Exhaustion and What to Do (or Not Do) About It

 

Psalm 107:1-9, (or check out the whole psalm if you want), Matthew 11:28-30

This is the Sunday one year ago that we suddenly suspended in-person worship.  A year ago we were hunting for toilet paper and hand sanitizer and stockpiling dried beans.  A year ago my kids came home early Thursday and didn’t go back to school on Friday. A month later my daughter and I walked through the spooky empty halls to clean out her locker, glimpsing half-finished projects scattered in abandoned classrooms and discarded boots and mittens lying on shelves.  
 
Imagine if you could have told us then what we were in for. 

I feel exhausted, emotionally, psychologically.  Things take more mental effort, my memory feels a bit feeble, and I have energy for fewer things in a day.  This is what we talked about 10 months ago as visiting a new culture, pandemic culture, and how culture shock and adjusting to a new culture, always calculating and modifying, is so draining.  It’s like we’re buffering, or continuously searching for a wifi connection, with what in our house we call “the spinning wheel of death” on our screens.  We may not be accomplishing a whole lot, but our battery is draining precipitously.  And while we’re constantly adapting the exhaustion is compounding. For. A. Year.  I’ve had a year of thin-skinned irritability.
 
What is a good life and how do I live it when I am exhausted? 
Who is God and what is God up to when we are exhausted?
 
Our scriptures today say something about both of these.  
I love Psalm 107. This is just a small part of it. It’s made up of about six different vignettes that describe God’s salvation coming in just the way people need it, God coming in and saving them exactly how they need saving.  This is who God is and what is God up to, the Psalmist says.  Several years ago a few of us wrote our own versions – here are two of the LNPC vignettes:
 
Some were overwhelmed with grief for a brother’s loss of his son
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble 
and God delivered them from their distress
God quieted them to hear their brother, and clarified their need to be present for their brother.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
For God’s wonderful works to humankind.
            For God covers our time being with one another in suffering with grace and tears, joy and gratitude.
 
Some of them had confusion about their “call,” their vocation, and had trouble recognizing their own gifts and letting themselves be used by God 
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble 
and God delivered them from their distress
God comforted them through friends, and directed them through mentors, and gave them patience on the unfolding journey
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
For God’s wonderful works to humankind.
For God brings peace in the midst of the journey.
 
We cry out to God in our trouble and God delivers us from our distress. And we thank God for God’s steadfast love, and wonderful works to humankind.  That is who God is and what God does.  Like Theresa said last week with the dead bones who can’t reanimate themselves – they can’t even cry out or thank God like this Psalm, and still – God does this, God brings salvation, breathes life into our places of death. It’s what God does.
 
Come to me, Jesus said, all you who are weary. Come to me and I will give you rest. The Bible often uses “the rest of God” as a synonym for “salvation.” Rest is what being saved feels like.  Rest is being saved.  


Last year, in the middle of Lent when we were plunged into this pandemic we were talking about the way of fear, that asks “what if…” and the way of God, where hope answers, “even if…” 

Worry is practicing fear. Worry trains us to fear by saying over and over again, “What if… what if… what if…”  And this year has been serving us worry opportunities on a platter, daily, nearly moment to moment. We don’t have to search for what if’s… we’re drowning in chances to practice fear.  

But rest, rest is practicing trust. Rest trains us to trust by saying over and over again, “Even if… Even if… Even if…”  When we rest we step out of the vigilance, we put down the weird belief that our worry and our work can somehow guarantee our security, protect our future, ensure our own safety or stability. When we rest, we practice trusting God to do what God does. We turn back to God, who does the saving. 
 
The way of God is the way of rest. Taking Jesus’ yoke means joining Jesus, and carrying what he carries into the world: the embodiment of complete belonging to God and belonging to others.  It is a restful, easy way, because it is the way we are designed to live:
where "the other" is not threat, object or burden, but my sibling, my neighbor, my friend.  Where there is enough and it is meant to be shared.  Where love has the first and final word.  Where the end it is all heading toward is wholeness and connection.  

Whether we forget or not, God's redemption and love is already and always happening.  We trust this. We live always into, out of, and toward, this reality.  Rest reminds us whose we are and who we are.  
 
