Tag Archives: grace

Sermon – John 3.14-21, Numbers 21.4-9, L4, YB, March 14, 2021

17 Wednesday Mar 2021

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Our scripture lessons today offer two contrasts:  a story from the Hebrew Scriptures which might be unfamiliar to you or at least may seem wildly strange, and a story from John’s gospel that is so familiar, you can probably quote a portion of the text if I simply tell you the citation, “John 3.16.”  What is strange about this combination is the unknown, uncomfortable story is a window into the overly familiar, commonplace story.  If we have any hope of understanding either of them, we need to dive into both.

At the point where we join the story from Numbers, God has been infinitely patient with God’s people.  Some might argue too patient.  God has saved God’s people time and again, wresting them from brutal slavery, miraculously helping them flee through the Sea of Reeds, helping sweeten bitter drinking water when they murmured, granting them manna when they complained of being hungry, giving them water out of a rock when they grumbled about being thirsty, offering them birds to eat when they whined of manna-fatigue.  Grace and patience abound with God.  Until this day.  The Israelites throw yet another fit, and God snaps.  This time, God sends poisonous serpents among the people, and many of them die.  When the people beg for help to Moses, God instructs Moses to put a bronze serpent on a pole; if people gaze upon the serpent, they will live.  For a God who asks the people have no idols or gods before God, a serpent on a pole is, quite frankly, just weird.

Meanwhile, we have a super familiar text from John.  “For God so love the world that he gave his only Son.”  We love this verse because the verse reminds of our abundant, loving, graceful God.  Of course, we sometimes gloss over the rest of the troublesome parts of this text.  The rest talks about how Jesus saves the world – as long as the world believes.  Here is where the questions start to pile up for us.  Do we really believe that some people are condemned?  Is God’s love conditional?  What happens if we doubt?  Does that count as not believing?  Can eternal life be given and taken away based on the seesaw of my behavior?  The trouble is if we focus on God’s grace, we can make salvation seem arbitrary, with no essential place for human response.  But if we focus on human faith, we may be in danger of making salvation a human accomplishment, restricting God’s initiative universally.[i]  The only thing that seems to be clear is that God gives us a choice.  When we commit evil deeds, when we deny God through our behavior, when we linger in the darkness, we are making a choice.  And the text tells us today that the consequence of that choice is condemnation.

The answer to so much in these texts seems to lie in verse fourteen of John.  Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  As scholar Debie Thomas writes, “In the Old Testament story, God requires the Israelites to look up.  To gaze without flinching at the monstrous thing their sin has conjured.  It’s the thing they have wrought, the thing they fear most, the thing that will surely kill them if God in God’s mercy doesn’t intervene and transform the instrument of pain and death into an instrument of healing and life.  In order to be saved, the people have to confront the serpent — they have to look hard at what harms, poisons, breaks, and kills them.”[ii]  The same seems to happen with Jesus on a cross.  Thomas goes on to say, “In the cross, we are forced to see what our refusal to love, our indifference to suffering, our craving for violence, our resistance to change, our hatred of difference, our addiction to judgment, and our fear of the Other must wreak.  When the Son of Man is lifted up, we see with chilling and desperate clarity our need for a God who will take our most horrific instruments of death, and transform them, at great cost, for the purposes of resurrection.”[iii]

The truth is, I am not sure either of these texts answer some of our basic questions, especially around those of belief.  But tying them together today, we do find an invitation – to change our gaze away from the judgment of others, the wondering about who is in and out, the questions about God’s retribution, and gaze on the cross – the body that reminds us of the goodness of God in spite of our sinfulness, that reminds us of God’s grace in spite of our lack of deserving, that reminds us of God’s unconditional love despite our inability to keep failing.  Our invitation is to take seriously the words of that old hymn, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.”  As we continue on the path of Lent toward the cross, today’s texts remind us of where we are going and why.  Our invitation is to look up at the horrible, wonderful truth of what Jesus does in the cross, and stand in the light of his glory and grace.  Amen.

