The Best Laid Plans…

     Yesterday we arrived in Porto, found Middle, got to our hotel.  All good.  Today the plan was to experience Porto.  I had tickets at Livraria Lello, suppposedly the most beautiful bookstore in the world, and we were hoping to bop down to the river for a river cruise.  Today is David’s last day in Europe… he flies home with Middle’s belongings, so we also planned to organize and figure out how to have Middle keep what he needs and give David what he doesn’t.  We had it all worked out with plans to eat at specific places and to try specific foods, even.

    However, the day before yesterday I started to have an intermittent pain in my jaw and mouth.  I kept just hoping it would go away.  But this morning when we went down for the breakfast, drinking warm tea was almost unbearable. In addition, after yesterday evening's attempts to slim down what we needed David to take home (I got rid of a number of articles of clothing including my jacket, David threw out a number of articles of clothing as well, including some jeans, and Middle threw out more of the belongings he’d already pared down substantially in Norway. I had told him when he insisted on taking his skis to Norway that he would never be able to return with them but some lessons are hard learned: so skis, bag, poles, as well as many items of clothing and other assorted objects now belong to Norway, despite my warnings), we STILL could not fit everything that really needed to come home into two checked bags and a carry-on.  So, today’s plans were tossed.  

    Middle had the job of finding a new backpack for his continued travels through Europe with the hope of giving his old one to David to replace the smaller one we had brought as his "personal item."  My job was to find a dentist who was willing to see me TODAY since we are supposed to start the Camino tomorrow morning.  With the hotel’s help, I was able to find a woman who said she would go into her office to see me even though today her office was closed.  After fighting with our map app, we finally found the place.  She said I have an infection in one tooth that has spread to my jaw, she prescribed both antibiotics and pain killers which I then had filled at the local pharmacy, and encouraged me to see my own dentist ASAP to get this dealt with properly.

      Middle, in the meantime, went on a hunt for a larger backpack for himself.  He wasn’t finding what he really needed, so I joined him and we spent the afternoon walking to the different sports shops in Porto.  We were still unable to find what he needed.  It is now 5PM.  Day shot.  Not very successful on the one hand.  We will spend more time this evening paring down even more so David can leave at 4am tomorrow morning for home.  Hopefully they will LET him check two bags… if not, we will be in real trouble.  

    But again, we have choices about how to view this day.  While we did not do the touristy things in Porto, Middle and I certainly saw a great deal of it as we searched for camping or sporting goods stores.  We got in some good walking which will be good prep for the next couple weeks.  We saw some lovely gardens.  In addition, I met with the kindness of strangers.  The dentist that saw me hardly spoke any English and it’s been so long since I spent that summer in Brazil that my Portuguese is pretty much forgotten.  Still, she came out on her day off to help a stranger and would only take a hug as payment!  Kindness indeed.  It was also a very good thing that today when the pain became unbearable I had the space and help of the hotel staff to find someone to see me.  I won’t have that space over the next couple weeks.  I am glad it happened here.

    So yes, the plans went awry.  Sometimes that’s life.  And many times it’s okay that things don’t go as planned.  We just have to look for the good.

Season of Change

           Last week I wrote a letter for our church newsletter that focused on the nature of change.  I want to include part of what I wrote here, but take it a step further.  

          Every change involves grief.  Even good changes mean there is loss: something that was is now no longer and we have moved into something that is different from what was before.  While some of these changes are easier to get through than others, they all invite us into a process where we can either grow or stagnate, learn and develop or become angry and bitter.  When we try to skirt around the feelings of grief that change brings, usually it ends up hurting us in the end: we are not as able to truly move forward, to grow through the healing process, or to do the inner work required to become the whole people God calls us to be.  

          As I write this, I am preparing to go on Sabbatical.  This is a joyous time: both for me and for my congregation.  For me, I will have intentional and extended time off.  I don’t believe I’ve ever had a vacation or even a day off that was completely free from work in my years serving as a pastor.  There have always been phone calls, texts, emails that need my attention and I’ve been happy to give it.  I love my work and that call has shown me that my work has been valued and appreciated.  At the same time, I am tired and taking a true step away for a few months will be different for me. I will be turning off my computer for these months, stepping away from phone calls and texts.  For much of the time I will be out of the country and unable to receive contact of any kind, but even while I am in the country, a sabbatical requires a stepping away, a silencing of these modes of contact. That will be new for me, but in 28 years of ministry, I’m hoping it will be a time of spiritual renewal.  Jesus modelled stepping away to pray and to regroup and I am trying to learn from his example as I take this time apart.

For my congregation, they will have the experience of a wonderful woman coming to fill in for me who is a colleague, friend and mentor whom I'm hoping will be able to lead them in a different way for a few months.  She will bring different visions, different insight and will be able to lead and walk with the congregation in new ways.  These are all good things.  I will return in August and that will also be a good thing: I hope to come back with renewed energy and vision and I look forward to hearing what my congregation has learned during my time away. 

               But I also need to name, as I began, that every change involves grief.  Grief can include feelings of sadness, depression, anxiety.  While my hope is that these feelings will be minimal for my congregants, I can honestly say that they are rising steadily for me.  I worry about life transitions that I may not be here to support or to walk through. I wonder what my parishioners feel and how they will move through this time. Personally, I worry how it will be for me to not be defined by my ministry.  I have anxiety about the transition back when I return in August.  

            Our session (executive council) for our congregation met yesterday.  We are reading together a book about family and church systems and the chapter we read for yesterday discussed how the anxiety of grief can cause people to "act out."  I feel called to name that despite my understanding this to be true, it is still the case that I find my anxiety causing me to behave differently than I would choose. Today I was snippy and unusually direct with a congregant about something that had hurt someone I love.  Normally I would step back, take a breath before reacting, and be able to be more pastoral in my response.  But today I acted from that reactive anxious place.  I apologized, and fortunately was able to see it for what it was: a reaction based in anxiety and the grief of change.  Even more fortunately for me, he was also able to see that as well and so did not take it personally.  Still, my own behavior was a call to pay attention, and to breathe more deeply through the next couple weeks as I prepare to go.  

            As with all transitions, this is an invitational time for me to pay attention.  As with all feelings, the anxiety calls us to listen and to be honest in our feelings.  But once again, God did not leave me alone in my anxiety.  In the middle of today's drama, I received a phone call from someone I haven't spoken to in nine years.  It was a delightful and unexpected "catch up" conversation with a parishioner from my last congregation. I left the call with several gifts.  

         First, it was a reminder to me that even if I were not returning (and I am returning!!), there would be people who had valued my time here.  I do not need to be anxious that my presence has been unvalued or unimportant.  Even parishioners who experienced me for a much shorter time and during an unusually dramatic and difficult time value what I had to give.  

       Second, it was a reminder that even when we are apart from one another, we remain connected.  Our hearts, our experiences together, our walks together matter.  They continue to be part of who we are even when we are separate.   

