A young woman lit up with new love
the radiant smile of a groom the inner glow of a pregnant woman beaming parents, a newborn child the long-married luminous and dancing under the moon the light that gentles us from this life into the next. Each brush with love transforms us if only temporarily and like the sun it burns so bright we must look indirectly or go blind. We can only come so close to the Great Source before we catch fire from the inside out. Like Moses our beards shimmer Like Jesus our garments blaze white. This is transformation-- shining from the mountaintop in momentary perfection dumbfounding those in our presence. As the blush fades we descend from the peaks to the plains of our existence uttering our small prophecies. We are no longer dazzling or set apart but, oh, we have been changed.
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Thoughts on Matthew 5:21-37 Adapted from my message at St. David of Wales Episcopal Church February 16, 2020 Have you ever been to a retreat or conference or read a book where the presenter or author speaks or writes in ways that “blow your mind?” Their words expand your thinking, open you to new ways of understanding life and its struggles, as well as purpose and you’re inspired to take this learning and incorporate it into your daily life? It’s what we sometimes call a “mountain top experience” and that’s what happened to the disciples who followed Jesus up onto Mt. Sinai for The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ teachings from the encounter comprise Chapters 5 through 7 of Matthew’s Gospel and begin with famous Beatitudes. “Blessed are they who…” These first verses weren’t in the Episcopal Sunday lectionary readings this month since we observed Jesus’ dedication in the temple on the first Sunday of February. But last Sunday our gospel reading included verses 13 through 20 of Chapter 5, and Fr. Steve, the priest at St. David's presented the heart of those verses. To paraphrase him: “You are salt and light and stardust. You come from love, live in love, and will return to love. Your worth is in being; not doing. You are beloved simply because you exist.” As the priest spoke, a glimmer of sun shone through the stained glass windows up in the choir loft casting a tiny rainbow on my bulletin and I soaked in the beautiful truth of being God’s beloved, having a mini-mountaintop experience. After worship, instead of floating off on a cloud to the top of Mt. Rainier, I stood in line for a potluck lunch and sat down for our annual meeting reporting the business of church, affirming those who are leading, and dusting off our rusty recollections of Robert’s Rules of Order. Eventually, we have to come down from the mountain and live our lives. Jesus knew this, and he didn’t stop with metaphors of salt and light. He got down to brass tacks as it were, reminding his companions that he didn’t come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them. We need rules and order. But if we are to live as God’s beloved, we need to live by more than the law—beyond the law, but not above it—as Jesus makes clear in today’s lesson. In four different examples, Jesus opens with “You’ve heard it said,” and quotes the law. Then he continues, “but I say…” going beyond the letter of the law to the spirit behind it. Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. Certainly, we shouldn’t kill one another. But if we are to live as God’s beloved, our concern for each other must extend far beyond refraining from fatal violence. We are called to not only avoid physical violence, but to control our emotions, to put aside our anger, even when we believe it’s righteous. And I have a feeling that might’ve been easier in Jesus’ day when people only moved as fast as their feet could carry them, instead of hurtling down freeways at 60 or 70 mph, forgetting there are humans behind steering wheels. We’re called to deny our desire for revenge against those who’ve wronged us, in our perceptions as well as in fact, and to employ our best efforts at conflict resolution. [W]hen you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. After worship few weeks ago, a parishioner shared her experience as a nurse in the prison system. She talked about how sentences are computed, time subtracted for good behavior, added in other situations, how in some form or another every day must be served. “Prison isn’t for rehabilitation,” she said, “it’s to keep the public safe.” And from Jesus’ words I gather that even centuries ago the legal system was not a place for rehabilitation or reconciliation, it was a place for punishment. Yet how often do we hear the threat, “I’ll see you in court” when neighbors are fighting over a property line, or “you’ll hear from my lawyer” in a contentious divorce? Jesus tells us to stay out of court, and away from systems that are purely punitive. And beyond that, if we have “unfinished business” with another person, whether it’s a grudge, a debt, or an estrangement, Jesus tells us to get right with that other person before we come to the altar offering ourselves and our gifts as a sign of our love and devotion to God. One morning when I was pastoring my church in California, two parishioners came running in from the parking lot yelling at one another as I was ringing the bell in the entry to begin service. They stood on either side of me, vilifying the other, each wanting me to take their side. I was shaking, pulse racing as I walked into the sanctuary and began the call to worship as they sat on opposite sides of our small church, glaring and fuming. The next week they both filed restraining orders against each other. This is an extreme example, but how many times have we come to worship feeling unspoken tension in our midst? We can’t offer the best of what have to God if we refuse to offer the best of ourselves to one another as a sign of love and devotion. To live as salt and light and stardust is to see every other person as God’s beloved. And yet, we objectify each other. Jesus told his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. Like most women, in my younger days I was propositioned and cat-called by strangers who saw me as a body they had some right to comment on or possess. Growing up, I saw infidelity and mistrust tear apart my family, and like Jimmy Carter, I too “have committed lust in my heart” imagining, at a time when I was struggling with my identity as a wife and mother, how perfect my life would be if I’d married someone else I imagined as flawless, lusting after some unattainable image of life, as if a life partner exists just to fulfill my needs. At other times we lust after material possessions, power and status, longing for the “lifestyles of the rich and famous.” We dehumanize celebrities, athletes, and models. People Magazine’s annual “Sexiest Man Alive” issues call from grocery store checkout stands, and scan any magazines on the shelves and we’ll find barely-clothed women (and men) draped over all manner of products. Our God-given nature splintered and reduced to commodities to buy, sell, use. Despite all this dehumanization, Jesus offers us the lens of wholeness with which to view one another. Though I don’t think Jesus is being literal about cutting off our body parts in response to our transgressions, sometimes we need extreme examples to shift our thinking. I thank him for urging his disciples and us all to see the humanity of others, to recognize that none of us are products, and that our desires can lead to disaster when they are not grounded in recognition of each person’s inherent belovedness. Jesus continued that message of affirming our inherent worth: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. At the time Jesus lived, women were not citizens, we had no rights, and our existence was subject to the whims of fathers and husbands who had likely not married for love, but according to societal expectations and for property consolidation, which included women. Here, Jesus is speaking to an audience of men, and I’m curious what he might say if he were talking to Martha and Mary then, or to a group of women about this issue today. I don’t think he would insist that we remain in a marriage where there is physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, since those are the very acts of sin he just spoke against. And I don’t think he’d insist people who are absolutely miserable stay married, since his desire for us is to live life abundantly as God has designed for us. What I do know, is that Jesus warned men to be extremely aware of the position they put women in by undertaking divorce. In his time, after a divorce, a woman was forced to remarry in order to survive—very literally—surrendering her body and her life to another man due to the whims of the first. It’s not a comforting thought for anyone. Which is why Jesus makes it. And finally, in the last passage in today’s gospel reading, Jesus said:
“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.” Oaths back then were serious matters, much more serious than using profanity today. An oath was more like being sworn in during legal proceedings. We swear to “tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” and often perjure ourselves by failing to do so. In those lies, we harm not only ourselves, but other individuals, the community, and even the state. In biblical times, an oath was often in the province of God. God’s oath was a pledge to make good on an action, one that might bless one group and curse another. And often, God, acting with compassion, decided not to follow through on the curse. When people swore in biblical times, their oaths explicitly or implicitly involved God, and the flip side of the oath meant the threat of punishment on others, and people aren’t as quick to refrain from punishment as God is. An oath, especially one broken or false oath sworn to God, put humans in the role of God, a position that is not rightfully ours. Jesus told his disciples to leave God out of it, to say yes or no, to live by their own word, without the threat of cursing God or others. He asks us to do the same. *** A few days ago, I mentioned to a good friend that I would be preaching this morning. She asked what the scripture was, and I said it was from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, but I didn’t have the verse numbers in front of me. “It’s the passage where he says, ‘You’ve heard it said, but I say,’ where he tells people to step it up,” I told her. “Oh,” she said. “when Jesus presents all those commands that are impossible to fulfill. When he levels the playing field and makes it clear that all of us are in need of grace.” Jesus asks us to step it up, to try the impossible and he offers grace when we can’t do it. That sounds right to me. Right that the both/and of Jesus, his being both human and divine, is echoed in the both/and of his words to us, “you’ve heard it said, but I say…” and