Can't seem to get it right

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 5

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

Romans 7:15-25

Paul's letter just got awkward.  The renowned teacher has been talking about God, and the church, and big ideas about faith, and now he’s suddenly talking about himself. But he’s not saying things he's proud of, he’s talking about what he’s not proud of – where he feels helpless or lost.
It’s a little too personal, like he’s had one too many, and the deep down feelings are coming up and, we want to say, Paul, dude, it’s ok, and try to get him back on track to with the big ideas. Or tell him to save it for his therapist’s office.  Besides, instead of good news, this kind of feels like bad news.  Or like he’s telling us this bad news to set us up for some good news, but we’re clearly not there yet.  It’s uncomfortable to stop here. Let’s get to the gospel!

But one thing we Presbyterians believe about scripture is that it’s all gospel - It’s all good news, even the “bad news.” Each time we open the bible, God can speak truth to us.
So we’re sticking here today with Paul’s personal lament about knowing the difference between good and evil, and even wanting to choose good, but watching himself choose evil anyway.  An inner battle between sin and the law.

Just before this part, Paul explains that the law of God is good – it shows us how God designed human life to work best, connected to God and each other, so it’s a gift to us. But once we know, we are also suddenly aware of how often we choose not to live that way.

It was easier not to know right from wrong, just to be selfish or ignorant of the ways we contribute to disconnection and brokenness.  Doing harm to ourselves and others because we didn’t know better, feels better than realizing all the harm we’ve done.  And worst of all is knowing, and continuing to do it anyway.

And once we start to have this awareness, we often look back at our previous self, or at those who are where we were, and feel disgust or contempt.  How could we have believed what we did, done what we did, said what we did?

I think about this when it comes to language.  Imagine we’ve just learned that a word or phrase we’ve used a lot is racist, which is to say, it contributes to brokenness and disconnection.  First of all, with that new awareness comes shame and regret, for having used the word.  Now we have the law, in other words, we know this phrase is bad and we add it to the list of words we should not use.  This is a helpful list, it guides us toward respect for others, so we are on board with the law.  We can see how life would be better if everyone followed the law and avoided the words on the list.

Now having been given the law, we are awake, and aware in a way we were not before. So when we hear other people use the word or phrase we know should not be used we get upset, angry.  We tell them they should not use that word or phrase.  They, perhaps, are not under the law yet, have not been converted to see how that word or phrase causes harm, so they tell us to back off and mind our own business, they can talk however they want.  Well, that makes us even madder. So mad, in fact, that we call them some words and phrases off that list.  But that’s ok, because they don’t deserve respect because they are refusing to show it.
Now we are trapped right back in sin  - only this time, we are contributing to brokenness and division knowing better.

Or to bring it closer to home, I know how I want to treat my children, I have read all the books and articles that give me clear guidance for the parenting I believe in and choose to practice. But in the moment of flared tempers, or exhaustion, or frustration, all that goes out the window.  And I can see myself behaving in ways I absolutely do not believe in.  O wretched mom that I am!

Knowing what is wrong isn’t enough to keep us from doing wrong. The law itself can’t set us free. In fact, it first makes us more miserable.  Now, having this second, awakened self within me, I can turn and look at the yelling self and say, What are you doing? This is not how you should be acting! And that feels awful.

We are not slaves to sin anymore – we are not helpless to those urges that are self-serving or divisive, we are not ignorant of our behavior and its impact.  We agree the law is good! We delight in the ideals we stand for – that everyone would be upheld and respected, and we could work together and listen to each other. Of course this is how we want to live, we say.  But that doesn’t mean we do it.

The law can’t save us, Paul says. In other words, awareness, being woke, knowing what’s right, recognizing the difference between good and evil, this doesn’t keep us from doing evil. It can’t ultimately fix what’s broken.
The law is good and necessary, but it also creates one more thing we can become a slave to.  We go around policing each other, and living in harsh judgment of ourselves, thinking change can come from just more knowledge and insight.  Of course knowledge and insight are important – they move us forward. But the place we’re moved to first is a greater awareness of our sin, of the ways we are trapped. The law illuminates our need for something beyond us to save us, because, wow, it’s all so much worse than we realized.

