Holy Desperation: Nov. 28, 2020

 Year B, Advent 1                                                                Isaiah 64:1-9                                                                           

            Typically when we come to the first Sunday of Advent, I find the readings rather jarring and incongruous with the holiday season. First Advent usually comes right after Thanksgiving when people are doing their Christmas shopping and decorating their homes. People come to church expecting some of that same light and joy.  Then they hear readings like the ones we heard today, which are depressing and a little scary. 

If this was any other year, I would start by apologizing for the readings as they just don’t seem to fit where we are right now.  But this year I read them and thought: “Sure, that sounds about right.” The Gospel reading is about the end times, the 2^nd coming of Christ. The sun is darkening and stars are falling from heaven.  There has been more than a few times this year when I have thought, “Yup, this is it. The end is coming.”

            However, the reading that really appealed to me this year was Isaiah.  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence…”  When this was written, the people of Israel were desperate for God to make himself known, to be an unavoidable reality in their lives.  Things were so bad, they wanted God to tear apart the heavens, because he clearly wasn’t on earth with them.           

They knew their history---they knew that there were many times when God had intervened.  Isaiah wrote, “When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.”  God had done it before for the people of Israel when he sent the plagues and delivered the people from the Egyptian army.  God toppled the walls of Jericho with just the shout of the army.  God delivered the 10 commandment and fed the people for 40 years with manna from heaven.  God had done marvelous and astounding things. They wanted to know, “Where is that all powerful God now?” 

            When I think of the themes of Advent, I think of preparation, expectation, repentance, waiting and hoping.  These are the tame themes, the ones that work well with the 5 candles of our Advent wreath.  So I was surprised when one of the commentaries I read mentioned that this reading from Isaiah contains two of the major Advent themes and neither were themes I usually consider.  The first theme Isaiah highlights is a deep sense of desperation about a situation that is out of control. I thought, wow, that sums up 2020 pretty well. I mean--- it doesn’t really work with any of our candles, but it fits our current situation to a tee.

Photo by Brian Kairuz on Unsplash

The people of Israel understood desperation. The book of Isaiah tells of a country that was defeated in battled. The land was devastated.  The Holy City (Jerusalem) was demolished. Most of the people were carted off to a foreign land where they were enslaved for generations.  In our reading for today, the long exile was over. They had returned to find a home that looked nothing like the one they remembered, nothing like the stories they had been told. They had to rebuild.  They were weary and they wanted a divine intervention.  They wanted God to burst through the heavens because no matter how scary that might sound, it was nothing compared to their current predicament. 

The first 4 verses demand and insist that God come down and make things right.  But then starting in verse 5 they acknowledged their own sin and seemed to give reasons why God should not come down.  It’s like they had this burst of self-awareness and realized that maybe there was something they should have been doing instead of simply demanding that God fix things.  There is another shift in verse 8. “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, and you are our potter, we are all the work of your hand….Now consider, we are all your people.”

            In just 9 verses, we can observe massive shifts in the way people perceive themselves and God. It begins with a desperate demand that God display his great power and shake the very foundations of the earth. Then the people acknowledge their own guilt. Then they shift to their relationship with God, the relationship of the creator and the creation, the parent and the child.  That is an intimate relationship, one of trust and love.  And that is the 2^nd theme of Advent that Isaiah highlights--- a bold and confident trust.[1]

            I resonate with this reading from Isaiah, probably more than I ever have before. I understand what it is to go from desperate fear--- to guilt-- to trust and hope—sometimes in less than an hour.  Everything is so unpredictable and chaotic right now. Desperation can do funny things. If we look inwardly at our desperation, that can lead to hopelessness and grief.  If we look to God in those desperate times, that can lead to a renewed appreciation of what God has done for us and continues to do for us.