rings true to the both/ and of our life experiences: memorable mountaintop and mundane valley, as well as the both/and of our human nature. Jesus asks us beloved children of God to live in a state of radical love with one another. At times our brokenness, shortcomings and sin will surround us, dulling that love so that it’s almost imperceptible. And in other moments, that love infused within us will radiate from us and we will shine like the light, salt, and stardust we are. A reflection on Matthew 3:13-17 in observance of The Baptism of Our Lord. Thanks to St. David of Wales for the opportunity to deliver the message yesterday. Jesus was thirty years old when took the plunge. As scripture relates, he sought out his cousin, John, the desert dweller who ate locusts and honey and preached to a good-sized crowd to repent of their sins before he dunked the converts underwater. Matthew’s gospel tells us that John would have prevented Jesus’ baptism, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But that Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” It seems an odd statement from Jesus, who doesn’t come across as a man concerned by what is proper. In fact, he’s usually the opposite, setting aside customs and rules that interfere with right relationships. Did propriety really compel Jesus to show up at the river? Or was it something else? There are no Biblical clues. We assume that Jesus already knew his identity as Son of Man, that he was aware he’d been born to a unique destiny, that showing up at the riverbank and submitting to John’s baptism was perhaps a formality, the ceremonial swearing in after God’s election. And soon after his baptism he finds himself on a vision quest in the wilderness battling temptations as he determines how to live out his destiny. But on the day of his baptism Jesus queued up along the riverbank with the other sinners, with nothing in his appearance or reputation signifying to anyone that he was anything other than exactly like them. A person, soon to be wet and repentant, sharing a desire to turn their lives around, or at least to align them more closely with what they perceived in John’s message to be God’s intentions. Whatever private message God had telegraphed to Jesus over the previous thirty years when he sat by firelight sharpening his carpentry tools and contemplating life was confirmed in the light of day along the banks of the Jordan, in front of the crowd, who must have been startled by the resulting thunderclaps, the holy spirit descending as a dove from the clouds, and the booming voice of God announcing his Son’s belovedness. Baptism of water and the Holy Spirit was the first sacrament that Jesus instituted among his followers; the Eucharist was the second. Two thousand years later, public baptism remains the principal Christian rite for those who want to join with Jesus. I assume that most, if not all of us, in this room have been baptized. And most of us have stories about that momentous event the Book of Common Prayer defines as “union with Christ in his death, resurrection, birth into God’s family the Church, forgiveness of sins, and new life in the Holy Spirit” (p. 858). I was twenty-four when I was baptized in 1985, standing in front of a United Methodist congregation of sixty or so people as my pastor dipped his hand into a small bowl of water and touched it to my forehead three times. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, he baptized—my bangs. Water never touched my skin. I had thought of baptism as a sin-proof coating like Teflon. Promise to stop doing things my grandmother (the only religious person in my family) would disapprove of, apply water to skin, and after death I wouldn’t burn to a crackly crisp in hell-fire. The words in the United Methodist Hymnal were pretty clear, “Forasmuch as all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, our Savior Christ said, ‘Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, one cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.’” It was one thing not to have been baptized when I didn’t believe in God. But, once I was a believer, wasn’t I still in danger of the fiery pit since I hadn’t been adequately spritzed? Sister Ishpriya wrote, “a tiny drop of water can cleanse the whole of my impurity when blessed by your forgiveness. But, O Lord, more than all this, this tiny bit of water passed over my head is the symbol of my birth in You.” A tiny drop of water on my face—Was it too much to ask? “The Baptismal Covenant is God’s word to us, proclaiming our adoption by grace, and our word to God, promising our response of faith and love,” the United Methodist Book of Worship told me. I had done my part with my vows, but I was convinced my pastor had failed in carrying out God’s part and suspected my baptism was a fake, though I’d later learn that Methodists, like Episcopalians, believe that baptism is “permanent and indelible” (Walk in Love p. 25). I smiled when people hugged me after the service, but deep down I worried that I was still flammable. I knew I was God’s, but not because of this ceremony, where there certainly hadn’t been enough water to scrub even a follicle of me clean from sin, but because God had come into my life a few months earlier and arrived while I was in the shower. As I rinsed off the last suds of soap, the water changed. It flowed softer, filling me from inside out with what I can only describe as pure love. This love wasn’t a zingy, romantic pulsing, it was absolute and unconditional, love I’d later feel for my daughters at birth. This love was expansive, excessive, a gift I hadn’t even known I’d asked for. I had no doubt this love came from God, and later, when I came to know the stories, it seemed entirely plausible. If Jesus could turn barrels of water into wine at a wedding reception to please his earthly mother, then his unearthly father could change water to love in my bathroom pipes. When I turned off the faucet and reached for a towel, I felt like a different person, raw and alive, claimed. God loved me and I had to respond. I’d overheard something about leaving everything to follow Jesus. Was I supposed to leave my husband and join a convent, or move to a kibbutz? I decided to attend a peace study at the local United Methodist Church instead. I took a membership class after that appreciated a faith that took into account not simply scripture, but tradition, experience, and reason. I was encouraged to think for myself, something I’d always assumed becoming a Christian would negate. The social principles focused on everything from eradicating poverty and disease, to fair wages and union rights, from racial equality and respect for the environment to opposition to gambling. This care for others was so broad and contrary to the cries I’d heard from Bible thumpers during my college years, and so close to the values I held, that I was prepared to pledge my prayers, presence, gifts and service. The only obstacle to my membership was fact I hadn’t been baptized. It was an easy problem to solve. I didn’t need a class to study biblical accounts and precedents or understand historical or theological reasons for baptism. I only needed a few more questions inserted before my membership vows. My pastor didn’t even tell me specifically how my baptism would be done. If he had, I might have reached up and pushed my bangs to one side. If I’d had access to the Book of Worship then, I would’ve read, United Methodists, like Episcopalians, “may baptize by any of the modes used by Christians. Candidates…have the choice of sprinkling, pouring, or immersion; and pastors and congregations should be prepared to honor requests for baptism in any of these modes.” Knowing that, what mode would I have chosen that might have felt as powerful as my shower experience? By the time my oldest daughter was born in 1988, I’d come to understand that baptism was more about the type of claiming that brought doves to Jesus and unconditional love to my shower––a recognition that we belonged to God—and less about applying two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen to human skin as insurance. But I wanted her welcomed into the arms and family of God from the very beginning of her life something so absent in mine, so she was baptized at six months old, though I answered on her before. Like before, I repented of sin and declared Jesus Christ as my Savior. But this time, I pledged to nurture my daughter in Christ’s holy church and was aware of the congregation’s pledge to do the same. The pastor dribbled water on my baby’s mercifully bald head. Jennifer’s scalp wasn’t soaked, but there was no doubt she felt something. Her eyes grew wide. She looked straight at Pastor Lorraine who took Jennifer in her arms, lifted her high overhead and walked down the aisles presenting the newest daughter in Christ. Even now I think sprinkling seems the perfect way to baptize a baby, the water splashing like tears of joy, as we become aware of how precious life is, and how this ritual is not only an offer by flawed human beings to raise a child to know God, but acknowledgment that this young life is as pure and full of possibility and unconditional love as it ever will be. The infant baptism of sprinkling wraps water and spirit and gratitude and enormity into a holy moment filled with unseen and ever present doves and voices. We know the beloved is in our midst, in the form of this tiny person. But sprinkling for me as an adult was a complete bust. I was a Southern California water baby. The first fourteen years of my life if I wasn’t swimming in the community pool, wading and bodysurfing along the shore, or submerged in the bathtub submerged, I was drying off. What type of baptism would feel most like giving up an old life and becoming a new creature? It was more than decade after my baptism that I first saw pouring. Thirty-year-old Shannon, with a purple beach towel wrapped around her neck, received a pitcher of water overhead as she knelt before the altar. The towel took the brunt of the water, but the back of her gauzy dress darkened, and she sat in clammy garments during the remainder of the worship service. I was baptized in November, and even in retrospect, the idea of a quart of water dumped over my head in the midst of a Sunday service on a cold cloudy morning wasn’t appealing. Under the right circumstances, though, pouring does have its appeal. In the Cathedral of our Lady of Angels in Los Angeles, California, “The Baptism of the Lord” is depicted in the center panel of the baptistery tapestries designed and woven by John Nava. This is the image on our bulletin cover today. Against a background of sand that wavers like a mirage, Jesus kneels low, bare backed, head bowed before John. His legs are not immersed in the watery Jordan, but pressed against its gritty bank. John, looking tenderly at his cousin’s submission, pours a bowl of water over Jesus’ head.