[i] Joseph D. Small, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 118.

[ii] Debie Thomas, “Looking Up,” March 7, 2021, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2944-looking-up, on March 12, 2021. 

[iii] Thomas.

On Finding Blessings among the Curses…

10 Wednesday Mar 2021

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Photo credit: Troy Mendez

Last week, a seminary classmate sent an email to a group of six of us who had travelled to Myanmar on a mission trip while in seminary.  The trip was a powerful, multiple week trip – for us as individuals, for us as a team (one of our members passed away a couple of years after seminary), and, when we returned, for our relationships with the Burmese students at the seminary.  The experience of that trip forever changed the dynamics between us – there are inside jokes that lead to ribbing; we know each other in ways that only fellow travelers can, leading to belly-laughs and understanding sighs too deep for words; and our connection to the Anglican Church in Myanmar and our spiritual experiences there created a brotherhood and sisterhood that is difficult to articulate. 

So, when the toughly-won democracy crumbled a few weeks ago in Myanmar, we all watched in horror.  The call to gather from my classmate was certainly an opportunity for us to catch up, but more importantly for us to pray – to pray for our Burmese classmates, the brothers and sisters in Christ we met there, and the countless people who simply want to live their lives free of the brutality of a military junta.  Over the course of this year, I have complained more times than I can count about the amount of time I spent on Zoom.  But as the six of us gathered virtually from around the country to tell stories, to laugh, to mourn, and to pray, I confess to you, I have never been more grateful for a technological tool.  Even in that virtual space, we were able to find the rhythm of a group established fourteen years ago, and slow down enough to put the needs of Myanmar above our own.

As we work to vaccinate our country and as churches begin to regather again, I find myself once again grateful for the ways God has made a way in the wilderness.  And although I will be thrilled to see people in person again, I am glad we will still have technological advances available to us – to facilitate community, care, and compassion.  Not once in the years since we left seminary has our mission team managed to get together in person.  But with technology, we were able to create a virtual space of real connection between us, and, perhaps more importantly, a place where God could move among us and beyond us.  I would never wish this pandemic on any of us, but I remain astounded at the way God has used the gifts God has given us to facilitate the spreading of the Good News. 

One year into this pandemic, I give thanks for the ways in which technology has facilitated fellowship, formation, worship, and pastoral care.  I wonder what graces this pandemic has gifted you over this last year.  What ways has necessity inspired blessedness?  As you reflect this week, I invite you to join me in offering gratitude for God’s grace in the midst of a very dark year. 

Please continue to keep Myanmar in your prayers as they struggle for the restoration of democracy, for the safety of innocent people being brutalized and disappeared, and for the encouragement and protection to keep fighting for justice.

On Hope, Sobriety, and Better Angels…

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

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Photo credit: https://www.juneauempire.com/life/living-growing-the-better-angels-of-our-nature/

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.  ~Abraham Lincoln, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

This morning, as we await the inauguration of our next President, I find myself equally sober and hopeful.  I am sober today because I am still reeling from the attempted insurrection in our Capitol Building just weeks ago.  That event signaled to me how much damage has been done to the fabric of our nation – how divided we have become, how hateful we have become, and how far we have strayed from our baptismal promise to respect the dignity of every human being.  I am sober because I know simply changing Presidents will not magically solve the division that took many years of cultivation.  We have much truth telling and healing to do. 

But my sobriety is balanced with hope.  Again, I have this hope not because I think our President Elect is the Messiah – we already have one of those!  But I am hopeful because being hopeful is the nature of being made in the image of God.  I am hopeful we will find our way back to our baptismal identity, of seeking and serving Christ in all persons, and striving for justice and peace among all people.  I know we have a long way to go.  Our black brothers and sisters have shown us this year how far we have to go in the movement toward respecting the dignity of every human being.  But somehow, seemingly impossibly, I am hopeful.