            There is a part of me that yearns to skip over Advent this year and go straight to Christmas. We have had enough of waiting and preparation.  No doubt, the people of Israel felt the same way.  The themes of desperation and trust might not be what we want right now---but they might be what we need. When this pandemic is over, things will not be like it was before.  The people of Israel returned to a land that had been demolished. It was nothing like they remembered.  They had to rebuild despite their weariness. We will have to do the same.  I know that I will yearn for a quick fix, because really, haven’t we been through enough?  Yet that will not be an option for most of us. 

Maybe this Advent we need to focus less on preparation and expectation and more on surrender…surrendering to our own powerlessness and brokenness.  Allow yourself that feeling of desperation. But in the midst of that desperation, let us remember that no matter how hard rebuilding might seem, we have the creator as our guide.  Our God knows how to create and recreate. It is ok to be desperate (perhaps even necessary), but let us never lose our faith, even when we are in the midst of that desperation.  Let it be a holy desperation—one that leads not to despair but repair.  If we are the clay and God is the potter, then we are never broken beyond repair.  Our world is never broken beyond repair.  Our broken places are places where God’s light can shine that much more brightly.  That light, that is the light that will give us the power to rebuild.

---

[1] Texts for Preaching, Year B Commentary p. 2

Trouble: May 10, 2020

Year A, Easter 5                                                                              

John 14:1-15                                                                            

            “Do not let your hearts me troubled.” I have preached this text more than any other text in the Bible, but only once on a Sunday.   Every other time it has been a funeral.  It is appropriate for a funeral.  Not only does it provide these comforting words by Jesus, but Jesus assures his disciples that he is going to prepare a place for them---which most people interpret as the afterlife, heaven.  When I read it this week, I had to laugh. Because the way I wanted to start this sermon was, “Be troubled, be very troubled.” 

We are in the midst of the greatest crisis of my generation, and probably several generations.  Just this week we learned that the unemployment rate is 14% and 78,000 people have died…in 3 months.  I will not bog you down with numbers and statistics—my job is not to depress you more.  It is to provide hope---to find the good news. That is what the Gospel is---the good news. Right now, I am having a hard time with that.

            Have you ever noticed that typically, when people tell you not to worry, it’s because there is something you should definitely be worrying about?  When Jesus told his disciples “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” there was something very troubling that was going on.  This gospel reading is part of the farewell discourse. In the Gospel of John, Jesus spends several chapters preparing his disciples for his death, more time than any other gospel does. It was a very long good bye.  This farewell discourse occurs at the end of the Last Supper. It comes after Jesus washes the feet of his disciples--- after Judas leaves to betray him --- after Jesus confronted Peter and told him that he would deny him.  It comes the day before Jesus was to die a horrific death.  Jesus had much to be troubled by.  This is not some platitude coming from someone who is safe and secure. This is coming from someone about to die a violent death.

            He could have easily said, “Be troubled.  Be very troubled.”  But he didn’t.  Granted, he is God, but he was also human. How was he able to provide such an assurance at a time like that? Jesus is not known for empty promises.  God always kept his promises. The next words out of his mouth were, “Believe in God, believe also in me.”  Another translation, is trust.  He is asking his disciples to trust him.  He is asking them to trust that whatever may happen, he will not abandon them.  Not only that, he is preparing a place for them.

            Then Thomas (good old Thomas) asks the question that was probably on everyone’s mind. “Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way.”  Jesus responds with, “I am the way, and the truth and the life…”  It is a beautiful statement, but I don’t think it clarified things for disciples. They still had more questions.  Philip wanted Jesus to show them the father.  Jesus seemed a little baffled by this question.  After trying to explain himself he finally said, “Believe me…” Once again, it comes down to trust.  Every time they pushed him for more details, he told them to trust. 

            Right now, we are all about plans.  The federal government is planning. The state government is planning. The local government is planning.  And even the churches are planning.  Our bishop recently put together a task force together to create a plan with various scenarios.  At our last staff meeting, we talked about different plans.  We want to know the way out of this hellscape we are in.  I get it, I like plans.  I really like plans.  I am not one of those “go with the flow” kind of people. I want to know where the flow is going, how fast it is going and whether there any alternate flows.  But right now, I am having a really hard time with all these plans.  Maybe it’s because there is so much conflicting information. Maybe I just don’t like the plans.  I am not sure.

