This was published today in The Presbyterian Outlook.

- Kara

Litany for a verdict

April 19, 2021 by The Presbyterian Outlook 

(If desired, this prayer may be read responsively, with the words of the people in bold)

Jesus said,
“Peace I leave with you;
my peace I give to you.
I do not give to you as the world gives.
Do not let your hearts be troubled,
and do not let them be afraid.”
(John 14:27)

Let us pray:

Jesus, who was misunderstood, maligned and murdered,
you were there as he breathed his last.
You are there with the jurors now.
You are with us all as we wait.
Jesus, who wept in anguish,
   hear our sorrow and grief.
Jesus, who turned over tables,
   see our anger and rage.
Jesus, who shared our life and bore our death,
   feel our worry, exhaustion, shame and despair.
No verdict can give George Floyd back his life,
and no finding can absolve us of his death.

We pray for justice.
Lord, hear our prayer.
God, your justice is not punishment or excuses,
but setting right all that is wrong.
Use this moment, Lord, to bring your justice.
Give us humility to learn from our past,
courage to engage the present,
and resolve to participate with you in creating a world
where all your children have what they need
and none are overlooked or undervalued.
God, your justice comes both through us and despite us.
   May it come through us. 

We pray for peace.
Lord, hear our prayer.
God, your peace is not the absence of conflict
or the silencing of pain or anger,
but the tangible harmony of our interdependence.
Use this moment, Lord, to bring your peace.
Turn us toward our essential belonging to you and each other,
belonging that comes from you and cannot be removed by us.
Increase our reverence for each other,
for it is in one another that Christ meets us.
God, your peace comes both through us and despite us.
   May it come through us. 

We pray for healing.
Lord, hear our prayer.
God, your healing does not return things to how they were,
it brings things into how they are meant to be.
Use this moment, Lord, to bring your healing.
For the courage of the witnesses, we give you thanks.
For the witness of the courageous, we give you thanks.
For all those through whom your healing comes:
the flower planters and soul tenders,
the music makers and speech givers,
the heart holders and art creators,
the place-sharers and poem weavers,
the child raisers and story cherishers,
and for the neighbors who will continue to neighbor one another –
long after this trial ends, and the cameras pack up, and the media goes home –
we give you thanks, O God.
God, your healing comes both through us and despite us.
   May it come through us. 

The nation waits for a verdict,
but the verdict has already been rendered:
We walk by fear and not by love.
We allow injustice, brokenness and despair to rule us.
And
This world is made in love, claimed for love and moving toward love.
The Holy Spirit’s work of healing is relentless and cannot be stopped.
God’s justice and peace prevail.
So as those who cry out and join in,
we wait.

God’s love comes both through us and despite us.
   May it come through us.

We believe. O Lord,
   help our unbelief.

Amen.

 

by Kara K. Root, pastor at Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis

https://pres-outlook.org/2021/04/litany-for-a-verdict/

Lament. Return. Remember. Rest.

Psalm 4

There’s a desperate vigilance and awful heaviness about the world at the moment. I think even if we aren’t paying super close attention many of us are still feeling it. A shared, psychic weight to the world. Even as we are hurriedly vaccinating people, the case numbers are rising toward a global highest point, and what, another mass shooting? Wasn’t there just one yesterday? The pressure feels audible, the tension palpable. So many people I know have commented on how utterly exhausted they feel. But at the same time our sleep is fraught and spotty. We are alert, restless and exhausted.

It feels like we’re given two options, and neither one is tenable. One is to watch every minute of the Derek Chauvin trial, read everything we can about little Adam Toledo, break apart the video of Daunte White’s killing, stay up late watching national guardsmen teargassing journalists a few miles away, track the vaccinations, stay on top of the politicians, check in on the suffering children at the border and the conflicts simmering all over the globe, worry about the threat of climate change, and compulsively wonder what more we should be doing. And if we are not out marching or speaking out then we are following those who are because we need to feel like we are doing something, like something is being done that can stop all this, or fix all this, and Lord, it’s all so awful how can we ignore even a moment of it? 

