Simultaneous and Indistinguishable

 

Ezra 1,3,6 & Nehemiah 5 On Wednesday night, at the same time as a small church in Oronoco gathered to pray for their pastor Lisa, who is dying, and the church Lisa grew up in in LeSuer did the same, the Sues and I opened this space for prayer. Lisa and her husband Peter attended here for a couple of years 2010-2012 or so while she prepared for ordination. Like a weather system on a radar map, I imagined a web of prayer spanning across the miles, connecting us to them and to God. 15-20 people from various parts of Lisa's life, including her first-grade deskmate, came and went, wrote notes and lit candles, walked the labyrinth, and sat for a long time.  I don’t think many of us were praying for her to be cured. Her body is ravaged and weary.  I think mostly we were praying for what comes next for her kids and her husband, praying out our sorrow and anger that moms can be taken young, that death is capricious and cruel, and also, just letting ourselves be in what is, as terrible as it is, in the presence of God. We pick up our Old Testament story after 70 years in exile. The people of Judah are finally allowed to go home.  And it is not because they have some great new king like Solomon or David to rebuild their kingdom and bring them all together. It is because another foreign power defeated the power that had defeated them, and this one has a ruler who gives permission for conquered peoples to return to their lands and rebuild their cities. So, in circumstances far different than they’d probably dreamed of, they’re nevertheless coming home.  But not all of them; some are staying where they’ve built new lives Babylon. When the Babylonians conquered Judah, they completely decimated the city, destroyed the temple, forcibly took the warriors and the wealthy, the skilled workers and the young nobility of Jerusalem, and left behind the poor. In captivity in Babylon, many suffered greatly. Others prospered. But for 70 years they built a life where they were. Archeologists estimate that after the various mass deportations, executions, epidemics and battles, perhaps just 10% of the original population remained in Judah. Now some what’s left of them are coming home.   I have to be honest, you guys, I had trouble staying gripped by these scriptures. There is a reason nobody preaches from Ezra and Nehemiah. (In fact, besides a handful of verses in Nehemiah, neither one is even in the lectionary!). I am sure they make meaty material for history professors, but this preacher struggled to find something to hang onto.  I will say, as an aside, I was fascinated by the explanation in Chronicles (2 Chronicles 36:21, Jeremiah 25:11) that their 70 years in exile, expelled from the land, was to make up for the sabbaths they owed to the land. For 490 years, since King Saul, they had been disobeying God’s command to rest the land every 7 years, and God repeatedly warned them through the prophet Jeremiah that this would happen. SO, there’s that. Imagining the vacant land resting for 70 years, after having been worked without end.  But mostly, I had trouble following it all. Because – like all history – it’s not a clear-cut story. It’s messy and it’s confusing, one step forward, two steps back and a shuffle sideways, this person and that person, and one thing leads to another, and things don’t just happen, they happen gradually and haphazardly and then you look back and say, Oh, that happened, and try to make some sense out of it.  So, imagining them, wherever they ended up, struggling to make a life, and follow God and raise their families, and deal with what came their way, and then finally, finally, being told you can go home. What was that like? Hardly anyone who went back would have remembered home. And it didn’t matter anyway, because Jerusalem was utterly gone, and even all the natural changes that had happened in their absence, like trees growing and streams shifting, would’ve been astonishing.  After 70 years away, what was it like to go back to the place you knew and loved, in all its glory, but which your last glimpse of was utter devastation?  Or, for most of them, to come finally to the place you’ve heard about all your life, and see only desolate ruins? Because when something or someone dies, we don’t just lose all that was, we lose all that could have been if things were not severed by an ending. So working together, those who stayed away sent money and support, and those who returned began rebuilding the destroyed temple of Solomon-  the symbol of their identity as God’s people, the place where God and humans met.  But of course, when the temple was destroyed, they had discovered Yahweh was not contained in stone or geographical boundary lines, God met them anyway, and the prophets guided them, and their prayers and practices upheld them and they were God’s people anyway, and Yahweh took care of them wherever they were. But now they here, ready to rebuild what was.  When the temple foundation is laid, they hold a big celebration. And, the text tells us, intermingled with the shouts of joy is the weeping of sorrow for the few who remembered the temple as it had been, but the noise was so loud nobody could distinguish one from the other.  And here is where my attention awakens. Because that is an amazing line to be plopped right there in the middle of all that historical record-keeping. My grandma died this week. And I am really sad she is gone. She was quite a person, and her reign in the world, as it were, is hard to overstate in the lives of my cousins, sisters and me, and our children. And yet, she was 95, and so ready to go, and what was could never be again. Her home was gone, she’d buried two husbands and a son and all her friends and dogs and passions, and her final days were misery as her body betrayed her and her mind stayed sharp, so that when she finally died, I mostly felt gratitude and relief for her. And it’s weird to feel glad about a death that takes someone so wonderful out of the world.  