This is a hard week, friends -- Thanksgiving without most of what we think of Thanksgiving as being, in the midst of a frightening surge of covid and tightening of restrictions. More loss. More hard conversations. More boundary-setting. More disappointment. More loneliness. More grief. More frustration. More unknown.
We are weary. That weariness is real and everyone is feeling it. Nobody is doing fine. None of us is feeling great.
But when we we come together, like this, over zoom, when the body of Christ gathers, we are putting ourselves in back in context. We are again being whose and who we are. We are placing ourselves to receive the blessings God always has for us.
We come here with our hearts open – our broken hearts and our weary hearts and our grateful hearts and our determined hearts—and the prayers of those gone before are prayed over us even now. In the timelessness of God, Paul and all the saints, including those we’ve personally known and loved and let go from this life, are gathered here with us, and they’re rooting for us, just as we are rooting for each other and longing that each other be well. We are part of this community of saints that bridges time and space, transcends continents and centuries, and we’re all in this together. This is hard to fathom, but it's true.
So imagine, dear ones, that Saint Paul has us in mind, that he is even now, face to face with the Divine, thanking God for us, and praying for us that we might recognize God at work, see who God is and what God is up to in this world. I know about you, dear sisters and brothers gathering as Lake Nokomis Church. I’ve seen your trust that Jesus is right here with you as you are with and for each other, the way you seek to live in love and courage, and I celebrate you and never stop thanking God for you.
And he’s asking God to open the eyes of our hearts to know without a doubt the hope to which God has called us, that we could see and know what is a truly good life, deep and sure, despite any circumstances or struggles, that we might recognize and receive the boundless love and abundant life right here in front of us.
I want to know that hope, I want to see God right here in the world and feel the gift of my life. I want to receive that life however it comes to me, and especially when things feel hard, when grief and gratitude are right here side by side in us like they are right now and will be throughout this week and the holiday season.
Paul says that God’s power, beyond our comprehension or ability to measure is here for us who trust God. I don’t know what that means, to be honest, my heart and head can’t begin to take that in. I don’t believe it means we get out of pain or escape our mortality, since God chose not to avoid the limitations and discomfort of being human but to come right into it with us. But he says that the power of God, power beyond measure is available to us right here, in the midst of everything we might be facing right now. It's this power that helps us to trust.
This power that raised Jesus from the dead, this power that assures us that beyond any president or dictator or regime, greater than any virus or crisis, is the One who was there when the world was spoken into being, who came in vulnerable weakness to share with us every single thing we endure on this earth as human beings, all the senseless suffering and also every breathless moment of joy too great for words to express, who died our death and took death and separation into the heart of God, where it was healed so that even death itself is not to be feared. This is the power that holds us. This is the love that claims us. This is the reality in which we belong. This is the context of our lives.
And just to help the point hit home, Paul goes at great lengths to say that this One who embodies our complete belonging to God reigns, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. There is simply no one and nothing greater.
And then he says that we are Christ’s body, we are the fullness of him who fills all in all. You and I, us!, in our little lives, our ordinary bumbling lives, together, side by side, suffering and laughing with one another, determined to see God in the world, committed to joining Christ in loving the world: the fullness of the one who cannot be contained lives in us.
So you guys, I know we are going to get through this. This part, and the part that comes after. We are going to get through it. We will let ourselves feel it – both the grief and the gratitude, we will let it break our hearts open so we can embrace more of this life that is so generously given to us. We wont be afraid to celebrate, and we wont be afraid to mourn, and we’ll even be so bold as to do both at once when the situation calls for it, as it seems to right now.
And we won’t just get through - because God will use even this, this extraordinary, unfathomable muddle of year, to bring us deeper into hope, wider into love, to bring healing and hope into this world that needs it so badly. God will use these experiences in this time to open our hearts to see the big picture that we are made for and called to, to help us welcome this ridiculous, bighearted, painful and glorious life that we are given to share with each other in this the world.