The big good news is coming in the next part of this letter, but the little good news of this part is that if you feel hopeless because you’ve done so much work and learning, and tried to change, and keep feeling stuck, that’s normal. It’s actually good. You are actually on the way of transformation.  We, as a nation, in a new reckoning with our history and systemic racism, are on the way of transformation.  People starting AA, facing their addiction, are on the way of transformation.
Awareness of how bad it is, and how trapped we are in repeating the cycles of destruction or dehumanization again and again, even generation after generation, is part of how we are set free.

And here Paul models for us what we can do with that: We can confess it. We can repent of it.  We no longer say, “I didn’t know!” Instead, we say, “I knew, and I did it anyway.”  We can speak boldly of our sorrow and shame; we can claim our guilt as part of our story.  We don’t pretend we are perfect, or even enslave ourselves to the quest to be perfect. We confess our brokenness. We draw closer to the pain instead of trying to flee or fix it. We let ourselves say the deep down feelings that are coming up; we tell the uncomfortable truth.

This Christian life is a life of deep honesty.  And the hardest things to be honest about are not the things we did by accident. They’re the times we hurt others on purpose, or went against what we believe, or lied to protect our reputation, or turned away from someone instead of acting for them.

So instead of pretending we don’t need saving, and covering up or making excuses for the brokenness and division we contribute to, we can face it and tell the truth about it.
And instead of thinking the law can save us, we can admit how hard it is to realize how very far away we are from the goal, and how trapped we feel by the ever-increasing list of rules for doing it right, and how it can even can make more judgmental of others and ourselves.

In other words, instead of avoiding doing what’s right, or obsessing about doing it right, we confess. We repent.  We tell the truth about it and grieve it. We join Paul in the discomfort, and let ourselves feel how hard all this is.  And we boldly acknowledge that we need someone from outside this mess to save us.  Wretched person that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?  Paul says. Then his outrageous and hopeful whiplash declaration, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Hear the good news: We can't get it right.
Amen.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to 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:

A good way to end the day might be with an adaptation of the prayer of confession from worship:

God, I pause at the end of this day
to let my awareness catch up with me.
I can see the sin and brokenness within me.
I don't turn away, but welcome that awareness now,
and name now those places in us me, where I long for your healing and wholeness...

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy. 

And God, as I think about my relationships, with those close to me, and those I don’t know so well, I welcome awareness of the sin and brokenness between us.
Into all the ways I act as though we do not belong to each other, bring your healing and wholeness, especially....

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.

God, I welcome awareness of the sin and brokenness around me. I lift up those places in my community, my country and your world, where I long for your healing and wholeness, especially....

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.

Hold me in your forgiveness.
Speak to me your peace.
Rest me in your grace. 

Amen.

Turkey tracks, monkey mind, and other places to glimpse God

Matthew 6:24-34

On the church retreat last weekend Maisy and I went for a walk through the snowy woods.  We saw all sorts of tracks in the snow – deer, mice, turkeys (which look like big arrows pointing in the way somewhere).  We spotted Jen and Brian, and little Ava sitting atop Brian’s shoulders grasping his head like the world’s cutest smiling hat.  

When we had nearly returned to the lodge, we passed a small red squirrel, sitting in the snow, gnawing on an acorn.  It was only about 6 feet away from us, and didn’t seem bothered as we came near.  Suddenly it looked up from its work and noticed us. It’s animal instinct must have kicked in, because it made to run, only instead of dashing across the vast empty field away from us, it must have made a quick calculation about the single tree, a mere two feet from where we stood, and ran toward us instead. A second after it landed on the backside of the trunk, its little tufted, squirrelly face suddenly peeked around the tree, right at our faces and jerked back into hiding. Maisy and I were shocked and delighted and started to laugh. Just a few seconds later, it peeked out the other side of the tree, as if to see if we were still there, and we doubled over.  It’s tiny face was arm’s reach away. We weren’t just out observing nature, we were being met by it – interacting with this other species who was interacting with us. After a minute or two, the squirrel dashed up the tree onto a branch and stared warily down at us as we continued our walk, feeling light and joyful.