The gentle cascade saturates his hair, cools his scalp, refreshes him in the scorching heat. Jesus can feel the small stream of water, each drop sliding over his skin, and in John’s measured pouring he has time to breathe deeply of the significance of this moment. Soon the heavens will open, soon the voice that called us into being will speak to the crowds, and will say of this son, the words we all long to hear, “You are my beloved.” Finally, there is immersion. As much as I’d like to think I’d have chosen immersion, the truth is, even if I’d known it was possible, standing on the banks of the local reservoir while my pastor dunked me into the municipal water supply would’ve been too much spectacle as a fledgling believer. But many years later, I stood with my congregation on a hot Sunday morning as we concluded worship at the edge of a swimming pool to witness ten-year-old Sarah’s baptism. Over their bathing suits, she and our pastor wore white robes that billowed around them as they waded in. Secure in Pastor Margo’s arms, Sara went under, and reemerged soaking, hair plastered to head, watered to the bone. Then, as she climbed out of the pool, water flowing from her robe, we gingerly hugged Sara, trying not to get too wet. “Baptism is both God’s act of grace in the world and the human community’s response to that grace in faith and obedience,” according to the Book of Worship, and Sara’s was close to the way I imagined the experience of those who came to John the Baptist, as they flooded to the Jordan River, eager for sin cleansing and a fresh start. They kicked off their sandals and waded in, gasping a bit when the water slapped against their hips and stomachs. Then they held their breath as John dunked them under. There was the sensation of surrender, closing their eyes, allowing themselves to be submerged, the shock of cool water enveloping them, the smallest sensation of drowning before they surfaced gasping, and stumbled ashore into the arms of family, friends, and even strangers afterward. Before Jesus came on the scene, John warned them that there was more to it, that this was just the beginning. Someone else was coming who was going to baptize with fire. No doubt that branding would sear us into family, scar us for life, leaving marks no one could ignore or forget. Whether the people listened, whether they followed Jesus into the fire or not, there could be no arguing that their baptisms were memorable. In the Methodist tradition, each year on this Sunday when we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord, and each time there is a baptism, we are called to “Remember your Baptism and be thankful.” It wasn’t hard for me to remember mine, but I couldn’t bring myself to be thankful. When I didn’t want to remember my shoddy baptism, I remembered both my daughters’ baptisms, and how meaningful they were to me, though my children have no memory of their baptisms outside photos and stories I’ve given them, and I wonder if I have taken from them the opportunity to remember and be thankful. I’m too new to the Episcopal Church to have experienced many of the traditions that surround this day. But I do know that, as much as we try, we can never do God right. Our sacraments and rituals, the big moments in our lives of faith will always reflect our humanity, our frailties, bad aim, and the things our parents did or didn’t choose for us. My baptism wasn’t the big bang I longed for. But as I look back, I can see the event perfectly illustrated not only my need for God’s grace, but my need to extend grace to my pastor, to the congregation, to God and even to myself. As Gayle Felton writes in This Gift of Water, “Baptism, then, is not so much an event as it is a process…dynamic, not static; a journey, not a destination; a quest, not an acquisition.” Today we come to the water alongside Jesus, who had no need for repentance, but who chose to be baptized, his first step into the river of his destiny. He chose to enter into our human experience entirely, despite his divinity. He became one of us and through his surrender, he was filled with the Holy Spirit, the comforter he would leave with us. With him we step into the river, we submerge under water that envelops us like our first home where we are cradled and blessed before birth, a place we can only occupy momentarily as we hold our breath and float in the weightless present that surrounds us in the expansive love of our Creator, dying to all that would separate us from that love. And when we can bear it no longer, we emerge from the water gasping, blinking, dripping, shivering, filled with the reminder of who we are and whose we are. May, each dip into river, Sound, lake, and stream, may each flume of sea spray, each drop of rain upon our skin, each sprinkling of the shower head and garden hose, each submersion into bath and dishwater, each hand dipped into the baptismal font before worship remind us again and again that we are God’s beloved. And to paraphrase the Book of Common Prayer, may that belovedness raise us to a new life of grace, give us an inquiring and discerning hearts, the courage and will to persevere, and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works. Amen. (p. 308) A reflection on Matthew 3:1-12 delivered to the people of St. David of Wales Episcopal Church in Shelton the Second Sunday of Advent. The first chapter of Matthew’s gospel begins by foretelling the birth of John the Baptist. An angel came to his father, Zechariah, a priest saying: Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Today’s scripture introduces us to John as an adult, just a few months older than his cousin Jesus, fulfilling the angel’s words about him. In Matthew’s gospel, John proclaims, “‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,’ and people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” Later, John will baptize Jesus to mark the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, and because of this, we often think of Jesus as the first person to be baptized in a ritual that John invented, and that we continue today. But before John began baptizing people as a symbol of their repentance, converts to Judaism were baptized, leaving behind their old idols and gods to follow Yahweh. Jewish people already participated in ritual washing which was sometimes full body immersion, and other times handwashing only, but unlike baptism, which we observe as happening only once, the ritual washing was repeated over and over again. We don’t know what John said to the regular people who came before him as they confessed their sins. He may have met them with hard words, with the intent of pushing them into radical change. Maybe his words weren’t scathing, but just blunt. He doesn’t seem the type of person to mince words or to speak carefully so that everyone will like him and get along with him. We do know that when the religious leaders came before him to be baptized, he didn’t hold back, calling them a “brood of vipers!” which is a family of snakes that eat their mother! And he warns them of coming judgment that they must bear good fruit or be destroyed. Karoline Lewis, Associate Professor of Preaching and the Marbury E. Anderson Chair in Biblical Preaching Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, MN writes that, “we tend to forget that the prophets in ‘Old Testament Times’ were not doomsdayers or predictors of the future. They were truth-tellers of the present.” John, who grew up as the son of priest, familiar with church and has scathing words for those in religious power, those serving the institutional church, as he sees where their present behavior is leading—to a love of power more than a love of God, to a love of power more than a love of God’s justice and mercy for the poor and oppressed. In his book Democracy Matters, philosopher Cornel West writes that “Prophetic beings have as their special aim to shatter deliberate ignorance and willful blindness to the sufferings of others, and to expose the clever forms of evasion and escape we devise in order to hide and conceal injustice….” It takes courage to speak truth to power, and the world then and now needed and needs people like John who say it like they see it and don’t worry about what others think of them. In the words of Karoline Lewis: There are too many in the world terrified of telling the truth. There are too many in the world who cannot speak the truth because they are afraid—and rightly so. There are too many for whom telling the truth brings too much pain, both personal and professional. To be a prophet … is to give voice to those whose voice has been silenced. It is to give voice to those who have been told that their place doesn’t matter. My guess is that many of the ordinary people who came to John were those who had been silenced; those who were told they didn’t matter. They find John in the wilderness of Judea dressed in simple clothing and living off the land, forsaking the comforts and conveniences of the day as he relies on God’s provision. And he preaches repentance in order to prepare our hearts for the coming of God among us. Matthew writes that John “is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” “As much as we should focus on the identity and the foretelling of the prophet, we can’t overlook a prophet’s place,” writes Karoline Lewis. “A prophet’s place gives a prophet purpose. A prophet’s place locates the testimony to an explicit need. Prophecy means nothing if it does not touch the specificity of setting and site,” she continues. John appears as,a wild man eating nothing but locusts and honey, and he cries out from the wilderness, not from the gates of the city or inside the synagogue. In the Old Testament, the Jews wandered in the wilderness for forty years while waiting for a place to call home, relying solely on God for everything they needed to survive, and complaining in the process. Later in the gospel accounts, Jesus journeys into the wilderness for forty days as he encounters temptations and determines the manner in which he will follow God’s claim on his life. Even today, being in nature restores us. In the wilderness, away from our daily responsibilities and distractions, we have time in solitude to meet ourselves and God in new and transformative ways. Living where we do on the edges of the Olympics and Puget Sound, we understand that the physical wilderness is not a place of desolation, but a place of beauty and abundance, a place where humans are not in charge, but are reliant upon weather and landscape. But venturing into the wilderness doesn’t always mean a welcome hike to the top of Mt. Ellinor or a planned backpacking trip along the coastal beaches. It can be any situation that pulls us out of daily rhythm and routine and makes us more aware of our humanity. It can be longed for yet jarring like isolation of being a new mother home alone all day with an infant, or moving to a new community where nothing is familiar. It can come suddenly in the shock of being laid off, or in the form of an unwelcome diagnosis. It can be a long wandering living with chronic illness, or the journey through grief and loss. John and Isaiah before him ask us to enter our wilderness not in a state of hopelessness or despair, but in a spirt of repentance—of turning away from that which separates us from God’s presence. I’m not a prophet, but I know that repentance born of fear and anxiety isn’t sustainable over the years. It might turn us from destructive behavior, but our letting go and turning away from must also involve a reaching for and turning toward—a repentance of openness, preparation and expectation that will serve us over the long haul. And though our individual repentance is an inward journey, we are also called to repentance is a church and community, so that together we turn toward God. You and I have done some of that already this morning: choosing to gather in worship instead of at Wal-Mart or in front of the TV. We don’t necessarily know what’s on the heart of the person sitting next to us, but we are here together, a community asked to prepare the way of the Lord, particularly in this Advent season. For me part of that preparation happens as I prepare to speak before you in response to the Gospel. As I do so, I pray for guidance and I meditate on the words for days and weeks while I cook and wash clothes and paint rooms and clean litter boxes. What is God calling me to say to us? What sort of prophet might I, or any of us who stand before you and deliver a message be? How do we discern and speak the truth for this particular time and this particular place in a way that honors God and is true to who we are as individuals? I wonder what John the Baptist would say to us if he were here in Shelton just weeks away from the winter solstice, more than 2000 years after he thought the end was at hand. Would he be surprised at God’s seemingly infinite patience? Would he quote Martin Luther King Jr., saying, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice”? I once read an anecdote once about a little boy having dinner with his parents at Denny’s. The boy stood up, leaned over the top of the booth and said to the diners behind him, “No one knows what’s going to happen.” No one knows what’s going to happen, could easily be the extent of my prophecies. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know what has happened when I prepare myself for God’s coming, and I feel called to invite you join me on a guided poetic journey into the wilderness. I invite you close your eyes if that feels comfortable, or to gaze softly at the cross. Let the sounds around us come and go easily, and begin to breathe deeply, noticing the rise and fall of your breath. Allow my words to take you anywhere the spirit and your imagination lead. We inhale deeply as we step into the unknown relying on nothing more than God’s provision Alone with our thoughts with our God we find a wilderness that calls to us a place of peace away from the clattering city stripped of noise and demands free from expectations, responsibilities and roles that sever us from our true selves We exhale deeply as we step away from friends and family with all their familiarity and stand alone in this wild place noticing our frailty and dependence on God and embracing our need rather than running from it We let even the trappings of religion rest setting aside forms, rituals, and conventions that constrict our desires and dreaming We let our faith unwind itself from outward expression and find what makes our souls sing We step beyond the boundaries of city gates stand outside the walls which welcome and shelter but also stifle and suppress We walk into the unknown where any wonderful or terrifying event might transpire where our fears and insecurities may surface but where our hearts might hunt for beauty and our feet trod toward truth In wilderness we face the sun and know we are more than the boxes we tick off more than the blanks we fill in more than the questionnaires we complete more than our latest test results and lab numbers more than any diagnosis or prognosis We let the rain fall on our faces and know we are worth more than any achievement more than any award or trophy bestowed more than any business success or failure more than any relationship restored or fractured We feel the breezing blowing and know we are more than our weakest impulses We are not defined by the worst thing we have ever done Though we wander in the wilderness we are not abandoned for God is with us The fire that baptizes does not destroy the true self but burns brightly within us Beloved—with every breath and every step and every thought in this Advent journey may the path unfold before us a blazing highway for our God a wildfire of hope illuminating the darkness welcoming all that is lost and all who wander back home into the arms of Eternal Love Amen I had the privilege of delivering the message at St. David of Wales today. The gospel reading was Luke 23:33-43.