Wisdom, revelation, fullness, hope… I receive that prayer, brother Paul! I welcome that blessing!
Life is more than just our experiences, it’s the stories we tell – to ourselves and to others – about our experiences. Story is how we understand them and the meaning we make of them.
We are in the middle of a big experience right now. A new president has been elected. A new chapter is opening up for our country. But what you think that means depends on the stories you are listening to, and the ones you are telling yourself. The future in front of us is either terribly hopeful or horribly terrifying. Same set of facts, different stories. How we face the world, the choices we believe we have, the choices we will choose to make, depend on the story we are telling about this moment. We are part of this story. This is part of our story. Absolutely. It shapes who we are as Americans; it will impact the experiences we have with each other in the coming months and years. But this is not the whole story.
There is a bigger story. A longer trajectory. A deeper narrative that holds us. Beyond the 244 years of this country’s existence, and the 45 presidents we’ve had, you and I are part of a people and tradition that extends over two thousand years, and we are shaped by those who’ve gone before, even as we are connected by the God who holds the universe in love to all those around us and every human that has ever been or ever will be, so our story is even broader, deeper, wider: it’s timeless and eternal.
We live inside our experiences, but they are not our story. The Psalmist encourages us to remember this, and to tell the bigger story. The rest of Psalm 78—nearly 70 more verses past this encouraging part—gets specific and uncomfortable. It goes into great detail to tell the Israelites story through the Exodus and wilderness into the generations that follow, up to King David. And it’s not too flattering. It tells the story of a people who over and over again doubted and turned away from God, and a God who over and over again cared for them. God provided and they complained. God delivered them, and they chose captivity. God gave them what they asked for and more, and they chose scarcity and turned on each other. God led them and they refused to follow.
Back and forth the Psalm goes, like a boat rocking on the waves: the people complain; God gets angry and still provides. The people turn away; God gets angry and punishes them. Then God comes to God’s senses and restores them again. They repent and say good things about God, but they don’t mean it, and they continue tearing each other down and turning their back on God. God gets angry and calls them out, and then welcomes them back in with great compassion and provides for them once again. Over and over the people are unfaithful. Over and over, God is faithful.
That is our story. That is the ancient story of humankind and the ageless story of our faith, and our scriptures don’t sugarcoat it. The bible doesn’t make its protagonists shiny and perfect. It tells of their failures and their infidelity and God’s consistency and salvation nevertheless and always. Telling this story is what the Psalmist is suggesting we do, and with the rest of this Psalm, he shows us how. Humans are unfaithful and inconsistent. God is faithful and trustworthy.
Our experiences and the things that have happened in our lives, in our families, in our country, in our world, they are the ingredients, but they are not the story. How we tell them – to ourselves and to each other, to the next generation, and the one after that – that is the story. And sometimes we get the story wrong, and we need to go back and look at what happened again and tell a different story. And sometimes we think the story goes just one way, but the real story, God’s story, is always bigger than our premature conclusions. And God’s story – the true story – is always about hope and redemption.
We are in an important moment as a country – and our children are watching and listening. They are watching us go back and look at how we’ve told the story of race and equality in this country, how we’ve told the stories of economic opportunity and fairness and justice for all and they are seeing us realize we weren’t telling ourselves the truth, we weren’t facing the whole story. Our kids are watching us start to listen more carefully to our past, and listen more intentionally to our siblings in this country whose experiences are different than this story, and different from our own. They’re watching us sort out what all of this means and begin to wonder what it might be like to tell our story differently, and to try to figure out how we go forward together into a different story, how we build a nation together that is what we all long for it to be.
But even as we do this work, we are part of a bigger story – one that puts this smaller story into context. The Story we are living in understands that human beings are consistently unfaithful and God is consistently faithful. And in order to live in hope (which is always from God) and not despair (which is never from God), we need to tell the bigger story. The story of God teaching us that we belong to God, no matter what, and we belong to each other, no matter what, and nothing we do or don’t do can break that belonging – even when we pretend it’s not true, or forget it is true, or actively argue that it can’t possibly be true. It remains the true story.