I’m preparing to send my youngest away to college shortly, and the gladness and the sadness are all swirled up, so that often I can barely distinguish one from the other.  So, when I read that same description of messy human emotion all tangled up in the crowd gathered on the bare foundation of the new temple in Jerusalem some 2500 years ago, something in me says, Yes. I get that. When I was in Christchurch, New Zealand a few weeks ago, I worshiped in the Cardboard Cathedral, a transitional building erected after the second earthquake in 2011 crumbled the Anglican Christchurch Cathedral. 14 years later the Cathedral is still encased in scaffolding and unsafe to enter, and services continue in this temporary structure. With two earthquakes, and over 11,000 aftershocks, with so many lives lost and homes, businesses and church buildings destroyed, life as they had known it ended, and the question, what does it mean to be church? took on a whole new meaning in that place. They had to rebuild a new life, and it would not be what it was or what that could have become; it would be something different. I got to hang out in May with Church leaders who had decided back then that whatever disagreements stood between them were unimportant, what mattered was taking care of people and ministering to their city, so the various congregations across denominations teamed up and worked together. And instead of rebuilding their own church buildings, some built shared community centers with community gardens and kitchens, or started exploring different ways and places of gathering for worship. The experience reshaped how they now understand what it is to be the church, and they are still cooperating and working together, seeking to shape their lives and communities to be the meeting place between God and humanity. What was could no longer be, and what could’ve been was gone. So why not look at what else should no longer be and leave it behind? Our Nehemiah text is a first-person account of someone who came to be governor in this time, after he makes an impassioned speech to his fellow leaders about not perpetuating the very things onto others that they had just been freed from. And they all agreed to a different way of leading, and this got him elected governor. But wait, one asks, will he govern like the governors before him, with all the rights and privileges therein? No. Instead he went on to demonstrate compassion, generosity and care, as they all figured out what kind of people they would be now, and what kind of life they would live alongside one another as those brought from death to life and being remade into the people of God. The thing about history is that it is just stories of the people who came before us, and they were just people, like us. And as different as life and contexts are across time, human beings struggle with the same things: selfishness, fear, greed, despair, loneliness, anger. And we long for the same things: stability, love, belonging, contribution, meaning and hope.   We all have experiences of getting what we wanted, and it turns out to be bittersweet. Of letting go of what was when it was never ours to hang onto, or it was taken from us long ago anyway.  Of facing an unknown future and trying to work out how to live a good life and make a good life for others amid great uncertainty.  Of recognizing that some of what was normal was actually wrong and damaging, and clumsily figuring out how to do things differently and better. We’ve all had loss; death spares nobody. The grief and the joy are intermingled.  The church is the place where that should be most acceptable – that is, we are the people who make space for the messiness of this terrible-wonderful living and dying that we’re all busy with, because our life is centered on Christ who died our death and was raised to new life. Jesus is the embodied action of what God has always been up to on this planet and in the lives of human beings, bringing new life out of death.  On Wednesday night we had a table with note cards that mirrored our gratitude prayer at funerals where we say, "For...", and all respond "Thank you, God" (eg, for her quick smile and joyful laugh, thank you God. For the way she lifted up those she met and honored each person, thank you God. For the hat she knitted me, thank you God.") I got to watch people go from quietly weeping, or stiff with anger, to smiling as they recalled something they dearly love about Lisa and wrote it down. Toward the end of the evening, two childhood friends of hers whispered on a back pew, soft laughter mingling with their tears, "so that people could not distinguish one sound from the other.”  We are creatures of loss and love, horror and beauty, destruction and newness, poignancy and pain. So, it seems fitting that when the returned exiles and the left behind people stand reunited together on the freshly set foundations of the new temple, the holy ground of meeting place between God and human beings, the joy and the lament of the people intermingle and are inseparable. This temple will never be what it was. But, then, neither will they. They belong to the God who meets us in death and are learning to trust this God to bring new life. Our lives are not a clear-cut story. They’re messy and confusing, and things happen gradually and haphazardly, and as we try to make sense of it all we get to look back from time to time and say, Oh, that’s what God was doing. So as we stumble along figuring out what kind of people we will be, and what kind of life we will live, we will embrace our holy calling as the people of God-with-us to hold space without fear for the intermingled weeping and joy of it all, and to wait on behalf of each other and this world, for the new life our God will always bring. Amen.