I was reminded today of the quote above from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, given on the brink of Civil War.  He had no idea what the future held and how our nation almost fell apart – and the very long road it would take (and is still taking) to recover.  But even then, on the cusp of some of our darkest times as a nation, Lincoln was convinced that we had better angels of our nature.  Perhaps that is where my hope comes from today too.  I am convinced that we have better angels still, and that, with God’s grace, we will be touched again by the better angels of our nature.  That is my prayer for all of us today!

On Shifting Sands and Drishtis…

19 Thursday Nov 2020

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Photo credit: https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/pillars-of-power-yoga-using-drishti-on-and-off-the-mat

When you are doing balancing postures during yoga, one of the skills you learn early on is developing a drishti, or a focal point.  The idea is the more you focus your gaze on one fixed object, the more your body steadies itself.  I am not entirely sure why or how finding a drishti works, but I know from experience that a very wobbly body in a balancing posture is quickly steadied once focused on a drishti.  It is a strange sensation, but when the drishti is engaged, the gaze of the eyes has complete power over the entire body, creating a sense of self-possession, control, and power.

I was talking to a fellow parent this past week and when we talked about parenting during a pandemic, I told her I felt like I was standing on shifting sand.  Just when I would start to figure out a rhythm or start to feel like I had some modicum of control over family life, things would change – whether the formal arrangement with hybrid learning, the changing of teachers mid-quarter, or even my own child’s changing ability to adapt and thrive.  Just when I feel like our family is finding our balance, something makes us wobbly all over again.  That kind of uncontrolled imbalance, of attempting to stand on shifting sand leaves the body weary and fatigued.

But as I have been thinking about pandemic parenting and my learning in yoga, I’ve begun to wonder if what this wobbly parent might need is a pandemic drishti.  For some parents that might mean focusing on the blessing of your children – so that no matter what tempter tantrum they are throwing today, what argument you are having as a family, or what door they have slammed, you focus not on the anger and frustration of the scene immediately in front of you, but on the love you have for your child (even if it’s only the love you see when they are fast asleep).  For me, my drishti is the love of God surrounding us on every side:  the one who loves me when I fail as a parent, the one who loves my child as they receive another setback in expectations, the one who loves each of us when all we can see is the heat of anger and frustration in one another.  Once I focus on God’s love of us, slowly my demeanor starts to shift, my balance starts to return, and my steadiness strengthens.

This week, I encourage you to claim your pandemic drishti.  Whether you focus on God’s lovingkindness, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, or the ever-present blessing of the Holy Spirit, take whatever time you need to shift your gaze on God.  My guess is the more you practice steading your gaze on the goodness of God, the more your wobbling, weary body will feel grounded in goodness too.  We cannot control the shifting sand of these times.  But we can control our steady gaze in the face of a storm.

On Rituals, Church, and Candy…

05 Thursday Nov 2020

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Photo Credit: https://www.hauntedwisconsin.com/things-to-do/kids-family/trick-or-treat/

Last weekend, I took my younger daughter trick-or-treating.  We spent a long time as parents debating whether we should take our children.  We read scientific articles, talked to other parents, and spent time in long conversations.  Ultimately, we decided to go ahead, making sure we donned our masks, only traveled as a family, and sanitized our hands frequently between houses.  We also talked to our child about how although she may want to greet friends with warm hugs, that night was a night for verbal greetings instead of physical.  Our child did not argue with the restrictions and was simply happy to be going at all.

We embarked at the designated time not knowing what to expect – whether other families with children would be out safely, whether homeowners would respect social distancing and mask wearing, or whether the entire evening would need to be abandoned.  Much to my surprise, the evening went better than I could have hoped.  The number of trick-or-treaters was cut in half, and people mostly respected safe distancing.  Homes distributing candy were also at about fifty percent, and many of those who distributed exhibited tons of creativity:  from baskets of candy lowered from outdoor balconies, to candy “kabobs” planted in yards, to zipline delivery mechanisms, to clotheslines of candy. Many homeowners bagged candy to reduce touching and many seemed to have read the best practices about how to hand out candy.  I was blown away by our neighbors’ thoughtfulness, creativity, and grace.