So we will claim this story, and let it claim us, and will live in this story, and tell this story to each other to help each other remember. And we’ll tell those who come after us so they can live in it too, and they can tell those who come after them, so they can set their hope on God and not forget who they are and what God does, and they too can live in God’s way instead of the way of fear.
Our kids need to hear about when we messed up, when we said something that hurt someone deeply, when we didn’t come through for someone, when we lied, or cheated, or turned our back on someone, or turned our back on God. They need to hear about when we gave up hope, and lost our faith, and forgot who we were and whose we were. Because the true story is about what God does. They need to hear about forgiveness, and redemption, and healing, and fresh starts and new beginnings – because they need to know that who they are is not defined by their failure and unfaithfulness but by the love and faithfulness of God.
This is who Church is - those vulnerable and brave enough to tell the stories about our own unfaithfulness and God’s faithfulness even so, working through it all, to move us into life, with and for each other.
One day we will tell stories about this time– about our country and about the pandemic, about the seismic changes happening in the world, the climate crises and catastrophes, and all the upheavals of this time. And if the stories we tell are true, they will not be about good verses evil, or us verses them. They will not make us look good or cover over our mistakes. They will be about God’s faithfulness through our unfaithfulness. About how normal humans came alongside each other in our brokenness and God worked through us to achieve remarkable things. How we were saved not through might and power, or by violent acts or vile words, but by God acting through our smallness, and sameness, and willingness to look each other in the heart and recognize that the one I want to hate belongs to me too. They will be stories of how we forgot that we are meant to care for each other, but then God spoke through a photo of a child in a cage, or the cries of a man with a knee on his neck, and turned our hearts back toward each other. Or how we forgot we are meant care for this earth and its creatures, but God spoke through a fierce child from Sweden, and terrible raging fires in Australia and California, and restored us to our place of responsible stewardship for creation. Or how we forgot that we are not invincible and indispensable, on demand at every moment, but God spoke through our quarantines and lockdowns and suddenly, when our busy was taken away from us—and it was terribly disorienting, and we were afraid a lot of the time and bored just as often—God woke us up to the deeper life that can only come to us when we’re moving slower and listening more closely, and God showed us how much we mean to others, and what they mean to us, and God gave us new and different ways to stay connected, and the Holy Spirit helped us to hang on tighter and love more deeply, and God reminded us that we are not indispensible but we are integral. Or how we forgot that our neighbors are beloved children of God until they got sick or we did, and with masks on someone brought soup and bread to someone else—someone learned how to make soup and bake bread and then brought it to someone else—and God touched our lives through culinary contributions, and through needing each other this way God helped us start seeing other people we need too, like doctors, and nurses, and mail carriers, and teachers and grocery store workers, and garbage collectors, and we realized that the people we’d taken for granted were the essential ones all along, and God showed us that we all belong to God and we all belong to each other, and we listened and obeyed and let God change our hearts.
No matter what happens next or what comes after that, we follow a God of unfailing faithfulness and infinite compassion who works even in our consistent unfaithfulness and through our weakness to bring hope and life to us all. This is the true story, ancient and eternal. And we will keep telling it. Amen.
PRAYER God, please show me the stories I am telling myself that are holding me back from the fullness of life you have for me. Destroy my stories of self-protection
and make me vulnerable and open. Heal my stories of injury
and make me a conduit of your healing. Forgive my stories of enemies
and make me a courageous peace-maker. Break open my stories of irreconcilability
and make me a willing listener. Redeem my stories of wrong
and help me join in your ongoing justice. Release me from my stories of grievance
and help me to grieve. Break my stories of despair
and teach me to hope. Set me free
to know and share your joy, to receive and share your love, to bear and share your hope. Help me to live in your true story. Amen.
