Being Blessed

 

Genesis 27:1-4, 15-23; 28:10-17

Mark 9:38-50

John 1:50-51

               Today we hear a story about Jacob stealing his brother Jacob’s blessing from his father.  This follows after Jacob has stolen Esau’s birthright, too.  Jacob is a trickster, he is a con.  He lies, is disrespectful to his father, cheats his brother, schemes and steals and in every way is NOT the hero we would expect to be the patriarch of Israel, but in fact he is exactly that: the patriarch of Israel.  It is later in Genesis that Jacob’s name is changed, in fact, TO Israel. 

The truth is this whole story may seem very strange to us.  It may seem strange to us at many, many levels.  First of all, why can’t Isaac bless BOTH sons?  After all, they are twins.  Esau was born only minutes before Jacob.  What is this blessing that is so important but also so limited in who is to receive it and who can receive it?  And if it is created simply by a word, why can’t Isaac take back those words, change those words, amend those words?  If he was tricked by lies, why can’t he reciprocate and say the words spoken in response to a falsehood are therefore themselves false?  And then, why is it that God seems to bless Jacob, this trickster, to choose him to become Israel, to BE Israel and to lead the people forward?

These are all legitimate questions.  Real questions.  Some of which can be answered by saying that these ideas of blessings rested on social conventions which were difficult to challenge.  That the blessing was a promise of inheritance, in this case land and power.  That once those promises were made, the only thing that Isaac could then do would be to offer mitigating promises in addition. 

In terms of God’s response, Lewis Hyde stated, “Tricksters always appear where cultures are trying to guard their eternal truths, their sacred cows. New cultures spring up whenever some trickster gets past the guard dogs and steals those cows.”  And this is what Jacob does — He breaks the rules, creates a new pathway and therefore opens up possibilities.  The implication here, then, is that God uses tricksters to break us out of our cultural ruts, to challenge the paths we have gotten stuck on and to encourage us to see life and rules and even conventions from a new vantage point, one that is willing to alter, change and amend things.  In this case, Jacob actually challenges the idea that it is always the first son who gets everything.  In this case, Jacob and Esau were twins, born moments apart, so the idea that one son gets it all and the other nothing appears especially ridiculous.

But I think the bigger question for us today is what does it really mean to be blessed, in the first place?  I don’t mean what was this blessing that Jacob stole.  I mean, we all seek blessings, God’s blessings.  We want them.  We invoke them for others, “Bless you” we say when someone sneezes, which was supposed to be a way to ward off death.  But we also use it in other ways. “God bless you!” we say when we are leaving or sending someone off.  “Blessings,” we may say to sign our names at the end of correspondence.   We also use it in sentences such as “bless his heart” by which we often mean, “That person can’t change, won’t change, so the best we can do is bless him and send him on his way.”  

But again, what do we really mean by that?  And what really is a blessing?  We experience God’s blessing in places that we don’t expect, in places that don’t look familiar to us.  We also experience God’s blessings in ways that we don’t usually call blessings.  Jacob, though he stole the “blessing” from his brother, ended up out in the wilderness: running away from his family out of fear that Esau, out of anger, will hurt him.  He struggles, he does not have an easy life.  The “blessing” that he stole cost him everything that he valued, at least for a time.  And we know this often plays out for us as well: that which we strive for, work for the most, sometimes ends up costing us a great deal, costing us everything we thought we valued most. 

I remember reading this wondering article by Scott Dannemiller entitled, “The one thing Christian’s should stop saying” (click to read article):

Whew.  And Amen!

But it is also important to note that “blessing” does not mean ease of Life.  Jacob’s life after this is not easy.  Just as he tricked, so too will he be tricked.  He will be tricked by his uncle in trying to marry Rachel.  He will wrestle with God and be forever limping afterwards.  He will be tricked by his own sons who will try to kill his favorite, Joseph, and sell him into slavery instead, telling their father only that he has died.   

But still, is he blessed? 