Receiving What's Difficult

  

 The first funeral I ever did was for a man I did not know.  I was a 24-year-old chaplain at a large, urban, trauma 1 hospital in New Jersey, paged awake in my bunk in the hospital basement for a man who had been on a meal and smoke break from his night shift factory job, who died from a heart attack sitting in his car.

When his two adult daughters arrived at the hospital, I was the one to bring them into the ER room to see their dad’s body.  When they saw me the first thing they did was assert emphatically that their dad was not religious, and neither were they.  I told them that didn’t matter; I was just there so they were not alone, and we could stay together in the room with him as long as they wanted.  

For the next two and a half hours, I listened as they told me stories about their father. They held each other and wept, slapped their knees laughing over some irreverent thing he’d said or done, saying he died exactly as he would’ve wanted with his fast food and cigarette in his hand. They stood and gazed at his face, wept again and told more stories.  

Time stood still for a while in that windowless room.  When they were ready to leave, the sun was just peeking over the rooftops of the awakening city. They hugged me goodbye and thanked me for the time we’d spent together. Then they left the hospital and went into their world to face their first day living without their dad. 

The following day, the hospital chaplain office received a call: the daughters wanted me to do their father’s funeral, and their only request was that it include the 23^rd Psalm.  I puzzled over this, remembering how insistent they had been about not being religious.  

When I arrived to do the funeral, he was lying in the casket dressed in his college sports sweatshirt, his hands grasping a pack of Marlboros resting on his chest.  The eulogies were filled with swearing and irreverence, but when I read Psalm 23 the room was suspended in hushed reverence.  

I left the graveside having pronounced the hope of Christ’s resurrection with my first “ashes to ashes and dust to dust” ringing in my ears, feeling overwhelmed by the sacredness of it all. I was struck by the astonishing gratitude people feel when we hold space for God’s presence – even people who think they don't believe in God. And it was a glimpse into the solace offered by these words people all over the world have prayed since King David wrote them 3000 years ago, words Jesus himself took comfort in a thousand years later, reciting with his own siblings, parents and community.

Most of us don’t have much scripture memorized, but I would wager many of us here could recite at least some of the 23^rd Psalm.  And chances are, we each have a handful of memorable, resonant moments that involve this Psalm. 

Between Easter and summer, we are spending time exploring the human work of simply receiving life—something increasingly challenging in our fast-paced, digital age where we think it’s our job to make things happen, and to control everything. In reality, this life is a gift from God--this one life we have been given, the one we are in right now, the life we share with those we are here alongside--and our job is to receive it.  

Lisa helped us think about receiving what is by sharing the story of the risen Jesus meeting the disciples on the beach, amidst the smells of the salty sea and fish cooking over smoky wood, calling the tired, wet, discouraged disciples to come and be fed in the warmth of the sun and the sand where God was waiting to meet them.  She reminded us that resurrection transforms not just the whole world and the trajectory of the future—resurrection claims our ordinary lives for the holy, these lives lived inside these limited, wondrous bodies, from which we experience everything.

This week we are turning our attention to receiving what’s difficult. The things in life we don’t choose and would desperately prefer to avoid. This ranges from the merely uncomfortable to the downright terrible.  And Psalm 23 is a great doorway into this conversation, because Psalm 23 has been holding space for God’s presence in what's difficult for 3000 years.

Psalm 23 falls into what biblical scholars call “psalms of trust.” These Psalms come to be in the midst of some kind of tragedy or crisis that psalmist responds to not with hopelessness or defeat, but, paradoxically, with a cry of trust.  

By using the same verb that is used in twice in scripture for the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, the phrase we often say as, “I shall not want” actually means, “I lack nothing.”  For King David, and for Jesus too, this phrase would have brought to mind that defining period in the Hebrew’s relationship with God where they were formed for trust, to embrace their belonging to God. 

One commentator (Kelly Murphy) explains of the Israelites time in the desert, 

“To be sure, life wasn’t always easy—but it was life. Those forty years might have seen a lot of grumbling and complaining, but they also saw manna free from heaven, the birth of a new generation, and eventual progress to the Promised Land. God cared for the wandering people—and they lacked nothing. 

…The psalm reminds readers about the beauties of living life in the here and now even amid the usual darkness that accompanies day-to-day life.”