It’s is easy to think everything will be all right when we feel alright. And when we don't feel alright, when the things that felt foundational get taken away, it’s easy to feel like we won’t be ok. We won’t be ok, so how dare we rest until we are? How dare we stop, how dare we play? How dare we waste time, squander energy, on anything other than saving ourselves or fixing what’s broken in the world?
 
In this mostly stay at home life, we have so overruled rest with worry and work – or the worry that we should be working – that when this thing ends, (and it is ending, you guys), we are going to feel pressure to go harder than ever, to make up for lost time. It will be more difficult than ever to rest. We will think we don’t deserve it. We will assume we’ve just spent a year “resting,” for pete’s sake! So we had better get out there and get going!
 
We tell ourselves rest is reward to be bestowed on those who’ve earned it, or claimed by those who are sick, or selfish, or simply too exhausted to go on.
 
In truth rest is returning to our deepest, most vulnerable selves, made in the image of a God who rests and who wove rest into the fabric of creation.  A God who tells us in the top ten rules for life that resting, regularly, on purpose, no matter what, is essential.  That rest is how we come back to our belonging to God and each other. It’s how we practice trusting. It’s they way we remember whose are and who we are.  Sabbath says to us: you are accepted, just as you are. You belong already.  This world is held in God’s love.  So once a week power it all down, unplug and turn it off.  Don’t seek anything, perform anything, produce anything. Spend a day accepting being accepted. Receive God’s grace.
 
So we start now. Here.  We get back to practicing Sabbath, which is a way of saying, resting proactively, preemptively, intentionally and regularly. Even if, we stop.  No matter what, we stop.  In the midst of, despite, and nevertheless, we regularly, without excuse or worldly justification, stop.  Because more important than our doing is our being. 
 
We are called to join in God’s work of justice, healing and hope from our grounding in rest.  There will never not be work to do. But not by weary people strapped to a yoke of fear. Not from heavily burdened people, dragging a load of pressure to make up for lost time, caught up in cycles of worry and anxiety, guilt and shame for not doing enough, exhausted and utterly spent, but forcing themselves to rally anyway. We must turn off.  So that we can turn back on and tune back in.
 
We are being set free.  Always.  We are being saved. This world is being saved.  That’s what God does. This God always acts from despair to bring hope, from brokenness to bring wholeness, from impossibility to bring newness.  We get to be part of this.
 
And so perhaps our vignette today would be:
 
Some found themselves a year into a disorienting pandemic. A time filled with terror, worry, boredom and isolation. It took from them all normalcy, exposed to them the vast landscape of injustice and pain in their nation, opened up deep wells of grief, and left them suspended in ongoing unknown that went on, and on, and on.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble 
and God delivered them from their distress
God met them in their exhaustion with grace, and gave them the gift of rest, returning them to trust. Jesus invited them to live in his life, his love in and for the world that is claimed by God, a life that begins in rest.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
For God’s wonderful works to humankind.
For the One who made us for life, and joins us in this life, meets us in rest, and draws us ever more deeply into life. 
 
Amen.

Sin, Salvation, and the All-Encompassing Belongingness of God

If my week had a theme, it might be noticing sin.

This week I’ve been forced to own up to the way I let a relationship go and chose avoidance and dishonesty over facing challenging conversations.  And in coming to terms with it, I have had to see that, compounded by years of silence, honestly dealing with it will cause more hurt, and the only way out of it with integrity is to go ahead and tell the truth anyway.

It’s uncomfortable to see sin, both past and present, in my life, and it feels awful, but also good to see it so I can deal with it.

Sin is when we fail to live consistent with who we are made and called to be – when we violate our belonging to God and one another.  It can be personal and internal – letting go of anger, dealing with pride, or self-judgment, and we’re stuck to wrestle inside ourselves with our failure to live consistent with who we are made and called to be. It an be between us, words and actions that hurt or degrade people, that violate the bond we’re meant to share as human beings and act as though we are against instead of for one another.  But most often, it’s both.

This country has a deep sin, our original sin, the sin of racism, which means first of all categorizing people as fundamentally different by the color of their skin, and then labeling some people better, more human or more worthy, and other people worse, less human and less worthy. Then that belief is built into a whole society’s structures and functions so that consistently, both overtly and subtly, for generations, some people are treated as less than and other people as more than, rooting this lie deep inside all people.