Today’s gospel passage smacks us right into the middle of Christ’s crucifixion without any lead up. It’s a difficult passage to read and sit with and we encounter it today as we observe the Feast of Christ the King marking the end of our Christian liturgical year as we turn from the long season of Ordinary Time following Pentecost and prepare to enter into Advent next Sunday. It seems like the perfect bridge after these months of following Jesus’ through his earthly ministry to remember his suffering and ultimate triumph before we turn to a time of waiting for Christ’s arrival. Thirty years ago, I joined the worship committee at my United Methodist Church. I’d been a Christian for a few years by then, and had taught Sunday school for first and second graders from a pre-printed curriculum but until I began planning worship, I really had no idea how the scriptures for a given Sunday were chosen. I soon learned that Methodists follow the Revised Common Lectionary, a three-year cycle of readings that provide a broad overview of Biblical texts from the Old and New testaments. Episcopalians follow this lectionary as well, and both denominations observe the major seasons and holy days in the liturgical year such as Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, and All Saints Day. Now I vaguely recall the Sunday before Advent being named Christ the King Sunday as a Methodist, but we don’t observe a number of holy days, particularly those honoring saints, that are familiar to Catholics and Episcopalians, and I hadn’t given much thought to how the observances of these feast days came about. I assumed, that like the major holy days, these observances had been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years, that they came to us from our Jewish roots, or the time of the early church, or the Reformation. So, I was surprised to discover that the Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King was instituted by Pope Pius the XI in 1925 and was originally observed on the last Sunday of October. In 1969 Pope John Paul the VI changed the title of the observance to “Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe,” and moved the date to the final Sunday of the liturgical year. Pius XI was pope during the final stages of the merger of formerly independent states in the Italian Peninsula into a United Kingdom of Italy, and he brokered an agreement in 1929 to settle the “Roman Question” that brought most of the original papal states under Italian rule, but preserved the Pope and Catholic church’s right to govern Vatican City. He established the Feast of Christ the King in an encyclical—a letter circulated among the churches—titled Quas Primas in December 1925. He wrote in the aftermath of World War I, and in response to growing secularism and nationalism, reminding the faithful of who their true ruler was. It had never occurred to me that our liturgical observances are not static dates on a calendar, varying only with the cycles of the moon, but that they, too are evolving, influenced by the work of the Holy Spirit and, in this case, in response to political and cultural disintegration that threatened not just the church, but who and what the church ought to worship. When secularism becomes freedom from religion, rather than of religion, when we discount the great mysteries of creation, we make humans gods and our concerns narrow as individuals pursue their desires devoid of concern of a power beyond our own understanding. We become slaves to systems that prize rules, regulations, and profit to the exclusion a spiritual life, compassion for the lost and the least, and reverent care for the environment that sustains all life. It is natural to identify with groups we belong to—they provide us with identity, safety, and community, but nationalism can warp our natural support of and affiliations with family, tribe, city, state, and country, when we come to believe that our way as the only way, that what we think and do is always aligned with truth. Engulfed in nationalism we become unable to look at our actions and policies critically, to see our own faults, and flaws. We become distrustful of people and places outside our own circles and experience, and devalue differences between us. Left unchecked nationalism leads to violence and war, to fear of the other, to the demonization of ethnic groups, immigrants, and refugees, to the belief that we are somehow more human and worthy than others, and that the needs and wants of our group are paramount over any larger common good. We lose sight of our interconnectedness, and our dependence upon God and one another. Today, perhaps even more so than the ninety-four years ago, we need this feast day, this reminder that our ultimate allegiance lies with family, country, or even our particular religion, but with Christ, the King of the Universe. A king who refused to call himself such. A king who sacrificed his own welfare and life on behalf of others. A king who constantly challenged the authorities on behalf of the poor and oppressed. A king we encounter on the cross in today’s gospel reading, who as he was being put to death, refused to defend himself as he was mocked by religious leaders, the soldiers who functioned as police, the crowd of onlookers, and even a criminal hanging on his own cross. In his encyclical Pius XI wrote this about Christ: So he is said to reign "in the hearts of men," both by reason of the keenness of his intellect and the extent of his knowledge, and also because he is very truth, and it is from him that truth must be obediently received by all mankind. He reigns, too, in the wills of men, for in him the human will was perfectly and entirely obedient to the Holy Will of God, and further by his grace and inspiration he so subjects our free-will as to incite us to the most noble endeavors. He is King of hearts, too, by reason of his "charity which exceedeth all knowledge…” If we are indeed subjects of Christ the King, if he is to reign over our wills and hearts, then we are commanded to emulate his manner of ruling over us. To set aside our ego, and pride, our need to be right, and to give up beliefs and behaviors that separate us from the love and will of God. We are asked to offer and receive forgiveness, to humble ourselves, to care for the widowed, the orphans, the mentally ill, the prisoners, the disabled, the refugees, the immigrants, and those who do not look or act or worship like us. But like Jesus’ disciples, we will not be able to do all that we are asked. Like Peter we will deny Christ; like his friends we will cower behind locked doors even though we love him and want to do what he asks. Despite our betrayals, Christ our King behaves like no other ruler. He does not exact revenge or retribution for our failures. He does not jail or banish, or ex-communicate us. “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing,” he says from the cross and in our midst today. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise,” he says in the last minutes of his life, inviting everyone into the kingdom of heaven. “If you are the king, save yourself!” those who mock him cry. But he does not. He saves us instead. … I close with this poem written by United Methodist pastor and poet, Steve Garnaas-Holmes: Suffering Sovereign Condemned, scorned and disposed of, whose life does not matter, enthroned under the weight of a cross, crowned with pain and humiliation, holding a scepter of powerlessness: the little man is a sad excuse for a king. That is, if you seek an unmoved mover, removed, impervious, who will excuse you from life, enabling you to be likewise. You can have him. Give me the one whose sovereignty is to rule in all suffering, to bless all pain by occupying it, to shine the light of love from inside the darkest night, whom nothing can prevent walking with us in our gravest trials. Give me royalty under whose reign every abuse and injustice, even toward the least honorable, is treason; whose decree, even from within our public agony and secret prison cells, is paradise. You can have your mighty warrior. Give me the little man with holes in his hands whose heart is never far from mine, whose imperial reign is right where I am. __________________ Steve Garnaas-Holmes Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net I opened my mailbox yesterday afternoon to find a “Special Welcome Back Offer” from Time magazine addressed to my mother-in-law.