I am grieved and sobered. But I don’t accept the results of the election.
I don't accept that we are against each other and unable to find common ground. I reject the assertion that we are hopelessly polarized and divided. I don’t agree to see us as on opposite teams with opposite viewpoints and concerns. I will not concede that some people don’t care about basic human needs, their own or others'. We all need food and home and belonging and love. We all want a stable economy filled with opportunity. Nobody want dirty air or water, or to pass on an uninhabitable earth to the next generation. We all want to be safe, to live in safe neighborhoods and a safe country. We all want to be seen and heard, and to know our lives are valuable and our contributions matter. We all want to trust we will be well cared for when we’re sick or injured, and we want to know our futures are secure. All of us want and believe in justice and liberty for all. Working for these things is not undermining them; being passionate about some of these things does not mean rejecting others. I do not accept that this is so. I will seek common ground, and join in a shared reality that uphold the needs and lives of all.
I don’t accept the urgency and intensity. I refuse to greet each day with anxiety and hand-wringing about the future, predictions of doom and insistence on vigilance. Instead I will welcome each day as an opportunity to live into our fundamental belonging to each other. I will watch for ways to affirm our intrinsic connection, to notice our shared humanity, and to join in strengthening the patriotic cooperation and mutual respect of this nation that together we are.
I don’t accept that we are in “battle between good and evil.” I refuse to surrender to exaggeration and hyperbole. I decline any invitation and rebuff any insistence to depict other human beings as caricatures, or distortions of their humanity, in order to label them more effectively, so I can dismiss them guiltlessly, or acquiesce to them thoughtlessly. Instead I will remind myself that we all are a mess of contradictions: selfishness and beauty, love and obliviousness, trying and failing. I will not let this election take away the exquisite complexity of each human being with whom I share this country.
I don’t accept that cooperation is impossible, or that to meet my needs I must deny yours, or to meet your needs you must deny mine. We need each other. I don’t accept that I am better off without you.
I don’t accept that some voices should be silenced, even if those voices grieve me. Instead, I pray that the voices that sadden or frighten me might stir me to compassion and curiosity about the person behind the rhetoric, the humanity that is just like my own, armored and defending a frightened and tender heart that longs to love and be loved.
Right now our brokenness is on full display. But I do not accept that this state of being is permanent or dire. Instead I welcome it as a sign of breaking open, the possibility of our soul healing differently, stronger. I will not be afraid of the pain. I will not be afraid of the struggle. I know the joy that is found in shared suffering, and the peace that comes in coming alongside.I have seen how new life comes from death. I have seen how the loss of what we thought we were can lead to what we can be. I have learned that being human means we are always in process, never complete. Each of us is always learning, always growing, always invited (and sometimes forced) to begin again and dream anew. Why would our collective of human beings called the United States of America be any different?
So, no matter who ends up being our president for the next four years, I do not accept fear as the winner of our nation. I will be led by love and guided by hope.
America is us; it’s you and it’s me. This I embrace.
Sometimes Election Day falls on my birthday, and I feel the sense of connection and celebration as we head to the polls together as Americans.
It's different this year - I voted weeks ago, and have held my breath as the day has approached, waffling between extremes, as Jimmy Kimmel said last night, " it’s somewhere between Christmas Eve and the night before a liver transplant.”
God, I long for competence, compassion, and cooperation in our leadership and our country.
God, I pray for calm and peace in our nation in the coming days.
After weeks tension and worry, today I feel stilled, quieted, and I am seeking to stay connected to the bigger picture. As we said on Sunday,
This moment is significant, and historical, and it is fraught. But beloved children of God, we live in a deeper reality, deeper than any moment, and with a further horizon beyond all the significant historical moments gone before and all those to come, and we know this world belongs to God, and every one of us in it belongs to each other. No matter what, and always. And God is always working. No matter what and always. God’s grace holds us and sustains us.
And as we've been saying all along, "This is part of the story. This is not the whole story. The world belongs to God."