On that retreat (our guest speaker) Phil said that all Christian disciplines are designed to bring us back into the love and connection of God  - they help us remember and experience what’s true. Then he called out two in particular, that are readily accessible, that we can do anytime, each one like a shortcut back to the Kingdom of God when we’ve veered off course into the Way of Fear.  These two practices are forgiveness and gratitude. 

Forgiveness deals with the past; it’s the remedy for regret. Gratitude resets the future; it’s like civil disobedience to worry.  This week, as we’re heading into the official holiday of gratitude, we’ll look at worry and gratitude.  We’ll save the talk about regret and forgiveness for next weekend, after Thanksgiving is over. 

But, as Phil pointed out, both forgiveness and gratitude begin with seeing and accepting things as they are.

“Here is what is.” They both say. “This is what’s true.” 

They don’t cover up or smooth over, and they don’t deny or avoid.  

Forgiveness and gratitude both see and accept what is.

The only place God can meet us, or that we can even actually live our lives – is in the present, in what is right now.  

Even though regret would try to tell us otherwise, we can’t go back and change the past.  

And no matter what worry says, we can’t shape a future without risk and suffering.  

It just doesn’t work like that.  

But we can waste our whole lives either reaching back or grasping forward, and never live in the truth of what is, which is to never really live.

So to begin, we have to see and accept what is. 

So we look. We notice. We consider.

Consider the lilies of the field.  Look at the birds of the air; see the squirrels of the trees. Consider the Avas on the Daddy’s shoulders.  Notice the world you’re in right now while you’re in it. 

Often, seeing and accepting what is takes something called self-empathy.  

Toward the end of my sabbatical, the third week in October, I went with three other pastors to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. This is the place I went two years ago for a silent retreat by accident.  This time I was going for a silent retreat on purpose.

For almost two full days, I felt my crazy, monkey mind bouncing around with song lyrics, commercial jingles, dumb movie lines and 90s pop tunes.  “Come with me if you want to Not-Talk” kept repeating on a loop in my brain.  There was just so much unrelenting noise inside of me. But just after my arrival, I had read something Fr. Thomas Keating wrote, “The psyche needs expulsion just like the body does.”  So I kept taking a deep breath and acknowledging and accepting what is, and giving myself some empathy.  Look at you, noisy mind!  Look at all the expulsion you’re doing!  

And on and on it would go.  

Until… it didn’t.  

Until I realized with a start that there was no noise inside my head at all. 

The songs were gone, the words were gone.  My mind felt clear and open and spacious.  I was astonished. I kept walking into my mind like an empty room, and feeling around the clean and beautiful walls and floor that I’d maybe never felt through all the clutter usually jostling around in there.  Would you look at that! It’s still quiet!  And the quiet, still, focused mind remained for the rest of the week, and I was mostly able to stay in the present with God, and marveled that such a thing was even possible. 

Except for when worry came.  

Perhaps nothing is faster at pulling us out of the right now- where God is waiting to hang out with us – than worry. Worry is a tantalizing, addictive distraction. It makes us feel like we have some control. We don’t.  It’s a liar from the Way of Fear.  For me, it’s kind of the Lead Liar. It's the liar out in front that lets the other lying lies slink in after it when worry has propped open the door.  Worry takes us captive to hypothetical scenarios and worst-case projections – what if there isn’t enough? What if I am not enough? What if the worst happens? What if I lose it all?  

Worry found me because of my phone.  I was choosing to be as present as possible in my life right now, which was this silent time with God.  So when I got there I turned off my phone, and planned to leave it off the whole time.

