Our Sabbath of Discomfort

Devotion for Being Apart -
June 25

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through the many devotions that have been posted on this blog 

since March 16.
 

Matthew 6:33-34 says, "But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today."

Every pastor and church I know is doing the hard work of shifting mindsets right now, out of the pull-out-all-the-stops, short-term, full-throttled approach we took when we thought this thing would go on for a few weeks, to a settle-in-and-find-sustainable-ways-to-continue mentality.

One thing our session (church board) decided in May was to not even to discuss in-person gatherings in the church building until September 1. After thinking we should get a jumpstart on figuring some things out, we've decided that decision will remain.  

This is a long season.  We will know more then than we know now.  We don't have the energy to put to hypothetical scenarios--the concrete ones in front of us are where our energy is needed - "today's trouble is enough for today." 

It's tempting to begin making plans, but there is nothing to plan for yet.  In fact, this time of year, we usually begin planning for Fall. Our worship planning team takes a retreat to plot out the next year. We talk through Advent and Christmas, and sometimes we even get through Lent and Easter in our dreaming. Not this year.  Our ordinary church life is at a forced rest - we didn't choose it; it just came.  What we had has stopped, and we are living in what we have now.

We bought a VBS curriculum a couple weeks ago designed to use online, so that we could create our own all-ages VBS together in this time. But friends, I can't lead that. And nobody on session feels called to lead it. So unless someone in the congregation steps up and says, “I really want to lead this!” - it should not happen right now. (The VBS curriculum won't expire. It can be used ANY time, in a variety of ways, even completely in-person!).  It seems perhaps don’t have energy for more than what we are doing right now. Pulling back and slowing down seems to be what people are needing. And it's what we're getting too, if we can let ourselves receive it.

 

Our congregation talks about sabbath, and learns about sabbath, and have practiced sabbath in some specific, defined ways.  But sometimes we are given a sabbath.  And perhaps right now we are meeting a need for sabbath. 

There will be a chapter after this one.  But we don’t know what it will look like or what new calling and energy will come for that.  It’s ok to live in this chapter fully, which is a week-to-week kind of existence for us all.

This is a time of sitting in discomfort. Discomfort is so uncomfortable. 

Who wants to be uncomfortable? We want to avoid or escape it.  We want to plan ahead, and to fix what's broken with everything around us right now.  Or we want to numb and tune out the discomfort with alcohol, drugs, television, video games, food, or obsessing about the people who refuse to wear masks.

But what if we didn't try to avoid or escape our sabbath of discomfort? What if we stayed right here?  What if we accepted that this is a season for sitting in discomfort.  The discomfort of limitations in where we can go and what we can do. The discomfort of facing our history and our own complicity in systemic dehumanization. The discomfort of not being able to live like the ever-future-oriented modern people we are.  The discomfort of living these awkward pandemic routines we didn't choose, for far longer than we thought we would be.  This is a season for staying here.

There is richness in allowing ourselves to be uncomfortable.  We let things germinate and heal and grow.  Even in the discomfort, this pulled-back and slowed-down pace is doing deep sabbath work in us.  It helps us to rest from what has been, and it prepares us for what will be. This is a time to stay attentive to the moment, and reflective as we do so.

I have written something like 100 devotions since pandemic life began. I first committed to writing one every day, and did that for months, then 4-5 times a week. I am pulling back from that. I will write when I have something new to say.  And I will share some of what I've already written, or point you to where they are stored on my blog, because I am finding it helpful to circle back and reread some of the work we've done earlier in this season of covid - things like learning to listen to our needs  and how it's ok to not be happy, and how every day we are making really hard choices about things that used to be simple and require no decisions at all, and how there is always grace enough for what is, not for what might be.

Sabbath is rarely comfortable. (We already knew that).  But it's good. (We know that too). Staying in the discomfort of the moment is our sabbath task right now. "God is doing something here and now that incorporates the past and will lead us into the future," remember? Let's live the season we are in.

We can do this.
 

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CONNECTING RITUAL:

 

Perhaps tonight before bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Matthew 6:33-34 says, "But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today."

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God
and God's righteousness
and all these things will be added unto you
Allelu, Alleluia.
Ask and it shall be given unto you
Seek and ye shall find
Knock and the door shall be opened unto you
Allelu, Alleluia.

God, help me live today.
Help me trust today.
Help me be present today.
Help me seek you today.
Help me live this day - the one I have, right now.
Amen.

The Lord is Come! (Aka, God's non-compliance)

To use this as a take-home service for Christmas Day, follow the red.

Isaiah 9:2-7 

Luke 2:1-20, Matthew 1:18-25

John 1:1-5

I have a stupid tree this year. It looked so great at the lot, the guy held it up and it was glorious and full, the perfect tree. We debated between two, and finally chose this one for being even more perfect than the other one.

But we got it home, and it turns out it doesn’t sit right in the tree stand. It has this thick branch too low down but hacking it off would leave a huge bald spot on the bottom so we left it on. And it was too tall, so we had to saw off the tip of the top with a meat knife and jam the star on the sticky, prickly nubs.  The lights just didn’t go on well; they are clumped in some parts and missing in others, and a few days after its arrival it became the setting of an epic stuffed animal battle so there are bent branches and still the occasional stuffed dog or hamster forgotten deep in the branches. But even if all these things were fixed, it turns out that the trunk itself has a weird bend in it, so it leans dramatically to the side no matter how much time we spend rearranging it, and we’ve spent far too much time rearranging it.