            However, I find comfort in this reminder from Jesus when he is asked about his plans. He doesn’t explain the plan.  He says, “I am the plan….”  Actually he said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  That is better than a plan. That is what I am holding on to right now.  That is the good news we need.

At the very beginning of this sermon, I said I was having a hard time finding the good news.  That’s not quite true.  I know the good news, but sometimes, I have hard time holding on to it.  However, in this moment, I am confident, that (the way, the truth and the life) is what we should be clinging to. I am not telling you to ignore all the experts out there. I am definitely not saying that. What I am saying is that when you are in the depths of despair, plans and details are not the good news that will drag you out. 

            I talked to someone yesterday who told me he felt lost. I reminded him of Jesus’ words here, not because I was trying to save his soul, but to let him know his soul was already saved and the path was before him.  It was only in reminding him that I realized how lost I felt and how comforting and life giving these words truly are. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” That statement wasn’t meant to be some litmus test for salvation.  It’s an affirmation for each one of us, that we are not meant to have all the answers.  We are not meant to know the exact plan and the path.  Like the disciples who were with Jesus, our job is to follow the light, the light that is Jesus. We are in a dark time when nothing looks the way it should.  Our land seems foreign and ever so lonely. Everything is changing so fast (yet somehow times goes so slowly).  But our God remains a constant.  The way. The truth. The life of Christ are our constant.  God is the only plan, the only way that really matters.

Missing Communion: April 26, 2020

Year A, Easter 3                                                                                 

Luke 24:13-35                                                                                    

            As many  of you know, I first heard a call to ordination when I was a member of the Roman Catholic Church. I felt it so strongly that I attended seminary, as a Roman Catholic, hoping to either discover some other way to follow a call outside of ordination, or find some kind of hidden loop hole.  One of the reasons that I eventually left the Catholic Church was that I feared that if I stayed, I would just be angry and bitter and no help to anyone. I remember sitting in mass, watching the Catholic priests celebrate communion and thinking, if only they knew how lucky they are.  If only they knew what it was not to be able to follow a call because of the gender that you are born into. I was incredibly envious. I am not proud it.  But what was weird, was that there was no other part of the ministry that incited my envy. I knew I could help people without being ordained. I even knew that if I could not preach, I would find some way to express myself and my faith.  But what I grieved, was not being able to celebrate communion. 

When I learned more about how the Episcopal Church viewed the sacrament of Holy Communion, I knew that I had found a new home.  When I celebrated my first Eucharist, I remember telling myself, never forget how much this means.  Never forget what it felt like to yearn for this.  But I did.  There were certainly moments when I could remember that feeling and felt rather proud of myself for remembering.  But I also took it for granted.  It stopped carrying the same weight as it once did. It stopped feeling like a gift and started to feel like a right.   I am ashamed to admit it, but there it is.

            So this time away from the sacrament has been good for me.  I have taken it for granted for too many years now.  Now I yearn for it, not in the same slightly bitter way as before, but the way we yearn for home when have been gone on a long trip. This time away has also made me wonder what it is I miss about it.   And I think what I miss the most is the act of simply placing it in people’s outstretched hands, seeing a young child reach for it before they even know what it is, bringing it to someone who has been away from church, sharing it with someone in the hospital who only has days or hours to live.  Because it is in the context of you—the church--where it has the most meaning for me.  Had you asked me before all of this what I valued most about communion, I might have given you a proper theological answer---about sacrifice or how the host does or doesn’t change.  So much has changed in the last 6 weeks.