This felt a huge deal. Because not only would I be away from my family for a whole week, but for about 30 hours of this time, my kids were going to be home alone.  They would be spending the night at two different neighbors’ houses, and everything was planned out to the minute, but it was the first time we’d left them without grandma or staying at the house with them. 

And I was turning off my phone.  

What if something terrible happens while I am away? 

At times I had to sit on my hands and take deep breaths to keep myself from heading downstairs to the landline phone booth in the lobby and calling home to make sure all was well. 

Again with the self-empathy, this time for my heart.  

Oh, dear heart! Look how afraid you feel to be apart from them!  Do you think that by being right there with them you could prevent all terrible things from happening? Look how scared you are to face your deepest fears! What if something terrible didhappen and you lost the people you most love and treasure? And you were just you? All alone in the world…? what if, what if, what if…”

Remember a couple years ago when we said worry was the big what if? Pulling you right into the way of fear?  Worry is practicing fear, we said.  What if, what if, what if…

And rest, we said, is practicing trust. Rest is the Even if… even if… even if…

Every time I felt the worry rise up in my throat I gave myself empathy with the what ifs until I could let it go and return to the resting even ifs… of trust.  

And I also wrote postcards. I mailed my family two postcards a day. I even sent one to the dog.  

Imagining them getting my postcards helped me let go of my worry and return to the present, where God was waiting for me. (Of course, the postcards did not begin arriving until I had been home for two days, but I didn’t know that at the time, so it worked for me).

God wants to be with us right now. 

We can see God in the world right now. We can notice God in our lives right now.

God likes you, and enjoys you, and wants to hang out with you right now.

The best part of the five days I spent at that monastery was the two different hikes I took for over three hours each, just hanging out with God.  The first hike was through a green forest with the deep silence of nature – which of course is cacophonous – birds and brooks and turkeys and squirrels and wind in the trees.  Deep communing with nature with no goal other than to be.  Look at the birds! Consider the lilies!  Walk out your own foot-stepping beat in God’s great symphony!

A frost overnight meant my second hike, two days later, was among brilliantly red-dipped trees and golden tunnels of lime and yellow. I got to see the world suddenly shift into its Autumn garb so deliberately. Who sees and holds all of this in loving care,my heart asked me, while you are not noticing? You sneaky, gorgeous world! You steady, persistent God! Gratitude upon gratitude, for the grace upon grace.

This past week I was at the National Youth Worker’s Convention in St. Louis. I go every year and spend nearly three days sitting and listening to strangers one by one, with no other agenda except to watch for what God is doing in their lives.  

I get to consider the person and life before me, and watch for the presence of God, and when we do this, right now God is with us.  In the very simple and profound act of my listening and their speaking, we are sitting in the presence of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, and seeking first the Kingdom of God and real connection with God. This is not just a bunch of churchy words.  This is really what happens when we look together at the honest truth of our lives – both the hope and the pain of them – and seek God there.  God says when you seek me you will find me. And so we sit together and seek. And so we find.

Thanksgiving is a ripe time for fake gratitude.  

But I am going to suggest that this year, we don’t give in to the temptation to fake the feeling, and instead we meet ourselves right where we are. With empathy. 

Hey! Look at that pain that just popped up out of nowhere when Dad made that comment! Wow, look at the grief that rises up when I think about who isn’t at the table this year.  

And when we give ourselves that empathy, we can come back into the moment enough to begin to look again. To consider. 

Consider the smells of tradition and family as they waft around you, notice the memories they evoke. Watch the tiny one taking first steps, and see the tall one who has suddenly shot up past her mom.  Look the one who has always seemed invincible now appearing so frail tucked into his chair.  

Seeking first the Kingdom means seeing them.  These belong to you.  And they belong to God.  

And all throughout this and the upcoming Christmas holidays, you can bet worry is going to try to tap you on the shoulder and say, Hey, I supposed to be here today; holidays are my jam!  And the temptation will be to give in to it and give worry the floor. 