But what struck me the most was a truth emerging from the whole evening.  If you had asked me or any of my neighbors before Halloween why we were participating in the ritual of trick-or-treating, we probably all would have said we were doing it for the kids:  to give them some sort of normalcy in this crazy, abnormal time.  But as I tucked my child in that night, and thought about all our experiences, I realized a deeper truth.  I think all of us adults participated in the ritual not just because the children needed it; we participated because we needed it.  We needed just one thing to be semi-normal in this super stressful, topsy-turvy world.  And we took our precautions and stretched our creativity, but we participated in a ritual that reminded us of joy, innocence, and community.

In many ways, that is what we are trying to do every week in churches too.  The very essence of Church is incarnational – from how we gather (in large groups), how we worship (using our all our senses, including touch), how we participate in ritual (often kneeling shoulder to shoulder, receiving communion from common dishes, and laying on of hands), to how we interact (from children’s programming and play to Coffee Hours).  With this pandemic, our incarnational essence just is not possible in the same way.  And so, we are worshiping online, we are offering socially distant worship services, and we are gathering on Zoom for pretty much everything – from formation, to fellowship, to learning, and even play.  I know Church right now is not the same, but if Halloween offers any lessons, perhaps it is that participating in the ritual – even an amended and altered ritual – is important for our spiritual, emotional, and physical health.  If you have taken a break from the ritual of Church because it just is not the same (and you are right, it is not), please know that Hickory Neck is here to help you reclaim some of that ritual.  It may be awkward or push your technological abilities.  But I promise, even those unusual connections might just offer the ritual you need to stay healthy and whole!

On Empty and Overflowing Cups…

21 Wednesday Oct 2020

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I have always been a bit of a night owl.  It has served me well with small children, as I often get a second wind after everyone is asleep.  In college, it allowed me to stay up late to finish papers and studying.  Of course, I also found in college that the late hours meant my eyelids were sometimes heavier than they should be in lectures – with my notetaking become illegible as my body succumbed to the fatigue, as if my handwriting was in sync with my drooping eyelids.

That kind of fatigue – the sheer exhaustion of pushing our bodies and minds to work at maximum capacity – is the kind of exhaustion I am seeing all around me.  Whether it is fellow clergy trying to be constantly nimble and creative while managing the emotional and spiritual field of a pandemic, whether it is working parents who are feeling the crush of working and schooling their children simultaneously, whether it is essential workers who have been putting themselves in constant risk for months, unsure of their job security despite our desperate need for their services, or whether it our retirees who feel the weight of missing their extended family, the binding feeling of restrictions, or the loneliness that can come from social distancing, we are all tired: bone-tired, fatigued, emotionally, physically, and spiritually spent.  Add on top of that a pending heated election, the work of racial reconciliation, and the economic impact of a pandemic and it is a minor miracle that most of us are functioning.

In this time of weariness, I want you to know not only do I see you, but also our Lord and Savior sees you.  When we are this spent in all parts of our lives, we may not feel Christ present with us in the same way.  But it is during these times that Christ is most available to us, surrounding us with grace and light.  It may be in the form of a healing phone call with a loved one, the stunning beauty of a tree turning vibrant fall colors, an online set of prayers or worship service, a good, hearty, unexpected laugh, or the kind word of a stranger, but God is with us in this, seeing our pain and weariness and sending us loving gestures every day.