Yes.  And not only by his father.  He is blessed by God’s presence with him, and that takes many forms.  Sometimes it is God’s presence in the struggles.  Sometimes it is God’s presence in the good times.  The blessing is the ability to experience God in those times, to hear God, to see God and to choose healing and growing that God offers.  The alternative is to become bitter, cynical, angry, cranky.

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”  Well, isn’t that an incredible blessing?

 

I think the bottom line is that when we say “blessing” what we mean is “gift”.  But our ideas of what are gifts, what comes to us through grace and not just LIFE, has to grow, has to expand a bit.  And the lesson for us today in this is that we should not miss out on a blessing because it isn't packaged the way that we expect.

I’m reminded of a lovely poem by an unknown confederate soldier:

I asked God for strength that I might achieve.

I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health that I might do greater things.

I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy.

I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.

I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life.

I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

 

I want to end with a poem by Jan Richardson called

 

Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light

Blessed are you

who bear the light

in unbearable times,

who testify

to its endurance

amid the unendurable,

who bear witness

to its persistence

when everything seems

in shadow

and grief.

 

Blessed are you

in whom

the light lives,

in whom

the brightness blazes --

your heart

a chapel,

an altar where

in the deepest night

can be seen

the fire that

shines forth in you

in unaccountable faith,

in stubborn hope,

in love that illumines

every broken thing

it finds.

 

- Jan Richardson

 

The thing is, we are most richly blessed when we are giving and caring and loving others.  That is when we are most richly and most meaningfully blessed.  And that is a blessing we bring to and on ourselves through our own choices and our own decisions to care for and offer care for others.  This is a blessing we can claim for ourselves, not through the trickery of Jacob, not through the anger of Esau, but through the decision to love.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

A Word of Comfort

 Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14, Psalm 23, Mark 4:35-41

As we continue our journey through the book of Jeremiah, we have now come to the part in the book where the Israelites have been exiled.  They have experienced the consequences of their behavior, and they are now in Babylon, away from their home against their will, separated from the temple, lost and unable to return home.  They are in the pain.  But in that place of pain, of suffering, or struggle, God’s word is still coming to them.  God is still with them, and now God’s word is one of great comfort.  But also, one that may not be exactly what they want to hear. 

         God promises the community, and again it is very important here that this is the community of Israelites, the people of Israel and Judah that God is talking to, not individuals, but the community, that things will be better.  God promises that they will return to their home.  This exile is not forever.  This time of alienation and struggle is not eternal.  There will be a time of renewal.  God also promises and reassures them that in the meantime, even in their exile, God is still present with them.

        But the other side of this is that this is a future promise.  God tells them "things will be better in 70 years.”  They will be able to return home in 70 years!!  70 years was a full generation.  It was a number that meant “completion” or wholeness.  And again, this is part of how we know this promise is not for individuals, but for the large community.  None of those to whom God is now speaking will be alive to experience this return home.  None of those in despair and pain will live to see their return.  God even goes so far as to tell them they must ignore their hopes, ignore their dreams,  ignore those who are prophesying for a return home to come in their life times. 

            And I think, post-COVID, we can relate to this in a tiny way.  When COVID first hit, we all hoped it would be over in a couple weeks.  We would shut down and then in a couple weeks we’d be able to get back to normal.  The kids would go on early spring break for school, but they would return, surely, after just a couple weeks!  When that didn’t happen, it was, “well, they’ll be able to go back in the fall.”  And then, “in the spring”.  We kept putting our hopes on tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.  But sometimes having those hopes for the near future makes the disappointment greater.  It is easier to fall into despair when our hopes are being continually dashed.  So, Jeremiah warns against that.  “No.  It won’t be tomorrow or even in your lifetime.” 

But perhaps an even bigger issue is that when we have hopes that are imminent for a major change, for the possibility of renewal and a return to what is familiar or comforting or what we believe was “whole” for us, we often forget to live now.  We put it off.  “We will do that when things get back to normal.”  We will fix this, or go there, or see that person, or call that person, or heal that relationship, or work on our issues “when things get back to normal.” 