“If we subscribe, will Mama Honey come back?” my husband asked when he came home from work and saw the notice on the counter. Does Time have the power to turn back time? If so, who needs a special offer? Even cover price would be small price to pay to welcome my husband’s mother back, to be wrapped in her loving embrace, enfolded by the sweet sound of her voice on the other end of the phone. It’s been more than two years since Mama Honey left this life. More than two years since I contacted Time to cancel her subscription, writing deceased as the reason. Every day my husband and I remember that she is no longer present, he in ways more visceral and potent than I. Memories of her float in and out of ordinary days as my husband works with tools she first gave him, as I refill the spice jars she gave me at my bridal shower, as we share stories of her at family gatherings. Visitations come to my husband in dreams as he dances with her, or cares for her again at the end of her life. Ephemeral moments evaporating into morning’s light. And no matter how powerful they are, our memories and dreams never reunite us in person with the solidity of her physical body, the sound of her voice in the room, the sweet hospitality of her spirit that drew everyone close. Was Time’s offer a cruel trick or a welcome treat? Was it a computer glitch omitting the instruction to delete her name from the database, or the inability of an automated system to honor our loss? Whatever it was, the special welcome back offer arrived on Halloween, and I am writing this on All Saints Day. The veil between worlds is thin in these holy days, when we do indeed welcome back the dead, bring them to life in our mind’s eye, dress like our best and worst visions and nightmares, offer sweets to those who remain to ease the ache, and visit their resting places, which may be only in our hearts. So, thank you, Time, for the opportunity to place my welcome back order. And thank you, catalogues and insurance and random special offer profferers, who manage to slip by my cancellation requests. Because of you, I open my mailbox on occasion and see my mother-in-law’s name in bold black print. I lift the envelope and carry it into the house as if my hand is cradling something precious and rare: Her memory bequeathed to me and those who love her still. A reflection on Luke 17:11-19
The gospel of Luke is rich with accounts of Jesus providing physical and spiritual healing to those who suffer: In the fourth chapter, Jesus stands over Simon Peter’s mother-in-law and heals her fever. Later that day “any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them.” Further on in Chapter 4, Jesus heals a man with an unclean spirit. In Chapter 5, Jesus heals a leper in verses 12-16. The account reads like this: Once, when he was in one of the cities, there was a man covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and begged him, ‘Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.’ Then Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, ‘I do choose. Be made clean.’ Immediately the leprosy left him. And he ordered him to tell no one. ‘Go’, he said, ‘and show yourself to the priest, and, as Moses commanded, make an offering for your cleansing, for a testimony to them.’ But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray. Later, in Chapter 5, Jesus heals a paralyzed man who is lowered through the roof into the middle of a crowd with the words, “Your sins are forgiven you.” In Chapter 6, we read: He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. In Chapter 7 Jesus heals a Centurion’s servant from afar and raises a widow’s only son from the dead. He casts demons out of man and into a herd of swine that run off a cliff and drown, and heals a distraught father’s dying daughter. A woman who has been bleeding for 12 years is healed when she touches the hem of his robe. After confronting her, Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” In Chapter 9, a man begs for his son to be healed from a demon and it is done. In Chapter 11, Jesus casts out a demon allowing a mute man to speak. In Chapter 13, on the Sabbath, Jesus heals the woman who had been bent over for 18 years. In Chapter 14, also on the Sabbath, he heals a man who had dropsy. And now, in Chapter 17, Jesus is traveling between Samaria and Galilee on his way to Jerusalem. As he enters a village, ten lepers approach him. Keeping their distance, they call out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" Here, we need to know some things about leprosy in Biblical times. The first is that the leprosy referred to in both the Old and New Testaments is not the modern day disease of leprosy. In an article adapted by the Nepal Leprosy Trust, Dr. Jeanie Cochrane Oldman writes: The condition described as leprosy in the Old Testament section of the Bible is NOT the same as modern leprosy or Hansen’s Disease, as it is often called. The Hebrew word sara’at [which was later translated into Greek as lepra] is a ritualistic term denoting uncleanness or defilement and covered a range of conditions that could affect people, or clothing, or even a wall. The conditions described could include boils, carbuncles, fungus infections, infections complicating a burn, impetigo, favus of the scalp, scabies, patchy eczema, phagedenic ulcer, and impetigo or vitiligo on people. On walls or clothes, it was more likely to be fungus, mold, dry rot, lichen or similar conditions. Even an article from the Jewish Encyclopedia published back in 1906 notes that: Ẓara'at was looked upon as a disease inflicted by God upon those who transgressed His laws, a divine visitation for evil thoughts and evil deeds. Every leper mentioned in the Old Testament was afflicted because of some transgression. "Miriam uttered disrespectful words against God's chosen servant Moses, and, therefore, was she smitten with leprosy. Joab, with his family and descendants, was cursed by David for having treacherously murdered his great rival Abner. Gehazi provoked the anger of Elisha by his mean covetousness, calculated to bring the name of Israel into disrepute among the heathen. King . . . Uzziah was smitten with incurable leprosy for his alleged usurpation of priestly privileges in burning incense on the golden altar of the Temple.” It would have been quite natural for the people . . . to have regarded persons afflicted with ẓara'at as transgressors; they had violated the laws of God and their transgressions had been great, else they would not have been so afflicted. One had to be clean and pure in order to come before God in worship. In that prescientific era before the understanding of viruses, bacteria, and the mechanics of how disease spreads, God gives explicit instructions about how to deal with leprosy in order to prevent the spread of sin and sin-induced diseases. The entirety of Chapter 13 in the book of Leviticus is devoted to diagnosing leprosy and other skin conditions. Anyone suspected of having this condition, needed to go to a priest for examination—and often repeated examinations, casting the priest in the role of dermatologist and judge. If found to be infected, the law says that “the leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip [his mustache], and cry out, “Unclean, unclean.” He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.” (Leviticus 13:2-3, 45-46). Why were lepers subject to such harsh public ostracism? The website gotquestions.org provides some rationale: Among the 61 defilements of ancient Jewish laws, leprosy was second only to [coming into contact with] a dead body in seriousness. A leper wasn’t allowed to come within six feet of any other human, including his own family. The disease was considered so revolting that the leper wasn’t permitted to come within 150 feet of anyone when the wind was blowing. Lepers lived in a community with other lepers until they either got better or died. The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia says that this practice of exiling lepers gave rise to the segregation of those suffering from modern leprosy, even though the disease is not highly contagious. It also says this: There is much reason to believe that the segregation of lepers was regarded . . . more in the light of a religious ceremonial than as a hygienic restriction. Writers who hold the view that the exclusion of lepers had chiefly a religious significance conclude from these facts that lepers were obliged to remain outside the camp because they were regarded as likely to morally infect others. As we return specifically to today’s scripture, I offer a few more thoughts from Dr Jeanie Cochrane Oldman and the Nepal Leprosy Trust. Although modern leprosy had appeared in Israel by the time Christ was living there, we do not know whether the “ten lepers” that were healed by Him had modern leprosy or not. After the four Gospels at the beginning of the New Testament, there is no further mention of leprosy in the Bible. [And as for] practical applications of this understanding:
With this background and insight, let’s revisit the scripture for a close reading and some thoughts about it: On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. (Luke 17:11-12a) It’s possible that this village is composed completely of lepers; of people cast out of their hometowns in both Galilee and Samaria, and together they’ve formed this community of outcasts. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" (v. 12b-13) Word of Jesus’s power to heal has spread everywhere, even in this village in no-man’s land. Throughout the gospels, people are desperate for healing and come to Jesus for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways. In the case of these lepers, why not ask Jesus for healing? He might say no, but having been exiled from home and family, they really have nothing left to lose. And I wonder if there were other lepers in that place who didn’t come forward, who stayed in their misery without reaching out for help when Jesus came. Though they’ve been banished, these ten lepers are still observing the law. They keep their distance, unlike the leper earlier in this gospel who broke the law to bow at Jesus’s feet and ask to be made clean. Maybe this group of ten stands six feet away from Jesus, or maybe the wind is blowing and they’re shouting from 150 feet away. Either way, they’ve summoned the courage to ask for mercy. And Jesus responds: When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." (v. 14a) Jesus doesn’t touch these lepers, as he did the one begging at his feet. He doesn’t need to. This isn’t the first time Jesus has directed his healing energy without touching those who are afflicted. Sometimes they weren’t even present. From a distance, he sees their affliction and isolation in this village where they’ve been banished between two fractious regions. Jesus recognizes that they are literal outsiders. Before the lepers are even aware that healing has begun, he sends them home, back to the priests who can give them “a clean bill of health” and restore them to home, family, religious, and community life. “And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back…” (v. 14b-15a) Healing, at least for the one who turned back seemed to happen soon after he walked away, in a short enough period of time that he could turn around, and still find Jesus there. We don’t know about the others. When their physical symptoms disappeared, when they noticed, or how they reacted. But we can assume that they were also grateful. Wouldn’t each of us be? Praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. (v. 15b-16a) The Samaritan is overcome with gratitude, and sets aside his objective—to go to the priest for reinstatement into the community—to offer thanks and praise to Jesus, the one who brought about healing. He is grateful for the healing in and of itself before, or even if, anything else in his life changes. “And he was a Samaritan.” (v. 16b) This fact is a big deal every time it comes up in the gospels. Franciscan Media provides some useful descriptions of the rift between the Jews and the Samaritans for us modern readers: Imagine the hatred between Serbs and Muslims in modern Bosnia, the enmity between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland or the feuding between street gangs in Los Angeles or New York, and you have some idea of the feeling and its causes between Jews and Samaritans in the time of Jesus. Both politics and religion were involved. Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean?” (v. 17a) Is this a rhetorical question, or is it possible that Jesus didn’t get close enough to really see each person clearly? The answer may not matter much. “But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" (v. 17-18) Those who leave and don’t return are simply doing what Jesus told them to do. They are eager to go to the priests with their newly unblemished bodies so they can be reunited with loved ones and belong again. Perhaps the nine are all Galileans, and they’ve left together along the same road to return to their towns and villages in Galilee, having something in common besides their leprosy and ostracization. I can imagine being one them, caught up in the anticipation, and then joy of reunification, and later wanting to seek Jesus out to thank him, only to find that he’d already left. He was, after all, on his way to Jerusalem. The Samaritan may have been on his own, the only Samaritan among the ten, the only one from his village. Jesus implies that he was. Though he was part of this community of outcasts, now that they are healed, he doesn’t belong with them. He is still an outsider. I don’t think the point of this scripture is to focus on the ingratitude of the nine, and I don’t think it’s meant to shame us into feeling guilty when we’re part of the 90% and caught up in the drama of the moment, the times we’ve been overwhelmed and forgotten to say “thank you” in the moment we received healing, grace, mercy, and love. And, I don’t think the purpose is to glorify being an extreme outsider, like the Samaritan leper. Instead, I think that Jesus finds his assumptions and his own cultural beliefs challenged here. This isn’t the first time he’s been surprised by the depth of faith and the actions of those outside the Jewish community he came to minister to. Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well." (v. 19) What does “your faith has made you well” mean? Is there a difference between being “cured” and being “made well”? Is there a difference between approaching Jesus out of an I’ll-try-anything desperation and approaching with a belief that he can and will heal you? Is that what distinguishes the Samaritan leper from the other nine? That may be true. But I sense another important distinction between the nine who rushed to the priests, and the one who turned back. It seems to me the faith that made the Samaritan leper well is his trust in his own experience of healing and inclusion in God’s kin-dom; a recognition that faith and belief don’t rely on following rules to the letter and the stamp of approval of those with religious authority, but rather faith and belief come from our recognition and acceptance of God’s love freely offered. Accepting grace seems simple enough, but remnants of legalism still plague us. Though our understanding of illness and infectious disease have shifted radically since the time of Jesus, we still struggle with the idea of illness being a consequence of sin, particularly as it pertains to addiction: Liver failure in alcoholics and dental decay in meth addicts often seem to us like fitting consequences for sin. “They brought it upon themselves” we say of the results of destructive. We think of such suffering God’s judgment, and see it as right punishment for sin—for our inability to master our impulses and behavior and overcome our brokenness. But even when we find better ways to cope with our brokenness, pain, and anxiety, turning from our sinful ways, becoming born again, and overcoming addiction doesn’t necessarily restore us to physical and mental health, as much as we hope and pray it will. We have centuries of history showing our human tendency to look for sin, for uncleanness, for explanation and justification of the human condition so that we can attempt to control life. We formulate rules, and opt for blame and punishment when we break them, as a way to keep ourselves safe: from bad decisions, mental and physical illness, from addiction, from pain and heartbreak. I knew a woman who built a house with her husband, and that process brought out long-buried issues in their marriage. At the same time, her husband was diagnosed with cancer. Rather than face the hard truths of their relationship, and her own part in the pain, she became convinced that the sin of her husband’s anger was the direct cause of his cancer. It was all his fault, and she was off the hook. But the world is too complicated, and our lives too intricate and nuanced for such simplistic cause and effect. And sometimes, contrary to what we might think, illness itself doesn’t bring despair or thoughts of sin, it returns us to belief. You have probably witnessed this in someone you know, or even in your own life. As humans, we are all frail, we all suffer, we’re all afflicted, we’re all outsiders at one time or another, and it is faith that can restore us to a wholeness in relationship with God, even if our conditions aren’t healed. In this gospel lesson, the ten lepers remind us to risk advocating for ourselves, to risk being told no, and to risk being told yes. The Samaritan leper reminds us to: •Ask for what our hearts desire even from those we think would never help us. •Imagine possibilities beyond our present circumstances and limitations. •Think and act beyond our own self-interest when we have the capacity to do so. •Offer thanks and praise to God and to those who remind us of God’s goodness and presence. •Live in gratitude. •Trust our own experience. And in this encounter, we learn from Jesus to offer our gifts to those outside of our own circle, our own comfort zone, our own community, and our own belief system. May the wealth contained in this gospel lesson enrich each of our lives. And may our faith truly make us well. A Reflection on Luke 15:1-10
Back in the summer of 1974, when I’d just turned thirteen, I attended my first major league baseball game at Angel Stadium in Anaheim not too far from our home. My mom, my stepdad, and I met up with another couple and their eight-year-old daughter, whom I often babysat. I can’t tell you who the Angels were playing that night, or if Nolan Ryan pitched one of his no-hitters, but I can tell you that even as a Southern California kid who’d been to Disneyland at least a dozen times, I’d never seen so many people in one place at one time. Stadium capacity at the time was 43,000, and I have no idea how many people were in the stands, only that when the game was over, we all poured out of the bleachers heading down corridors elbow-to-elbow swarming toward the exit as if we were a school of tightly packed grunion headed toward the beach. I shuffled out behind my parents’ friends and their daughter, trying not to step on her small tennis-shoed feet. I remember chatting, but not about what, as we wound our way past closed concession stands and through the concourse. As we converged with another river of people approaching the exit, I realized I ought to be with my parents, not with their friends, since we were going home, and not to their house. I stopped walking, turned around, and was engulfed by a crowd of people streaming past me, none of whom were my parents. I scanned the faces coming toward me for a few seconds, and when I still didn’t see my mom and stepdad, I turned back around to resume walking with their friends—but they were gone. I stumbled into the crowd looking in vain for a familiar face as everyone pressed on toward the exit, taking me along with them. As I got closer to the wall of doors, I fully expected to see my parents and their friends standing just inside or outside the doors, waiting for me to join them. But they weren’t. Since I was a kid, used to reading in the backseat on car rides and usually oblivious to directions, I had no idea where my stepdad had parked his car or how I’d ever be able to find it and my parents. Panic and tears both began to rise as I realized I was truly lost. I guess my distress must’ve showed because soon a woman was standing in front of me asking if everything was okay. I told her I’d lost my parents. Not far away, she spotted a man in an official jacket—an usher or a security guard; I don’t remember which now—ushered me toward him and told him my predicament. She left when he took over, asking me to wait against a wall while he spoke into his walkie-talkie. Soon someone else in a uniform jacket appeared with a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt and I followed him through a door, down a flight of stairs to an underground