Today, I invite you find some small way to let that loving generosity into your heart.  Maybe you give yourself a couple of minutes before bedtime tonight to make a mental list of things for which you are grateful, maybe you write down those moments of grace from the last week, or maybe you call someone to share with them your reflection.  My guess is once you create that moment for grace, you will start seeing those moments more and more.  These small graces are what can sustain us in this moment, and eventually refill our cup so that it can run over to bless others.  You are in my prayers as you refill your cup!

On Things Hidden and Things Seen…

07 Wednesday Oct 2020

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Photo credit: https://psychcentral.com/blog/how-to-sit-with-painful-emotions/

October is reserved for awareness about many issues:  infertility and child loss; breast cancer; domestic violence; and mental health.  What I noticed about all these issues is they are hidden – issues we do not talk about, have shame about, or are labeled as “private” and therefore off-limits.  And while I always like to respect people’s privacy or private grief, when we do not talk about these issues, we end up ignoring people’s pain or worse, robbing them of our empathy and support.  By hiding these issues away, we can do more damage than the issue itself.

I have seen a similar pattern with the Coronavirus.  Because we are physically isolated, we struggle to make space to honor the physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial strain of this time.  In my pastoral conversations, I have heard the grief of people who are physically or financially secure but are overcome with anxiety and depression.  I have talked with those who have lost jobs and are struggling with a sense of failure that has nothing to do with their abilities, effort, or achievements.  And I have reflected with others on how things slowly returning to a semblance of normalcy as we progress forward in phases of regathering in our communities makes them feel even more stress – as if they should feel normal too, but cannot seem to operate at full capacity.

In times like these –in infertility, infant loss, breast cancer diagnoses, domestic violence events, and mental health strains – but also most certainly during this pandemic, many of us are trying to show strength or an ability to power through, so much so that we avoid taking our suffering to God.  But that is not the kind of God we worship.  God does not expect an ability to be stronger than the pain and suffering of this world.  Instead, God longs to be invited into our pain, journeying with us, giving a comfort the world cannot provide.  This kind of relationship involves vulnerability and honesty – something that may be difficult for us.  If you find yourself in the midst of that struggle to trust God enough to show your weakness, or if you are feeling shame for your lack of empathy lately, I invite you to pray Psalm 139 with me this week, especially the first twelve verses.  I leave them here for your prayers, inviting you to be gracious with yourself, with your neighbor, and with the stranger.  Even if we do not know their struggles, God does.

Psalm 139.1-12

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

    you discern my thoughts from far away.

3 You search out my path and my lying down,

    and are acquainted with all my ways.

4 Even before a word is on my tongue,

    O Lord, you know it completely.

5 You hem me in, behind and before,

    and lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

    it is so high that I cannot attain it.

7 Where can I go from your spirit?

    Or where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning

    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

10 even there your hand shall lead me,

    and your right hand shall hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

    and the light around me become night,”

12 even the darkness is not dark to you;

    the night is as bright as the day,

    for darkness is as light to you.

On Seeing Goodness…

30 Wednesday Sep 2020

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After six months of waiting, planning, praying, and organizing, my parish finally held our first in-person socially distanced worship service.  We had prepared our members and guests for how different Socially Distanced (SD) Worship would be, even producing an instructional video.  And when the day finally came, our volunteers were amazing – sanitizing, directing, monitoring, and executing a beautiful morning of worship. 

I have been reflecting on the experience of finally being back in the worship space with other people, and I realized what we have been saying all along was true:  it was not the same as worship before the pandemic.  Certainly, the service was familiar:  the liturgy, beautiful music, the physical patterns of standing and sitting, and the reception of communion.  But the little things were different:  the inability to physically embrace or shake hands (something that felt sorely needed after such a long separation), the absence of touch during the Eucharist (an act that has always felt intimately and sacredly physical), the general tentativeness of all gathered (the desire to keep each other safe creating an underlying tension).  We had said SD Worship would be different, and it was.