      Finally, and always, it was a reminder that God never leaves us alone. At the moment when I most needed reassurance and comfort, I was given the gift of this re-connection.  The ways in which God binds us to one another and is the glue, the love, the communion in community is so important and essential.  And for all of that I am deeply grateful.

     During this season of change I am striving to walk with my eyes open.  I will make mistakes.  But none of us are alone, and with love and intentionality we will walk through the struggles to emerge in a better place on the other side.  Thanks be to God.

Are We Our Stories?

         About a month ago I was able to attend a conference for pastors and church leaders.  The theme of the retreat was story-telling: the importance of hearing and sharing the stories that make us who we are.  I found myself troubled by some of what was said, but I tried to stay in the positive of what we learned concerning the importance of telling our stories and hearing other people's stories.  The conference ended with lunch, and as I sat with a new friend I had made at the conference, she turned to me and asked what my biggest take-away had been.  I told her that I needed time to think on that, but that obviously she had been thinking about it already, so I wondered what her biggest take-away was.  She said it was a negative take-away.  She is the pastor of an older congregation, many of whom have Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.  She said, "If our stories define who we are, what happens when we can no longer remember those stories? If we are our stories, when those stories are lost, are we lost too?"  And in her words, I realized exactly what had been troubling me throughout the conference.  

          My mother has Alzheimer's.  In her case, it is not so much that she has lost her stories, as that her stories have changed, dramatically.  She is at the place in her illness where she tells outrageous stories of mistreatment (in particular), some that she claims happened years ago, some that she believes to be happening in the moment.  None of them are accurate.  For example, when my father went outside to get something from the car, she informed me that "that man has left me and I don't know what I did!"  I explained that Dad had just gone to the car to get something and she insisted that "No.  He's left me.  He's not coming back."  When he came back in and I said, "See, here he is!" she gave me that look of an abandoned, mistreated child and turned away.  That same afternoon as I made her a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, she told us that when she was a kid she was not allowed to have sandwiches.  Again, I have enough stories of her childhood, shared with me both by herself and her siblings, to know that this is not in fact true.  Still, in that moment these stories were true for her.  

          The stories that might once have defined her, that might once have made her into the person she is are gone.  Nonetheless in so many ways, my mother is still the person she has always been. Her personality is the same in many ways.  There is consistency in who she has become, even with the Alzheimer's.  And while that, too, may change (after all Alzheimer's does take us away from ourselves  and our loved ones, one painful step at a time), she is more than all of that.  She is more than her face and her body (which are changing for all of us all the time).  She is more than her memories, or her lack of memories.  She is more, even, than her personality.  She is more than what she has done and what she has left undone.  The conference answer to the question of who we ultimately are seemed to center completely on stories. And while the conference solution to the fading of memories was that "We therefore need to be intentional about sharing our own and each other's stories" and "In the end, God will remember our stories even when we cannot," I have to say that I found both these answers unsatisfactory in many ways.  

         I agree with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin when he says, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience."  As humans, we are given the experiences of this life: all of our thoughts, feelings, actions, and stories are a part of that.  What our brain does, with its gifts and its limitations, and yes, its stories, is a part of that experience.  Frankly, the experience of Alzheimer's and other dementia is often also a part of our human experience, a part of living.  It is not an easy part, but it is still a part, still an experience that we have here on this human journey.  And as a person grounded in the deep belief that we are more than our experiences here, more than this human journey, I have to believe that our identity, our meaning, our grounding goes beyond our stories.  

        For me, then, ultimately who each of us is, is a deeply loved, seen, understood and valued child of God.  And, big picture, each of us is part of a whole: deeply, intricately connected to every other part of creation. When we lose our stories, when we lose our memories, when we lose our abilities, and our functionality, and even our personalities, we are still valued, loved, deeply important pieces of a bigger picture that is a wondrous creation.  Each of us are a unique and beautiful drop in the ocean of life.  We are still children of God.  And we are still spiritual beings experiencing that painful and difficult part of the human journey as well.  Again, it is not an easy part of the journey.  But with every breath we take, the Spirit remains with us, accompanying us in our human journey, and being present with us even when that journey ends.  Ultimately, then, we return to being simply the spiritual beings that have had a human experience.  That is who we are, even when the stories are gone.

Changed in a Moment

 

Acts 9:1-19a

5/1/22

 

Today we heard about Saul/Paul’s conversion, and his being filled with the Spirit rather than persecuting those who would follow Jesus.  We have all heard this story before: it is a very familiar story.  It is so familiar that when people talk about great changes in their lives they sometimes refer to them as “Damascus Road experiences”.  But what I want to focus on today is that, while we in the extremely individualistic United States always hear this story as being a story about Saul and Saul alone, that Christianity is, in actuality, a very communal faith.  Our scriptures are not speaking to us as individuals, they speak to us as communities.  This story about Saul is no exception.  This is a story to a community of people, and the change that Paul experienced was a change that affected a great number of people.  But also, Paul did not experience this in isolation.  There were other players in this story who had very important roles to play.  We are told he was traveling with a group who also heard the voice.  We are told that he stayed with the disciples.  We are told that Ananias was the one who laid hands on him and healed him in Jesus’ name and then baptized him.  These are communal events.  And after all of this takes place, his call, and what he does from this point out, is to build communities of believers, entering synagogues, talking about Jesus, building up communities, groups of followers.  He is not about converting individuals, he is about building communities of believers. 

Christianity is very, very communal.  A commitment to the faith is a commitment to spend time in Christian community, caring for and serving God’s people, also in community.  I realize this is a foreign concept to many people.  Perhaps this is especially true of our younger generations at this point in time.  There is a myth at large, for example, among many young adults that religion is a private thing and does not require being in a community of faith.  But if you read the scriptures with intentionality, it becomes very clear that they have something very, very different to say.  Jesus, himself, was never a “lone ranger” but a person with a community not only of disciples but of many others as well, including women who were not counted among the twelve.  In Matthew 18:20 Jesus tells us, “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”  This is a strong statement, a strong, strong statement that it is not just that God stands beside us when we are alone and praying, but that Jesus is actually tangibly present, here in this place, in this room, when we are gathered in his name.  We do not experience Christ, God-among-us, Emmanuel, when we are alone.  It is an impossibility to do so.  Christ is to be found in community.  God might be experienced alone, but CHRIST, God with us cannot be.  We, together, are the body of Christ – but not alone, not in our own individual practices.  We are the body of Christ as a community of faith. 

It goes even deeper than that.  In today’s passage from Acts, when Jesus speaks to Saul, he does not say, “Why are you persecuting my people?”  I want you to think about that for a minute.  Those were not the words that Saul heard.  Remember that according the book of Acts, Saul was hunting down people who were followers of Christ.  As the passage we just read put it, “Meanwhile, Saul was still spewing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest, seeking letters to the synagogues in Damascus. If he found persons who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, these letters would authorize him to take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.”   But Jesus, speaking to Saul does not say, “Why are you persecuting my people?”  Instead he says, “Why are you persecuting ME?”  When we injure God’s people, we are injuring God, God-self.  This, of course, mirrors Matthew 25: “Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me.”