            These changes have caused Episcopal clergy all over the country to question what we believe and what is most critical as part of our worship.  Because for so long, it was all around the celebration of communion—coming to the table together.  Now that we cannot have that, how are we the church?  This is not the first time the Christian community has needed to shift how we think.  This reading from the Gospel is all about how we encounter the risen Christ.  Typically, when we have interpreted this text, it has all seemed painfully obvious.  The disciples recognized him after he broke and blessed the bread, an obvious allusion to the Last Supper and one of the reasons that the earliest Christians interpreted scripture and then broke bread together. When this Gospel has come up in the past, it has seemed a perfect opportunity to talk about the importance of celebrating communion together, as a community. It’s a great time to remind people that this is why we come together in church. 

            Of course this is not just any Sunday.  We will not celebrate communion together.  Now what is this text about? It’s about two disciples encountering the risen Lord.  These disciples had learned how to be disciples by following Jesus, in the flesh.  What they had to figure out now was how they can follow a God who is not present with them as a human.  That must have been a hard transition for them. They knew how to be followers when they could literally follow Jesus, listen to Jesus, break bread with Jesus—but how could they do so after his death, resurrection and ascension?  By interpreting scripture and breaking bread together, Jesus was showing them a new way to be followers of Christ.  It doesn’t seem very new to us, but it was new to Jesus’ followers and the first Christians. 

For the last ten years, every church event, every conference has talked about how the church needs to change.  And I took that all in and talked to you all about it.  But I didn’t really want to change and the urgency was not yet there.  Now, we are faced with a change that has been forced on us.  We have no choice but to change.  We can grieve the loss of what we once had much like the disciples grieved the departure of Jesus. It’s ok to mourn that.  Yet what we cannot mourn is the loss of faith or God, because God is still present and faith---while perhaps more challenging, is that much more critical. 

One day, we will share communion together.  We have no idea when that will be. It could be many months and it might look different than how it looked 2 months ago. However, this is an opportunity for each one of us to discover a new way to connect with God.  It might be centering prayer, journaling, reading the Psalms or an online Bible study.  These are things we will be talking about more in the coming months. We will provide resources and direction.  This is a time to do something Episcopalians rarely talk about….develop your relationship with the one true God.  Much like we are all finding new ways to relate to one another, this is an opportunity to relate to God in another way, perhaps a more intimate way.  And if you don’t---that’s ok. This experience isn’t a test sent by God to determine who could find ways to come out of this with stronger faith. It is an opportunity.

            When we initially cancelled services, I thought, well Conor and I can celebrate communion together. That will be nice.  Then I realized I had no desire to.  That concerned me as I worried it meant it had lost its importance. Now I long to have communion.  I pass the aumbry with the reserved sacrament in our sanctuary and look at it longingly.  But I am determined to reserve communion for a time when we can share it together.  When we do, it might be in a small group.  It might be with tiny cups (gasp).  God will be present.  God will be present and I will once again remember how precious communion is.  For now, we lament our loss and we talk to God about that loss.  We wait and we pray. One day we will gather at the table again.

Grace in the Wilderness: Easter

Year A, Easter                                                                       

Jeremiah 31:1-6                                                                                         

How can we shout Alleluia and announce a risen Christ in the midst of such grief, illness and death? Many are lamenting our loss of an Easter celebration because of the recommendations to shelter in place and the order that we not gather in groups of more than 10.  But really, even if there wasn’t a fear of infecting one another and rules about staying home, would we really be able to celebrate with so much death around us?

            This past week the Surgeon General declared this week to be our Pearl Harbor and our 9-11, the week that would test the strength and endurance of Americans.  Even if we were able to gather without fear of getting sick or infecting another unknowingly, it would be hard to celebrate in the midst of such pain and anguish. While I grieve our inability to gather as a community, I have to admit that I am relieved that we don’t have to pretend that all is well when we know all is not well.