           And God through Jeremiah challenges this.  Jeremiah tells us that God’s call for us is clear, “Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away.  Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare.”  In other words, LIVE.  Don’t put off living until you are able to return home, or return “to normal”.  Live now.  Do the things of living in this place and in this time.  We are called to preach the Good News, to live in faith, to do the work of our lives whether we are “in season” or “out of season”.  This was a very long “out of season” for the Israelites.  And while God called them not to just be okay with where they were in life but instead to continue to hope and trust in a future that was better, even while they were doing that,  still they were called to live.

           I want you to try to picture this.  These exiles were “forced immigrants”.  They were forced to be in another culture, in another place, away from their home and in terrible circumstances.  Think about the Africans who were brought here against their will: forced immigrants in this place.  Generations later, do they feel at home here?  Are they still experiencing discrimination?  You can still be an exile in your own country, the country of your birth if you are not respected and treated equally.  And this was the experience of these Israelites for 70 years.  That is a hard, hard place to be.  And it is to all exiles that this message of a future hope is spoken, but also a message of “live your lives NOW.”

            In the Church, big C, as we look at the shrinking numbers of people who identify as Christian, we often talk about the church, especially perhaps mainstream or progressive Christianity, as being in a wilderness time.  But the reality is that it is much more accurate to say that we are in exile.  In the wilderness there aren’t established institutions, everyone is wandering around, without grounding, without a sense of direction.  But when you are in exile, you are in another culture’s space, story and institutions.  Those around you do have grounding, are “at home”, and do have a sense of meaning, purpose and direction.  We have moved into a time of exile, as progressive Church, a time when the predominant culture goes two ways: into either a rejection of faith all together, or into a more fundamentalist stance.  As people who fit into neither position, we are in exile.  Part of how we know this is that it is when you are in exile that those in the dominant positions of the culture are given permission and it is even seen as “normal” for them to define who others are.  The fundamentalists define us as not being “real” Christians, of getting it wrong.  And the atheists or those of other faiths, or even those who define themselves as “spiritual but not religious” assume that even we in this building are fundamentalists and treat us as such.  Neither group is open to hearing something different.  Those in power have the power to define, and to insist that their definitions are the only ones worth attending to.  And so we are in exile, boxed, labelled and in many ways rejected.

          This last weekend I was outside watering my plants when someone that I’m generally friendly with passed by.  She had a baby a year ago and I was telling her that I would like to buy some of my favorite child-books for her daughter.  Her response was “Well, we don’t want any religious books.”  I was stunned, to be honest.  I’m not good on my feet, but if I had been I would have asked if, since she’s a CPA, if all the books she gives her kids are all about taxes.  Later that same day, I had a second experience like that.  Someone who had asked me to teach their child some basic piano skills wanted to be sure that I wasn’t going to teach their child “Christian music”.  These are people who know that we are at THIS church, where we fly a flag of inclusion, where they hired ME, a divorced and remarried female as a pastor!  But part of being in exile is that people in the dominant culture do not bother to feel they have to get to know you.  They do not feel they need to understand you.  They can ascribe to you and put on you all kinds of assumptions and if you argue against those assumptions, they will, more likely than not, assume you are LYING or hiding the truth.

            I remember when we were in Canada and I was wearing a CVPC t-shirt.  A lesbian couple got into the elevator with us, saw my shirt and immediately began to talk loudly with one another about how horrible and judgmental Christians are.  We didn’t know them, I didn’t engage the conversation, I understand why they believed that, but it again showed that assumptions made about us are manifold.  And do not apply to the folk here at this church.

          This is what it is to be in exile: to be strangers in a culture that is not your own.  But we cannot go back.  And the myth of “the good old days” is exactly that: a great big myth.  I would hope that we don’t really want to return to a time of slavery, or Jim Crow laws.  I certainly don’t want to return to a time, not much more than 50 years ago, when women could not BE pastors.  That nostalgic glorifying of the past is never of the true story. 