But SD Worship was also good.  You could feel the palpable relief of everyone to finally be back in the space we love.  I watched as our deacon became much more animated while preaching with people in the room.  I heard sounds I had not heard in the last six months – a familiar lector reading the lesson, the organ and a violin making an otherwise spoken service feel whole, and voices responding in a room that has been mostly empty on Sundays.  It was definitely not the same.  But it was certainly good.

One of the things that has impressed me during this pandemic is the ability of parishioners, neighbors, and friends to see goodness.  When a health crisis occurs, in the stress of restarting schools virtually, in the inconveniences of wearing masks and staying home, I still encounter people who can name goodness in this time.  My invitation for you this week is to find something good and holy about this most unusual time each day.  Try to imagine the way God responds in creation at the end of each day, saying, “It was good.”  What is good in your day today?  Where are the moments of grace, the occasions of gratitude, the sacred for you this week?  I hope you will share them, as your moment of goodness may be what someone needs to help them see goodness in their life too. 

Sermon – Jonah 3.10-4.11, Matthew 20.1-16, P20, YA, September 20, 2020

23 Wednesday Sep 2020

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Today, we hear some of the most fabulous stories in scripture.  The first is one of my favorites – the complete and utter temper tantrum of Jonah.  Jonah, the “anti-prophet”[i] who runs from God’s call so vigorously he risks an entire boat’s crew, and is swallowed and regurgitated by a large fish before doing what God tells him to do.  He finally goes to Nineveh, preaching the shortest, most reluctant sermon ever, and when the people repent and God relents from punishment, Jonah loses his mind.  Maybe Jonah hoped that Nineveh, home of the Assyrians who have battled and ruined the Northern empire of Israel, would finally get what they deserve.  Instead they get God’s mercy and grace.  Jonah is angry because he loathes the very nature of God – the God who is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.  Jonah only wants that kind of God for himself – not for his people’s mortal enemies.  Jonah is angry.  In his tempter-tantrum-throwing words, “Angry enough to die!”

The characters in Matthew are not much different.  After laboring in the fields all day, as various workers are brought in from the marketplace, even up until the last hour, the day laborers are distributed their pay.  When the landowner gives those who worked an hour the same as those who worked all day – even though technically, the longest working laborers received exactly what the landowner promised – a living wage that can feed their families – the longest working laborers cannot see and praise the landowner’s generosity toward others.  No, they grumble – a pastime of God’s people from the beginning of time.[ii]  Everyone wants a gracious God – until that grace is extended in ways that violate our precarious notions of justice.  The problem, as once scholar submits, is “Justice and grace cannot be reconciled with one another.”  And yet, “they are both part of the character of God.”[iii]

Now I would love to stand here with you today and patronize these characters.  But those kinds of sentiments let us off all too easily.  If we have not acknowledged our own Jonah-like temper tantrums or our grumbled against God’s gracious mercy in the last six months, we are not paying attention.  Everything about our nation’s conversations right now are about justice, mercy, and grace:  conversations about race and privilege; anger at foreign countries where not only a pandemic originated, but where economic policies are cutting us off at the ankles; an election that has us so polarized we no longer see the humanity in our political enemies; an economy where the rich are either getting richer or are tending to their own, especially when related to the education of their children, while the poor are simply praying to keep their jobs and their homes where their kids are struggling to learn; where the death of an iconic judicial leader has us not just grieving, but taking up arms about the process of electing the next Supreme Court Justice before we’ve even uttered the words, “Rest in Peace.”  The list goes on and on, and I am sure at some point in the last six months we have all been “angry enough to die.”