But worry is no match for the real reality. Worry can’t keep hold when you turn and face it, and name the fear.  Because the real reality, the Kingdom of God truth hiding right there underneath the worry is love.  You’re worried because you so treasure this person.  You so value this connection. The idea of losing it, or of losing them, makes you afraid. 

Naming the fear turns worry from a powerful liar to an obnoxious invitation to be present to the love. It’s a chance right in front of you to let yourself feel the depth of that love seems suddenly threatened with loss –to look at the love and accept it.  Receive what is.  And then receive the gratitude too, because it will rise up inside you when you do.  I love these people. In all their messy, broken, infuriating beauty.  I love them. In the mystery of knowing them and never really knowing them, is also love. I belong to them and they to me.

And this is one way to seek first the kingdom of God.

But let’s not forget that scripture begins by talking about money. The verse just before it says, you can’t serve both God and money; there can be only one master in your life. So therefore, don’t worry about what you’re going to eat or drink, or strive to have stability in this world.  God will take care of you.  This feels like kind of a dangerous message.  Of course we need to worry about those things.  What kind of people would be if we didn’t worry about taking care of ourselves? Lazy? Naïve? 

The Way of Fear would have us obsess about self-preservation.  It would warn us to hoard and stockpile, and say, you can never be too safe.  It would hold out images of a future without stability, and tell us that unless we grind away relentlessly, that’s where we’ll end up.  

But again, when we turn and look at worry, when we tell it what we see, when we’re gentle with our pounding hearts and our shouting minds and say, Look at how afraid you are!  Look at what that fear is telling you!  Gradually worry backs down and gratitude rises up, because we can see the real reality underneath.  Look how I am cared for. How my needs are met. See what gifts are abundantly spilling into my life!  And not just the roof over my head or the food on my table.  Gifts that are bigger and deeper and more sure: Love. Meaning. Friendship. Laughter. Beauty.

Can anyone by worrying add even a single hour to their life? Jesus asks. 

Life is filled with suffering. That’s a fact. 

And life is filled with joy.  That’s a fact too.  

And all worry does is keep us from experiencing life.

When we do the work right now of accepting what is, we are opening ourselves to experiencing life. 

The Way of Fear does all it can to avoid death, and (spoiler alert) fails.   

The Way of God is the death and resurrection reality that doesn't hide from what's real.  We die to the things we thought made us secure or strong, and we acknowledge that the things and people we cling to die too.  And so will we. And we also remember our God joined us in the worst life can bring, including death, so that we might have life that outlives death. 

Fredrich Buechner famously says, "The grace of God means something like: 'Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us.”

This human life we live on this earth in is so precious and precarious. 

It is both magnificent and brief.  The grass will wither, the flower will fade, and the house will crumble away and disappear, but the love of God is everlasting, it is eternal life that will never end.

So stop and look around at this stunning world in all its detail and diversity.  

God is caring for it. 

And let it in, this one specific life you are standing inside of right now. 

God is caring for you.

Stop and see your life as it is.  

Let gratitude fill up the space in your heart opened by love.  

Instead of worrying, seek first the way of love and the bond that connects us to God and each other despite all our acting to the contrary. 

And all will be will, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Amen.

(Quotes from Keating - Intimacy with God, Buechner - Wishful Thinking, Julian of Norwich)

Shame and Regret

Throughout Lent, at LNPC we are exploring the Biblical Stations of the Cross.  We have the stations up in our sanctuary, and the congregation is doing a Lenten Worship Project, bringing in images that we find in media, our lives, art, etc. and helping to construct one of the stations during worship each week.  This week, we explored Peter's Denial of Jesus: Station 4.

Matthew 26:69-75

Station 4: Peter Denies Jesus

Lenten Worship Images: Betrayal, Shame, Regret

I want you to think of a time when you did something that you are ashamed of.  For just a minute, remember something you've said or done that you regret.  
Now, show me shame.  Right now with your bodies, do regret. 
How many of you covered your face? Dropped your head, hunched your shoulders in, eyes closed to the world, hands hiding you?  When looking for images this week of shame and regret I was struck by the fact that that one thing was so common it was hard to find anything else.  Shame makes us want to hide.  To erase ourselves, to disappear.