            But like in the Mark passage for today, when things become difficult, when things become stormy and those waves of trouble and tribulation are threatening, people forget that they had goal of getting somewhere specific, of sailing to the other side, or traveling to a specific place with a specific hope and goal for the future.  Instead, they replace this goal with the goal of basic survival, of simply staying afloat.  We are not called to just survive.  We are not called, out of fear, to put down living until things can “return” to what they were.  We are called to remember that in our frantic running around, trying to “survive” as a church, that Jesus is still in the boat, probably “in the way” even – something that cannot be ignored or overlooked as we trip over him to try to trim the sails.  He is there, calling for our attention and our focus, asking us to remember our call to LIVE, no matter what the circumstances are that we may face.

           The Good News it manifold.  There will be a time when we will no longer be in exile.  God is with us no matter what is going on with us.  The journey is bigger and longer and more beautiful than we can imagine.  And we are called into life THIS day.  We are invited to live NOW.  None of that may be easy.  Living in exile is a challenge.  But it teaches us compassion and understanding for those of our brothers and sisters who are also in exile.  For those who are suffering, for those who are treated as less than, for those rejected and oppressed by society.  We are invited to learn in our exile, to live in our exile, to continue the journey and not just simply focus on survival.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Reassuring Signs - and the threat within.

          I have shared with many of you my "Lean on me" story.  But for those of you not familiar with the story: When we were truly in our darkest time, when I wasn't sure how we would get through the next hours, let alone the next days or months, I had to drive to the hospital to visit someone I loved who was dying, was at the very end.  I turned on the radio for the first time in many months.  The song that immediately began playing was "Lean on me" - a song I've always heard as being an invitation from God to let go, to trust, to live in the love of a supportive, caring "other" that is beyond and above and among us.  I was happy to hear the song, but didn't think too much about it until, on coming out of my visiting time and again turning on the radio, the song was playing a second time.  At that point, I had a conversation with God that went something like this, "Okay, I hear the message here.  At the same time, I tend to think that twice is just a coincidence and that if you are really there trying to communicate with me, there will be a third time."  I drove home and was walking into my house when the telephone rang.  On answering it, I discovered it was one of my parishioners, a man who was in charge of picking the movies for our faith and film nights at church.  He had called to tell me that even though we had scheduled a particular movie for the next evening, he felt this strong sense that he should show a different movie this week.  "What movie are you wanting to show instead?"  I asked.  "Lean on me," he said.  Okaaay…  That night I had choir practice and as I drove to church the song "Lean on me" played yet one more time on the radio.
            Ever since that terrible time, there have been other challenging times in my life.  And very often when I am in those times, the song "Lean on me" will show up at exactly the right moment, reminding me to let go, to trust, to feel the presence and love and care of God surrounding me.
           All of that is wonderful, and awesome and good.  But there is another piece of this with which I'm struggling.  Whenever that song comes on the radio now, or the phrase or movie or anything connected with "Lean on me" pops up in my life in some way, I now feel a sense of fear.  "Why are You reminding me of this?  Am I going to need particular care right now?  Is something terrible about to happen that you want me centered and grounded in You, in my faith, at this moment?" And I have found myself left with the very weird realization that sometimes these words of comfort and care feel more like threats than reassurances.  
        I'm trying to hold on to the memories that usually the song's appearance has come as a needed reassurance during a difficult time, not as a pre-curser to a difficult time.  But this is not completely true.  Things did get worse for us during the week I spoke about above, and I can't forget that.  The person I loved did die that week, for example.
        This is one example, but there are other cases in which words of reassurance and signs of care are more a burden than a gift.  The phrase, "This, too, shall pass," is a wonderful reassurance when things are going badly.  But what about when things are going well?  That, too, will pass.  The words of comfort are also words that create fear.  Nothing lasts: the good and the bad will all pass away.
        We walk a life that is full of ups and downs.  And much of how we hear and experience what comes our way is dependent on our mind-set, our perspective, our approach to life as a whole.  We all know the dualistic idea that one is either an optimist who sees the glass half full or a pessimist of seeing the glass half empty.  I don't actually see myself in either of those categories.  I love the solution that sees the glass as half available for something better (alcohol for some, chocolate for me).  But while I love that solution, it doesn't mean that I can always live in that place.  A long-view perspective sees the complexity in the glass: it is both a glass that is half full and half empty, it has room for more, AND when something else is added into a glass already half full of water, that which is added will be necessarily watered down: in other words, it will still be a mixture of the good and bad, of what we would want, and what we are handed, a mixture of our own control and the worlds' influences, a combination of what is good and what is ordinary or even distasteful when mixed with something else.  Part of maturing and growing older is being able to see it all: all the nuances, all the angles, all the wisdom of a life that is both beautiful and challenging, dreadful and wondrous, that is full of many colors, not just black and white, nor shades of grey.
        I cannot be in a place of seeing life as an either/or.  I can no longer hear even words of comfort as 100% positive, life-affirming support.  That depth of vision is a gift, but not always a comfortable one.
        In terms of our faith, I celebrate that a God of love and grace and wonder is there, always.  But the other side of that coin is we are then called into action, to live out our faith with courage and love for others.  That, too, is both a blessing and a challenge.  There are times I would choose, if I could, to return to a more child-like view of the world and all that is in it as being either good or bad.  There are times I would choose a dualism that simplifies everything.  But I can't.  And so I am working to embrace this reality of gifts that are challenging; comfort that encourages growth, movement and change; and an overabundance of love that calls us into an action of risking everything to love "the least of these".  One day at a time.

