The True Wisdom

Jan Richardson's The Best Supper. You can see her work at janrichardson.com, 
and register for her Advent retreat at adventdoor.org

 1 Corinthians 2:1-16

One of my favorite Thanksgiving stories pops up again every year in the news and social media because it is ongoing.  Six years ago a 64-year-old woman named Wanda Dench sent a text to her grandson inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner. But it was a wrong number, and a 17-year-old boy named Jamal Hinton received the text, and asked, “Who’s this?” She shot back boisterously, “Grandma!” After some sorting out and selfies confirmed they were, in fact, strangers, he asked, “Am I still invited?” And she answered, “Of course! It’s what Grandmas do! Feed people!” So he accepted and went to her house for Thanksgiving dinner. 

Jamal has been at Wanda and Lonnie Dench’s Thanksgiving table every year since. When Lonnie died of Covid, last year’s with Wanda was a table of shared grief.  This week Jamal and Mikeala will be back at Wanda’s table where they belong.  

We all belong to God and we all belong to each other. 

All of us. All the humans. Without exception. 

There is no more fundamental truth than this, nothing more real in all the world, actually. 

But oh, how we forget it, and doubt it and disguise it and deny it.  How we cover it up with layers of interpretation and competition and hedging our bets and building our coalitions and hiding our true selves. 

 

And soon this hunger for belonging - this absolutely core, unshakable reality that we yearn to feel because we know it in our depths as the truest thing, the most real thing - soon it becomes something we commodify. We dole it out in tiny amounts, and sell to the highest bidder, we seek it relentlessly, addictively, in harmful and dehumanizing ways. And we make it probationary or provisional, limited and guarded, shutting out some in order to welcome in others. 

 

We long so badly for this connection to God, this belonging to the very source of life, our identity, our purpose, our human-made-in-the-image-of-the-Creator-core-being –that we set up rules to mediate it, to say who has it, and who doesn’t, and how to earn it, and who can dispense it, and what can make you lose it or gain it. And oh, the contortions we twist and the energy we expend trying to gain or earn what already defines us!

 

We forget- in that deep existential kind of forgetting - that belonging to God and belonging to each other is something hidden before the foundations of the world, decreed before the ages for our glory, utterly true and eternally unchanging. And then once in a while, like unexpectedly sharing Thanksgiving with a stranger, we remember.

 

There are two wisdoms, friends. Paul says. 

There is the wisdom of this age.  At LNPC we’ve been calling it “the way of fear.” This wisdom is built on power and centered on scarcity. It tells us always life is urgent and you must never let up or let down your guard. Each of us is in this alone, other people are competition or threat, and judgment and condemnation are constant companions.  

The way of fear seeks salvation from smart leaders, wise investments and the careful construction or dismantling of isms. It says we can be saved by weapons, or by legislating against weapons, by this candidate or that party, by this act of piety or that specific prayer, by this way of seeing the world or that list of beliefs.  It says you can force others to respect you through violence or through moral rightness, and these also prove your worth or earn you a place at the table. 

And we put stock in that kind of wisdom, we pay money to it, and educate our children in it, and take it in through our televisions and computer screens and phones and car radios, scrolling, listening, reading, soaking in so many words: his words, her words, their words. 

 

And like the dingy beam of a dying flashlight, we hold up this worldly wisdom before us, and we squint into the darkness, letting it guide us. And we’re killing each other. And we’re blaming each other. And we are finding more ways to divide into ever smaller and more homogenous camps, until there will be no belonging left and it will be just me against you – all the mes and all the yous against all the other mes and all the other yous. Despairing. Alone. Afraid.

 

But there is another wisdom.

Ancient and true. Secret and Hidden. Decreed by God before the ages, running like an underground river through time.  The wisdom that spoke the world into being with a single word, the wisdom that bound it all in harmony and order, a delight to its creator, functioning in love and cooperation. The wisdom of the Word made flesh when the Creator of all came to dwell among us. Stupidly. Weakly. Foolishly, to live without power and to die alongside us, on our behalf. 

 

There is no worldly wisdom in this. It is what the Narinians call, “the deeper magic from before the dawn of time.” Unbreakable and resilient, absurd and steadfast, it comes concealed in weakness to stand always with the weakest among us.  

 

Paul was a Roman citizen from a prominent Jewish family, well-established with an impressive pedigree. He studied under the most prominent rabbis of the day, and was fluent in classical literature, philosophy and ethics. Paul was educated in the wisdom of the world. He was a successful, powerful, influential figure, and a zealot.  He knew how to speak the wisdom of the age, in the language of the rulers of the age.

