accent.
Susan received her Bachelor of Science in Mass Media Communication from Oral Roberts University. At ORU she participated in the MultiMedia Institute, the Honors Program, and the Missions & Community Outreach Department. She traveled with ORU Outreach to Poland, Ukraine, India, China, Japan, and Kenya.
Not yet ready to give up travel or higher education, Susan went on to earn her Juris Doctor and Master of Dispute Resolution degrees from Pepperdine School of Law. While in law school she assisted in developing negotiation trainings at the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution in London, volunteered as a mediator in small claims court, advised the Supreme Court of Rwanda on case management and alternative dispute resolution, and interned with a trial judge in the Family Court division of the Los Angeles Superior Court.
After taking the bar, Susan spent a year in Kampala, Uganda through the Nootbaar Legal Fellowship. While there, she served as a court-appointed mediator in the Commercial Court and managed plea bargaining initiatives in the juvenile and criminal courts. She also earned a Certificate in Development Project Management, helped develop remand and diversion programs with the Children Justice Initiative, and learned to love African tea.
Susan returned to California to work at Christian Legal Aid of Los Angeles, where she supervised legal clinics, developed partnerships with organizations like Homeboy Industries and local senior centers, coordinated pro bono services and volunteers, administered the internship program, and generally nerded out managing tech & systems issues. She also provided counsel and advice to low-income clients on legal matters such as post-conviction relief, immigration, housing, consumer law, and estate planning.
While acclimating to life in Los Angeles, Susan had the chance to re-examine many of the theological and political frameworks that she had grown up with in light of the people and real-life challenges she saw on a daily basis. Through friendships, books, and online conversations, she developed a new vocabulary of justice. These words and perspectives would serve her well during the initial process of coming out and navigating its complex relational & theological effects.
Susan currently works as a Managing Attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, where she leads a diverse team of legal and service professionals to connect community members with the Foundation’s many programs and offices. She also attends The Loft LA at Westwood United Methodist Church, spends (wastes? invests?) a remarkable amount of time on Twitter, and is perpetually finding new things to add to her reading list.
Recommended Reading/Works Mentioned in the Podcast:
LaurenRELarkin.com 