Today's Sermon - Sitting in the Pain

Sitting with Pain

October 11, 2015

Hebrews 4:12-16

Job 23:1-9, 16-17

Psalm 22: 1-15

These are hard passages that we read today.  Today’s lectionary passages are the anger, the pain, despair, the bottom-less pit, the grief of human experience. Unlike most of the rest of the year where we hear the grace, the comfort, the love or the challenge of being God’s people, today we are given the passages in which the writers feel God’s “absence” or feel betrayed somehow, abandoned, and hurt by God. These are the feelings we are least comfortable with, as a whole, in our churches. But while we are uncomfortable with these emotions, they are in our scriptures and as such they call us to take a closer look, to spend time with feelings we would otherwise wish away. Usually we reserve this look for Good Friday or Passion Sunday as we remember Jesus’ journey to the cross. But as it came up in the lectionary passage for this week, I felt that though these emotions are uncomfortable, we have a call to look at them, to honor them, and to listen for God’s words even through these words of anger, of pain, and of railing against God. 

Job had everything taken from him - his wealth, his home, his living, his children, his health. The only things that remained were his wife and several friends, but all of them told him he must have done something to deserve his pain (an accusation which is confronted and overturned by the story itself), and so their remaining presence in his life was in itself an affliction. Psalm 22 we recognize as the psalm that Jesus quoted on the cross – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” These passages reflect our deepest despair, those moments when it is hard, so hard, to feel God’s presence, when we, too, might instead feel that God has somehow forsaken us, is somehow not there.