Right now our nation is noticing its sin.  

By virtue of the sin itself some people have always noticed it, because it affects their every waking day and it can never be escaped, and others, because they don’t often feel directly impacted by it, can ignore it and look away for weeks, years, even decades at a time.

But right now we cannot look away. 

And it feels awful to be staring at this thing together, this sin at our core, both past and present, but I imagine for those who among us who have stared at it their whole life, it feels good too, to see so many other faces staring at it at once. 

Right now most of this country is looking at the same ugliness and evil and calling a thing what it is. This is a huge part of God’s salvation.

Calling a thing what it is, naming your own story, your own culpability, your own participation in evil, recognizing and saying aloud the way Sin works in you and through you is the only way to salvation. 

We call it Confession or Repentance. 

It’s what comes before forgiveness, but after the grace of God.

God’s grace always comes first. God’s grace is where it starts. 
We begin in abundance and enough for all, harmony and unity in crazy wild and vibrant diversity, all people sharing together in caring for this gorgeous earth and its creatures, all of us made more human by our shared humanity, learning and growing alongside one another. The Way of God is our beginning and our end. 
Anything that takes us away from that is a lie.

We live the lie every day in our country. 

Whether we feel the sting of it in the moment or not, we participate in that lie. Just to illustrate this lie at work, I live in the neighborhood where Philando Castile was shot. He had been pulled over by police 52 times in 13 years. Want to know how many times I have been pulled over in my 26 years of driving? Four.  I was speeding all four times. Two of them I was let off with a warning. As a white woman, I have always felt safe with the police, confident that they are there to protect me. And if I get in trouble it’s because I deserve it, and they are upholding laws that keep us all safe.

Respect, kindness, mutuality, safety - these should not be a privilege. 

We belong to God and we belong to each other.  

Anything less than that is violence to the image of God.

But here is part of the trap – the way of fear, the sin of division, and devaluing each other is so ingrained, that we operate out of that without thinking, without noticing. 

In longing for justice for all, we could settle for revenge against some.  

And wouldn’t it feel so good to hate haters with a more hate than they hate? 

But choosing which people to hate has never been and will never be the answer. And just trying really hard to be good and right and never mess up or hurt others isn’t the answer either (not least of all because it is impossible).

The answer is facing our sin with honesty, letting the sorrow and horror of it wash over us, stepping into our brokenness alongside each other is the place God can meet us and heal us.  In Jesus Christ God so loved the world that God plunged right in alongside and with us into all of it, calling all people children of God, calling all people back to God.  And taking on all sin and evil and division into his very self, God-with-us let it take his life, and then came back to say love is stronger than death. In Christ's complete connection to God and each other, we find the belonging that sets us free to truly live.

Our Psalm today has a repeated refrain: God’s steadfast love endures forever.

Steadfast love is one of the ways the Hebrew word Hesed is translated. Remember Hesed? It was in the story of Ruth and Naomi that we told years ago, and it is all throughout the bible. It’s translated many ways, love, kindness, lovingkindness, mercy, loyalty, favor, devotion, goodness – it captures something of the inner connection and commitment God has toward us, so for years, we’ve called hesed: belongingness.

The belongingness of God is eternal. Nobody is outside of it; nobody gets to put others outside of it. It lasts forever. 

Human beings who have been judged less than and treated as unworthy, they belong to God and belong us.  

Human beings who have grown up sheltered from the suffering of others, benefiting where others don’t, they belong to God and belong to us.  

Human beings who are so filled with hatred and violence they forget their own humanity and purposely dehumanize others, they belong to God and belong to us.  (So then is incumbent on human beings who long for justice and peace not to agree with them and let them off the hook by dismissing them as monsters when they act inhumanely, but instead to call them back to their humanity and hold them accountable it).

The way of fear that says there is only so much belonging to go around – that if we give it to some we must withhold it from others. But the belongingness of God is neverending – eternal – constantly replenishing, spreading and multiplying, claiming us back to the love we came from, the love we are here for, the belongingness we are meant to live into and out of alongside each other.