One of the things that distinguishes St. John’s in terms of our Easter celebration is the Easter Egg hunt in our cemetery.  It seems an odd tradition and the first few times you see young children weaving between tombstones carrying Easter baskets, you can’t help but recognize the bizarre juxtaposition, seeing such life and vitality in the midst of death.   Yet my friends, that is exactly what Easter is, what Easter has always been.  We can never forget that the very first Easter was in an empty tomb.  It was in the midst of grief, fear and weeping. 

Every Easter, I preach on the Gospel.  Anyone coming to Easter Sunday service wants to hear about the empty tomb and the appearance of the risen Christ.  But this isn’t your average Easter Sunday, so instead, I am going to talk about our Old Testament reading from Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was such a depressing prophet, he carries the unfortunate nickname of “the weeping prophet.”  Like other Old Testament prophets, much of his book was about encouraging people to repent from their sins and turn back to the one true God.

Typically there is a shift somewhere later in the book where the prophet moves away from judgment and warning to hope and comfort.  Our reading for today depicts this very shift.  But it’s more than just comfort.  It’s not the chicken soup for the soul kind of comfort that reminds us to look for the silver lining or search for the bright side.  This is about restoration.  This is about re-creation. It is a reminder that we worship a creator God and if God can create the world, he can re-create it as well.  That is what Jeremiah means when he writes, “Again I will build you, and you shall be built.”

These are words to people who have seen their homes destroyed and seen many loved ones die.  Some have lost faith in their God.  They have questioned why God would allow so much pain, so much unnecessary loss to a people he is supposed to love. They are a people who are weary, terrified and frustrated.  (Sound familiar?) Yet Jeremiah reminds these people that they are the same people who found grace in the wilderness. He is referring to the Exodus, when the Hebrew people escaped slavery in Egypt only to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.  Jeremiah reminds them that they found grace in the wilderness.

I was struck by that phrase.  I feel as though this period we are in right now is very much a wilderness period.  We are isolated, even though we are surrounded by the news and social media.  We have plenty of food as they did in the wilderness (because God provided) but we still feel the need to hoard.  We still feel anxiety for what we might lose.  We are in the wilderness.  Like others before us, we can find grace in this wilderness.  I often hear myself using the word stuck when I am talking about my current situation, which is not a good word for this situation.  We are not stuck.  We are free.  We are free because we have a God who loves us with an everlasting love. That is what Jeremiah calls it. 

One of the reasons I feel Jeremiah is so perfect for where we are now is because he uses past, present and future tense in these verses.  After reminding them of their wilderness period of the past, he writes, “Again I will build you, and you shall be built/ Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. Again you shall plant vineyard on the mountains of Samaria…”  Today is not the day for tambourines and the dance of merry makers.  It is not the day to plant a vineyard.  Today is not the today for countless lilies, sumptuous food and an overflowing church.  But it is still a day for Alleluia.  It is still a day when we announce the risen Lord. 

One of the things I like to remind people at funerals is that the funeral liturgy is the one time we are allowed to say Alleluia during Lent. We believe that when we die, our lives are changed, not ended.  We are people of the resurrection.  Even in the midst of death, we still embrace the hope of the resurrection.  So yes, we are in a horrible period in our world where far too many people are dying, not just in other parts of the world, but here in Virginia, even in Hampton Roads. Yet as our funeral liturgy says, “even at the grave, we make our song Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”  We sing that song with tears in our eyes and a lump in our throats, but we still sing the song.  Even in the wilderness, we find grace.

            Sometimes in church we act like Easter is the end of this long marathon and we can all relax and go back to our normal lives. But that has never been true.  Easter is not meant to be the end.  It is a new beginning.  That is why in our Gospel story, Jesus tells Mary that she cannot cling to him, because he’s not done yet.  He has more to do.  We know, that even after the peak of this virus is past us, there will be more work to do.  We will need to rebuild.  We will need to comfort those who are mourning.  We will need to take measures to keep our people safe.  Things will never be as they were before.  That’s ok.  That doesn’t mean we cannot mourn the loss of people, jobs, financial security, and experiences.  It just means that we keep going.  We discover a new normal.  And most importantly, we can’t let ourselves grow complacent and comfortable as we were before.  While people were not dying at alarming rates even a month ago, I think we can all agree that things were not ok.  It was only ok because the bad things didn’t affect many of us. 