Each of us has gone through hard times. We’ve gone through hard times individually, I know you’ve gone through hard times as a church community, and we’ve gone through hard times as a nation, and as the world. We’ve experienced losses. We’ve experienced deaths, divorces and other endings. We’ve seen our families and friends struggle to find or hold on to work, some have experienced pay cuts, we’ve gone through moves. The world is experiencing wars and droughts and climate change. Things are hard. And sometimes we feel, each one of us, that deep pain, that deep grief for what was, or what should be, or what could have been. Kierkegaard put it this way, “the most painful state of being is remembering the future…particularly the one you can never have.” I want to say that again, “the most painful state of being is remember the future…particularly the one you can never have.” We know that grief looks different for everyone, but some of the emotions people may feel in grief include denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, pain and guilt to that list. Job and Psalm 22 reflect all of these feelings. And yet still, it is hard to be with those feelings, hard to acknowledge the grief, let alone allow ourselves the time that it takes to really experience all of it. I was with a group of pastors at one point several years ago discussing these lectionary passages. And one of the pastors wanted to include the end of Job (though it is not in this week’s lectionary) and the end of psalm 22 (also not in this week’s lectionary) because those endings are more positive. Her justification was that we cannot let our parishioners stay in the pain. But the reality was that this was more a reflection of her discomfort in sitting with the pain of those in her church. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that someone in every room is in pain, is in grief, and recognizing and naming that reality is helpful and important. But again, it does appear to be fairly normal to want to avoid it. We have sayings, trite things, that we say to one another as a way to “help” that in fact are simply ways of avoiding sitting with one another in our pain. I’d like to challenge a few of those.  Saying to someone in pain, “Remember, God never gives you more than you can handle” may comfort the comforter, but it tends to be a way of discounting the extreme pain a person is in. When you say this, the person hearing it often hears, “oh, you’re fine. No big deal. Get over it!” Or worse, if the person being told this isn’t handling it, they may add a feeling of failure to the other feelings of grief they are experiencing. “Everything happens for a reason” is also discounting. It is a way of saying, “because this is part of a great plan, you shouldn’t be upset about this.” You may believe that to be true. But saying it to someone in pain does not honor or respect the feelings they are experiencing at that moment. More importantly, these sayings make it sound like you are not willing to simply be with the other in their pain.

Henry Nouwen in his book, Out of Solitude wrote, “You might remember moments in which you were called to be with a friend who had lost a wife or husband, child or parent.  What can you say, do or propose at such a moment? There is a strong inclination to say, “Don’t cry; the one you loved is in the hands of God.” Or “Don’t be sad because there are so many good things left worth living for.” ...”Our tendency is to run away from the painful realities or to try to change them as soon as possible. But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators, and prevents a real community from taking shape. Cure without care makes us preoccupied with quick changes, impatient and unwilling to share each other’s burden.  And so cure can often become offending instead of liberating. It is therefore not so strange than cure is (often) refused by people in need...it is better to suffer than to lose self-respect by accepting a gift out of a non-caring hand.”

C.S. Lewis also wrote about his struggles after the death of his wife, Joy, in his book, A Grief Observed.  And he, too, wrote about these situations in which well meaning friends could not tolerate his pain. They couldn’t tolerate it, and so they tried to shove it away with trite quips.  His favorite was “Well, she will live forever in your memory.” And he found this created nothing less than an intense rage within him as he struggled to grasp, daily, that she was no longer alive, no longer with him in a way that he could recognize while he was in the midst of his deepest grief. To tell him that she would live in his memory did nothing for him but make him feel completely alone in his grief - in other words, it had exactly the opposite effect of what was undoubtedly intended. It did not make him feel better. It made him feel misunderstood, isolated, alone.

It is hard for us to experience our own pain and it is hard for us to be with others in their pain. Pain hurts. It is not comfortable. And in this fast paced, instant gratification society, we don’t want to feel pain. We want to make it go away, for everyone, right now.

But we now know, from a psychological perspective, that grief that is not really felt, pain that is not really experienced does not go away. If we really care about ourselves and one another, we have to allow the grief to be felt. We cannot heal it by avoiding it or denying it. We know this from the perspective of psychology. But that doesn’t make it any easier to take when we are in it up to our necks.

There are some cultures, however, that are better at living in the pain than others. Early Israel was one such culture. The people who wrote the scriptures and, later on, those who chose the books that would be part of our cannon recognized our profound need to feel the pain that life gives us, to experience our losses and to express them. Job is an entire book in the Bible, and with 42 chapters, it is one of the longest Biblical books at that. The book of Job is about being in the pain. The book is a description of Job’s experience of hurt and despair and his feeling that God had abandoned and forsaken him.

As Henry Nouwen continued in Out of Solitude, “… are we ready to really experience our powerlessness in the face of death and say, ‘I do not understand. I do not know what to do, but I am here with you.’ Are we willing to not run away from the pain, to not get busy when there is nothing to do and instead stand rather in the face of death together with those who grieve?” ... “When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.  The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares.”