I understand our emotions are raw right now.  Lord knows, I think every person in my household burst into tears about something this week.  Even the notion of singing the psalmist’s words today feels impossible when we think of “the other.”  But we have to remember when we say, “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,”[iv] those words are for us too.  As much as Jonah runs, deceives, puts others in danger, resists God, half-heartedly does his work, stomps away from God, shows his anger, God keeps pursuing him.  Over and over, despite Jonah’s not deserving, God is gracious with him, full of mercy and steadfast love.  And despite the longest laborers’ grumbling, God provides them with their daily needs.  In God’s question to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” are a host of modern-day questions, articulated by a scholar.  She asks, “Could it be any more obvious that we — all of us, every single one of us — are wholly dependent on each other for our survival and well-being?  That the future of Creation itself depends on human beings recognizing our fundamental interconnectedness, and acting in concert for the good of all?  That what’s “fair” for me isn’t good enough if it leaves you in the darkness to die?  That my sense of “justice” is not just if it mocks the tender, weeping heart of God?  That the vineyards of this world thrive only when everyone — everyone — has a place of dignity and purpose within them?  That the time for all selfish and stingy notions of fairness is over?”[v]

I know today’s lessons are hard.  But when we allow ourselves to be fully consumed by God’s grace, mercy, and abundantly steadfast love, our hearts soften a bit – maybe just a tiny sliver.  That sliver is God’s gift to you this week – the gift that will enable us all to see we are all in this together.  God needs me, you, us, and them – however you are defining “them” this week.  God is not asking us to roll over and stop fighting for justice.  But God is inviting us to remember each other’s humanity while doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.  Today’s lessons remind us we can – we can see with the eyes of God’s grace, mercy, and love because we have experienced that same grace, mercy, and love.  When we start seeing with God’s eyes, we will be empowered to find a way forward despite ourselves.  Thanks be to God.

[i] C. Davis Hankins, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 75.

[ii] Kathryn D. Blanchard, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 94.

[iii] Lewis R. Donelson, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 97.

[iv] Psalm 145.8

[v] Debie Thomas, “On Fairness,” September 13, 2020, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?fbclid=IwAR1uTVaenGNYgJX-mpph8V_97k_S-kIWEbuuSMwkzJKLohX0XbYvuveEk9k on September 17, 2020.

On Grief, Fairies, and Grace…

17 Thursday Sep 2020

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Photo credit: https://childrengrieve.org/resources/about-childhood-grief

A dear friend of mine once talked about the experience of a “grief fairy.”  This fairy was the metaphorical way she explained how grief was not a simple, linear process from tragic event through grief to wholeness.  Instead, she imagined grief as a fairy who would, out of nowhere, lighten upon your shoulder and all of a sudden you went from fine, or at least managing, to not fine at all.

In some ways, I feel like this pandemic has become the same way.  We have begun to convince ourselves that we had our chance to be sad in the first few months of the virus, or even in these last six months.  But by now we should be adjusted, used to the “new normal,” and ready to get moving.  All the markers are there:  Summer has pretty much ended; the children are back to school – if not in person, certainly online; some employers are expecting workers to return to the workplace; churches kicked off their program years – even if they were missing the normal parish parties and picnics; and things like elections are rapidly approaching.  For all intents and purposes, we should be putting on our game faces and getting back to “normal.”

The problem is nothing is truly normal.  And every time we run into anything abnormal, we are reminded of our grief over what has been lost during this time.  We have become quite good at coping, to be sure, but somehow, that fairy keeps landing on our shoulder, reminding us of our grief in big and small ways:  when the kid’s back to school photos are missing pictures of the school bus; when a visit to someone sick is either not allowed, or has enough restrictions that we do not even bother; when the church year begins, but we’re still watching online; when we go to run a quick errand and realize we left our mask at home.   

My prayer for all of us is that we be a bit gentler – with each other, but especially with ourselves.  If you are feeling frustrated about your inability to keep your game face on, take the game face off and let yourself acknowledge the grief still lingering among us.  If you are surprised by a sudden surge of feelings about something seemingly small, remember that grief during this time is not linear, and that the fairy will keep on visiting.  If you are feeling alone in your ability to keep it all together, lean into your faith community to remember God’s grace for all of us.  We are all in this together.  We will have days of strength and days of weakness.  But God is present in all of it, always holding out the light to get us through the darkness.