For thousands of years, to recite this psalm, to pray this prayer, is to share in the promise that no matter what we are going through, God is accompanying us, protecting us, caring for us, and that God’s goodness and mercy will pursue us (the verb here is this aggressive!), without end, and death is not the great ender of everything - love's grip on us is eternal. 

When Psalm 23 was read today, we heard interspersed within it the lectio divina reflections from this congregation this week three years ago, April 2021, when we were in our own wilderness. Sixteen months into the pandemic, we were meeting for church on screens, sharing show-and-tell videos, and gathering six feet apart on the patio for bonfires. Suspended in a strange unknown, the whole world was wandering in wilderness, in the valley of the shadow of death, with the future uncertain. Yet every day, we were still living life’s beauties. With grumbling and complaining, provision and connection, we were existing in the here and now amid the day-to-day joys and the usual darknesses. And we lacked nothing. 

With various, surprising metaphorical green pastures and quiet waters, with protection and accompaniment, God sustained us, restoring our souls, preparing our tables, overflowing our cups, and through it all, pursuing us relentlessly with goodness and mercy. 

It was right around this time that Jen Rainey wrote a prayer, which is now in my book as a prayer for receiving what’s difficult. Jen had intended to use this prayer at a gathering to mark the anniversary of her cancer diagnosis, but that event wasn’t able to happen.  Instead, the prayer was read six months later at her funeral.
Her prayer is a psalm of trust.  Here is part of it: 

Dear God,
One year ago, this day taught me the lived definition of horror.
It brought me to my knees.
There was begging and pleading.
Fear, sadness, confusion, and anger
flooded in and enveloped our visions of the future. 
It felt like there was no escape. 

Why, God, does this type of pain exist in the world?
 Why do beautiful things get ripped away or slowly, painfully destroyed?
Why can’t I go back to what was? 

Breathe in the breath of the life you have now. 
Let the tears of mourning cleanse your spirit
so your inner world may be gentle and blessed. 
Feel the ground beneath your feet, 
that same ground that you fell to on your knees and face, 
holding you today.
Let the fears and grief arise, 
and see that you are not alone—
we share this human suffering. …
 
She goes on to quote Psalm 139, and ends with these words: 
 
On this day, we remember.
We wonder what is coming.
We let go of the past.
We gather to better feel you in this moment,
to experience the ways that you
were, and are, and will be 
with us and for us 
when our worst fears come true. 
 
In their darkest valley, each morning and night Jen and Brian logged onto zoom with Pastor Lisa and me, and every Sunday with a whole group of us, to simply be together and bear together what alone is unbearable. Praying together each morning and night, we lived the trust of Psalm 23, as real trust acknowledges honestly what is: our suffering, our quiet ordinary living, the small joys, the hovering dread, the tiny reprieves of rest, the unquenchable terrors, and in and through it all, the unceasing presence of God. 

Likewise, 24 years ago, in the deep night of a windowless ER room in New Jersey, those two daughters and I walked into the valley of the shadow of death, and it became holy ground. Before dawn, Christ, the good shepherd, who meets us when we are with and for each other, met us there. We did not say his name, nor did we address him directly. But the presence of the risen Jesus was palpable.  By being together in what was difficult, impossible, suspended in the kind of space where tears, stories, anger, laughter and anything else that might arise is welcome, and so fear is driven out, these daughters found themselves doing what we never think we will be able to do—they were receiving life just as it was, the horror and truth of it, while love held them up. 

The Lord is our shepherd – we lack nothing.
The Lord is our shepherd. We lack nothing.
And, no matter what and always, and beyond time’s conclusion, we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. 

Amen. 

This is Part 2 in a series on Receiving This Life. Read Part 1: Receiving what is, by Lisa Larges.  

Coming up: Receiving what God is doing, receiving what God has already done, and receiving what will be.

The Context of the Meal

 Matthew 14:13-21

Besides the Resurrection, the Feeding of the Five Thousand is the only miracle that appears in all four gospels; it’s a super important story for the early church and clearly meant to give us a glimpse of who Jesus is and what God is up to. And as bible stories go, it’s fairly tame and unassuming, so we love to tell it to children. It’s not scandalous or disturbing, and it has a happy ending too! What's not to like?

 

But like most things in life there is more going on than we see on the surface. The context matters. When we tell this story on its own, we don’t realize that in Matthew’s telling in a single 24-hour day, a bunch of big things happen that maybe have something to do with each other. And maybe it’s not as meek and mild as we think. 