There is more good news in the face of grief. As hard as it is, there are gifts in grief. Some of those gifts of grief include a larger vision of the world, a deeper understanding of what is possible and what new futures we can envision to replace the images of the ones we used to have. Through grief we become more integrated, more whole in our experiences and our memories, making sense of the past and building tools of fortitude and understanding for facing future loss. Through grief we become more empathetic and have a deeper vision for the compassion Jesus calls us to have for one another. Through grief we learn our own resilience, our own strength, and learn about internal gifts and external supports that we never would have known we had. Only through genuine grief can we make room in our psyche’s to move forward into a new tomorrow with new dreams, goals and hopes. Through genuine grief we say goodbye to the past, and we open the door for God to bring about the resurrections that God promises us.

Robert Browning Hamilton wrote:

“I walked a mile with Pleasure;

She chatted all the way;

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,

And ne’er a word said she;

But oh! The things I learned from her,

When Sorrow walked with me.”

When we remember grief, when we experience grief and when we read scriptures like today’s passage from Job and even more, Psalm 22, we are also called to remember that these words of pain, and of suffering are quoted from Jesus on the cross. Psalm 22 like Job ends with a recognition of God’s greatness, God’s comfort and God’s love. But it does not start there. Some commentators who talk about Jesus quoting Psalm 22 on the cross are so uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus saying that God forsook him that they, too, discount Jesus’ pain and say that Jesus was just beginning a psalm that everyone knew ended with a declaration of God’s love and presence. But Jesus wasn’t quoting the end of the psalm. He was quoting the beginning. He was in the pain. He felt abandoned by God. He felt the despair that all of us have felt at one time or another. He felt it all. And that is the best of the good news for today. That is the good news that we find in the Hebrew’s passage as well when we are told that Jesus is not without empathy, that he has felt all that we have felt and experienced all that we have experienced. Our feelings of despair, of loss, of anger are not blasphemy. They are not un-holy. They are mirrored and reflected in scripture itself. Jesus, himself, felt all that we feel. And therefore, as today’s passage in Hebrews tells us, he is not unsympathetic with our weaknesses and our pain.  Jesus felt our pain and he expressed that pain. His expression likewise gives us permission to speak of it as well. God can handle it, and God gives us the words to do it if we are uncomfortable using our own words. We can read Job, we can pray the psalms, knowing that God has heard them before, and that Jesus felt they were worthy enough to be expressed that he himself said them too. We therefore have been given the gift of being able to speak our feelings to God. Knowing this can also give us the courage to stand with one another in each other’s pain, too. 

Just as we strive to be the friends to one another who care, not by our sayings that try to avoid or ignore each other’s pain, but by being willing to be with one another, in silence, in love, just to listen, until we can move through and beyond the pain; we are called to give ourselves the same grace of experiencing the grief. Jesus knows our deepest pain - we see him on the cross, crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” And while we can stand in the sure knowledge that the other side of the pain is the resurrection, we have to truly experience the death first before we can get there. Holding hands with one another and with our God, we can get through this, and anything, together.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - Advent II - Comfort, Comfort