level, and from there, down a long windowless corridor. He stopped and opened a door revealing half a dozen little kids, all lost like me, kept watch over by yet another uniformed adult. The person on watch explained that there were too many people outside right then to go looking for our parents. We would wait until the stadium emptied out and then they’d take us to find our parents. So, I sat on a bench, like the other kids and waited in silence, trying not to cry. Though I was relieved to be safe, I was also embarrassed. In any other circumstance, I’d be babysitting these kids, reading them bedtime stories and tucking them in and watching TV in their living rooms until their parents came home from the ballgame. I was at least twice their age, and almost five feet tall. I could see faces in the crowd when I’d been looking for my parents. These kids were probably staring at belts and waistbands; no wonder they’d gotten separated from their parents. What excuse did I have? None. I should’ve known better than to get lost. I felt stupid, thoroughly humiliated, and convinced my error was going to put me in so much trouble once I was finally reunited with my parents. The minutes dragged on until finally our supervisor opened the door and ushered us onto a waiting motorized cart with bench seats. The driver cruised through the building and out toward the parking lot, which ringed the entire arena. He told us not to worry, that he’d approach each lingering vehicle, and eventually we’d all find our parents. “Believe me,” he said, “they’re waiting for you.” As we turned into the first parking area, there were still dozens of cars in the lot, many more cars than lost children, but I could see that some vehicles had their emergency flashers on, headlights blinking in the dark summer night, beckoning us. I don’t remember where I was in the lineup of reunification, but I do remember the driver commenting on how helpful the flashing headlights were when he pulled up next to my stepdad’s car. The driver said parents didn’t usually think to do that, and my stepdad responded that he’d circled the entire parking lot looking for me, and as he stopped to talk to other parents of lost kids, he’d told each of them to turn on their flashers. As the driver and my stepdad thanked each other, I stepped down from the electric cart and into my mother’s warm embrace. Then, as the cart continued on its mission, I climbed into the backseat, waiting for the dreaded reprimand, surprised that it never came. All these years later, I’m still anxious about being separated in large crowds. Every time I leave an arena, my experience at Angel Stadium surfaces, and I hold tight to the hand of whoever I’m with, afraid I’ll get lost again. Encountering this scripture passage brought the incident and my anxiety to the foreground of my thoughts. And for that, I find myself unexpectedly grateful. The process of immersing myself in Luke’s words allowed me to see the situation from other perspectives, not only as the sheep or coin or young teenager who was lost, but as the shepherd and the woman who cleaned her house, and the kind woman, security team, and stepdad who all helped in the search to find that which was lost. It’s likely that you, like me, have been lost in a situation that still sticks with you many years later. Maybe it happened while visiting a new place, or driving with bad directions, or out on a hike. Or maybe it was less of a geographical situation and more of an emotional one—feeling lost and unmoored after an unexpected move, or unsure of what comes next after the children left home, or after the death of a loved one. Whatever the particulars, each of us in our own lives and in our own ways has been lost—to ourselves, or to those we love, or to our faith in God. And perhaps you, like me, have approached being lost with judgment about yourself, with feelings of failure or inadequacy that lingered long after you were found or found yourself. Reading Jesus’ parables about the lost sheep and lost coin, and applying them to my own life, I find good news for those of us who are lost: First: There are people looking for us, even when we don’t about it and can’t see them. The shepherd leaves his flock—hopefully in a safe place—to search for the lost one. The woman tears her house apart, cleaning from top to bottom to find the coin. I don’t know when my parents realized I wasn’t with them, and even though they weren’t where I hoped or expected them to be, they were out looking for me, sending out SOS signals with flashing headlights, even helping others to find their lost children. Second: Things and people get lost. Getting lost isn’t an intellectual, moral, or spiritual failure. It’s reality, and when people see that reality, they respond. The shepherd retraces the paths he’s led the sheep on, the woman sweeps and looks in every place her coins could possibly be, strangers see lost children and young teens and offer help, the baseball stadium staff have protocols to reunite lost children with parents, parents turn on flashing beacons. None of them just sit there saying, “Oh well, it’s lost,” or, “Oh, well, she’s lost. There’s nothing we can do about it,” or “It’s her own fault she got lost, let her find herself by herself,” or “Oh well, I didn’t need that sheep, or coin, or kid anyway,” or “Oh well, I’ll get a new sheep, a new coin, a new child.” When we who are lost feel powerless to change our circumstances, there are people and forces greater than ourselves working on our behalf. Help is available in our distress, even if we don’t know how to ask for it, and even if we don’t recognize our need. And perhaps most importantly, especially for those of us who are prone to punishing ourselves for making mistakes: Joy is the proper response once we’re found, no matter what circumstances led to our being lost. The shepherd didn’t banish the wayward sheep for wandering away. The woman didn’t give away all her coins; she didn’t decide that in losing one coin she was too careless to be responsible for any coins. The stranger who asked if I was okay didn’t say that it was ridiculous for a teen to get lost in the crowd. The security staff didn’t lecture us kids to be more careful or responsible while they waited to return us to our parents. My parents didn’t shame or scold or punish me once I was found. They shared some responsibility, wishing they’d been more attentive and hadn’t lost track of me. But they didn’t wallow in self-recrimination and decide we could never go anywhere again because we might get separated. The shepherd, the woman with her coins, my parents: they all were happy to have that which was lost restored to them. Each celebrated. In the gospel, the shepherd and the woman invited their friends and neighbors and threw a party. My parents hugged me. I’d like to say that we went out for ice cream with their friends who’d waited to see that I was returned safely; but I don’t remember if the friends stayed or what happened next. What I do know is that in our finding, we are recipients of grace, of unconditional love, of welcome and celebration. A point that Jesus makes abundantly clear to those who are judging him about the company he keeps. He reminds the righteous that the welfare of each person, whether we “approve” of them or not, is important to all of us. And he asks us to consider the impact in our own lives when we have lost something or someone important to us. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them,” Jesus says. He doesn’t ask us to suppose we are the sheep or the coin, but that’s often our first instinct. What is our modern day sheep? A missing pet? A family member struggling with addiction? A friend suffering from depression? A child caught in a custody battle between acrimonious parents? A fellow parishioner who has stopped coming to worship? What is our modern day coin? A wedding ring? A family heirloom? A vehicle registration? Who are our modern day sinners and tax collectors? Telemarketers? Internet scammers? Sex Workers? Drug dealers? People in the political party we’re not? Whatever form the sheep or coin takes for us, whoever the sinners and tax collectors are, Jesus calls us to seek that which has been lost to us, to include those who have been excluded—and further calls us to rejoice at the reunification. Celebration sounds wonderful, but can be so difficult when what or who we’ve lost has hurt us. Words that wound our pride. Spouses who break our hearts. Addictions that poison relationships. Bosses who fire us. Churches that drill in sinfulness to the exclusion of grace. And Sons who beg for their inheritance early and run away to squander it—as happens in the next verses of Luke’s gospel. It’s difficult when these lost things are restored to believe that they’ll remain found. It’s hard to welcome them wholeheartedly and take the risk of losing them again and being hurt again and not having life work out the way we want. It seems safer to be wary, to require assurances through scripted behaviors, specific beliefs, court orders, drug tests, or some other external proof that the restoration is real, that promises will be kept, that things will be different this time around. But if God doesn’t require us to swear oaths and sign promises in order to welcome us into relationship, if God doesn’t need anything more than us as we are to celebrate our belonging and love us unconditionally, then our rules about belonging simply don’t hold up. Most of those who judged Jesus genuinely believed their reasons for exclusion were justified. His ideas were so radical, his words and actions threatened their religious practices and their very identities. For us, Jesus words may be simple to embrace, but living them out is much more difficult. Be like the shepherd who seeks the lost sheep until it’s found. Be like the woman who cleans her house until she recovers her lost coin. Be like the father welcomes the prodigal son with no questions asked. Be generous; Be merciful. May Jesus’ words open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts. May his words remind us that to be human is to be lost to be human is to be found, to be human is to seek, to be human is to find to be human is to forgive others and ourselves, to be human is to celebrate inclusion to be human is to live and love in the manner of the one who gave his life in love for us. A slightly modified version of my most recent sermon based on Luke 13:10-17, the healing of the bent over woman.