            Now, we are all in this wilderness together. Perhaps we should stop trying to escape the wilderness and instead, find some grace in it.  Grow into our better selves.  Grow into the people God created us to be.  And then we can truly let our voices soar when we say together, “Alleluia.   Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.”

Good Friday: April 10, 2020

Year A, Good Friday                                     

Psalm 22                                                                               

            I have often lamented the fact that in the Episcopal Church (and a lot of churches) we tend to overlook Good Friday. We cram everything into Palm Sunday because people are too busy to come to Holy Week Services.  I have come to believe that to fully appreciate Easter, you have to first experience the betrayal, denial and abandonment of Maundy Thursday and the utter desolation of Good Friday.  The church adorned with lilies and azaleas is that much more stunning after you have experienced it completely stripped of adornment on Maundy Thursday and then bare on Good Friday.  But….this year is different.  This year, I feel as though we have spent far too long in Lent-- and Easter can’t come fast enough.  We have been waiting and waiting, anticipating the worst and hoping that it won’t be as bad as they say it will be. 

That feeling of dread and anxiety has given me a better appreciation of what Jesus must have felt.  Since he was all knowing, he knew exactly what was going to happen. He knew that he would die a horrible death and not only did he have to bear that horrible weight, but he had to continually explain to his disciples what was going to happen.  It’s like those experts today who are constantly warning us of the impending deaths in our nation and warning us about what not to do.  Can you imagine having to explain that horrible truth over and over again? Jesus had been anticipating this moment his whole life.  I am sure he handled that better than we are handling our current fears, but maybe, just maybe we now have an inkling of what that might have felt like, what Lent is really about. 

Much is made of Jesus’ final words in the Gospel of Matthew and Mark.  They echo the first line in our Psalm for today, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”  Some people conclude that despite the fact that Jesus was God incarnate and all knowing, he felt forsaken for that moment.  We can never really know.  I think he was in agony and expressing something that many around him were experiencing. I don’t think he ever lost his faith.

In the Gospel of John, the Gospel that is typically read on Good Friday, Jesus never asks, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  His last words were, “It is finished.”  Now, here is something kind of interesting.  The first line of Psalm 22 is: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  The last line is: “They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.”  You see, the psalm doesn’t end with a desperate cry, but with a reminder that God will finish what he started.  God will save.  So when Jesus proclaimed, “It is finished.”—it wasn’t a cry of defeat it was a testament to God’s work.  God finished what God started. 

We are in a dark and scary place in our nation and our world.  Here in Virginia, we are still anticipating a peak that could happen in late April or May.  We’re really not sure.  Either way, I am waking up with chest pains in the middle of the night because of the anxiety around it all.  But here’s the thing, the Psalm doesn’t end in defeat and neither does Jesus’ life.  The last word for God is always salvation.  Yes, the anticipation is a bit of hell on earth, but it will end and in the end, God will save.  God will finish what he started.

By Bob Harper

*I found a great deal of information and inspiration in many commentaries, but particularly: Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship: Year A, Volume 2, Lent through Pentecost

We Wait: March 29, 2020

Year A, Lent 5                                                                      Ezekiel 37:1-14                 

          I have heard and preached the story of the “dry bones” many times.  Never has it seemed more appropriate and more profound than when I read it this week.  Ezekiel was a priest and prophet who lived about 500 years before Jesus.  He lived in a critical time--- when the majority of the Hebrew people (including Ezekiel) were exiled to Babylon.  In the beginning of the book, Ezekiel was warning people about the invasion that was to come.  He called on people to change.  However, once Israel was defeated and the people were scattered to foreign lands, his tone change.  There was more comfort and hope.  Ezekiel’s primary audience became the people who were displaced, cut off from their homeland.  The vast majority of people would not live to see their homes.  They would die in a foreign land.  Some of their descendants might return, but many would not. The exile lasted approximately 70 years.  That is a very long time to be cut off from your homeland, from your people, and even your place of worship.  They didn’t even have facebook!