Beloved, this is never not true.
So here are some blessings for your Election Day:
1- The "Keep Going On Song" by The Bengsons has been accompanying me for a few weeks, but today especially it has felt like a blessing:
2- And I pulled out a prayer I wrote for the 4th of July a few years ago that is a helpful reminder to me today, so I adapted it for now. Here it is:
A PRAYER FOR ELECTION DAY
We belong first and foremost to you, Lord. God of heaven and earth, eternity and the moment, ever and always.
Then we belong to the whole of creation; the living, the dead, the yet to become, and the reborn, the ongoing cycle of earth and life with its glorious array of ever-expanding participants: mountains and trees and oceans and valleys, gazelles and robins and rivers and earthworms, all.
Next we belong to the human family, all humanity in every corner of the vast globe, all languages, creeds, cultures, skin tones, religions, beliefs, experiences, hopes, celebrations, losses, goals, vocations, technologies and connections, in grief and wonder and anger and happiness and confusion and sadness and joy. Whatever happens, and no matter what, we belong to them all, all, all. And they all belong to us.
After this we are grouped - some arbitrarily and some by choice - into land masses and geographic regions. We develop identifying accents, clothing preferences and regional tastebuds which is to say, we gather our experiences into ourselves alongside others who are gathering into themselves experiences alongside us.
We call our places of belonging towns, counties, villages and cities, tribes, nations, countries, continents and coalitions; these countless designations simply mean that we live nearby and agree to certain codes of living with one another that, in one way or another, uphold our greater belonging - to the whole human family, the living and the dead of all creation, and the Lord of all.
Next we have the smaller groups in which we learn and the people there who teach us, the neighbors, musicians, coaches and collaborators, the members of our faith, our teams, our clans. We have hobbies we cultivate with people who practice them alongside us, passions we pursue and those whom they impact, jobs we end up in and those who end up there too, whose lives intertwine with our own.
And then there are those specific people from whom we come, the ones whose being and belonging shape our own being and belonging most directly, I mean, of course, our ancestors and grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and kin, parents and siblings. We may have the partner with whom we share our life, and the children whom we shape and watch become, and the pets we assemble into our homes, and the gardens we tend, and the friendships we cultivate, and the places we grow our roots, deep, strong and sure, with and for those to whom we give our hearts, who will one day be buried in the ground alongside everyone and everything else, to which we already and always belong.
So on this day when our Democracy is Verbed, and we exercise our right and responsibility to participate together in shaping the future of our shared home, we give thanks for all the belongings that hold us, both created and innate.
We give thanks for the communities into which we pour our lives, and for all those in our communities that pour their lives into us. We give thanks for the earth that nurtures all life, and all those who nurture the earth.
On this day that shapes our nation, in our collective belonging called The United States of America we give thanks for all that is good and wise and kind, all that upholds our humanity, both individual and shared. Thank you, God.
And in our collective belonging called The United States of America we confess all that is evil, foolish and divisive, all that damages our soul, both individual and shared. Forgive us, Lord.
And when this day of national weighing in has come to an end and whatever comes next begins, it remains that beyond country, beyond kin, beyond borders and beliefs, beyond any and all boundaries, whether natural or unnatural, is the Great Belonging, that is, to one another, all, and to you, Lord of all.
Right now feels like we are poised on the edge of a significant, history-making moment.