This story here, and Jesus’ words to Saul: these were not the exception.  This was the whole point.  We are deeply interconnected.  And when we try to separate ourselves from one another, walling off parts of our beings as “private” and “personal”, especially something as big as our faith, the people we harm are ourselves.  Our connections to others are our deepest connections to God.  Our faith conversations led us to a deeper understanding and therefore a deeper connection with God.  The sharing of our faith experiences also rounds out our vision and understanding of God.

When we are worshiping together, God is with us.  When we are feeding God’s sheep, God is with us.  When we are serving God’s people, God is with us.  When we connect with others in kindness, in care, in grace, God is with us.  And when we fail to connect with love and kindness towards others, we are failing to connect with God in those moments.  I think that part of the reason why meanness, why tearing, why estrangement and disconnection from others is so very painful for us is that it is not just a disconnecting from someone else.  It is a disconnecting from our very selves and a severing, in those moments, from God. 

               I think about when Pope Benedict made his decision to resign from his job as Pope.  That had not happened since 1294.  It was unheard of by many, and others saw it as unacceptable.  He made a very brave decision to do what he believed was best not only for himself, but for the church, since he could no longer serve as well due to failing health conditions.  In many, many ways he put the needs of the church and of the world above himself.  It was a brave and compassionate decision that recognized our deep interconnections and the need for wholeness and strength in leadership roles. 

               There is a story about a hospital volunteer who shared about a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare & serious disease.  Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness.  The doctor explained the situation to the girl’s little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. The hospital volunteer share that she saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes I'll do it if it will save her."  As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheek. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away?" Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.  But the point is: he did it anyway.

               Another story shares about a professor who gave a pop quiz.  The student wrote, “I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50's, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. "Absolutely, " said the professor.  "In your careers, you will meet many people.  All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do Is smile and say "hello.." I learned that her name was Dorothy.”

               These are stories that remember our connection.  These are stories that remind us of the importance of each person but more, the importance of our relationships with those we encounter.  Those connections are vital in every day life, but even more vital for those of us who believe in God, who believe that God is the connection between all of us, is the love that we share between one another.  The more that we can love, the more that we can connect, the deeper our relationships with God.

A member of a certain church, who previously had been attending services regularly, stopped going.  After a few weeks, the pastor decided to visit him.  It was a chilly evening. The pastor found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire. Guessing the reason for his pastor's visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a comfortable chair near the fireplace and waited.  The pastor made himself at home but said nothing.  In the grave silence, he contemplated the dance of the flames around the burning logs.  After some minutes, the pastor took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone then he sat back in his chair, still silent. The host watched all this in quiet contemplation.  As the one lone ember's flame flickered and diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more.  Soon it was cold and dead. Not a word had been spoken since the initial greeting.  The pastor glanced at his watch and realized it was time to leave.  He slowly stood up, picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire.  Immediately it began to glow, once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it. As the pastor reached the door to leave, his host said with a tear running down his cheek, 'Thank you so much for your visit and especially for the firey sermon. I will be back in church next  Sunday'.

               It is essential that we remember this.  That when people are dying in wars, that we are lessened, that when people are hungry, we are hungry.  When people are angry and vengeful, we are suffering too.  If we want to be the people of Christ, we have to remember our connections, our unity, that we need each other and are deeply connected to one another.  Paul’s conversion did not happen to just one person. It affected all who interacted with him.  Those who traveled with him when it happened, those who were with him with Ananias came to heal him, and all the rest of those with whom he interacted afterwards.  Similarly, everything we do, everything we choose, the words we use, the attitudes we have: all of these have an affect.  It’s the butterfly affect, it’s the quasar affect: everything we do interacts with everything else.  It all matters.  Let us, in all things, remember our deep connections and choose actions therefore that reflect love, grace, and caring for one another.  Amen.

Confession

 

John 18:12-27

John 21:15-19

Peter loved Jesus.  He loved Jesus deeply and in both of these passages he is making promises to Jesus.  In the second passage from John he is promising that he loves Jesus and Jesus is telling him to therefore show it by going out into the world and caring for Jesus’ sheep – or God’s people.  In the first passages, Peter is promising that he will never forsake or betray Jesus.  But then we see that he does.  This isn’t his intention.  He is not planning to betray Jesus.  He loves Jesus.  But he got caught up in the moment and before he knew what he was doing, he had done the very thing he hated – he had betrayed this person whom he loved.  He had betrayed his Lord.  He had betrayed God.

We, too, make mistakes, devastating mistakes sometimes, against the people we love and in doing so, against God God-self, who loves us all and wants right relationships for us all.  Sometimes these mistakes are complicated by our failure to realize that we have a choice about them.  Many times, maybe even most times, we don’t realize we are being “tempted” into hurting others and therefore hurting God until the moment has passed. 

We see example after example of this in our movies.  So many of our stories involve a betrayal, often unintended, of one person by someone they love. We’ve talked before about the movie “The Devil Wears Prada”.  The movie’s main character, Andi, starts as a person with goals and integrity.  She wants to be a journalist, and she has written about injustices such as poor work conditions.  She is in a committed relationship and values her time with her friends.  She enjoys her life, and has a cause or meaning, a purpose in her future.  Her values do not include shallow things like appearance, being thin, high fashion, owning expensive purses, clothing, things.  She puts work in its proper place as one aspect of who she is.  She is down-to-earth, centered, and knows where she is heading and what she wants.  When she first applies for the job as Assistant to the Director of Runway Magazine, she is appalled by the value system that surrounds her – the emphasis on accessories that make no real difference to one’s well-being, the insistence on being thin, on looking “right,” on dressing “right.”  She is also kind, committed to her friendships and cares about her relationships with those friends, and with her boyfriend, above all others.  But when she takes the job, she finds her values and her identity being slowly challenged, slowly and subtly being undermined and eroded.  She finds herself giving up more and more of her time with her friends and significant other in order to work.  She finds herself being pulled into the drama and the appeal of a fast-paced career with models and glamour and eventually into valuing the entire system of clothing and accessories and being thin and owning purses that cost thousands of dollars – all things she didn’t used to care about.  The choices she is faced with – to choose depth, meaning and relationships, or to choose appearance, glamour, fame and achievement are subtle choices, but she finds herself choosing for the latter again and again, and she finds herself saying to those who would challenge those choices, “well, I didn’t have a choice!” She chooses to do what her boss asks her to do, and in the end that means that she ends up deeply hurting a colleague who was becoming a friend.  She took from her an activity, by agreeing to do it herself, that she knew was the thing most valued by her friend.  She betrayed that relationship, all the time repeating that phrase, “I didn’t have a choice.”  Similarly, she begins a flirtation with another man, “cheating” in an emotional way, on her boyfriend.  Again, it is subtle, and it feels to Andi like she is just responding in the best, most appropriate way to the actions of others coming at her.  But she betrays that relationship as well, deeply hurting the man she loves. 