 

Our story begins early in the morning with the words, “Now when Jesus heard this...”  Heard what?  When Jesus heard that John the Baptist, who had been in prison, had just been beheaded, and his head delivered to Herod on a platter in the middle of an extravagant and vulgar dinner party. John’s disciples had picked up his body from the palace and buried it, and gone immediately to tell Jesus what had happened. 

 

When Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place. 

 

 And who wouldn’t?  What else in the world is there to do?  

John is gone, his cousin, his friend, the one who knew who Jesus was better than anyone -  from before he was born, even – leaping in recognition in his mother Elizabeth’s womb at the sound of pregnant Mary’s voice, the one who proclaimed in the wilderness that the Messiah is coming, and plunged God incarnate under the waters of baptism, the one whose whole life was telling that God’s kingdom is coming and announcing that Jesus had arrived, this John has just died a pointless, disgusting, inexplicable death, as a pawn in a gluttonous game of revenge and power. 

 

When Jesus hears this he withdraws in a boat to a deserted place.  

But the crowds seek him out. 

 

On foot they go around, ahead, and I have always imagined them like clingy toddlers flooding his alone place and his apart time with their need and their clamoring, their sheer mass, the overwhelming sound, smell, the hungry obligation of them.  And I’ve felt defensive of him, as perhaps, his disciples were too. He has every right to absolutely lose it. To tell them all to go away. To tell the disciples to make them leave him alone.  To practice self-care and turn the boat around and float alone in the waves for hours until he regains his composure, until he finds some peace and quiet.

 

But when Jesus sees the crowd, it says, he has compassion on them, and cures their sick.  He brings the boat ashore and goes to them and stays there with them. 

Vulnerable, grieving, reckoning with the horror and consequences of evil, mourning the death of his beloved friend, Jesus embraces the vulnerable, the grieving, the sick and despairing.  

 

And I don’t think it was a “nevertheless” kind of thing, being with them. I don’t think it was “even though” he was sad he embraced them “anyway” sort of deal. I think it was an “alongside,” “with and for” kind of thing. I think it was sorrow meeting sorrow, a pretense stripped away, no games being played, hearts connecting scenario. 

 

I guess until now I have always seen the crowds as almost predatory, like relentless zombies following him around, grabby and demanding and needy. Why can’t they just leave him alone?   

 

But this time I saw something different. I had to read it three times: “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.” When confronted with the news of his friend’s death Jesus went to hide in his sorrow. But when the crowds heard the news that they knew would devastate Jesus, they went to find him.  And not to give every person there a noble and altruistic motive, but perhaps, without overthinking it, the drive to be together in suffering is a way human beings return to our humanity, which is also to say, a way we seek and share in the presence of God. Perhaps that’s the way God designed us.  When someone we care about suffers a great loss, the reflex is to be with them, to share the pain.  

 

A few weeks ago a friend texted me from a meeting of exhausted teachers, education assistants and therapists in a program for children with extreme trauma, to tell me that a therapist had just said, (and I paraphrase to remove the swear word), “Self-care is hogwash. When something happens we don’t take care of ourselves, we take care of each other.” This is not to say we should not have good boundaries, or cultivate healthy habits, or that we should give and give when we are tapped out. This is to say: in crisis we do not take care of ourselves; we take care of each other. We belong to each other.

 

So perhaps, as much as all those people needed Jesus, Jesus needed them too.  Maybe he needed to feel his belonging to each other and God, and that was not something he could have done on his own in the moment. 

Being with them connected him to the bigger context, the deeper story, the wider belonging. In his own need and dependence on God, Jesus was moved with compassion for the people, and he welcomed them, listened, touched, and healed their sick. In his own vulnerability Jesus reached out to theirs.  And I wonder how God-with-us being with us with them on that day–the Great I Am coming in weakness alongside weakness with healing and hope—how this may have fed Jesus himself in that moment. 

 

As the day stretches toward evening the disciples, who, let’s face it, must have been freaking out all day at this impromptu gigantic event they were apparently hosting in the wilderness without a port-o-potty or vendor stand for miles around tell Jesus that maybe he should send the crowds away so they can find food for themselves in the villages.  But Jesus answers, They need not go away - you feed them. An impossible and ridiculous instruction.

 

But impossibility is God’s favorite canvas. And now a meal is about to take place that will upend the meal that preceded it. 

The first meal happened among sycophants in the seat of power. Full of insecurity and hungry for esteem, a cruel leader fed his own ego in a vicious power play of political manipulation and demonstrable control, killing a person in a mighty flex of fear and dominance. 