            Our reading for today comes near the end of the Book of Ezekiel and provides a vision of hope, that it is truly a vision.  It was a valley of dry bones.  Some assume this valley was full of the bones of people who had died in battle.  However, I think that the valley of bones represented not the dead, but the living, the people who had lost so much.  We only hear the voice of the bones after they have been given life.  After they are restored to life they say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” These are not the bones of the dead, but of the living.  One commentator wrote, “Everything they had trusted, everything that had given their lives shape and meaning, was gone…”  For this group, that was their land, their homes, their communities and their holy city, the place where God resided. That is a great loss indeed.  It is no wonder that they felt as though they were cut off completely.

            Even in the places that have been affected most severely by the coronavirus, people are not quite as cut off as the Hebrew people were.  But there have been people who have lost their homes, lost their jobs and have been cut off from family and friends and many who have lost their lives.  People have died alone, or lived knowing their loved ones are dying.  For those of us who are fortunate enough not to have lost those things, we still mourn the smaller losses because they don’t feel like small losses.  Our children and young adults have lost out on their last few months of school.  Some will not be able to graduate.  Many of us feel lost without a job to go to and a schedule to follow.  I find myself mourning my loss of a schedule and routine.  As I considered this particular loss, I could not help but wonder if I have given far too much meaning to my job and routine.  Is that where meaning resides, in what I do day to day?  Do we have to be busy to have a purpose in life?  I feel like this is an opportunity to consider where we find meaning in our lives.  Our meaning is not in what we do, but who we are.

            Even the most fortunate of us are facing hardship right now.  We are being asked to make sacrifices, not merely for us, but for the good of the community.  This is a time we must be patient.  Our Psalm says, “I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope.”  Right now, we wait and we make small sacrifices so that this virus will lose some of its power.  Ezekiel waited until Jerusalem was destroyed to share this vision of hope, this knowledge that no matter how difficult things get, no matter how much we feel we are cut off, God never forgets us. 

While we may feel as though our bones are dried up and life as we have known it is changed forever…we still have life in us.  There is still meaning and purpose in this life.  So we wait.   We pray. We live, because no matter how suffocated we may feel, God breaths for us.  God’s Spirit is with us.  Then when the worst is past (and it will pass) we will rebuild a better country and world—where we find meaning not in the success of our economy or the might of our army, but in the people we love and the world that God has entrusted to us.

Where do we look: March 8 2020

Lent 2, Year A                                                                        

Psalm 121                                                                             

Like many of you, I have a newsfeed option that pops up on my phone.  Lately, especially because of the primaries, I have gotten in that very bad habit of checking it as soon as I wake up. I tell myself I am only checking the weather, but then I find myself scrolling through the trending news stories before I even get out of bed.  The problem with this habit, is the news is rarely good news.  It’s usually dismal and slightly terrifying.  It’s just not a good way to start the day.  It’s been even worse lately because the majority of the stories are about the coronavirus.  I mean, how many articles can you have about how important it is to wash your hands? So many…. I’ve read about how to prepare.  I have read about recent outbreaks. I have read about what regular doctors are saying, what our national leaders are saying, even what foods to have on hand when stockpiling for a quarantine.  And this isn’t me searching for articles.  These are just popping up, because they are trending…which means that everyone else is reading them and therefore I too must read them.  It is maddening. 