“I didn’t have a choice.” But that lie that she told herself, that she didn’t have a choice meant that she lost her friends, she lost her significant other, she lost her sense of self and her values.  As she and her boyfriend are having the conversation where they are actually splitting up, she receives a phone call from her boss, and she says, “I’m sorry.  I have to answer this,” STILL not realizing she is making a choice.  As her boyfriend walks away he says to her, “You know, in case you were wondering?  The person whose calls you always take – that’s the relationship you’re in.”  Even after all of those losses she still didn’t realize the choices that she was making or that she had a choice to make, until her boss, Miranda, in the film pointed it out to her by comparing Andi’s choices with her own.  Andi could see that Miranda’s choices were hurtful, were harmful, were devastating.  But until Miranda pointed out that Andi had made the same choices, Andi couldn’t see. She could not see the choice she was making, or even THAT she was making a choice. It was just like with Peter, who did not realize he was doing what Jesus told him he would, that he was denying the person he loved, until the rooster crowed, reminding him of Jesus’ words that said he would do exactly that.

Similarly with Saruman in Lord of the Rings who thought he could look into the Palantir thinking he could learn from it and instead was seduced by it.

            Also in a Joan of Arcadia episode where Joan has been asked to do something by God that Joan does not understand and that she feels would hurt her friend.  She chooses to say “no” to God instead, believing that she has a good reason, but that choice, that choice to “protect” her friend against that request of God lead to the friend being much more harmed, much more damaged than if she had acted differently. 

            In most of these situations: Andi in Devil Wears Prada, Joan in Joan of Arcadia, and Peter in this story with Jesus, we find the same ending.  In the “Devil Wears Prada” Andi eventually chooses to walk away from the evil that she is becoming.  In the Joan clip, she is given another chance, repeatedly, and she chooses to listen and follow God.  Saruman never changes: he becomes too entrapt in his love for evil.  But with Peter, too, we know the end of this story.  The end is that Peter does follow Jesus after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Peter becomes a martyr for the faith – dying because of his proclamation of Jesus as Lord.  He does stand up for God, by God, by Jesus.  He had a slip, but that wasn’t the end of the story. 

We, too, make mistakes and hurt people we care about.  But God offers us forgiveness, God offers us new chances every day.  More, God forgives us and starts us over again and again and again.  I wish I could say that people were as forgiving.  But they aren’t always.  Some betrayals can’t be gotten over.  Some mistakes can’t be righted by apologies or attempts at reconciliation. 

            I’m reminded of a MASH episode which I shared about recently in a blog post but wanted to share it here as well: In Episode “Dear Sis”: Father Mulcahy punched a guy who had hit him first and was being difficult.  He felt bad about it and tried to apologize, but the man was still being an absolute jerk who was completely incapable of seeing how he contributed to the problem.  Father felt bad and was outside and said to Hawkeye:

F: You know, I used to coach boxing at the CYO. I told my boys it built character.

H: Father, why don’t you stop punching yourself on the chin.  Pick on someone your own size

F: I’m Christ’s representative. “Suffer the little children to come unto me.  Do unto others… I’m not just supposed to say that stuff.  I’m supposed to do it.

H:All you’re supposed to do is the best you can.

F: Some best.

H: Best is best!  Look.  Suppose you were sitting here right now with somebody who had done his best and was feeling lousy about it.  You’d let ‘em off the hook wouldn’t you?

F:  Sure I would.  And if the hook didn’t work, I’d probably try an uppercut.

H: Father, get off your back.

F: It isn’t just that.  I don’t seem to make a difference here.  I hang around on the edge of effectiveness.  And when I do step in, I really step in.

H: Look.  This place has made us all nuts.  Whey should you be any different?   WE don’t sleep we don’t eat and every day a truck dumps a load of bloody bodies on the ground.  Okay so you hit someone.  We have to stand here and watch so much misery we’re lucky we don’t all join hands and walk into a chopper blade.

            The reality is that none of us are perfect.  Not one.  And that means that all of us will err at one point or another.  We all will.  No matter how “good” we are, and no matter how hard we try, we will hurt people.  We will hurt people we don’t care about, and we will hurt people we love.  We will, like Peter, deny someone we love when we feel threatened, refusing to stand up and say “I know that person and I love that person” to someone who is condemning them.  We will, like Andi in “Devil wears Prada” choose to do what gets us ahead, even if it means someone else losing out on an opportunity.  We will, like Joan in Joan of Arcadia, choose to follow our own path, thinking we know best, even when we’ve been told otherwise.  We will err. 

            But the Good News of this story and every Bible story is one of God’s amazing and great, unfathomable forgiveness, offered to us again and again and again.  It is the Good News of second, third, 100^th choices to do right again next time.  It is one of Grace.

            Our call when others seek forgiveness and reconciliation is to follow God, to follow Jesus and extend grace just as they did, not just for the other, but for our own healing as well.  But we cannot control the choices of others and sometimes we will not be offered that same grace. 

            Still, you can count on God’s grace.  Jesus shows it to Peter, and God shows it to us.  God hopes that we will not make those decisions that harm relationships, but God knows we will err, we will make mistakes.  And when we do, God is there to offer us new starts, new chances, new opportunities. 

            There is something else I want to say here.  We are in the season of lent, and lent as you know, is a time that we are usually called to self-reflect and to “repent”.  But that word, “repent” carries with it so many associations that are incorrect.  “Repenting” is not about beating yourself up with shame and guilt and pain.  It’s not about punishing yourself and then striving to do better.  “Repenting” means turning around, going a different direction.  Marcus Borg defines “repentance” as “returning from exile.”  I want you to think about that for a moment.  Because doesn’t that feel very different that what we’ve always heard it to mean up until now?  Returning from exile is about coming home: coming HOME.  You come home to yourself, you come home to who you really are, you come home to who you want to be.  And we don’t tend to get there by beating ourselves up.  Yes, self-reflection is necessary to know what is keeping us in exile, and what is keeping us apart from what we love and what we want to be.  For Peter, his denial of Jesus was keeping him from Jesus.  So we change.  But we don’t change out of shame and guilt.  We change as a way to return home to the people we are called to be. 

            I think about Frodo in Lord of the Rings when he thought that Sam was out to take the ring from him.  Frodo “repented” or came home from exile when he saw Sam again for who he really was: the helper who, in the end, saved Frodo’s life.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

All Saint's Day sermon (late)

 

Celebration of the Saints

1 Kings 5:1-5; 8:1-13

John 2:19-21

10/31/21

               In the passage that we read today from 1 Kings, we hear of the amazing plans of Solomon for the building of the temple.  We also hear in that last line the intent of the temple.  “Then Solomon said, ‘The Lord said that he would live in a dark cloud, but I have indeed built you a lofty temple as a place where you can live forever.’”   We don’t tend to think of God as living in a temple, as living in a building, as residing in a specific place at all.  If we do, I think we envision heaven as the place where God lives.  But this is not really a biblical understanding.  And it is certainly not an Old Testament understanding.  The Israelites truly and deeply believed that God resided in the temple, in the Holy of Holies: the innermost part of the temple: in the Ark of the Covenant.  This was where God LIVED and could be found. 