 

The other option we’re given is to go numb and limp, to shut it all off and block it all out and take in nothing but our own lives and desires, and maybe we occasionally feel a teeny bit guilty, but that’s better than helplessness and rage with no outlet. And sometimes we just bounce wildly back and forth between the two.

 

But there is a third way. And I think this Psalm gives it to us. 

 

It starts with lament. When the tears feel close and sorrow claws up the throat, and anger and rage are right here next to us we aim all of that right at God.  We moderns are pretty scared of lament in church, preferring the more palatable confession, but lament is in integral part of our faith. And this particular lament of David, we know, was sung all the voices crying out together, Answer me when I call to you God! How long will this go on?

 

There is a mystery word here that shows up 71 times in the psalms and twice in Habakkuk, Selah. Because it’s very close to the word for pause and also the word for praise, throughout the millennia it has come to be seen as a kind of mix of both - pause and praise God. Take a beat, and turn your attention back to God.

So built right into the song is a pause, everyone stopping, silent, shifting focus back to God. And then continuing on in unison.

 

So hear the Psalm again, in this paraphrase:

 

O God who knows me, answer me when I call!

When I have been confined in anxious misery before, 

you opened up expansive space for me to breathe, 

please hear me now, give me your grace again.

 

How long will our humanity be torn down? 

How long will lies be elevated, 

and people spread vitriol, delusion and exploitation?

 

Stop.

Take a beat. 

Turn your attention to God.

 

God has drawn us to God’s own being, 

those who seek God are claimed for God’s purposes.  

When you are worked up and distraught, 

don’t turn to division and blame; don’t tear down others.  

Instead, sit in it with God, 

be silent in a restful space. 

 

Stop.

Take a beat.

Turn your attention to God.

 

Lay everything before the Almighty in vulnerable honesty, 

and trust God with it. 

So many people say, “There is no goodness that we can see!” 

Oh Lord, let your love and truth shine on all of us!

You have filled me with deep joy, 

more happiness than when they have all the wealth 

and satisfaction they desire.

 

I won't stay up babysitting the world,

I will sleep soundly and deeply

because this your world, God, 

and my life is held in you.

 

 

Lament. Return to God. Then remember.  

This earth is heavy with sorrow and need. 

And at the same time this planet turns slowly in the utter silence of the vast cosmos, nestled amongst the great lights of burning stars, held in orbit to the sun. And within this planet, while one hemisphere is nestling down in winter hibernation, here the green shoots push up through the soil, and trees are awakening. And all over the planet new babies are born, and broken relationships are mended, and people are tending to each other, and there is laughter and joy, and tears of deep connection, and healing, and hope, and love remains the most powerful force in the universe, always at work, always, always, always.

 

But oh! We forget. So quickly, without realizing it, even when we’re trying to remember. 

This happened to me yesterday. I was remembering, and then I was completely derailed when I read in a commentary from 2012 (Shauna Hannan, Working Preacher) that in the first verse, where it says, you made space for me it originally alluded to “release from a tight noose at the neck,” the opposite of the word for when I was in distress, which is used for “a constricted larynx.”  And I stopped hearing the promise of God’s deliverance and the invitation to trust, and all I could see was that God did not make space for George Floyd when he was in distress, and how could I preach this text in the shadow of that? 

All day long I spun out, all day long I fixated on my words, the overwhelming sorrow and brokenness of this world, the pain of our city.  I did not lament, I obsessed. I did not take my anguish and sit silently before God, I logged onto the news and social media and started babysitting the world again. I did not come in honesty before the Almighty. I got caught up in blame and frustration in the country, and became controlling and edgy in my own house. 

And then I looked at the clock and realized it was time for evening prayers. So I sat down on zoom with those who meet together every evening.  

Stop. Take a beat. Turn your attention to God.

 

And suddenly there was joy, in sharing about a day spent with happy little cousins, and our delight and horror at a ridiculous amount of accidentally purchased bananas. Suddenly God was meeting us right there in our humanity, in our need, in our coming together. Then one of them repeated back to me that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and I was invited back into trust.