Friday a friend on the phone with someone in Washington DC said this person was watching out her window as the city was being boarded up. The National guard is standing by, ready to be deployed. Nobody knows what is going to happen next, or how we all will respond to what happens next. Of course, it’s already history-making, we’re in a global pandemic and all. But it suddenly really feels significant and history-making. Our country feels fragile, things are charged and divided, we are raw about racism and doing hard introspective work about the changes needed in our nation. Our mental health is affected by our limited our ability to be together, the loss of our normal routine with jobs and school, with no way to imagine the future or timeline for when this might be over. We’re struggling to hang on when the ground feels so unstable. So we are coming into this significant historical moment exhausted from nine months of virus vigilance and let’s just say, we aren’t at the top of our game. We are going into this future-shaping, unknown outcome, amped up stakes, moment feeling especially vulnerable, particularly powerless, and parched in our hearts and souls. Some of us feel a kind of alert, attentive stillness, preparing for whatever comes next, others of us are flailing and wringing our hands in worry, and sighing or swearing a lot. Perhaps I am not speaking for you, and you’re feeling mostly terrific and unfazed at the moment. If that’s you, I’m genuinely glad for you. If you’re like me, though, what Jesus says today might sound like good news: Blessed are the poor in spirit. Ok, God, I’m listening. Blessed are those at the end of their rope. Blessed are the bone dry, those who can’t fake it, those who are facing their own nothingness and know it: God’s way of life is for them. I want God’s way of life! I want to live beyond the striving and comparing, the judgment and the fear. I want to remember that we belong to God and each other and that can never be taken away. I want to remember that love is real and it never ends. The way back into that that reality is not by determined will or strong faith, but through our own emptiness and longing. Jesus comes into our death with new life. It is in our impossibility that Christ meets us. Blessed are… all these beatitudes begin, this whole sermon on the mount starts with a litany of blessing like statements of fact. Happy, contended, grounded are those…. Then it flips everything upside down and says a bunch of things we don’t prefer and wouldn’t chose, and pull us into grace. “Grace means nobody gets what they deserve but infinitely more.” Fredrich Buechner says, “Blessed is the one who gets the joke, who sees that miracle.” Blessed are the parched souls, God’s way of belonging and grace is especially for them. Also in on the miracle? Those who mourn. They will be comforted. This word for mourn is the strongest possible word for mourning. And comforted here is the strongest possible word for comforted. So, blessed are those who are in absolute abject despair. All defenses crumbled, unable to fake it, actively surrendering to all-out no-holds-barred grieving. They will be comforted, not made comfortable, as in, hanging out in a familiar place with a hot cup of tea and your feet propped up. But comforted, as in completely propped up on someone else’s strength. When we let out our agony, others will bear us up and walk with us, and carry our burdens with us, and not let us be lost or alone. We are all mourning something. There is loss that we keep in or downplay, that we are invited to let it out. By the way - Jesus did not say blessed are those who mourn for they will find inner strength to triumph over their circumstances, or blessed are those who mourn for they will be delivered from the things that are causing them sorrow. No, he said, blessed are those who mourn for they will be joined and held up in their grief and their circumstances. When we mourn we find right here the Christ who suffers with and for us. In the presence of those who come around us to lift us up is the actual the presence of God. The next one feels a little icky. Blessed are the meek. God knows, and this is on full display right now, we will choose security above all else. We will choose it over goodness or cooperation or justice, we’ll choose the way of fear’s promise of safety over love’s vulnerability in a heartbeat. We want to be strong, and right, and self-sufficient, and respectable and buffered from loss. We don’t want to be “meek.” Lisa once said, “It is hard and humbling to realize that faith leads not to security but to vulnerability.” We belong to God and we belong to each other- we are dependent and interdependent. No amount of striving can make us ever not need God and each other. So saying Blessed are the meek is like saying, Contented are the honest. In on the joke are those who get that they are recipients of grace alongside everyone else. The antidote to our obsessive striving for security is humility. Lisa said it this way, “To be meek not to be ashamed or small or groveling. It is only to be at peace with our place in the universe, not to be secure, but to be at home.” In on the miracle are those who are at home in God’s grace, they are at home in the whole world.
And blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness! We who long to live in God’s way, to see justice and kindness and mercy and love as way of life in this life, we will be filled. Because it is not we who bring about God’s reality, it is God who is already and always bringing it. So we watch and wait and pray and yearn that we all could live our belonging to God and each other, and the promise is, that in longing for it, we will experience it.