               I invite you to think about that for a moment.  How would our faith, our practice of faith change if we believed God actually lived in the church, for example?  What would you do differently if we believed that this building was God’s HOUSE? 

               And then the next question is, if we believed that God lived here in this building and then the building was destroyed, especially by people we believed to be enemies, how would that impact you?  What would you do?  What would WE do? 

               That is in fact what happened to the Israelites.  For them the temple was sacred, absolutely holy in the highest sense of that word.  It was perfect, it was God’s home.  And then it was destroyed.  Twice it was destroyed.  And both times that destruction was beyond devastating.  It challenged everything they believed, everything they understood.  Did this mean that God was destroyed too?  Did it mean that God had left the “home” they had made for God?  And if so had God left them, too?

               They had come to a very unhealthy place in their understanding.  God had wanted a relationship with the Israelites.  But instead, they had made it into a set of rites, rituals and regulations.  But that became their core value, their core understanding.  And when that was destroyed?

               We all have beliefs, we all have “sacred cows” in our understandings and in our theology, but also in our mind sets.  Things that we cling to absolutely.  Those beliefs that we cling to become our grounding, our base.  They become foundational for us; core beliefs that effect everything else about the way we view the world.  They affect what information we can take in, what information we reject.  They also blind us to other pieces of information.  They blind us, many times to inconsistencies and to flaws in the arguments that support those beliefs.  They blind us to obvious truths that would challenge our way of thinking. 

But the thing is, sacred cows cannot survive in this world.  Anything other than God that we make into an idol is bound to fall, that we declare absolute, that we decide is “truth” cannot survive, ultimately.  Maybe not in our lifetimes, but everything that we make into an idol, or that we decide is unshakeable, or absolute will be challenged.  And when the beliefs or the idols or the sacred cows become challenged, as all sacred cows will, we will have a choice we must make. 

There are four ways people usually respond when their core beliefs are challenged. 

               The first is to continue to deny what has challenged our understanding.  This can only be done up to a certain point, but people do this.  Even when it is obvious to everyone around them that they are doing that, people still do this.  For example, if you were raised to believe that people who are rich have it because they deserve it, and people who are poor don’t have things because they don’t deserve to have good things, then these beliefs might be challenged the first time that you actually get to know a poor person, or someone who grew up in abject poverty.  Even so, I hear people find ways to cling to their old belief systems: “Well, this person is the exception”.  “Well, but MOST people who are poor are different.”  Or they discover how much harm someone who is rich has really done to those under them in order to climb that particular ladder.  Same deal: “Well, that action was the exception.  They don’t normally act that way.” 

               When I was in Ohio there was another clergy couple in our Presbytery who also went through a terrible scandal.  The male pastor was brought up on ecclesiastical charges for sexually abusing a bunch of different boys from three different Presbyteries around the country.  These boys were now all men, the pastor was past the statute of limitations so could not be brought up on criminal charges, but these boys were pressing ecclesiastical charges.  The pastor renounced jurisdiction, which means he gave up his ordination, in order to shut down the process so that no one would hear the charges or be able to confront him.  But the three Presbyteries involved decided this was unfair to the victims.  They hosted “listening” sessions that would simply allow the victims to share their experiences with this pastor.  When the charges were first brought, most people supported the pastor.  They denied the possibility that their beloved, charming, charismatic pastor could ever be found guilty of something like this.  But with the listening sessions man after man came forward to share their story.  And those these men had not previously known each other (some from California, some from Florida and now some in Ohio), their stories all had strong similarities and were all intensely painful.  Once those stories were out, it became much, much harder to deny the charges.  But his wife continued to hold on to her belief in his innocence.  She could not allow her core faith in her husband’s innocence to be shaken, despite the evidence. 

The second response that a person may have in the face of the face of a core belief being challenged is that a person may change lesser beliefs around the core belief in order to hold up their core belief.  I saw this with Martha Stewart.  People believed in her. Many idolized her. So when she was found guilty of insider trading, people changed other ideas they had in order to keep Martha Stewart as the idol she had been for so many.  “Oh, that’s not such a bad thing,” they decided.  Or “Well, she wasn’t really guilty.”  Or, “well, people make mistakes”.  And they forget that if it had been a poor, unknown person making that same “mistake”, they would have wanted them put away for life.

               However, if the situation is too big, too overwhelming, neither of these responses can be upheld.  Such was the case with the destruction of the temple.  It was far too clear and obvious that the temple had been destroyed for any denial to be long lasting.  So then again, they had a bigger choice to make about the cognitive dissonance they were experiencing.  One possible response is to throw out the whole belief system.  Some people decide that because a core understanding has been found to be flawed, the whole thing has to go.  We see this response in many situations.  When I was doing my dissertation on fundamentalism, as you know from a few weeks ago, I interviewed some people who had left fundamentalism to become atheists.  For these folk, they would find something in scripture that contradicted something else in scripture (like, for example, the order of creation in Genesis 1 versus the order of creation in Genesis 2, or Jesus’ constant confrontation and overturning of some of the old biblical laws: like the law of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” which he completely threw out saying “But I say to you, do not return evil for evil. But if someone slaps one cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”, etc.) then their core belief in a literal and inerrant scripture becomes challenged.  The reaction of some, then, is to throw out the entire faith.  “If this is wrong, the whole thing must be wrong.”

Another example I’ve often encountered is with the core belief that God is in charge of everything, and that everything happens for a reason.  If God is all-powerful and then something too terrible to be dealt with happens, what is a core belief for many is shaken.  If I believe that God can take control or is in control of everything, then I may have been able to say, “everything happens for a reason” when my brother died or when I lost my job.  But when an event such as the Holocaust happens?  Or when I know a child who is raped or tortured?  When I encounter first hand the thousands of people who die from starvation or dehydration?  Then the ability to say “well, God was in charge” and “everything happens for a reason” can be challenged.  The result for many who go through this experience is also one of choosing to reject faith completely.  There can’t be a God at all, certainly not a loving God, if these kinds of terrible things happen and God does not prevent them.

In the secular world, we see this happen when an idol is found to be human. When a politician or movie star or pastor is caught in a scandal that is so horrific that it cannot be denied, people may throw out the person all together.  They will flip from seeing the person as all good to seeing the person as all evil.  There is no in-between.  There is no humanity to be accounted for.  They were perfect.  And now they are the devil. 

Finally, the last, and obviously the most healthy response to that cognitive dissonance, to an irrefutable challenge to our core beliefs is to go through the grief and pain of adjusting them.  Can we make that choice to change how we think, to readjust our beliefs to include the new information?  This is the hardest self-reflective work that we will ever have to do in our lifetimes: to actually be willing to look at foundational beliefs, to accommodate information we did not have before, to change.  I cannot overstate how hard this is for people.  The grief involved in a complete mind-set change is so large that most people simply cannot do it.  It takes amazing strength, courage and wisdom to be able to look at new information and consider that we may have been wrong.