Usually this time of year I love getting up in the early morning and turning on the tree. I will sit by the fireplace, the room lit by the tree’s soft glow, and feel peaceful and hopeful.  This year I wake up and sit with my coffee glaring at this belligerent mess, brazenly slouching against my wall like it’s trying to pick a fight. I wanted to love this tree, even ironically, but I can’t muster anything but irritation for it.  It is not cooperating with my plans.

Apparently I expect Christmas to make me feel cozy, sentimental and serene. But to be honest, I’m not sure Christmas can take the pressure this year. And my tree leans defiantly in my constant sightline as an irksome reminder that things are not quite right.

Today people are going to sit around not quite perfect trees, eating not quite perfect food, opening not quite perfect gifts, having not quite perfect conversations.  And between the joyful moments of laughter and connection, for lots of reasons, lots of people will also be feeling mixed up, anxious, and sad, and then they’ll chide themselves for not being in “the Christmas spirit,” even though the weather isn’t really in the Christmas spirit either.

Christmas is not cooperating with our plans for it.

But guess what? Neither does the first Christmas, actually. 

And neither does God, almost never, in fact.

So let’s step out of a shallow dependence on holiday cheer, and into a different story, one that has very little to do with a jolly version of Christmas contentment -  God’s story of deep darkness pierced by unquenchable light, of expectations thwarted and salvation glimpsed, of love born into in a tense and weary world.

Read Isaiah 9:2-7 

Read "When the World was Dark"

Write on a bit of paper, Where do I want God to come in?  Collect and set aside.

(Read Luke 1:26-38)

We all belong to God, and we all belong to each other. This isn’t trite and shallow: a plea to “just be nice,” or a campaign slogan lying in a muddy puddle under people’s departing feet.

It is the very lifeblood of it all. 

And it looks like this: Mary, Don’t be afraid; You belong to God.  So does the whole world and everyone in it.  Because this is so, God is coming to share life with us, to set us free from everything that tells us otherwise.  And you, Mary, are going to be part of this.  Don’t worry about how it will happen; it will break every rule, because God loves to do impossible things. And because belonging to God means we belong to each other, you wont be alone  - even now, in fact, your impossibly old and undeniably pregnant relative is part of this too.

(Read Matthew 1:18-25)

And then there is Regular Joseph with his regular life, comfortably stretched out before him, predictable and planned, now suddenly shattered.  She is not mine after all, and I am not to be hers. Dear, brokenhearted Joseph, resolving to quietly, in the least harmful way, sever ties, pick up the pieces and start over. 

Don’t be afraid, Joseph. Don’t be afraid to belong to her. God is coming share life with us, to set us free from everything that divides us from God and each other. And you, Joseph, are going to be part of this. God will come as a helpless baby in need of belonging, and you are to love him as your own son.

(Read Luke 2:1-7)

A hugely pregnant Mary and a stressed out, worried Joseph make the trek to Bethlehem, one little, inconsequential family among the masses, traveling under orders of a powerful empire that dominates the people’s lives.  But when God’s celestial army assembles, instead of wiping out the oppressive enemy in the blink of an eye, it forms a giant choir, and belts out God’s persistent, undermining promise of peace on the whole earth to all who belong to God and each other, into the stunned and terrified faces of simple shepherds in a nowhere place. Don’t be afraid, the angels will joyfully holler. You are going to be part of this too! Go and see!

God doesn’t play by the same rules as you and I do. The world wants strength; God comes in weakness. The world values status and power, God chooses the ordinary and unnoticed.  The world praises shiny and slick, God prefers broken and real.  God chose to come in scandal and shame instead of honor and admiration.

Nobody in the Christmas story got to keep their armor. Their illusions about where their strength or purpose or value or identity come from have to die, because really belonging to each other means that all that separates me from God and from others has to die in me. It means all that buries my true self and yours, all that makes me feel like I have to earn my esteem or defend my worth, and all my reliance on things in the world to guarantee me security and stability, that dies.  It all gets taken away to make way for the real. Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Magi, all of them get reduced to their simple humanity before they are brought into the Kingdom of God with the words, Now Don’t be afraid!

(Read Luke 2:8-20)

A different story is unfolding, even now, within and through your life, this life, this world. In this reality, everything seems upside down; shepherds become preachers and virgins are mothers, and in a dark and smelly stable, with no doctor or place for them in the inn, the God of the universe lays aside invincibility to be born as a defenseless human baby.

  

The Kingdom of God is here, grown up Jesus will later say, It’s right here. Among us, within us, between us. Hidden and backwards, it comes in weakness, asking us to let go of all that we use to protect ourselves from our most basic humanity and divide us from each other. God’s Kingdom is seen when we step out of our strength and stand with someone else in their brokenness. When we name our own brokenness and need and let someone stand with us. That’s where Jesus already is, already has been, always will be. That’s where we can feel that primal and permanent belonging, to God and to each other, that we were made for and are returning to.

Sometimes we call it love.  And nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Darkness is real, but Love is the deepest reality and the final word.

(Take out the papers you wrote at the beginning. Read them one at a time, For each one, say, "God is with us in this."  Or, "Into ______ God has come.  Response: God is with us.")

Right into the very mess of it, God comes. 

Into a tense and weary world braced for worse, God comes, thwarting expectations and upsetting plans, threatening power with undermining peace, and piercing the darkness with unquenchable light. 

This is the story you belong to. 

Now, don’t be afraid.

Amen.