 

But when he comes to the Corinthians, he chooses to leave all that behind. He sees it as a distraction, a shiny diversion that might keep people from seeing the real reality. I did not come with all the methods and the political skills of lofty words or persuasion. He says.  I came in weakness and fear, with much trembling. I wanted you to see God’s actions instead of focusing on my words -  So that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on the power of God.

In other words, he says, I vowed to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

 

Paul uses this language -  “Jesus Christ and him crucified,” “the cross,” “the foolishness of the cross,” again and again, as a kind of shorthand to refer to the whole of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus- that is, that the Almighty came into this world as a helpless a baby, into the arms of those he came to save, to share this life with us. And then died, taking all that separates us from God, all destruction and brokenness, even death itself, into God’s very being. 

Then Jesus rose from the dead, and everything we thought was real about the power of death and division is exposed as utter fraud by the unquenchable light of the world, the wisdom hidden before the ages shining forth, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. It’s settled and final: We belong to God, we belong to each other. This is what Jesus trusted, and embodied, what he died for and rose into and referred to again and again as ‘The Kingdom of God.’

 

And yet… and yet we choose sin. Which is to say, we choose self-protection and division and destruction and existential forgetting. We choose to tear others down and to fear, fear, fear that anything, everything, could tear us down. 

 

But here is the free gift of salvation, friends. Right here: You belong to God. You belong to all the rest of the people in this whole big world.  And they belong to God, and they belong to you. Fact. Done. All that is needed is to say yes. Yes, I accept that. Yes, I receive that.

 

And because we’re steeped in the wisdom of the age, bobbing around every day in the way of fear, this is not a once and done acceptance. It’s an, over and over, Oh yeah! That’s right! kind of remembering, a chance to return, at any moment, every day, back to the truth that holds us.

 

Biblical scholar Mary Hinkle Shore describes spiritual wisdom like a pair of lenses at an eye exam, where click, click, click, suddenly the fuzzy blur is sharp and clear, the chart in focus. You can see what was there all along, only obscured by the various lenses that misinterpreted it for you. 

 

Paul calls this having the mind of Christ. Jesus was both always connected completely to the Father and always belonging completely to the world. Always at home in God, always living in a settled state of trust. And we can enter that, too, at any moment. Christ’s faith is our faith, Christ’s mind is our shared mind now, Christ’s lens is our lens. The Holy Spirit makes us into Christ’s body here on earth so that we embody belonging to God and belonging to each other.

 

There is nothing that happens to us that God doesn’t share.  And sharing it with each other is how we see God, because that is where Jesus is. Bearing with us, already. 

That is the wisdom of the Spirit  - that God doesn’t swoop in and triumphantly sweep away all of life’s pain and heartache. God sets a place at the table of life for each person and sits down alongside us. God offers God’s very self to us, broken and given, so that we might be made whole.

 

Having the mind of Christ helps us see this.  And it makes us brave. Brave to face the truth. Brave to tell the truth. Brave to live the truth with each other. Even when the truth is, This sucks! This hurts so bad! it’s terrible and I hate everything about it! Because we know all sorrow and suffering is embraced and joined by God.  

And also, we know it’s not the end. It’s not the real, final, and true word about all of this or all of us. And right here, in the midst of whatever it is, we keep belonging to God and we keep belonging to each other. And this world is absolutely and forever loved by God, who is, at every single moment, bringing wholeness and love, healing and hope, through all the cracks and crevices in infinite and often unnoticed ways, and who is leading it all toward undiluted and unending love.  That’s the real reality.

 

A few minutes ago, when we baptized little Ohlin, we poured over him this promise and spoke into him this ancient and deep word of life, Ohlin you are held in the reality of God’s love, part of the harmony of all things, from before the foundation of the world and long after you are gone from it.  

And you, First Presbyterian Church of South St Paul, in this mystical and sacred act, promised to teach Ohlin this eternal wisdom, and when he forgets his belonging or the world’s belovedness, you are the ones who remind him. 

And you committed to Ohlin to live out your own remembering alongside him until he begins remembering for himself, and then helps you all in your remembering, and you’ll remember together. And you’ll send him into the world to remember with and for others, and to find Jesus right there where Jesus already is, to see God and join in God’s work of redemption. 

 

That this power was just bestowed upon a baby, that this act that undermines all the might and corruption and brokenness of this world just happened right here is a mystery that can hardly be grasped. 

None of the rulers of this age understand this wisdom, Paul says.

And why should they? It makes no sense. Its logic is love; its awareness is transcendent.

 

There are two short-cuts that I know of back to the true wisdom.  

The first one is sabbath. 