I think about the people who believed with absolute conviction that Hitler was doing a good thing for his people, and what they must have felt after WWII.  Were they able to see that they had in fact been wrong?  Were they able to change?  Where they able to see the evil in their own understandings?  Or did they die declaring he was right, or misunderstood, or that we just were focusing on the wrong thing?   Did they deny the evil he did?  Say it hadn’t really happened at all?  Did they deny the inhumanity of the concentration camps?  Or continue in prejudice, blind thinking?  Were they able to change?

We know that some were.  I think about Corrie Ten Boom’s writing about some of the guards she met when the Holocaust had ended.  I think about their confessions to her with sorrow and deep regret about the parts they played.  But how hard that must have been for them!  How hard for any of us to realize we have participated in something harmful, or destructive.  I’m reminded once again of Professor Dumbledore’s commentary at the end of the Harry Potter series about the evil Voldemort.   He said that even this evil man could heal, he could heal all the horrible, awful things he had done.  He could find “salvation” but only if he were willing to face what he had done and to feel remorse for it.  He also admitted that the pain of that remorse would be worse than he could imagine.  But it would save him.  Being willing to see and understand would save him.  But it would not come without a pain he was unwilling to experience. 

               Today we celebrate the saints.  And we tend to mean two things by this in the Presbyterian Church.  The first is those people who have gone ahead of us whom we honor.  When I think of the saints in my life, the people in my life whom I deeply respect, admire, look up to; they are, consistently, people who are willing to do the hard internal work of really looking at themselves, their core beliefs, and all of their actions throughout their lives that have come out of those core beliefs.  They are willing to turn, or go a different direction, when they have found that their most sacredly held beliefs have led them astray.  They are people, like Jack, who are willing to adjust, change, and go a different way.

               The other thing we in the church mean by “the saints” is all those whom we have cared about and valued who have passed before us.  Because we believe and understand that they are all children of God, all loved by God, all valued by God.  They have added to our lives, not always in a good way, but always they have added something, something we could learn from if not rest in.  They have made us who we are, they have made the church what it is.  They have struggled and suffered as we now struggle at times and suffer at times.  And their legacy informs ours and who we are and who we are becoming.  We remember them in all their humanity, in all their ideas that we now know to have been false, all their core beliefs that we have now come to see were flawed and limited.  Our remembering them can help us to be gentle with our own flawed beliefs.  Our remembering the building of the temple and the hope they placed in this building that was destroyed can help us to have compassion for those who remain stuck in their ideas, but also for ourselves when we are struggling to change.  It can also give us the courage to change: Remembering can give us the courage and strength to be willing to change our ideas when they are challenged. 

               So, on this All Saints Day, I call you to remember.  Remember a temple people thought housed God.  Remember that it fell.  Remember that the people had to choose how to respond when their core beliefs, their sacred cows, were destroyed.  Remember the saints we have known and their core beliefs that were challenged or shattered during their life times or afterwards.  And then remember to be gentle with yourself when you are faced with new information.  You have choices about how to respond.  Will we grow?  Will we learn?  Growing and learning will make our lives easier.  But know this good news: that even when we don’t, when we cannot stretch or cannot grow, God will still love us, hold us, and carry us into tomorrow.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

The Ability to Affect Change in Those We Encounter

       As I mentioned in my sermon last Sunday, my son and I have been watching MASH episodes.  I have always enjoyed the show and I continue to do so.  But I'm also seeing them from a slightly different perspective as I grow and become older.  While the sexist and demeaning remarks of the men in the show towards the nurses used to be funny to me (and that was their intention), they now bother me a lot more as I see them for what they are: harrassing, objectifying, and again, extremely sexist.  At the same time, these attitudes expressed in the show do improve as the show progresses through time.  Additionally, the women become less of an "accessory" and more central to the show.  Margaret's character, in particular, moves from a one-dimensional, unintelligent sex-object into a real person who is not only powerful and strong, but also confronts some of these attitudes that come her way.  I woke up this morning thinking about the ways in which her character not only challenges the behaviors of those around her, but actually makes a difference in who they are, in the ways they treat her, and possibly all those around them.  This happens many times, more so as the show progresses, but there are three times in which it especially stands out for me.
        In Season 5, Episode 19, "Hepatitus", Hawkeye has to give Margaret a shot for hepatitus.  These shots are to be given in one's rear end and Hawkeye litters the conversation with these objectifying remarks.  But Margaret ends the scene with these words:
        "How dare you! You come in here on the pretext of giving me a shot and then stand there ogling me as thought I were a side show attraction!"
        "Margaret, I'm trying to show you some appreciation and you hit the roof!  What do you want from me?"
        "Respect.  Simple respect.  I expect nothing more, and I'll accept nothing less."
         Hawkeye looks like he's been hit.  He looks like her words impacted him in a way that nothing else in their relationship had up until that point.  And he shows this to be true by his response when he then says: "That's pretty good.  You got me with that.  You really did.  You know in some ways you really are magnificent, and not just on the outside."
       In season 10, episode 5, "Wheelers and Dealers," BJ is struggling because his wife at home is having to go to work to pay some of their bills.  He is extremely upset and is acting out by being unkind to everyone around him.  Eventually he gives Hawkeye and Margaret a lecture explaining how they can't possibly understand his suffering because they don't have a family at home.  Margaret comes back at him with these words: "How dare you!  How dare you stand there acting like your brand of suffering is worse than anybody else's!  Well, I guess that's the only way you can justify treating the rest of us like dirt.  Well let me tell you something, sad sack!  If the worse thing that has happened to you is that your pretty little wife has to help pay the bills for a while don't come to me for sympathy.  Maybe you do have the most to lose.  But that's only because you've got the most!"  And again, we see that BJ hears her.  He brings a gift to his friends of cookies that his wife made and as he shares them he says, "I'm still full from last night's serving of humble pie."
      Finally, in season 8 episode 14, "Stars and Stripes" Margaret is having a romance with Scully until he dismisses her work and her profession as unimportant, less-than, and almost "play acting."  He says, "You're a nurse.  Being a major is an honorary thing, so you can boss around a bunch of nurses.  But not real soldiers."
      Margaret responds with "Is that so?  Well, let me tell you something, Private. I'm damn proud of these." (pointing at her major pin)  "Nobody gave these to me.  I earned them. And I'm just as much a major as any other major.  You'll notice these leaves come in gold.  Not pink for girls and blue for boys."
      And then later when they have another conversation in which he is again trying to put her back into the singular role of subservient woman, she says, "You take it for granted that everything you want is yours.  What about what I want?  What do you suppose I am deep down?  I'm me: sometimes a nurse, sometimes a major, sometimes a woman in love, sometimes all three at once... and sometimes that's lonely. Cooking eggs and playing house used to be fine for an afternoon.  But now I want more out of my life than an afternoon..."  Scully leaves.  Perhaps she doesn't change him with her words this time, but my guess is that she does: it just takes longer for those words to have an impact, to make it inside to that place where he might become a bit more self-reflective and might grow and learn a bit.
     There are other times too, when Margaret is able to truly impact those around her, with her strength, and with her wisdom.  Since this is a TV show, I have found myself wondering, more realistically, how many people the character's words actually affected through the airing of these thoughts, ideas, beliefs and even values.
      I think for me, that ability to make a difference, to change ourselves, but through that to impact others in ways that help them to be kinder, more self-reflective, more understanding, more compassionate, more grace-filled - that is my deepest goal and hope.  This isn't really measurable.  I will never know if my words have impacted or changed others.  My life is small, the ways in which I affect the larger world are small.  I will never know if I have been able to make a difference in the lives of those around me.  But it is my goal, my hope, that my impact in this world is positive, and makes change for the better.
      At the same time, I had someone remind me today that we pastors are not the "source" but are the medium, like a river bed, for the river to flow through.  That our goal, really, should be to move ourselves out of the way so that the river can flow through us to those we encounter.  While it can be hard to put our egos aside, any goal that lifts up our own success or our own ability to make a difference is not following that deeper call from God.  So, I am trying to sit into this, to listen to those words of wisdom and to move myself out of the way.  Still, I think God works through us, no matter our flaws and our humanity, whenever we are open to God, and whenever our intentions aim towards Love.  I will continue to value the character of Margaret in MASH because she is able to change her world for the better.  It is something I would wish for all of us; that we can become the mirrors reflecting the Light, that we can become the arms, holding one another in love; that we can become the river bed, a shute for a river of compassion, grace and justice to flow through us into a broken and hurting world.