It doesn’t let us go when we hurt each other, or when we believe the lie about others or about ourselves. Instead it calls us back to confession and repentence, the place where salvation can meet us.

The salvation of God, often called in scripture, the rest of God, is returning to our core, belongingness, being brought back into harmony with God, ourselves and each other, where our souls can be at rest in trust, and we can live consistently with who we are and whose we are. 

Our Psalm today tells of God’s specific salvation, restoration of belongingness, felt right where people needed it most – in their sin and its terrible consequences, in times terror and helplessness, when they were lost or alone, or had reached the end of their capacity to adapt or cope in a crisis.  Each vignette is a story of people who confessed, who recognized their situation – noticed it and cried out to God- And God saved them.

Salvation comes as deliverance from what is holding us captive, wholeness where we are broken, direction where we are lost, and connection where we are severed. It comes as hope in despair and new beginnings after bitter endings.  As this Psalm illustrates, the salvation of God always brings to us just what will heal us – even if it isn’t necessarily what we think it should be – because it is always about restoring us to belongingness in God, and that is not always comfortable, or easy, or fun.  

And it doesn’t mean dead people come back (yet), fortunes are reversed, the world is suddenly fair, or pain we’ve caused can be taken back and erased. But it means the way forward in Christ is deep and true connection to God and each other.  This is where it all began and it’s where it will end up when all is said and done.

So, as brothers and sisters in Christ, the Body of the living Christ here on earth, embodying God’s belongingness in and for the world, we are not to fear the lie that tries to mislead us, or hide us from the pain and suffering of others. 

We are not to fear the lie that says violence is stronger than love, or that hating is ok as long as you direct it at the right people. 

And we are not to fear looking into our own souls and our own actions for the evil and sin that keeps us from belongingness and withholds it from others.

We are to confess them out in the open where salvation can meet them.  

And we are to live the crazy trust that God’s abundant and neverending love and steadfast belongingness is bigger than our sin, wider than our divisions, deeper than our pain and our alienation, and higher than our human goals and aspirations.  

God’s steadfast love is eternal and beyond us, and right here next to us; it embraces and claims us, so we can see each other, listen to each other, confront each other, forgive each other, and thank the Lord for God’s steadfast love, For God’s wonderful works to humankind.

This Psalm was written to be read out, sung out, spoken by a community as a kind of call and response; it was meant to be shared by a diverse gathering of people rejoicing together.  It places them within a bigger story, the eternal belongingness of God throughout history, in the lives of those gone before and yet to come, God redeems and heals and restores. And so it becomes an invitation to honestly recount the stories of their need, and share how God has been faithful in their lives, and to name where they need salvation now, and remember God’s belongingness that holds and heals them even as they are belonging to each other in this act of sharing it all aloud.

So here is what I would share:

Some were forced to acknowledge that their own actions had wounded another.  By avoiding conflict and distress, they’d let dishonesty and division grow.  They felt ashamed and dismayed at the further hurt coming clean would cause.

Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,

And God delivered them from their distress:

God helped them look honestly at themselves, and confess to the person,

to see that forgiveness and reconciliation can only emerge when you tell the truth.

Let them thank the Lord for God’s steadfast love,

For God’s wonderful works to humankind.

For God persists in calling us to belonging,

and offers endless opportunities to make things right, even when it feels hard.

Some were watching their country in turmoil,

as deep sin and evil rose up from within and made itself known once again.

Anger, violence, sorrow and distress surrounded them,

And they felt like they were drowning in the noise of arguing and blaming, 

lamenting and shaming, calling to action and name calling,

and they longed for clarity, direction and hope.

Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,

And God delivered them from their distress:

God brought them side by side with someone in silence to lift up this nation in prayer. 

God reminded them that forgiveness and salvation can only come after confession and repentance. And God showed them stories of people facing our sin and turning toward each other in belonging.

Let them thank the Lord for God’s steadfast love,

For God’s wonderful works to humankind.

For God brings life out of death, always, and God will never stop, God’s justice will prevail.

Let all who are wise give heed to these things,

And consider the steadfast love of the Lord.
Amen.



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"For Our White Friends Desiring to be Allies"
"How To Make Fun of Nazis" 
"The Power of Non-Violent Action: South Africa and Poland" (High school curriculum)