The second meal is happening here among ordinary people in the middle of nowhere. Full of sorrow and hungry for gentleness, a brokenhearted healer is feeding thousands with a single child’s handful of bread and fish, in a compassionate outpouring of inconceivable abundance and demonstrable unity, nourishing all these people in a colossal expression of love and solidarity.  

 

And the people, out there in the deserted place, far from the center of commerce and empire, are sitting down on the ground like one enormous picnicking family, dining on manna, until all, every single one of them, to the last man, woman, and child is full, and there are leftovers galore. And the power that brought the world into being, is here, among them, healing the sick, providing their daily bread and receiving their love and gratitude, and together, all of them are connected and held in a power greater than death, a force greater than evil, that is moving the world toward love. This power is not encountered by the strong but the vulnerable, and it comes not through coercion or control but through compassion and companionship.  

 

In a few minutes we will share a meal that seems almost silly, really. Without the context it could feel tame and unassuming, a nice tradition, a lesson to remember. But real violence rages in our world, rampant corruption and evil, power is wielded to selfish ends and lives are lost for pointless reasons, and own lives from time to time threaten to brim over with despair. 

In this context we will eat bread and drink grape juice and claim that God is with us right here and now and it means something important and powerful.  Because God is, and does; Jesus himself was broken for us, taking into God’s own heart the heartbrokenness of us all. 

 

We are gathered today in our shared need and vulnerability, with whatever we bring and however we’re struggling, and Jesus meets us here, joining us with all those gone before, including those that one evening in that deserted place who ended that sad day side by side with a sister who was just healed, and a neighbor who just found hope, and thousands of siblings in this world God is creating anew. 

In receiving the bread, taking it and pass it to one another as they did, we are connected held in a power greater than death, a force greater than evil, that is moving the world toward love.

 

And, just to wrap up the day, because, believe it or not, there are still a few hours remaining: after the feast Jesus releases the disciples and disperses the crowd and finally gets away to a quiet place. He rests. And stops. And makes space for his grief to breathe.  But he does so now not as one thrown into isolation by his pain, but as one who has been held in solidarity in the love and care of others, as having experienced the power of God moving through him to them and through them to him and the love of God holding them all as they all shared that day together, that meal together. Now, grounded in his belonging to God and each other, Jesus finds the solitude, solace, and silence he needs. 

 

But just in case we don’t yet get how big it all is, just before dawn breaks on this long, full day, we meet back up with the disciples, who left that epic experience to find themselves all night long battling raging winds and torrential rains in their precariously rocking boat. And just as he did for the crowds, Jesus meets them right where they are, which means that as the vulnerable and terrified disciples squint through the storm, they see Jesus calmly walking to them on the water.  

 

Amen.

A Prayer for the 4th of July

A Prayer for the 4^th of July

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 whole ongoing cycle of earth and life
with all 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 the 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 that celebrates our nation,
we give thanks for all the belongings that hold and shape 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 for all those who nurture the earth.

On this day that celebrates 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.

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.

And when this day that celebrates our nation,
has come to an end,
in fireworks and fanfare,
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.

For this, today,
we give thanks.

Amen.

- prayer by Kara K Root, from the forthcoming, The Liturgy of Living: Embracing Meaning in the Midst, Fortress Press 2023

The end, and what comes before that

 

Revelation 21:1-8

There are dragons that need slaying. Monsters that need defeating. 

There is chaos unleashed on the earth.  Sometimes we can pretend we don’t see it. We can make our lives small and our walls high and pretend calamity won’t touch us. Some of us can get away with this more easily, or for longer stretches of time, than others.  But right now is not one of those times. Not for any of us.  Right now – ironically – it feels like the world is more unified than ever, if only by shared turmoil and upheaval, and the sense of instability. At the moment, we are an entire species anguished and crisis-weary.

Chaos, like the Hebrew people saw symbolized by the wild, thrashing seas, hovers on the edges every day, in nearly every moment. It seeps into the cracks of our daily errands, and washes over the rooftops of crumbling institutions.  It ruptures our confidence in each other and erodes our trust in our leaders, and dumps all over our plans for the future, even the tiny, little, unimportant, nonthreatening plans that shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. Chaos keeps wrecking those too.  
 
And there is evil, real evil, that seems so often to have the upper hand. Sometimes it’s bold and appalling and devastating. But often it slippery and sneaky. 
When you break it down, instead of one big hellish plan of destruction, evil tiptoes in through little, imperceptible lies, small selfish motives, momentary thoughtless decisions, modest breaches of trust and betrayals of confidence, and it spreads and grows. 