We began our Lenten prayer journey last week with Jesus in the garden. We saw prayer as pleading, sorrow, raw and open before God. Not hidden. Exposed. Vulnerable. Deeply and frighteningly honest; not a smidgen of decorum or hint of duplicity about it. Utterly Transparent.

 Today we are seeing ourselves the opposite way. Hiding. Shame, Regret.  The need to cover ourselves because we are ashamed. We are aware of our own guilt, aware of what we’ve done and we can’t take it back.

I will never betray you! Peter says to Jesus. We say to one another. Our spouses. Our children. Our friends. Our neighbors and communities. The least of these.  

It’s the contract we make with the world.  I will be true. My word is my bond. I will never sell you out. But we do. The lies to save face.  The gossip about someone we love.  Sharing secrets that were not ours to share.  Saving our own skin at another’s expense. Sometimes it happens chillingly quickly, almost an impulse, like fight or flight response. Me or you? Me. Boom. Betrayal.

And there is nothing like that feeling of Guilt. Hot Shame that starts in your gut and rises to your neck and face, burning the whole way up. Horrible Regret. Who hasn’t felt this in their core at one time or another? That stupid decision you made that you can never undo. One little moment. One sentence. A look. Something you could have avoided but you chose not to.

It is never a hypothetical thing, betrayal, never an on paper, victimless crime, a private, individual sin. It is always about hurting another person. Directly. The guilt of it is precise as a laser and it’s all yours.  The sin of betrayal isn’t a clinical right or wrong misstep, it’s the brooding and churning darkness at the very heart of sin: saving me at the expense of you.

If prayer is, as we said last week, brutal honesty with God, opening your heart, being exposed in your need and pain – how in the world do we pray in experiences of duplicity? How do we pray when we are bathed in our own shame, wreaking of regret? Fresh off of a moment of betrayal? How do we pray when we knew better, when we knew what the right thing was and we did something else instead? How do we look God in the eye when we’ve just turned our back? If praying is baring your soul, splayed out before God in all trust and vulnerability, how in the world can we do that if we are curled in horror, frozen in self-protective shame?  We don’t deserve to have God hear us.  We don’t deserve to pray.

Look at Peter – arguably Jesus’ most passionate and committed follower. Peter in all his crazy and wild abandon, his whole-hearted love for Jesus, his ardent and true devotion. Peter, of all people… so confident in his loyalty!  Earlier that evening they were gathered at the table, Jesus saying all these terrible and confusing things…

Then Jesus told them, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written:  “‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’

 But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”

Peter replied, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.”

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.”

But Peter declared, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the other disciples said the same.

Fast forward to the moment, when the random stranger said to him the third time in a crowd of people he might never see again, you were his follower, right?  And Peter denies ever having known him.

Is there ever a worse moment than this, in the history of the world?  God of all creation and your closest friend raises his head and makes eye contact. Sees you in the core of your soul. The cock crows and you are found out. It doesn’t matter if anyone else there knows, or if the whole world is oblivious, you know. What kind of person are you?  How could you?

It’s no wonder Judas hangs himself.  It’s kind of a surprise, frankly, that Peter is able to go on at all. 

I wonder what it was like in the garden before. I mean the very first garden. I mean before before. Before betrayal. And not just Judas’s kiss betrayal, I mean Adam and Eve’s apple betrayal.  What was it like before shame and regret? When they were free and unaware of their nakedness. Whole. Complete. Connected - to God, each other, the world around them. Responsible for each other. Responsible for creation. Accountable to God. In harmony. Fulfilling their purpose, embodying their identity.  Before they thought they knew better. Before they said the slogan of sin, decidedly, irreversibly, Me, not You.

Sin drives a wedge between them and God, them and each other, them and themselves, their own bodies, their own wholeness.  And then shame keeps them there. So self-conscious that they hide in woods, wont show their faces, wont show themselves.  They’re stuck.  Shame locks your limbs in, seals over your soul. There is no escape.