This wisdom tells us to stop and rest every single week. To put down everything, and not do anything impressive or productive at all– it deprives us of all our devices of accumulation, our instruments of efficiency, our tools of measurement and our weapons of comparison, and forces us to just be human beings with each other. Our glorious and pitiful, nervous and intriguing selves are utterly loved by God in all our sagging, annoying, endearing and honest humanity. This regular, intentional stopping doesn’t make us fall behind or miss out; but actually restores our souls, returns us to being human and grounds us in our belonging once again. Be still and know I am God.  

 

The second short-cut back to the true wisdom is gratitude.

 

Br. David Stendyl Rast asks, 

“Is not gratitude a passage from suspicion to trust, from proud isolation to a humble give and take, from enslavement to false independence to self-acceptance in that dependence that liberates? 

Yes. he answers. Gratitude is the great gesture of passage.

And this gesture of passage unites us. It unites us as human beings, for we realie that in this whole passing universe we humans are the ones who pass and know that we pass. There lies our human dignity.

There lies our human task.

The task of entering into the meaning of this passage (the passage which is our whole life), of celebrating its meaning through the gesture of thanksgiving.”

 

Sabbath and gratitude can point us back to the wisdom deeper than words.  

But we do not make moments of awareness and transcendence happen. 

They come upon us. 

From time to time, when we are unprepared and unsuspecting, we are seized by a kind of wakefulness that resonates in our depths. 

Cradling a new baby, swaddled and sleeping, warm against your chest…  

Standing still under a vast, dark and starry sky….  

Pausing, breathless and still, holding eye contact with a deer you’ve just startled while meandering in the woods…. 

Being held in someone’s strong embrace while you weep…. 

Rocking back and forth in violent hilarity with a friend gasping in unruly laughter beside you….

Through the whisper of memory, the glimpses of fullness, the flashes of beauty, and the tastes of wonder, God keeps calling us back to the deep.

The true wisdom will mostly show up in weak, gentle and surprising ways, but it is steady, persistent, unfailing.  Underneath and behind and inside everything is the heartbeat that keeps the whole world alive: 

We belong to God; we belong to each other. 
We belong to God; we belong to each other.
We belong to God; we belong to each other.

 

Here’s the really good news about all of this:

It remains true whether we remember it or not. 

Whether we are actively looking for it, practicing it and embodying it, or whether we’re stranded in fear or lost in exhaustion and all we can see is the next anxious moment in front of us, God’s persistent reality of love, hope, belonging and connection is already holding us all.  

The table of welcome is always set, and every one of us is endlessly invited.

This week, may we accept the invitation.

 

Amen.

 

This Thanksgiving...

This Thanksgiving...

They say, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder,"
we know absence makes the heart grow poignant.
The absence of those we love and miss today 

comes like a lump in the throat, 

a pressure in the chest,

tears, gulped away.

Their faces rise before us,
their voices echo in the silence,
the touch of their hands brushes us in the stillness.

Longing has asked for a seat at the table of our heart today.

But we're tender and afraid,

and this day is for thanks, not for sadness,

so we turn away from longing,

pretend it isn't here,

and ask ourselves instead, with forced 

smile, "What are you thankful for?"

batting away the hand of longing 

as it reaches for our heart.

Let's not.

Today, instead,

let's welcome longing in.

Let's take its coat, 

hug it tenderly, 

offer it a seat, 

and then feed it generously.

Given a place at the table,

longing will speak kindly to absence, 

pat sorrow's shoulder,

laugh with memory, 

draw out awareness,

and pull up a chair to pat the seat of honor

for gratitude.

Our heart will be full.

 

And we may end up feeling, after all, 

the presence of all who are not alongside us today,

here within us.

We may sense our belonging to them,

connection not only unbreakable

but strengthened this day.

Because longing 

given place and welcome,

made comfortable and free,

settles in,

makes itself at home,

and eventually reveals in us

its true and full self:

Love. 

-Kara Root
 
Happy Thanksgiving.

The Context of Our Lives

Ephesians 1:15-23

This is a hard week, friends -- Thanksgiving without most of what we think of Thanksgiving as being, in the midst of a frightening surge of covid and tightening of restrictions. More loss. More hard conversations. More boundary-setting. More disappointment. More loneliness. More grief. More frustration.  More unknown.  

We are weary. That weariness is real and everyone is feeling it. Nobody is doing fine.  None of us is feeling great.
 
But when we we come together, like this, over zoom, when the body of Christ gathers, we are putting ourselves in back in context.  We are again being whose and who we are.  We are placing ourselves to receive the blessings God always has for us. 
 
We come here with our hearts open – our broken hearts and our weary hearts and our grateful hearts and our determined hearts—and the prayers of those gone before are prayed over us even now.  In the timelessness of God, Paul and all the saints, including those we’ve personally known and loved and let go from this life, are gathered here with us, and they’re rooting for us, just as we are rooting for each other and longing that each other be well.  We are part of this community of saints that bridges time and space, transcends continents and centuries, and we’re all in this together.  This is hard to fathom, but it's true.
 