And there are villains. Actual villains. Diabolical villains to be sure. But so often the villains look like us. Are us.  We are victims and villains. It merely depends on which story we’re in, and who’s telling it. 
 
All of this is messy, and unsettling, and exhausting. 
We so much prefer our on-screen dragons and monsters. We like our battle lines definitive. Our victories complete.  We want our heroes pure of heart, and we’d like to give evil a face that we can watch whimper in defeat when it’s vanquished and crushed.  We want to gorge ourselves on decadent vindication.  Hope for justice, longing for goodness, these things can feel naive and impossible in the tangled turmoil of this life, especially at the moment.
 
Enter Revelation in all it’s fantastical metaphor and story and imagery.  The book of Revelation is an ancient movie, a radio theater hour, a play in four acts. It gives evil concrete form and then destroys it.  
 
Apocalyptic literature was a popular genre at the time, and Revelation is longest piece of apocalyptic literature in the bible. Apocalypse doesn’t actually mean dramatic end of the world, it means revealing, unveiling, peeling back the curtain for a peek of deeper truth. The language of apocalypse is metaphor, pictures, story. Truth is conveyed not by being told directly to you, but because underneath what is being told to you, the prelingual essence, the elemental substance of you hears a message that can’t be told in words, and your heart or gut screams YES. THIS. 
 
A few weeks ago in a session meeting we discussed nudity. I’ll explain. Each time session gathers, we read scripture together and reflect on it, and we let it inform our work. A couple months ago we began with the first day of creation, and every two weeks when we meet, we read the next day of creation. In lovely, poetic language we had painted for us a picture of this relational God abundantly pouring out creativity into matter, giving goodness concrete form and then celebrating it.  And then each movement of creation ends with God pausing to take it all in, stopping to delight in the wonder and joy and harmony of what now exists.  And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.  And when God creates humankind in God’s image they are “naked and unashamed.” They live freely as beloved by God and connected to all other beings.  So, what’s easier, we wondered, being buck naked in the backyard where your neighbors could see you, or being completely open and vulnerable?
 
Reading slowly through the beginning this way together reminded us that God holds it all, God loves it all, God is present in and through it all, and there’s no rush, in fact, pausing is an essential part of the divine ordering of things, and that God wills goodness and joy for the earth and its creatures.

So when we turned to the chaos of our lives and our world, and this trying to do church one week at a time like we have been for two years, it helped us to remember whose church, whose world, whose lives, these really are.  We are learning that remembering the beginning helps us navigate the middle.
 
But so does premembering the end.  And Revelation tells us where it’s all headed.
In the beginning God created, loved, rested, enjoyed, and made us live freely as beloved by God and connected to all other beings. And it was good. And in the end – God creates, loves, rests, and enjoys, alongside us, along with us, and ensures we will live freely as beloved by God and connected to all other beings. And it will be good.  That’s where it starts and that’s how it ends. 
 
But the middle, oh, the middle, the middle is filled with suffering. Along with the goodness is evil and chaos. Mourning, division and pain, lies and struggle fill the middle.  
 
So comes Jesus Christ, God with us, right into the middle to share middle with us. Instead of rescuing humanity out of life, God joins us here, and infuses this mess of a life with the holy. Right inside the suffering, conflict and loss, God brings hope, joy, connection, and salvation.  
 
And from the very end, redemption leaks backwards into the middle.  Every experience of wonder is a taste of the end that mirrors the beginning.  Every time we pause and delight in the goodness of this life, or marvel at the beauty of this world, we are foreshadowing what is to come, and recalling how it all began. Every moment spent relishing the simple fact of existence, or opening our heart vulnerably to another person, peels back the veil on what will be, and echoes how it all started.  
 
This is a story suspended from love to love. 
 
And so the end also promises that everything from the middle that divided us from love, all the monsters around us and the villains within us, the dragons looming over us, and every possible way evil got a foothold and turmoil took over, will be powerfully obliterated.  All that separates us from God and each other will be permanently destroyed.
 
In light of all this, I would like to suggest that true Christianity is vulnerability - a choice to live without illusion and defenses, (naked and unashamed, one might say), recognizing reality and our place in it. This is faith’s role. Faith is not believing we have extra armor against dragons, protection from monsters, or a secret weapon against chaos. Faith helps us live vulnerably in light of the final reality. Faith is trusting we are held in this life between a beginning in God’s love and an ending in God’s love.  Chaos will not prevail. Evil will not win.  
 