Isaiah 40:1-8
Mark 1:1-8

     The poet, Clementine von Radics said this, “You silly little girl, you think you’ve survived so long that survival shouldn’t hurt anymore.  You keep trying to turn your body bullet proof.  You keep trying to turn your heart bomb shelter.  You silly thing.  You are soft and alive.  You bruise and heal.  Cherish it.  It is what you are born to do.”
Living is hard.  And so, it is no wonder that we have Isaiah’s words for us today…  “Comfort, O comfort my people.”  We are all looking for that comfort, for that reassurance in hard times.  We are all looking for a sense of peace in the face of adversity.  We are all looking for salvation from whatever we are struggling with.  I saw a post the other day, “If Comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more time.  But I would really settle for less tragedy to be honest with you.”
But even as we yearn, we want, we ask for comfort, Advent is also the time of waiting.  That comfort doesn’t come right away, we aren’t healed instantly, the resurrection comes in steps, over time, sometimes so slowly we don’t even see it.
The journal, “spirituality and practice” lists several things we can do during advent to signal our willingness to wait, our commitment to waiting during this Advent time.  These are:  Let God sit in the director's chair.  Give up your fantasy timetables and go with the flow. Do not try to push the river; all will happen in God's time.  Let go of any negative images you carry around about waiting. Have faith that all good things come to those who wait patiently.  Grow through periods of waiting that entail darkness and dread.  Work to reduce your anger and frustration about waiting.  Always be a person animated by hope.  Take time during periods of waiting to count the many gifts and good things in your lives.
These are great suggestions and yet, I admit from a personal perspective that I don’t wait well.  I get really impatient and easily frustrated.  Yesterday was a perfect example of this.  I’ve had my computer for over a year now, which is in itself an amazing thing since I seem to zap computers as well as other electronic devices, as many of you know.  But it has been a long time and so now my computer appears to be in full-collapse mode.  It runs extremely slowly, and it freezes up on a regular basis.  I’ve taken it to Geek Squad several times.  They “fix” it and usually it comes back with more problems than when it left.  Again, this is typical for me.  My electro-aura simply zaps anything and everything electronic, and since I use my computer a lot, it tends to develop problems quickly.  Being in a close relationship with an IT guy who specializes in these sorts of things is not actually helping either.  The computer works for him.  Just not for me.  Yesterday my computer developed a new issue.  I was working on my sermon and wanted to use some internet resources that I had bookmarked and set aside for this Sunday.  But as I tried to pull up those pages that I had bookmarked, they failed to load.  I sat and watched as my lap-top connected to the internet, disconnected from the internet, connected and disconnected itself in rapid succession.  I ran the “trouble-shooter”, which told me the problem was not with my computer but with the router.  But since we currently have a plethora of computers, smart phones and other devices that connect themselves to the internet and none of these were having issues, I knew that no, despite the computer’s desire to blame something else, the problem was once again with my lap-top.  I became extremely frustrated, impatient, did not want to wait until things could be fixed or redone or set up in a new way.  I did not want to borrow someone else’s computer since my sermon was partly written on my own already, I did not want to deal with the waiting.  I wanted things fixed NOW.
But, as with every challenge, when we have eyes to see, we can choose to look at everything that happens as blessings from God.  This, too, in this moment was a blessing because it did call me to sit still, to wait, and to think about the lessons in that waiting, for me, in that moment.  The article from Spirituality and Practice that talked about the commitments we can make to waiting during Advent also talked about the spiritual gifts that come from the practice of waiting.  These include developing patience, giving up of control and accepting what IS, learning to live in the present, compassion, gratitude, humility, and most of all, trust in God.
Our culture has become more and more an “instant gratification” culture.  There is very little opportunity for us to learn patience, to learn to give up control over our surroundings and the things that happen to us, to learn to be wholly present in the present, despite whatever we have or don’t have in each moment.  There is very little opportunity, as we depend on our things, and on our toys and on the internet and our instant access to information, communication, resources, etc to learn to trust God for what the next moments might hold for us.  With all of that, is it any surprise that people are not as interested in faith issues?  For those who have not experienced needing to rely solely on their trust of God, and finding that that trust really is enough to carry us through, that God really is with us, why would we trust God?  If we haven’t experienced it, why would we do it?
Waiting is hard.  But God gives us this gift, and we have the chance to grow from it.  John the Baptist came paving the way for Jesus, inviting the wait before Jesus’ began his ministry.  Isaiah proclaimed the coming of justice, of comfort, of release from oppression.  But none of these things were instantaneous.  They were coming.  These passages were and are calls to live into hope while we wait.  To trust in God, while we wait.  To let go of control, while we wait.  To learn patience while we wait.
I think we will find that there are gifts even beyond those listed above in our waiting.  I found this quote as well…

There is something deliciously wonderful in the anticipation of the good that is about to come.  There is something amazingly wonderful in the moments before you open that first Christmas present, in the moments before you see a new baby for the first time, in the moments before that visitor you’ve waited for has come.  There is something incredibly life-giving in the hope and anticipation of Advent.  Experience it, live it, enjoy it.  For it is a gift from God.