There is so much richness in this relatively short scripture passage, so many themes we could explore about the nature of the Sabbath, about our human tendency to put rules and regulations around our humanity, about Jesus’ ministry and his words and actions that illuminate the differences between the spirit of the law and the letter of it, so that we might learn to choose the law of love above any other. But it is the bent over woman herself who draws me most deeply into this gospel reading and sparks my curiosity: Who is this bent over woman? How old is she? Is she married, widowed? Who is she living with? What is her role in the household and community? What happened to her body, and how did her physical ailment impact her spirit with each passing year? Given the time period, did her family and community think her condition was a result of her sin? Did they care for her, or ostracize her, or perhaps both? Did she fight against her body’s limitations in the beginning? Did she injure herself more by refusing to admit to her limitations? If she’d fought against this new reality, when did she stop fighting? And what sort of “giving up” was it? Resignation or acceptance? Had anyone tried to help her? Had she sought out cures? Did she come to the synagogue faithfully, or did she come that day just to see Jesus? Had she planned to ask him for healing? How had he noticed her? Why had he chosen to heal her and not someone else? What happened to the woman after the commotion of her healing died down? How did the people in her life and synagogue treat her after her healing? How did her daily life change? Was it Jesus’ words or his touch, or both that brought about her healing? In what ways did the healing of her body return her to her former life? And in what ways did it close her off to her former life yet open up to a new one? In what ways did this healing impact her body, mind and spirit? Does healing have to come in one dramatic moment, or can it be gradual? Most of my questions can’t be answered. But I want to understand the story of the woman in Luke’s gospel and learn about healing from it because I have both been a bent over woman myself, and I love and have cared for a bent over woman. The bent over woman I love and have cared for has been bound by physical, emotional, and spiritual pain for decades, a crippling that wouldn’t be a stretch to attribute to Satan, as does Jesus in this gospel. The experience of being in relationship with her has impacted me deeply. I have seen the loss of physical abilities and the insufficiency of treatment or cures. I’ve seen a person stripped of dignity, trapped in dependency, robbed of happiness, and beset by hopelessness and despair. There are moments, despite my love for her, and despite my own faith, when I do not think I can bear another moment of her suffering. I want Jesus to heal my bent over woman. I want him to say as he did to the daughter of Abraham: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” And I want him to do it now—or to have done it already, years ago. Each of us has been bent low in some way, crippled by illness or disease, by infirmity or job loss or natural disaster or divorce or grief or violence or any number of human experiences that derail our plans and identities. And our healing, and how, or when, or if it comes in this lifetime, can be unexpected and mysterious. I became a literal bent over woman in January 2016. I was crawling under bushes to dig out Himalayan blackberries by the roots when I felt a sharp twinge in my back. I hobbled into the house for a dose of ibuprofen and ice, but within a few days I couldn’t put weight on my right leg without crumpling. My husband drove me to Urgent Care that evening, and to the ER the next as the pain got worse. I was given a shot, prescription anti-inflammatory, painkillers, muscle relaxer, a pair of crutches, and told to rest. I spent weeks mostly laying on one side in a near-fetal position, unable move freely. Pain made me tired, grumpy, weepy, and narrowed my world. Sometimes my consciousness extended no further than my body as I sought a pain-free breath. I was completely dependent on my husband for dressing, bathing, meals, transportation, shopping, laundry, and housework. Though I was grateful for his uncomplaining generosity, it humbled me not to be able to contribute to our household, and to accept so much help. A month after the injury, I felt worse and not better. My doctor thought the initial diagnosis of a sprained iliac ligament and inflamed sciatic nerve, might be a herniated lumbar disk, and recommended an MRI, which my insurance wouldn’t pay for, saying I hadn’t suffered long or severely enough. I certainly felt I’d suffered long and severely enough so my husband and I, who were strapped for cash at the time, decided to charge the MRI to our credit card. I shared a prayer request on Facebook with my family and friends, and within an hour of scheduling the appointment, a loved one called and offered to pay for the procedure, though I hadn’t asked. I hadn’t recognized until that moment that there had already been some gifts in my suffering: In pain and illness, the trivial and irrelevant had been stripped away. Though I spent much of each day zoning out watching HGTV, I also appreciated daily life with a heightened awareness and gratitude: the beauty of sunrise and sunset, the melody rain on the roof, the many ways my body had so often done what I asked without protest. Accepting that I couldn’t cook or clean or even wash my hair and being vulnerable enough to ask for and receive help was part of my healing. As was accepting money for the MRI. It was gift I couldn’t repay. A gift given in love by someone who wanted to relieve my suffering and couldn’t; but could do this. I’d never had an MRI before, and I didn’t know I was claustrophobic until I was confined in that coffinlike tube with magnets banging like a jet turbine rattling my teeth and nerves. To quell panic, I brought hymns to mind, but my favorites, like “Morning Has Broken,” and “All Things Bright and Beautiful” were too happy for the circumstances. It was early February and Lent. I needed a hymn of lament and “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” floated into consciousness where I repeated the lyrics in my mind like a mantra. I latched onto Jesus and the words of his wounding, for who and what else could be present with me there? Not the technician who was only a disembodied voice speaking via microphone between scans. Not my husband in the waiting room. Not even my wedding ring stashed in a locker with my clothes. In the middle of that MRI, clinging to Jesus, I knew that I would be healed no matter what images the machine generated, no matter what sort of treatment I would or wouldn’t receive. I knew because people I love had suffered much worse, and were whole despite diagnosis, disease, disability. God did not take the cup from them or from Jesus—though each asked to be spared. I can’t say if my doctor saw Jesus lurking between vertebrae when she read the MRI report, but I felt him—and the knowledge that God will not forsake us penetrated me bone deep. There was nothing more to resist. Somehow, in that blaring machine I was cradled and blessed. Feeling that blessing, I wondered if anyone had blessed the machine and the room, the technicians, physicians, and janitors who worked here, those who came here like me, under extreme circumstances, and our friends and families, at home, in the lobby, waiting, hoping, fearing, and I cobbled a silent prayer in the final minutes: “May this machine be used for the highest and best good by all who come in contact with it. May those entrusted to operate this equipment do so with great skill and compassion. May all who enter here be comforted.” Jesus spoke healing to the bent over daughter of Abraham, laid hands on her, and she stood up straight for the first time in eighteen years praising him. Two thousand years later on the far side of the resurrection, as I was bent over in pain, he healed me, and I praise him. Will Jesus heal the bent over woman I love and so many in our midst who are bound by illness, injury, addiction, trauma, abuse, who are crippled under the weight of so much they cannot bear to carry? I do not know, but I believe he is able and willing to heal us and waiting for us to come near, like the woman in scripture. I believe Jesus waits for us to surrender whatever it is that we cling to that stands between us and him. For some, like the bent over woman who suffered for eighteen years, that thing might well be her pain. If your pain is all that defines you, the only thing that has remained with you when everything and everyone else has deserted you, who are you without it? How can you possibly let it go and live when you have no idea what will happen? Where can you find that courage? Where do any of us find the courage when we’re bent low? Perhaps in the words of scripture. Perhaps through prayer. Perhaps by opening our eyes and our hearts and listening deeply to the experience of others who have found their way to healing. Perhaps all of these can lead us to take the first steps toward healing. I have been part of a faith community for the past year, lifting each other up in prayer every Sunday as we worship, kneeling at the altar together as we feed on the bread of life. I look at the faces of those who have become dear, and I know they know what it is to be bent over. And I know they know what it is to be healed. Among us, we know what it is to draw near Jesus and to surrender what we can’t control. I see faith in the midst of pain and suffering. I see wholeness and healing. I hear praise as we lift our voices in song. In a world where so much seems broken, where so many strive after a false illusion of happiness, where so many are bent over, I hear the hurting clamoring for reason to hope, looking for something to believe in. The daughter of Abraham Jesus set free immediately stood up and praised God, and I want to think that she told her story again and again over the years, to anyone who hadn’t heard it, and to those who had, but needed a reminder of God’s healing power. I want to imagine that she became a disciple in her own place in her own way. May we be like the daughter of Abraham. May we stand and speak. May we be emboldened to offer a glimmer of hope to those who are hurting, sharing not doctrine or theology, but the truth of our lives, the stories of our own pain and suffering, and the ways in which we risked opening ourselves to God’s presence to be healed by an outpouring of grace and love. How are you doing these days? I have to admit, I've been struggling. There are moments when I buckle under the weight of the news and the violence pervading our society, when I don't know how to bear our collective anxiety and suffering, as well as my own anxiety and fear. Moments when my prayers, my words, my actions, feel utterly insufficient in the wake of such great injustice. Earlier this week, In response, I did what I often do. Wrote a poem: Feeling Powerless in the Face of Everything Out of nowhere a massive meteor passes between earth and moon bypassing all our space aged tracking systems nearly obliterating the planet and all of us on it Out of nowhere in the course of a week in three U.S. cities three young white men steeped in hatred wield automatic weapons and open fire on festivalgoers, shoppers, friends out for drinks obliterating dozens of families and futures in mere seconds Out of nowhere officials of our government raid cities and towns ripping parents from children creating chaos and inflicting wounds that will never heal families obliterated under the guise of law and order Out of nowhere a helicopter thunders overhead one evening while I wash the dinner dishes I step outside to see an orange bucket suspended from the copter dip into the bay yards away than track its flight toward a plume of wind-whipped smoke billowing from the steep hillside less than a mile from my home Out of nowhere a can of Diet Dr. Pepper falls from my hand hits the floor, punctures the aluminum, and through the tiny hole a thin virulent stream of brown sprays the wall, the curtains the cat food in its bowl, the kitchen floor Deadly interstellar debris hurtling through the solar system assault weapons available more readily than birth control human dignity destroyed by fear and false power brush fires caused by human carelessness extinguished only by herculean human efforts a leaking carbonated can… It is the soda catastrophe too infinitesimal on the scales of tragedy to register at all that I curse, that I attend to that brings me to my knees, wet rag in hand, head bent in sorrow trivial minutia over which I feel a modicum of control the only disaster in which it seems my response has any impact I also admit that when I'm feeling fearful, anxious, and my reserves of hope are low, that writing a poem seems like a frivolous and completely insufficient response. I should be protesting and circulating petitions and arguing for my beliefs and demanding change. I have done all those things before, still felt inadequate, and often more anxious awaiting longed-for results. What do we do when we feel powerless and want to avoid toxic responses like blaming and demonizing others, self-medicating, or living in denial ? How do we empathize with the terror and suffering our sisters and brothers are experiencing without being undone by it? How do we keep from succumbing to existential angst? What gives you hope? Where do you draw your strength? These aren't rhetorical questions. I ask because I'm looking for connection in my wrestling and questioning, and for inspiration—if you have any. Please join me in conversation by leaving a comment here or on Facebook, or sending me a message. We're in this together! As for me, I'll keep turning to small acts of creativity as an antidote to destruction, to see the beauty that exists along with the violence, remembering to remind myself that every act of intention contributes to the greater good, no matter how small it seems. Writing a poem—even if it's a poem about powerlessness—and taking photos of the beauty around me are what I can muster right now. How about you? |
I began blogging about "This or Something Better" in 2011 when my husband and I were discerning what came next in our lives, which turned out to be relocating to Puget Sound from our Native California. My older posts can be found here.
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