Times are different

          Lately I've had many days when I feel that I've said everything that I need to say.  Well, not, perhaps to individuals.  There are people I would like to say things to.  There are people I'd like to apologize to, and others I'd like to just catch up with.  There are even a couple folk with whom I'd really like to have a "come to Jesus meeting" - people I'd like to speak truth to, telling them how those I've loved or even I myself have been affected by their actions.  I'd like to have the opportunity to be strong and fix untruths.  I'd like there to be a sense of "wholeness" or closure or reconciliation with a couple folk.  But those are all individuals.
         For some time now when I go to write a new sermon, I've found myself looking to old ones for help to know what to say.  And when I go to write on this blog, I look at old essays I've begun but never finished to try to see if there are any of those beginnings that are now calling to me to finish them.  And now, after a month of limited contact and "shelter in place" I am struggling to write emails to my congregants that boost them, that support them, that offer the love I feel for them each day and the dismay and absence I feel when we cannot be together.  I've said it repeatedly.  And now, there is nothing more, nothing left, nothing new to say.
        For those who know me well, the idea that I may have nothing to say... well, it's new.  I usually have way too many things to write, to think.  I have 150 pages of "sermon ideas" or illustrations for anything I might want to talk about.  I have beginnings of books, beginnings of blog posts, beginnings of emails just waiting to be finished, written, sent.  They were just waiting for me to have space and time.  I have that now.  Well, I have the space even if the time may be a bit illusive.  But when there is space, when there is time set aside for writing, for speaking, for creating, I find that new words do not come easily.  And when I read the words I've written, they sound like empty echoes of words I've spoken before.
         Perhaps creativity is also a victim of this time - at least for me.  For many people crisis encourages art, spurs on new thoughts, new reflections, and new ways of looking at things.  The last time I went through crisis, my writing became prolific, my thoughts were opened and writing was necessary in many ways to process through what was going on.  But maybe in part because I've done so much "crisis writing," this time round I have nothing new.  And maybe that's okay.
        I've encouraged my congregants to be gentle with themselves during this time, recognizing that our reactions to crisis are varied and that we all need time and space in crisis to grieve, to process, to rest and to just BE.  I've reminded them that we will process more slowly and that taking the time to walk through trauma is not only okay, but necessary and important.  So perhaps I need to offer myself that same kind of grace.  I also need to recognize that where I am today may look very different from where I will be tomorrow.
        Grace, offered to others, but also offered towards ourselves, is very important right now.  The world looks different.  So do we.  And that needs to be okay.  God offers great grace.  And we can learn to offer that to one another and ourselves as well.

Preparing for what is to come

Mark 11:1-11,

Mark 14:3-9

             We come once again, as we do every year, to Palm Sunday.  We know the basic message of Palm Sunday: the people expected a military king who would overthrow Roman Tyranny and restore Israel to its former glory.  Instead they were greeted by a humble king, a king of peace rather than violence, a king who called us to work for change in a different way, through the power of love rather than through the power of anger and hate.  The people didn’t understand this, didn’t want this and by the end of the week were so outraged that they killed him.  We know this story and it is important that we remember it.  But today I want to change the focus a little bit and instead talk about where you are, where we are, where the world is today, in light of the Palm Sunday message.

             How has this been for you as a Palm Sunday service?  There are no crowds processing into the church, there have been no large groups shouting “Hosanna!  Hosanna!” and waving their palm fronds.  There is no choir to celebrate this high holy day.  There are five of us in this sanctuary and we are not in a celebratory place in our lives.  We stand apart from one another, distant from each other, keeping space.  We are standing in the unknown, in a place and time of “social distancing”. 

             At the same time, I think the similarities between Palm Sunday and where we were before March of 2020 are striking.  When the people welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem, they had high expectations of one kind.  They had expectations and hopes for that day and frankly for the rest of their lives.  They believed that Jesus would make everything better.  They threw their cloaks on the road before him and shouted “Hosanna!”  or “Lord save us!” and they blessed him and honored him.  They set their hopes on Jesus that he would free them from government tyranny (by the Romans) and that they would then be free.  They expected that he would return Jerusalem to Jewish control, that he would renew their strength and power.  But Jesus wasn’t who they expected.  He was a leader who led by an example of love and grace rather than rage, violence and judgement.  He accepted those that the people rejected and he uplifted those others oppressed.  He focused his attention on the poorest of the poor, and called all of us to the task and the work of treating the least of these like the worthy humans that they are, caring for them, loving them. 

We are given a glimpse of this reality in the second gospel reading for this morning.  Jesus’ kindness and care for the woman who came to honor him with the perfume bottle was upsetting and disturbing to those who wanted him to act in a very different way.  It was upsetting because it was confronting the status quo, but not in the way those around him hoped.  He didn’t confront the Romans, but he did confront Jesus’ own religious leaders.  He didn’t lift up the Israel Elites into a position of even higher status, instead he confronted their leadership by challenging the ways in which they behaved towards their own people.  He confronted their values: throwing out the money changers from the temple, talking to women, Samaritans, those who were sick and damaged.  In the span of a week, the beliefs and hopes of all those who were hearing and seeing Jesus were flipped on their heads.  Their expectations for the future were completely destroyed and their reaction was much more than disappointment.  It was rage.  It was fear.  It was anxiety.  It became a desire for nothing less than his death, his crucifixion. 