 

We are meant to stand with one another and for each other, to hold each other and fight for life for each other and us all, for this whole beautiful and broken world. We are made for love. God calls us into God’s purposes; we are drawn into God’s own being. We get to share in the love God is already, always bringing.

 

And then, at the end of the day, we sleep.  

To sleep is to yield to our most essential humanity – our creaturliness, our need, our soft, vulnerable, universal humanity, the warm breath, closed eyes, heavy limbs of us. 

Sleep is trust. It is pure being. Sleep is admitting we are not God. Sleep returns us to the humility of our own humanity. Only from here can we be fully in this life, with and for each other. 

 

We belong to God. This is God’s world. God made it. God came into it to bear our suffering and share our pain and take on our death so that death cannot, will not define us, will not have the last word, will not prevail. 

So stop. Take a beat. Turn your attention to God.

 

There is a poem by Pablo Neruda that I love, called Keeping Quiet. It goes like this:

 

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

 

For once on the face of the earth

let’s not speak in any language,

let’s stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

 

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines,

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

 

Fishermen in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would look at his hurt hands.

 

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victory with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

 

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about;

I want no truck with death.

 

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with 

death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.

 

Now I’ll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.” 

 

Christ has risen. He is risen indeed. 

Death does not get the last word, 

and love is the most powerful force in the universe. 

May we join in fully. 

And may we sleep soundly.

Amen.

 

The Never-Ending Story

Mark 15:42-16:8

A year ago Easter we were a little shell-shocked to still be in a pandemic, and I, for one, felt certain it was going to be the one and only online Easter.  Alleluia! 

But here we are again, a year later, and we’ve changed, the world has changed, and also we’re still stuck inside an agonizing moment that keeps on going.  And I, for one, come to this moment ready to hear the good news of the gospel on Easter, hoping it has something to say to us right now that might pull us out of this never-ending Lent. So let's see what it has for us.

First of all, have you ever notice that there is Sabbath in the Easter story? There is. Right there in the middle of it, interrupting the incarnate God living and dying and rising again, a sabbath day.  Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell us about it, they all make sure we know that everyone and everything pauses for the sabbath before resuming again on Sunday. This strikes me so profoundly strange and wonderful. 
 
I suppose it never occurred to me to wonder before why Jesus waited a day in death to rise again on the third day.  Why not the next day? Luther says it’s because Jesus was keeping the sabbath in the grave. The son of God, the son of a Jewish carpenter, dead and buried, sabbathing in the cemetery.
 
In the midst of life and death, when all that was is gone and all that will be has not yet unfolded, when God is doing the most significant thing God has done since speaking the world into being, it all just stops.  Right in the middle of the thing that will change the whole planet to “before” and “after,” the pause button is hit.  
 
It seems to me this is the point in any world-altering project when it’s all hands on deck, nobody stopping, nobody sleeping, a beating heart of adrenaline-hyped project managers and bleary-eyed, caffeinated engineers making sure it all comes off as it’s meant to. But instead, they leave the building and turn out the lights. They go home and crawl into bed and spend an entire day on purpose not doing it. 
 
At the high point of the death and resurrection drama, it all grinds to a quiet halt, candles are lit, stories are told, prayers and naps and holding one another and reading alone and recalling the faithfulness of God and practicing the gratitude of belovedness happen. A sabbath day.  
 
My friend Phil shares that in the hours after the 9-11 attack, in the midst of the world in chaos - people leaving work, stores closing, all bets off - he noticed cars pulling into the parking lot of the church he pastors.  At first he thought there was a need or emergency, but the people got out of their cars, headed inside and tromped down the stairs to the basement, where they began setting up folding chairs and brewing coffee, because it was time for AA. And you go to AA, no matter what else is happening in the world. You come together to remember who you are and who is in charge of the whole thing. 
 
Even in the midst of a world-altering moment, a moment that will become “before” and “after” for the whole world, you are already living your own after and your before has happened.  You were dead in your addiction, in the grips of something that took away your life before, and now you live after.  And the freedom of life afterrequires practice, it needs a fulcrum around which the rest can balance, a practice that helps you remember that all life is already only in the grace of a loving God.
 