Knowing what is coming, what does it cost us to see and share the pain of another? What do we risk to live boldly and joyfully?  Why not join in where redemption is unfolding?  What do we have to lose? That no matter the turmoil or monsters the moment, Jesus is here with, among us.  And that in the very end, God will deliver us completely and finally.  This is our apocalyptic insight that, if we let it, can resonate in our bones and raise our courage. This awareness can make us sing, and weep, and live, and die, as honest, open people who celebrate goodness, practice justice, love mercy, and live freely beloved by God and connected to all other beings. 
 
Amen.

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.

 

Stay here

Daily Devotion - May 29

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

Deep breaths, beloved ones.

Here's a psalm for you today, from the paraphrase, Psalms for Praying, by Nan C. Merrill. 

Psalm 90

Eternal and Immortal One,

You have been our refuge in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

before You had formed the earth and the world, 

from everlasting to everlasting,

You are the Alpha and the Omega.

When our days on Earth are ended,

You welcome us home to your Heart,

to the City of Light,

where times is eternal

and days are not numbered.

You gather those who love you

as friends returning from a long journey,

giving rest to their souls.

You anoint them with the balm of understanding,

healing wounds of the past.

For our days on Earth are a mystery,

a searching for You,

a yearning for the great Mystery

to make itself known.

The years pass and soon the 

Harvest is at hand,

a time to reap the fruit of

one's life.

Who has lived with integrity?

Who will reflect the Light?

Who can bear the radiant beams of Love?

Who has reverenced the Counselor,

and opened their hearts to the Spirit of Truth?

Teach us, O Beloved, to honor each day

that we may have a heart of wisdom.

Awaken us, O Holy One! 

Too long we have been asleep!

Help us to wait in Silence

listening for your gentle Voice;

Strengthen us with courage

to face the fears within.

I, that we might be converted in our hearts

and walk together in peace and harmony!

Let your Love be known to the nations,

your Glory to our children's children.

Let the grace and gentleness of the

Holy Spirit be upon us,

guiding our feet upon paths

of Love Consciousness

Increase the Light within us - 

O Beloved, hear our prayer!

Amen.

Right now, there are many emotions. So many emotions that we don't stop to tease out what they are.  The feelings point to needs that are met or unmet - deep values, qualities for life's flourishing as it was made by God for all human beings.  But we don't stop to look at what those needs are either.  

Let's stop and hear our hearts. 

In listening to one another, among us the feelings include: grief, heavy-hearted, worried, afraid, ashamed, hopeless, overwhelmed, guilty, open-hearted, torn, angry, perplexed, disturbed, outraged, devastated, anxious, numb, mistrustful, distracted, despondent, numb, angry, stunned, overwhelmed, sad, anguish, uneasy, dread, baffled, burnt-out, enraged, sad, compassionate, tender, exhausted, apprehensive.  

We are feeling these things because shared human needs are not being met, and we are deeply longing for: closeness, stability, to know and be known, connection, community, harmony, integrity, security, consideration, safety, to understand and be understood, justice, value, equity, belonging, mutuality, rest, cooperation, equality, respect, closeness, competence, contribution and mourning.

What are you feeling right now? (This list can help).

What are you needing?  In other words, what are you longing to see fulfilled?  (This list can help).

It's hard to bear grief. It's painful to sit in sadness.  It's hard to feel lots of things all at the same time.  We want to find a way out of the feelings, and right now there isn't a way out.  In hanging up the phone with someone today, I found myself starting to say, "Hang in there," but that felt weak, like avoidance somehow.  So I changed it to, "Go be sad."  

Mourning is holy work.  

Feel the feelings. Name the needs. Breathe.  Return to the truth that we all belong to God, and we all belong to each other.

Lament. Repent. Pray. Repeat.

Let's try to stay right where we are. Right where God can meet us. 

Tonight we hold our city in prayer and love, trusting from death will come new life. 

______________________________

CONNECTING RITUAL:

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

This is an important one. The news feeds are relentless, the interpretations and analysis are plentiful, the emotions are high and the shock is real.
Most of us have not been still or silent. Most of us are reeling and flailing.

So if that is you, please do this tonight.
And if it's not. please do this tonight for us, holding the rest of us in peace and love.

Sit somewhere comfortable.
Light a candle if it helps you be present and remember God is present.
Set a timer for 5 minutes.

Take two deep breaths, all the way to the bottom of your lungs, and let the air out slowly.
Sit in silence.
God is here.
Listen around you.
Listen within.
God is with you.

Amen.