             And us?  You and I?  Is this how we expected to spend our Palm Sunday?  Is this how we envisioned we would be at the beginning of Holy Week?  No.  Our expectations and hopes for our own future also looked different.  We were looking forward to time with our families, time with our friends, time to travel, time to gather for parties or festivals or even just to worship together.  We looked forward to eating out, going to the theater, walking together and gathering together for book groups, golf outings and bocce.  We looked forward to weddings, anniversary gatherings and birthdays together.  We were excited about graduations and time with kids or grandkids and theater events.

             We planned, we dreamed, we celebrated as they did on Palm Sunday.  We welcomed in each new day with hope and we looked towards the future with anticipation. 

             But we are no longer in that Palm Sunday place.  We have moved into the rest of Holy Week much more quickly than we would like.  Now things are different.  Things have changed; unexpectedly, quickly, and dramatically.  They continue to change.  What looked like a short time of isolation and social distancing is now increasing in length.  What looked like a potentially low risk and low mortality rate is now looking like a disease that spreads much more quickly and easily and has a much higher mortality rate than we at first believed.  Every day, it seems our disappointment with the current situation deepens, our anticipation of time together is pushed farther into the future, our hopes for a “return to normal” recede further and further away.  For this time, and for who knows how long, all of those things that we looked forward to have been put on hold, have been put into “wait and see” mode. 

I think about my own daughter.  Her birthday was two weeks ago.  And instead of going to see Hamilton (her birthday present from us), she stayed at home (the theater closed the day we were supposed to go).  And instead of the party we had planned for her and her friends at the trampoline place, she stayed at home.  And instead of spending time with her family, she was laid up in bed, sick, with a 102 degree temperature.  With what?  We don’t know.  And again, I realize this is a very small loss.  Whatever she was sick with, it has passed and she is back to being our healthy girl.  But that was her birthday.  One of pain, one of grief, one of fear…  Her anticipatory time of hopes and expectations and celebration was brief. 

For the rest of us, for those of us who really understand the situation and how serious and potentially dangerous it is, it is much more than disappointment that we are facing.  There is also fear.  Fear for our own health, fear for the health of loved ones; fear about the loss of work, for ourselves or our loved ones; fear for a future that is unknown.  We don’t know what is coming, and the fear that we have is real, is there for a reason. 

That combination of disappointment and fear, that combination of rage and anxiety is dangerous for us, because it can lead us to become the Good Friday people searching for someone to blame and lashing out with our anger.  It can cause us to turn 180 degrees from people who are celebrating life to people who are enraged and acting out our fear with violence and unkindness.  But we are always called to something better.  Yes, we need to confront problems, but baying for blood, turning to retaliation and damage of our neighbors is not the same thing as confronting problems in a helpful and positive way.

On NextDoor last week from a person posted that when he went to the local Safeway, he was standing behind a woman in line who turned and yelled “back off!  It’s the law!” He responded with, “Actually, it isn’t the law, but it is a kind thing to do, so I will step back to make you feel more comfortable.”  Apparently the woman who told him to back off became completely outraged, and was screaming obscenities, so the man chose not to engage it, left the line altogether, checked out somewhere else and walked to his car.  Then when he tried to back out of his parking spot, he found that the outraged woman had parked behind him and was still screaming obscenities at him.  Fortunately, he could pull forward out of his spot, but he soon found that this woman was following him home and at every stop sign and light was continuing to curse him out.  Finally, he called the police because he was afraid of this woman’s rage and even more afraid to drive all the way home and have this person learn where he lived.

We do not handle change well.  We do not handle our fears well.  We don’t know what to do with our anxiety or our discomfort.  We don’t know what to do with our disappointments and our grief for what was, what we hoped would be, what we envisioned our lives to be, for our hopes.  And the bigger the disappointment, the fear, the grief, the anxiety, the more we tend to act out, to lash out, to behave badly.   We do not handle humiliation and humbling well.  And yet we are given the example of Jesus, who’s integrity mitigated all humiliation.  He did not fight with violence or resistance against the powers that would destroy him and wanted to destroy him.  He did not turn to hate as a weapon, even against those who hated him.  He allowed them to do what he knew they would do and he kept his integrity, was not persuaded or pushed into becoming anything less that the godly man he was.  He chose to continue to be a person of love and forgiveness, of healing and grace, even when they beat him, even when they killed him, even when they spit on him and destroyed his body.  He knew that love would win, not in the way they expected, and not that day, but that it would win.

In his latest book, Finding Chika: A little Girl, an earthquake and the making of a family (New York: Random House Pub., 2019) Mitch Albom tells the story with this book of the little girl, Chika, who has a brain disease that eventually claims her life.  But before it claims her life, it takes from her, slowly over time, everything that she has: her ability to walk, her ability to talk, her ability to play and laugh and function as others do.  It takes her hair and her body shape and everything that makes Chika Chika.  At one point while Chika was still able to walk but her abilities were beginning to fail, Albom describes a scene where Chika was walking towards a doll and fell, and because she did not have the strength in that moment to get up and walk again, she simply crawled over to the doll and picked it up.  As Albom wrote, “As you played on the floor, accepting the new rules, your toughness far exceeded mine, and gave us comfort, even as we were trying to comfort you.” (page 133)  Chika did not let her impending death rob her of her grace, of her love of life, of her joy.

Martin Luther King Jr similarly took a stand for non-violence against the oppressive systems of power that had robbed African Americans of every shred of their dignity.  He would not allow them to damage his soul by forcing him to resort to violence or hate.  Instead, he chose actions that confronted the systems violence by showing a different way, a way of justice that was direct, but did not strip others of their humanity.  When threatened, MLK and his African American community stood without retaliation and chose something better.  When beaten, they stood, choosing love and grace and forgiveness over violence and rage.  When attacked again and again he chose his soul, and his faith, and his integrity, and was determined that those things would never be taken from him or his people. 

To be clear, we should never choose to tolerate injustice, we should never allow oppression or cruelty.  I am not saying that we should be passive in the face of what is wrong.  What I am saying is that one of the gifts of Palm Sunday is that Jesus demonstrated for us with all of his behaviors during Holy Week, that while people may take your body, that while people may inflict cruelty beyond measure onto your person, that it is up to us whether or not we allow the other to also take our souls.  We choose how we will react.  And while it is likely that no one would blame us for reacting to the disappointments, fears, griefs and angers of today with rage, with hatred, with violence, the choice to be moved into an action of hate in response to our suffering is a decision to give up all of who you are to the situations that would harm you.  That choice is a decision to allow whatever is happening to damage our spirits as well as our bodies.

             As we begin the Palm Sunday journey towards the cross, my invitation to you is to reflect on what makes you you, what are your true core values, and if they are the values Jesus asks you to hold, of Love, of peace, of grace, then how will you hold on to them in the face of this crisis or the next crisis or the one after that?  How will you respond in the face of other’s anger and rage and fear?  How will you react when your body is being threatened and you feel helpless and fearful?  How will you deal with this time of trial?  Will you still choose love?  Faith?  Grace?  My prayer for all of us is that as we walk towards the cross, we may understand the gifts of Jesus’ choices and choose to follow him in love.  For it is in Love that we will find our strength and overcome whatever it is that we are facing.