So there is a sabbath day in the Easter story. 
Because God is still God. And we are not God. And no matter what happens, you do this thing that reminds you who you are and who is in charge of the whole thing. And you do it because all life is already only in the grace of a loving God. So even though God was absent, and all hope had died, they still rested as God commanded.
 
Then, when the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.
 
I wonder, they said, who will roll away the stone?
They went not knowing. They went facing an obstacle too great for them, but they went anyway, not knowing how it would work out. They went to grieve, to care for Jesus’ body, to figure out how to move on without him, to let him go.  Who will roll away the stone? The barrier that symbolizes death - the finality of it, the judgment of it, the permanence of it.  Depression, division, hatred, what are the stones in our lives and world that we cannot roll away?
 
When they got there the stone was gone, the obstacle was no longer an obstacle, indeed, death was no longer death!  The strange man dressed in white told them Jesus was not there but was alive, and go tell the rest of the group that Jesus would meet them in Galilee, just as he said, already there, awaiting you. 
 
I will never forget when my friend Lisa said to me, “That’s like saying, ‘Tell them I’ll meet them in St. Louis Park.’”  Nowhere important, nowhere fancy or powerful, just where their ordinary life happens. Tell them I’ll meet them back in the neighborhood. Tell them I’m waiting for them in the day to day, where I said I would be. 
 
This is how God saves the world. Not through powerful leaders, influential networks and proper channels, but in the regular, everyday lives of ordinary, everyday people. You. Me. If you want to see Jesus, look around your life. He’s already there, up to something.

So did the women go back then and tell everyone joyfully what God was up to? No, they didn’t take the news well.  Who would? Death we get, letting go we can do. But resurrection? We’ve got nothing for that. So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. 

And it ends like this. In fact, the whole book of Mark ends this way. If you open your bible and look you will see that there is more there, to be sure, but scholars agree that what comes next was added later, because people couldn’t bear ending the story this way, a dissonant note in a song left hanging in the air, just begging for someone to walk across the room and play the chord that resolves it.
 
But nobody accepts resurrection at first, not anywhere in the gospels. Nobody can get their head around life coming after death. It’s not possible, it’s not believable, and to pretend it makes sense and they just took it in stride diminishes it, reduces it into an idea instead of an encounter. Besides, the risen savior is a song that keeps going. There is no end.
 

So the discombobulated and bewildered women flee in terror and say nothing to anyone, and the narrative of Jesus Christ the risen Lord stops right in the middle. 
 
Because it’s still the middle.  We are in this story too; it lives on in us.  We find the Risen Jesus out there in our own Galilees, in our homes and families and places of work and neighborhoods, alongside one another in our struggles and our fears, wrapped up in the lives of friends we love and strangers we run into. Jesus is here, among us.  God is always here, always at work, always moving stones too heavy for us to move, always turning death, impossibility and nothingness toward life and love.  
 
There is a lot right now that feels heavy and impossible.  There is a lot that feels hard and confusing.  So taking a page from our Easter story, here’s what we’ll do:

 We’ll show up in the places of death with our spices and our plans, ready to face the obstacles in front of us without knowing how they will be resolved. 
 
And even when the world is ending, or the pandemic isn’t, we will rest. No matter how big things feel or how long they go on, or how strongly they demand our fervent attention, especially then, we’ll rest.  We’ll let ourselves be put back into the story, where God is God and we are God’s children. Because all life is already only in the grace of a loving God. And life run by love requires practice. And we need reminding who is in charge of the whole thing. 
 
And when we’re afraid and confused, and can’t wrap our heads around the possibility of transformation, when we freak out and flee and forget momentarily to do the part we’ve been given to do, that doesn’t slow the story down at all, it just keeps it real.  

Because the story keeps going, and pretending to resolve what isn’t resolved doesn’t make the truth any less true: that God is relentlessly bringing life, life that death itself cannot stop. And we are part of that; our ordinary little lives join in that. Even now, every now.  God is breathing new life into the world.  
 
There was a before, and this is the after: Christ is risen. 

And he’s waiting for us right where he said he’d be. 
Amen.