It must have been worse for Peter than anyone else when Jesus died. To have turned your back on a friend in their moment of greatest need, and never be able to make it right again. Death separated them. Death made reconciliation impossible, and it ended forever Peter’s view of himself. His future. His legacy. It obliterated all that Peter had thought he was becoming when he was with Jesus. All that had existed between them. It was over for him. Done. Jesus was gone. Death made it final.

But we are not left there. Where Peter was, the darkest of all places, the place that drove Judas to hang himself and end his life, the place that led Adam and Eve to hide themselves from their Creator, and led Cain to bury his brother’s body and not come out when God called, and leads fathers to leave their families, and sisters to hide in drugs, and mothers to layer on bitterness and hardeness, and friends to cut off from one another permanently, and us to avert our eyes from the suffering of those around us, because after you’ve said Me, not You, there is no retracting it, the shame descends, regret takes hold, and there is no turning back.  But we are not left there.

God’s response to their shame in the garden, God’s answer to Adam and Eve, was to cover them. God covered them. God took away their flimsy layer of leaves and robed them in skins. God recognized their shame and met them there. Forgiveness does that.

We don’t see Peter’s forgiveness here - but it’s coming. After the resurrection, it’s coming. Out of death, life will appear. Into Peter’s life will come forgiveness. And not just that, but restoration, fulfillment of who he was meant to be, called by God, a friend of Christ.  Into Peter’s life will come grace – pouring in and lifting him up, opening his hands and arms to touch and heal and his mouth to speak. Upon this rock, THIS rock, this one who disowned me in my darkest moment, I will build my church.  This one who has known what it is to be utterly lost, who has felt the depths of disloyalty of which he is capable.  Feed my sheep. Jesus will say.  I want YOU to feed my sheep.

Resurrection is coming for Peter.  But resurrection always begins with death, death of who we thought we were, the death of relationships and belonging. Where shame and regret have calcified our sin and cut us off from one another and God.  It is into those places of impossibility that resurrection will come.

Lent, though, asks us to take it a day at time, one step at a time. Lent invites us to sit in the feeling of shame and regret. To stay with Peter in that week.  Exposed and aware.  To recognize that feeling, that you could have, should have, acted differently, and you didn’t.

We don’t practice the act of confession much. We don’t close ourselves in a little booth and slide open the window to dump our darkness on a hidden listener.  We are supposed to confess to one another. We are supposed to carry that for each other, that common burden of sin, the powerful message of forgiveness – to say it and share it and remind each other of both. But we don’t, at least, not often.

Instead we come to church and in unison we give a general confession. We’ve turned our back on you, ignored our neighbor in need. Sins of commission and omission blah, blah.  And our heads stay down, our arms crossed, our selves protected from the harsh light of grace that would demand we reveal our duplicity, that we be exposed as sinners.

But What would it be to live honestly, truly honestly? To find the places of confession in our prayer? To trust so fully that we could bare our souls even in our darkest shame – our betrayals of each other and God?

 What would it be if we stayed awake with one another in the garden of that kind of prayer? If we heard each other’s confessions and pronounced to one another that we were forgiven? If we were able to tell each other where we had hurt someone, and then hear that we are not defined by that sin or shame, but by the grace and love of God?

Return to the garden, Lent invites us, the place of honesty in prayer. Where God clothes us in our shame.  Where Jesus falls across a rock and cries out in despair.  Where we are not alone in our sorrow or our guilt, our betrayal or our shame.

Return to the garden. The source of our life, the place of truth.  The place of confession, of self-revelation. The place of acknowledging weakness and culpability.

Come sit in the garden for a while.  Sit in the darkness until we can open our eyes and lift our gaze just enough, to whisper, not Me, You. Or Not my will, but yours. And then wait.

The only way to wholeness is to live in our brokenness, and let God meet us there. Lent invites us again to the garden. May we have the courage to come.