So imagine, dear ones, that Saint Paul has us in mind, that he is even now, face to face with the Divine, thanking God for us, and praying for us that we might recognize God at work, see who God is and what God is up to in this world.  I know about you, dear sisters and brothers gathering as Lake Nokomis Church. I’ve seen your trust that Jesus is right here with you as you are with and for each other, the way you seek to live in love and courage, and I celebrate you and never stop thanking God for you. 
 
And he’s asking God to open the eyes of our hearts to know without a doubt the hope to which God has called us, that we could see and know what is a truly good life, deep and sure, despite any circumstances or struggles, that we might recognize and receive the boundless love and abundant life right here in front of us. 
 
I want to know that hope, I want to see God right here in the world and feel the gift of my life. I want to receive that life however it comes to me, and especially when things feel hard, when grief and gratitude are right here side by side in us like they are right now and will be throughout this week and the holiday season.  
 
Paul says that God’s power, beyond our comprehension or ability to measure is here for us who trust God. I don’t know what that means, to be honest, my heart and head can’t begin to take that in.  I don’t believe it means we get out of pain or escape our mortality, since God chose not to avoid the limitations and discomfort of being human but to come right into it with us.  But he says that the power of God, power beyond measure is available to us right here, in the midst of everything we might be facing right now.  It's this power that helps us to trust.

This power that raised Jesus from the dead, this power that assures us that beyond any president or dictator or regime, greater than any virus or crisis, is the One who was there when the world was spoken into being, who came in vulnerable weakness to share with us every single thing we endure on this earth as human beings, all the senseless suffering and also every breathless moment of joy too great for words to express, who died our death and took death and separation into the heart of God, where it was healed so that even death itself is not to be feared.  This is the power that holds us. This is the love that claims us.  This is the reality in which we belong.  This is the context of our lives.

And just to help the point hit home, Paul goes at great lengths to say that this One who embodies our complete belonging to God reigns, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. There is simply no one and nothing greater.

And then he says that we are Christ’s body, we are the fullness of him who fills all in all. You and I, us!, in our little lives, our ordinary bumbling lives, together, side by side, suffering and laughing with one another, determined to see God in the world, committed to joining Christ in loving the world: the fullness of the one who cannot be contained lives in us.

So you guys, I know we are going to get through this. This part, and the part that comes after. We are going to get through it. We will let ourselves feel it – both the grief and the gratitude, we will let it break our hearts open so we can embrace more of this life that is so generously given to us. We wont be afraid to celebrate, and we wont be afraid to mourn, and we’ll even be so bold as to do both at once when the situation calls for it, as it seems to right now. 

And we won’t just get through - because God will use even this, this extraordinary, unfathomable muddle of year, to bring us deeper into hope, wider into love, to bring healing and hope into this world that needs it so badly. God will use these experiences in this time to open our hearts to see the big picture that we are made for and called to, to help us welcome this ridiculous, bighearted, painful and glorious life that we are given to share with each other in this the world.  

Wisdom, revelation, fullness, hope… I receive that prayer, brother Paul! I welcome that blessing!

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)

Today, a blessing

Gratitude is a door into timelessness.

Stopping in wonder,

letting gratefulness swell in your heart,

rise in your throat,

and press against the back of your eyes,

pulls you through the moment

into the deep reality.

Beyond everything else,

and underneath it all,

We Belong to God

and We Belong to Each Other.

May today be filled with glimpses

that break through 

noise and division,

anxiety and frustration,

distraction, blame and fatigue,

to this fundamental truth:

These people belong to you

and you to them,

we all belong to God,

this whole wide world,

and life is a gift,

abundance beyond measure,

to be shared and received.

Each breath and touch,

each laughter and tear,

each taste and texture,

drawing us in, opening us up,

to receive, respond, rejoice.

Pause there for a moment.

Read it again if it helps.

May you transcend and descend today.

And when you forget,

that you belong to God and these others,

may someone see past your defenses and bluster,

to your longing soul,

and may the Spirit gently nudge you back,

to your true home,

the space you are known and loved in God.

And when it’s a challenge,

may the grace of deep belonging hold you fast,

console your disappointment,

and give you a peek past their bluster

into the longing soul of another,

who belongs to God and you,

even while they’re forgetting it just now.

Gratitude is a door into timelessness.

pulling you through the moment

into the deep reality.

And these words: “Thank you,”

masquerading as simple, even trite,

are a mighty invocation,

a holy and powerful homecoming,

returning us to each other,

with whom we share all life and blessing,

and resuming us in God,

from whom all life and blessing comes,

and to whom all life and blessing returns.

Happy Thanksgiving.