            While this virus is scary, a lot of news has been scary recently.  I am not sure if life is more scary now than it was 20 years ago, or it’s simply that the 24 hour news cycle and multiple ways that we have access to news, is making us more aware of all the terrifying things happening in the world.  But here’s the thing about so much of the crazy stuff going on right now-- there is not much we can do about most of it.  I am not saying that we should just sit back and let the world descend into chaos.  There are all kinds of places where we can take action—where we can make our world better.  But for some things, well a lot of things, there isn’t much we can do, except pray.  At some point, when you are feeling anxious or worried, make a list of all that you are worried about.  Then put a mark next to the things you have absolutely no control over. My guess is that the majority of the things you are worrying about are things you can’t control.

            That can be both comforting and frightening.  For instance, let’s consider traveling.  If you are flying somewhere and you want to make sure you arrive safely, there are a few things you can do.  You can arrive at the airport in plenty of time.  You can make sure you have everything you need for the flight. You can fasten your seat belt and read the safety brochure.  But you can do nothing about the pilot, or the plane, or the weather.  Once you get yourself buckled in, all you can really do is pray.  And that’s where the psalms come in. The psalms are wonderful tools for prayer.

Psalm 121 is referred to as a Psalm of Ascent.  Biblical scholars believe it was written for people traveling or even going on pilgrimage.  In the time when this psalm was written, people were not worried about planes falling out of the sky.  But traveling was still a very dangerous thing.  There were animals that could attack.  You could get lost.  You could be robbed or killed. You could get stuck in a horrible storm. You could run out of food or water.  Of course, there were things you could do to prepare, but there was so much that was unknown.  Because of the fear of the unknown and their faith in an all knowing God, the Hebrew people prayed before and during a journey.  When the journey was over and they had returned safely, they gave thanks.

            The psalm begins with “I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come?” When I have read or heard this psalm, I have imagined someone looking heavenward.  Isn’t that where we imagine God?  We imagine God in heaven, looking down on us.  That might be what this psalm meant.  But it’s also possible that it was warning people about looking for help in the wrong places.  Much like today, the world then was full of false gods, false assurances of safety and control.  There was the God of the Hebrew people, the God who we pray to.  Then there were the other gods.  The Sun god, the fertility god, the god for good crops.  These were the gods that people turned to in weaker moments, moments when it was tempting to forget the one true God.  These gods lived in the high places. Altars were placed on these high places so people could worship them.

Thus when the psalm says, “I lift my eyes up to the hills…” it was imagining people in their time of need looking up to these false gods.  Now we might wonder, why look to a false god when they had the one true God? Because the false gods were easier.  They were easier to conceptualize, easier to encapsulate. They had human attributes and human expectations because they were created by and for humans.   The one true God is a lot more mysterious, more difficult to understand.

            While we are wise enough now to know that there are no moon gods, sun gods, or fertility gods resting on our hills, we still find false gods to cling to. We find them in our politicians, the Hollywood stars, the newsfeed on our phone, and even---ourselves.  When we are in trouble--when we need help and direction, it’s astounding how many places we can turn to before we turn to God.  So often, God is the last place we turn to, when all else has failed. “From where is my help to come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”  It doesn’t say that our help comes from earth, or even heaven. Our help comes from the one who made heaven and earth.  Our help comes from the creator of all the places we turn to first.

            Psalm 121 is a pilgrim’s prayer.  It is a prayer for people who are on a journey. We are in the season of Lent, a season that leads to another hill, not one of the high places where altars to false gods are placed, but Golgotha, the hill where Jesus was crucified.  That is where our journey leads.  Because it is the season that leads us to the cross, perhaps we can bypass the false gods of worry and fear and instead place our fears and concerns at the foot of the cross.  I am not saying all problems will go away and you will be free from all stress, but your heart might feel a little lighter.

It’s all about perspective.  When you stand at the cross and you look up to see our God suffering for us, then sometimes our concerns and fears seem more manageable, not because they are any less of a concern, but because if we look close enough, we will see that they are already hanging there on the cross.  Jesus died carrying our burdens so that we could be free to worship him, free to serve him, free to look to him when we are in need. Remember the journey never ends at the cross.  It always ends with the resurrection.