And being at home in God’s grace, and longing for God’s belonging to be shared means getting comfortable with mercy. But that is not a popular stance these days. Mercy feels risky and embarrassing, and so outdated. Right now our world feels like a very punishing place, without a lot of room for mercy. We’d rather punish others. We ourselves would rather be punished harshly. We are not good at accepting mercy or extending it to others. We’d prefer to restore order, or pay penance, or earn acceptance. Even better, we’d rather just cut people off completely and move on with our lives. But in the kingdom of God mercy is what keeps us all afloat. Because mercy is how grace works. God’s way is forgiveness and compassion that are not deserved and cannot be earned. And the promise is, you brave souls who reach your hand toward another with no guarantee they will accept or appreciate it, when you may not get the recognition or justice you deserve, You will receive mercy. Giving mercy washes away the hardness and the stuckness in our hearts, and receiving it sets us free from the self-judgment and self-punishment we often choose instead. Blessed, then, also are the pure in heart, those who welcome mercy and live in it, those who for whatever reason, have chosen NOT hard and cynical, NOT self-protective and cunning. Those whom we might dismiss as naive or weak, easily taken advantage of, are the ones who are tuned in to the song of kindness and love and mercy and hope that the rest of us mostly ignore. These are the ones who get to see God. In on the miracle are those whose hearts are vulnerable and open. Then there are the peace-makers. The Hebrew word for Peace, Shalom, means “fullness” or “completion”. So the greeting, Shalom, means “May you be completed.” When we contribute to others’ fullness, fullness in the world around us, and fullness between us, we literally share in the substance of God’s life, here and now. Whenever we say, by our words or our actions, “May you be completed,” we make peace. We smile it, and knit it, and bake it, and write it, and march it, and speak it, and hug it, and listen it into being, we break down strife and strain by wishing wholeness and fullness upon others. And those who are doing this, Jesus says, know with confidence whose and who and whose they are. But just to be clear, being peace-makers doesn’t mean we’re suddenly no longer tension-makers and crazy-makers too.(Back to the poor in spirit!) It means, as Glen Stassan says, we “abandon the effort to get our needs met through the destruction of our enemies.” Being a peacemaker starts with surrendering our own troubled hearts to God’s mercy, and letting God bring peace through us. And Jesus ends the whole thing with, Blessed are you when you are deeply misunderstood, labeled, dismissed and hated for living like the game is pretend, and choosing to live in God’s belonging instead. And, then here comes the only command in the whole beatitudes – you shouldrejoice and be glad, because what you are doing is noticed. You’re undermining the way of fear; you’re making good trouble. And there is a whole cloud of witnesses—those who’ve been in on the miracle longer than you have—cheering you on. And one day, when all this is over, you will be thanked by the Creator for your participation in the miracle. This moment is significant, and historical, and it is fraught. But beloved children of God, we live in a deeper reality, deeper than any moment, and with a further horizon beyond all the significant historical moments gone before and all those to come, and we know this world belongs to God, and every one of us in it belongs to each other. No matter what, and always. And God is always working. No matter what and always. God’s grace holds us and sustains us. No matter what and always, this remains true: when we feel parched in our hearts and souls, God’s way of belonging and grace is for us. And when we express our heartbreaking grief we are lifted up on others’ arms. And when we’re at home in God’s grace we find the whole world to be our home. And when we long for God’s belonging between us we find fullness, and when we’re brave and generous with mercy we ourselves are awash in mercy. And when our hearts are vulnerable and open, we see God. And when we surrender our troubled hearts to God’s grace and let God’s fullness come to and through us, we remember whose and who we are, part of the eternal community of good trouble makers, persistent love-seekers and brave hope-bearers. This week, and always, may we know ourselves to be in on the miracle. Amen.
PRAYER PRACTICE:
Using a journal, or verbally with a quiet few minutes to reflect and pray, let yourself express to God what is on your heart in this way:
