Deep and Great

Several years ago during a grief-filled Christmas season my friend Jen shared this poem with me. It’s by Madeleine L’Engle, one of my favorite authors, and the title is ‘First Coming.’ And it seems relevant this second Christmas of the pandemic, as we are particularly aware that our need is ‘deep and great.’ As we celebrate this week, may you be aware of Christ’s presence with you and may your heart sing with God’s joy.

First Coming

God did not wait till the world was ready,

till . . .nations were at peace.

God came when the Heavens were unsteady,

and prisoners cried out for release.

 

God did not wait for the perfect time.

God came when the need was deep and great.

God dined with sinners in all their grime,

turned water into wine. God did not wait

 

till hearts were pure. In joy God came

to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.

To a world like ours, of anguished shame

God came, and God’s light would not go out.

 

God came to a world which did not mesh,

to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.

In the mystery of the Word made Flesh

the Maker of the stars was born.

 

We cannot wait till the world is sane

to raise our songs with joyful voice,

for to share our grief, to touch our pain,

God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

Preparing the Way

The invitation to prayer during the season of Advent in Teach Us to Pray is this sentence from Isaiah 40:3: In the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord.

We’ve been saying that sentence before all of our meals these last weeks. I’ll admit that sometimes I raise my voice a bit to begin it, hoping to quiet some of the clamor around the table, maybe even to cut off a few arguments and redirect things.

I came across this poem by Joseph G. Donders in the resource Imaging the Word last week that has had me thinking a lot about the first part of that invitation: in the wilderness.

In the Wilderness

John came out of the desert

to preach in the wilderness.

…

 

The wilderness

he preached in

was his own country.

A wilderness

not coming

from the hands of God,

but from a jungle

caused by innumerable

human decisions

that were

      wrong,

      shortsighted,

      and selfish.

Decisions

that had created havoc

in the lives

of the many.

      It was in that

      jungle

      John preached

      and baptized.

As long

as we think

about John

like that

-preaching

in his own country

two thousand years ago-

his preaching

remains distant

and very far

away.

Let us try

to get that wilderness

and also John’s word

nearer home,

so that it can cut us

to the bone.

 

Let us speak

about the wilderness

in which we live.

And let us think

not only of sin

but of the world

we are accustomed to.

…

 

It is in that forest,

in that jungle

that the word of God

sounds

through John,

saying that once

justice and integrity

are victorious,

the whole of humankind

will be saved,

that Jesus, the savior,

is going to bring

a total difference.

But indicating also

where we come in and

what we should do:

      straightening the paths

      we are walking now,

      preparing a way for the Lord,

      filling the valleys and potholes,

leveling the mountains and

      obstacles in us

and in the lives we live....

 

The poem got me thinking about how we live in the wilderness, and how it is in the wilderness of our daily lives that we are called to prepare the way of the Lord.

 

And then I saw this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in an article on The Twelve: “It is impossible to state too clearly that only the coming of the Lord himself can make ready the way for his coming.... The end of all preparation of the way of Christ must lie precisely in perceiving that we ourselves can never prepare the way.”

 

I hear in this a reminder that it is in the wilderness of our daily lives that Christ comes to us. He meets us where we are and when we receive him, when we say yes to his work in us, it is he who fills the valleys and potholes and levels the obstacles, restoring us, preparing us to be who we were created to be. In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.

Trying Again

It’s been cold this past week. Which means I pulled out my winter dress coat to go to church this past week. Which means I tucked my hands into the coat pockets and found my hand-knit scarf hiding in there, waiting to be found after a summer of un-needed-ness.

I smile every time I rediscover my hand-knit scarf tucked into my dress coat. It’s made from super-soft, burnt-orange alpaca wool imported from Peru. I know this because I knit it myself. Margaret Jager taught me to knit through several of her knitting evenings hosted at church. She patiently guided me through all my mistakes and carefully corrected a few of my more egregious ones. She also gave me a pattern to follow that was not “beginner-level.”

It took me all winter to finish. Between the slowness of my learning-curve and the extra-long length I needed so that the scarf hung at a reasonable length down my torso after wrapping around my neck, it was a big project. I completed it just as the first crocuses were breaking through the snow and stashed it away in the closet for the next winter.

I smiled that first year when the snows came again in the fall, and I reached for my new scarf to wear it in the cold for the first time. It was sooooooo soft. And perfectly warm. And made my neck happy. One-of-a-kind. Definitely worth all of the work.

And so, when Elizabeth had a late-night craving for macaroni and cheese (this was the year we were expecting Emma) I grabbed my new scarf, threw it around my neck, and ventured out on the snowy roads to D&W. I didn’t much understand these strange food cravings—we hadn’t eaten macaroni & cheese in all our married years to this point—but I knew one thing: I needed to come home with mac & cheese. Not because Elizabeth would be upset if I didn’t, but because it was my duty as a new father-to-be.

This was just my second time wearing the scarf. It wasn’t a dress-coat only scarf back then. When I got to D&W, I tucked the scarf in my coat pocket, found the requested brand, and checked out. I returned triumphant with the box of mac & cheese. (And actually, I bought several—just in case this odd craving might strike again).

The next day, when I went to put on my coat, I reached for my scarf. It wasn’t there. I checked both coat pockets. I checked the floor. I went all through the house, turning everything over to see if I set it down somewhere. I went back out to the car and checked under the seat. I checked the pockets of my other, lighter-weight, coat. I checked the pockets of coats I hadn’t worn in over a year. No scarf.

I jumped in the car and headed back to D&W. I retraced my steps. Looked all around in the parking lot. I checked their lost and found… Why, yes, we do have plenty of scarves in this box…Well, no…none of them are one-of-a-kind super-soft burnt-orange alpaca wool with a fun, diagonal design.

I like to think someone picked it up off the floor at D&W and was so impressed with the craftsmanship and quality that they kept it for themselves. Or maybe it was someone down-on-their-luck who was going to be cold all winter long but found this scarf and was able to stay just a little bit warmer. That’d be cool too. Maybe there’s a homeless person out there with a one-of-a-kind scarf.

Except, it’s not one-of-a-kind. Not anymore. After I got over my grief at losing my splendid creation, I went back to the yarn store and found more of the same yarn. And I started again. And again it took me all winter to finish. And again I didn’t get to wear the scarf until the snows started falling again the next fall. And again it felt wonderfully soft and warm around my neck as I wore it off to church for the first time. And this time, when I took it off my neck, I tucked it nice and deep into my pocket. I haven’t lost it since.

The other day at the opening of our Council meeting, we reflected on the passage in Luke 10:1-12 where Jesus sends out the 72. He sends them out in pairs to the surrounding towns telling them to heal the sick and proclaim that the kingdom of God has come near. He includes instructions for both when things go well and when they go badly. If the town is not receptive, Jesus tells them to shake the dust of that town off their feet and move on. Go to the next town and try again.

I once heard this text preached to a group of returning citizens trying to put their lives back together, fresh out of jail. The preacher applied Jesus’ lesson to life in general—sometimes things don’t go our way. Sometimes life seems turned against us. Sometimes bad things happen through no fault of our own. Sometimes we get ourselves into trouble. But when that happens, shake the dust off your feet and move on. Start again. Next time might be better—and if it’s not, shake the dust off again and start over again.

I put a lot of effort into my first scarf. A lot of time. It ended up getting me nowhere. I ended up without a scarf. If anything, I ended up in the hole because I was left with feelings of grief and some bitterness for having lost something so precious to me. But I “shook the dust” of that bad experience off my feet and tried again. And now I smile every time I reach in the pockets of my dress coat.

There are times when the Christian life is like this. We put a lot of effort or time or energy into some initiative, some program at church, some outreach effort, some personal devotional strategy, some relationships we’re nurturing—and then everything turns out for naught, or our efforts seem to get us nowhere, or we feel worse off than when we started, or the person we’re investing in moves away. Shake the dust off, says Jesus. Try again. There’s no promise this is going to be easy. You might just need to start again from scratch.

Seeing Clearly

I’m not one who likes to admit I need help. I generally try to tough my way through whatever problem I might be facing. I’m one of those who are reluctant to admit that I might be sick and need to rest. I take a lot of convincing before deciding it’s worthwhile to go to the doctor. 

This frustrates Elizabeth. She’s never quite sure if she can trust my account of how I’m feeling. She looks at me suspiciously whenever I say, “Everything’s fine.” I think she feels sometimes that she’s being cheated out of opportunities to care for me by my refusal to admit that I’m sick.

This past week hasn’t helped matters. A week and a half ago I hit myself in the head with a prybar. This was not a light tap—it was pulling the prybar into my forehead with all of my strength. I was trying to pry a bicycle hoist off the rafters in the garage and the prybar slipped out, resulting in said collision with my forehead. This explains the gash that appeared over my eye two Sundays ago.

At the time, I was surprised there was not more blood. And after sitting for awhile, the headache subsided and I was able to get back to work. But here’s how the incident unfolded to begin with: when I installed the hoists about ten years ago, I stripped the screws, making it impossible to take them out. I should have started by trying a vice-grip locking pliers on them, but my first thought was to drill through the screws to weaken them. This proved harder than I had hoped as my cordless screwdriver is near the end of its life, and at some point I decided to stop trying to drill and start trying to pry.

I counted myself fortunate that the injury was not more severe, and even took our daughters out that evening on some adventures. Everything was fine, except there was a nagging scratchy feeling on my eyelid. I checked three or four times to see if some sawdust or something else had fallen into my eye, but didn’t find anything. I chalked it up to swelling that must have happened from the impact of the prybar.

Only the scratchiness didn’t subside. And indeed, I woke up on Tuesday morning that next week and my eye was bright red. And super-sensitive to light. And the vision was kinda blurry. And I had a pounding headache. Elizabeth told me to go to the doctor. I said I’d go if things didn’t improve the next day. The next day they were marginally better. I didn’t go to the doctor. Each day since then, they were slightly better—just enough to convince me I didn’t need to go to the doctor. I rested a little more than usual, and looked up concussion symptoms and best treatments.

Finally Tuesday of this week, a week and a half after the initial incident, a doctor came to me. A friend of mine who is an ER doctor stopped by, and I took the opportunity to ask him about my eye. He took a look and said, “Well…you mean besides the piece of metal stuck in there?” I didn’t believe him. He said, “No, really…there’s a piece of metal in your cornea.” I told him I had looked in my eye about a dozen times and hadn’t found anything. Granted—I was looking more at the eyelid and not at the eye itself, but still… But once he said it was there, and I went back to the mirror and looked again, when the light caught it just right, sure enough—there was indeed a tiny piece of metal in my eyeball. No wonder it had been scratchy for the past week and a half.

I asked him if he could take it out, and he said he’d have to remove the plank from his own eye first. And then he said I’d need to go to the eye doctor.

So the next morning I made a call, and when I mentioned the words “foreign object in my cornea” (as my doctor friend had instructed me to do), they were able to get me in within a few hours. They were also able to get the metal out without too much difficulty, and on my way out made the comment, “So you had that thing in your eye for a week and a half?” Yep. I did. Because I refused to get help.

The good news is there shouldn’t be any long-term damage. And my headaches are much improved already. And my eyelid no longer feels scratchy. And while still slightly blurry, my vision is much-improved.

The whole incident has got me thinking, naturally. Obviously a fair bit about the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount about taking the plank out of your own eye before trying to remove the speck in another’s eye. I was pretty miserable with just a tiny piece of metal shaving in my eye—how could anyone possibly have a plank in their eye and leave it there? Of course, on one level Jesus’ words are hyperbole, but on another they aren’t. We do, actually, leave the figurative planks in our own eyes. We’re willing to put up with a lot that doesn’t belong in our lives—a lot that is destructive to us and to others. In part, perhaps, because we don’t want to do the hard work to change. In part, perhaps, because we don’t want to admit we might be wrong. In part, perhaps, because it’s hard to really examine oneself. In part, perhaps, because we’d rather judge others than judge ourselves.

Gratitude

The hard frost last week meant the end for our garden and for our zinnias, planted from the seeds from last Easter. We picked and ate all of our carrots – small and sweet, probably planted a little late. On Friday I spent most of the day taking out the garden and the zinnias and a few other annuals. The zinnias were tall! The ones in the backyard were like small trees and had to be chopped up before Jay could mow them into mulch. And the ones in the front flower boxes did not want to come out – it took a lot of wriggling and twisting and pulling to free them from the dirt.

The tomatoes too were a particular challenge. My working with them renewed Luna’s interest in them and although she hadn’t eaten too many all summer, it was hard to keep her away from the frost damaged fruit falling as I wrestled with the plants. Tomatoes make her sick, but she forgets this in the delight of being chased around the yard with one her mouth and the excitement of being told “Drop it!”

The plants were huge and viney and supported by a lot of different loops of twine connected to the back fence and the metal cages. Rogue vines had grown on both sides of the fence. Again, there was a lot of chopping and pulling involved and eventually two yard-bags full and tomato seeds everywhere. The basil plants were just dry stalks but still smelled wonderful as I added them to the bags.

I spent most of the day pulling and digging and cutting and I found myself giving thanks while I worked. Feeling deep gratitude for the zinnias – the bright and deep colors and blossoms had cheered us all summer in the yard and in bouquets inside. And gratitude for the tiny carrots, and the dusty smell of the basil, thinking of the pesto in the freezer for later this winter and all of the tomato basil recipes we tried this summer. And gratitude for the tomatoes – so good right from the garden and enough to share. I’m not sure I’ve felt thankful taking out the garden and flowers before.

I’ve been re-reading the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and gratitude is a theme in the book. I think the Spirit is using it to shape me – to help me be more thankful. One of the chapters in the book is about the Thanksgiving Address of the Onondaga Nation, also known as the Words that Come Before All Else. The Onondaga have a tradition of beginning every gathering with a litany of thanksgiving that includes all of creation. I wonder what it would be like if my first thoughts, my first words were gratitude. As I was reading through the Thanksgiving Address, I found myself thinking of the Psalm refrain ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever.’ Kimmerer notes that the Thanksgiving Address reminds you that you already have everything you need. ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever.’

Faith

I preached on Hebrews 11 this past Sunday. Hebrews 11 is the great chapter on the heroes of faith, and it’s one of those passages where you really just need to get out of the way and let the text preach itself. Verse 1 opens with “Now faith is the confidence of things hoped for and assurance about what we do not see.” (NIV) If you look around at different translations, you discover that the word for confidence here is sometimes translated “substance.” That is, “faith is the substance of things hoped for….” As if faith is the act of our hopes becoming manifest. Almost like our hopes lived out in our day to day lives.

What is really interesting here is that the Greek word for confidence is “hypostasis.” It’s the same word that's used in Hebrews 1:3 to talk about Jesus. The preacher says Jesus is the “hypostasis” of God’s being and in the NIV it’s translated as “exact representation.” That is, Jesus is the exact representation of God’s being. In other words, we see God the Father in and through Jesus. It is through Jesus that God the Father is made known.

I wonder if a bit of this same idea is at work with our faith? Faith is not meant to be something that is only in our head, but something that is lived out. Something that others can see by the way we live. Perhaps faith is a way of living that teaches others about God—that reveals our hopes. What if faith were the exact representation of our hopes? What if faith were the substance of our hope? What if faith were something that people could see in us and through us, to help them make sense of the hope we have in Jesus?

Letting Go

There’s a meme that’s appeared in my Facebook feed a couple of times this fall – a picture of autumn leaves and the words ‘the trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let things go.’

Creation is often our teacher, pointing us toward God and reminding us of how our lives are intertwined with others. The Psalmist proclaims, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God.’ Poet Gerard Manly Hopkins writes, ‘the world is charged with the grandeur of God.’ And Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass writes that the first man ‘understood that all the knowledge he needed in order to live was present in the land. His role was not control or change the world as a human, but learn from the world how to be human.’ Creation is often our teacher, revealing God and ourselves to us.

And something in me has been resistant to the lessons of autumn this year, the lessons of ‘how lovely it is to let things go,’ the lessons of surrender. Maybe it’s the ways the season reminds me of my mortality, maybe it’s dreading the darkness and cold of winter. Maybe it’s that continuing to live with so many uncertainties makes surrender, letting go, feel harder than ever and not at all lovely. I’m not even sure what it is I am resisting letting go of . . . maybe it’s my ideas of what I should be able to do, who I think I should be. Maybe it’s my hopes and fears for my kids, for our neighborhood, for our church. So many things need to be held loosely these days – big things and small things. Maybe its that in what feels like a long season of loss, it’s hard to let go.

Last week we had some time with friends up north, near Houghton Lake. The weather was cold and dreary, but we hiked anyway and on one of our hikes, our friend challenged our family to find leaves in every color of the rainbow and gather them and we’d have a rainbow contest at the next trail marker. There was some resistance to the idea, but soon we were all busily collecting leaves and creating our rainbows. And it got me thinking about Noah and the rainbow and how the sign of God’s promise was/is a sign that comes with rain and storms and it isn’t always visible. And yet there are signs of God’s faithfulness everywhere once we begin looking for them. The changing of seasons, the sunrise each morning, our daily bread.

I’ve been looking for signs of God’s faithfulness this week, trying to gather them up like we gathered our leaf rainbows. Here are a few I’ve noticed: the drop-off line for Eastminster preschool when I walk the dog in the morning, and the school buses driving through the neighborhood; kids coming in and out of church after school for Learning Cafe; elders and deacons meeting and praying in person for the needs of the church and the community; the thick frost on the grass, and the annual turning on of the boiler at church; our kids’ eager excitement about making costumes for Halloween.

My spiritual director gently reminded me this week that fall is a transition – it’s about letting go but it’s also about letting come. And maybe instead of resisting the lessons of autumn about letting go I can keep watching for signs of God’s faithfulness in this season of change.

God's Rest

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about what rest means. Sunday’s sermon was all about rest—God’s rest. And the rest that God invites us to. We looked at Hebrews 4:1-11, and we talked about the many different layers of meaning to the word “rest” in this passage, but we didn’t have enough time to really do it justice. And it’s been bugging me since then—in part because even though I preached that sermon, I’m still just a bit unclear about what “rest” here really is.

We talked on Sunday about it being peace—the peace of God. The goodness of God. A sliver of the wholeness of the Garden of Eden or a foretaste of the glory of the already-but-not-yet Kingdom of God. What’s still just a little confusing for me, however, is how it relates to work. There’s still work to be done in this world. There’s still work for God that we’re called to do in this world. God’s rest is not an invitation to kick up our heels and enjoy a glass of lemonade.

I caught a podcast of The Bible Project this morning. It was a follow-up to the series they did on the Son of Man title for Jesus. But I was surprised to hear a reference in it to God’s rest in Genesis 1 and 2. And they, too, noted that rest here is not an absence of work as much as it is a transforming of our understanding of work. One of the clearest expressions of God’s rest from Genesis 1 and 2 is the Garden of Eden—and this is not God taking a break from work as much as it is God being present in and through the world. And so when God invites us into God’s rest, it is an invitation into God’s presence—just as we had in the Garden of Eden.

I then went back and listened to the Bible Project’s podcast specifically on God’s Rest. Like Hebrews 4, it rooted the Sabbath rest of the Ten Commandments in the rest of God from Genesis 1 and 2. One of the pitfalls of working too much is that we quickly begin to think that our survival depends entirely on ourselves. We forget our dependence upon God, we forget that all that we have is a gift from God, we forget that God is ultimately providing for us. And so one day a week, a Sabbath rest, we are invited to step away from our work and enter a mini Garden of Eden. We are invited to remember that our lives don’t depend upon our own work. Our lives depend upon God.

This is helpful in projecting forward as well. We’re not looking back at a Garden of Eden as much as we are looking ahead to the New Jerusalem. A world where all the brokenness is healed. Where there is no more sorrow or suffering or pain. Where everything is in right relationship with everything else. I’d like to think that I’m striving for this world. That I’m doing my best to live into that reality right now. That I’m working to heal brokenness in this world. To lift up the oppressed. To give hope to the hopeless. But this is hard work. And it can be tiring. And it’s easy to think that we’re not making any difference. And, of course, it feels like I’m never doing enough.

But here, in part, is where God invites us into God’s rest. Not to stop working per se. But to do the work in a new freedom. To enter into the presence of God. To see God already at work in and through the world. To remember that even as God invites us to participate in this important work, its success does not depend upon us. It is God’s work. And God will get it done. 

For All the Saints

On Sunday morning on the way to church I mentioned to the kids that part of the passage for the sermon was about ancestors and reminded them of a couple of stories of me and their great-grandparents and also told them again how much I think their great-grandparents would have enjoyed them. We were in the car because it had started to rain as we were leaving the house, and as we crossed Kalamazoo Ave the rain came down even harder, and one of them said, ‘You know our church doesn’t really have a good place to get out and go in that’s protected from the rain.’

And I said, ‘Oh yes we do! One of your ancestors at church, Ken Zaagman, thought of that when the church was adding the education wing, and insisted that we have a place for folks to get out that would be covered when it was raining – that’s why there’s that covering going over the driveway on the side of church.’ So we pulled up under it, I let the kids out, and then pulled around and rushed inside to open the doors for them. It might be the first time we’ve ever used that covering in the rain....

During the service and into this week, our Boston Square ancestors have continued to be on my mind. I’ve been thinking of some of the stuff in the building – the fan in the balcony that was also used in the church when it met in a storefront. The certificate of appreciation that’s framed and hanging in the council room from 1946 expressing gratitude to Boston Square Church from the Diaconate of the Gereformeerde Kerk of St Annaparochie in the Netherlands for sending needed clothing after World War II ended.

I’ve been remembering Tom Draisma setting up my desk and bookshelves in my office after he and Marilyn painted it yellow for me, fifteen years ago when I began working at Boston Square. Ray Van Sledright tending the beans and tomato plants along the fence in the parking lot. Nell Holwerda Bouwma, who fainted in church 2 different times, both when Jay was preaching on the Song of Mary, and who wrote on her ballot when the congregation was voting on whether or not to close or make significant changes, ‘Don’t close my church!’ And how a few months later it was a generous bequest from her estate that gave Boston Square the money needed to continue. So many people and so many stories....

As we celebrated communion together on Sunday morning, singing ‘Oh give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever,’ with folks scattered around the sanctuary and invisible on zoom, I found myself wondering what Boston Square’s ancestors from the 40’s and 50’s and 60’s and even the 90’s might think of our congregation now. I imagined them joining us in worship – it was one of those moments when the veil between now and eternity felt very thin. And I imagined them being delighted by who we are now and how the Spirit is still at work among us today.

I recently re-read the book Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson, who writes ‘We are all the dream come true of the people who came before us.’ Maybe this is some of what the author of Hebrews had in mind, when later in the book, he or she writes about us being surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, cheering us on. As we said in our words of sending on Sunday: “For all in whom Christ lived before us, thanks be to God. And, “For all in whom Christ lives beside us, thanks be to God.” 

Sickness in the Community

The last five weeks at Boston Square, Elizabeth and I have been preaching from the book of James. James is a hard book to preach in part because James jumps around a lot. It’s more of a collection of proverbs and wisdom sayings than it is a letter that has a developing argument or a clear progression of thought. Because of this, it’s challenging to get a clear understanding of context with any particular passage.

There are, however, themes that repeat throughout the book that are helpful to keep in mind when reading the whole book, and there are a few principles that are clearly important to James. One of these is community. James opens by addressing his letter to “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations.” The “twelve tribes” conveys a sense of shared identity while the fact that they are “scattered” implies that there’s a togetherness that is missing—or maybe rather a togetherness that exists despite the challenge of geographical distance. Similarly, James ends his letter, seemingly abruptly, by talking about the importance of bringing back into the fold anyone who has strayed. Community is important to James. 

So then as we read James, it’s important to keep his emphasis on community in mind. When he talks about welcoming both the beggar and the rich person into our meeting place, without showing the rich person favoritism, there’s both an individual and a collective meaning that’s included. You yourself should not show favoritism, but the community you’re a part of, together, should not show favoritism either. Likewise with the tongue—it causes you in particular to sin, but it’s the damage that it does to the community that really concerns James.

It’s also true of the passage we looked at this past Sunday, James 5:13-20. If anyone among you is struggling, they should pray. If anyone among you is happy, they should pray. If anyone among you is sick, they should call the elders to come pray. And if you’ve sinned, confess to one another that you might be healed…. All of this is dripping with communal language—James isn’t writing to us just as individuals about how we should pray, he’s writing about how we should pray together.

I mentioned on Sunday that this is a difficult passage, especially in the midst of a pandemic, because James seems to say that prayer will “work”—it will heal the person who is sick—if we have enough faith or if we are righteous enough. Yet we know, often from personal heartbreak, sometimes the person dies, no matter how hard we pray or how much faith we have.

But this passage becomes at least a bit easier to make sense of when we think about it in terms of community. What happens when someone is sick? They often become isolated. They are unable to enter into society and sometimes they are shunned. Community is broken and their place in it is often destroyed. Just think about the early days of this pandemic—remember when visitors were not allowed to go into hospitals? Remember when families were dropping off loved ones at the ER, unsure if they’d ever see them again? Remember when nurses were holding phones by patients so family members could facetime with them before those patients died? It was one of the most destructive aspects of the pandemic—dying alone, separated from loved ones.

So James says—if you’re sick, call the elders. Have them come pray. It doesn’t have to be the elders—there’s nothing magical about them. But what happens when a group of believers come and visit the person who is sick? When they pray for that person? The community expands again and embraces the person who has been isolated. The community patchwork that was broken is restored. Healed even.

Sin works the same way. Our sins often drive us away from the community. They isolate us from others. So what does James tell us to do? Confess to God, the one who has power to forgive sins? No—rather, James tells us to confess to one another. Enter back into the community. Clear the air. Be healed.

There’s still plenty that’s challenging about this text. It’s one that we need to keep struggling with, and it’s okay if we don’t fully resolve all of our questions about it. But it’s also a reminder of how important community is. How we’re in this together. How we’re healthier when we make sure no one is isolated, when we lean on one another, when we don’t keep our struggles to ourselves but rather share our lives with one another.

Bent Trees

This week I sat in on my children’s piano lessons. Their teacher is excellent and I love the way she interacts with them. My ears perked up when I heard her describing how to sit at the piano when you play. She said, imagine you are a tree – your feet are the roots that ground you and give you strength, so you want to make sure they are flat on the floor. Your back is like the trunk and you want it straight and tall so that your arms can reach and your hands can move freely up and down the keyboard. I found myself sitting straighter in my chair as I listened to her, making sure both of my feet were on the floor too.

My ears perked up when she mentioned trees, because I’ve been thinking about this poem I read in the Plough Magazine over the weekend:

The Hunger Winter, 1944-5

(The Netherlands)

 

A dark, dictated famine made by war.

Small fires, for warmth, lit up the towns: canals

blockaded by command froze up, as if

to make a point. The Dutch began to starve.

They gnawed on sugar beets and tulip bulbs.

 

Out walking here, in Naarden’s ancient woods,

I see a stand of trees made strange by war.

Bullets have signed the bark, their wounds a mad

and modern furioso. No Arden here.

And in the rows of trees, a few grow straight

but only for a foot or two, then veer

off east or west, continuing to rise

within a different column of air as if

an origami fold had given them

a surreal twist. These trees were cut for fuel

but over seven decades grew again.

Time is simple for a tree, it hides

its rings inside, a strange geometry

by which a rise inscribes itself as round.

The reckoning of feet or yards remains

visible, as though the tree might be

a giant ruler marking years.

These limping trees look frightened, almost as if,

having seen something terrible, they tried

to take a step – they tried to walk or run.

Three-quarters of a century is long,

even if less for trees, which hold

their winters close, and imperceptibly, rise.

They will never grow straight now, yet they grow.

-       Susan De Sola

I keep imagining these trees, bent yet still growing tall, with strong roots. And I keep picturing my child at the piano bench, feet on the floor, sitting straight and tall, arms and hands ready to play.

I rediscovered this quote on a post-it note on my desk this week at church, from Alicia Garza (one of the founders of Black Lives Matter). It’s from her book The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart. “Hope is not the absence of despair; it is the ability to come back to our purpose again and again.” It makes me think of those trees, continuing to grow. And it makes me resolve to keep returning to love. To keep my feet grounded, back straight, arms and hands ready to receive and to give. . .. to keep growing.

A Bunch of Hot Air

Anyone who has been at Boston Square in the middle of the summer knows that we don’t have air conditioning. Most Sundays it’s not too bad of an issue—the outside air cools off enough at night that the sanctuary is a reasonable temperature in the morning. Only on those Sundays when it’s been hot for a number of days in a row or when it just doesn’t cool off at night is the sanctuary nearly unbearable. 

A couple of weeks ago the weather was beastly hot. All week long. And the nights hardly cooled off at all. With an off-the-charts level of humidity. The folks that have been designated to make decisions about such things at Boston Square began an email thread early in the week with alarm messages about how hot it was likely to be on Sunday. About how the previous week was already sweltering, and all signs pointed to the coming Sunday being noticeably worse. We went back and forth about the wisdom of canceling the service or not or simply moving everything to zoom.

In the end, we decided to go ahead as usual, but encourage people to take advantage of the zoom option if they had been finding the heat in the sanctuary to be oppressive. I myself had had a hard time pealing myself from the pew the week before when it was time to go forward to help lead communion, and I admit the thought of leading worship from the air conditioning of home was certainly tempting. Not surprisingly, attendance in the sanctuary was noticeably lighter that week, and participants on zoom were more numerous.

There are a handful of mitigating tactics we can take to try to get the temperature in the sanctuary to come down. Opening the windows is a start. Running exhaust fans in the balcony is even better. They pull out the hot air that rises to the top of the sanctuary and create a draft that pulls cooler air in through the lower windows. I knew we had one exhaust fan already in the balcony that we had moved up when we first started worshiping together in person to encourage airflow to help reduce the risk of exposure to COVID, but there was still one that was in the narthex in the back of the sanctuary. I knew that if we had any hope of cooling down the sanctuary, we needed both fans running all night long in the balcony.

So Saturday night, after I put the finishing touches on the sermon, I headed over to church and lugged the second exhaust fan up to the balcony. I placed it in the window right next to the fan that was already up there. As I was bracing it between the window and the sill, however, I noticed the storm window was open only a few inches. I laughed at myself at how close I had come to running the fan with only about two inches of open screen. I also shook my head, wondering why this storm window hadn’t been open all summer—the balcony windows facing Kalamazoo Ave are under an overhang, after all, and rain isn’t a concern. As I tried to brace it open, however, I discovered that it wouldn’t hold in place higher than it was, so I ended up removing the whole storm window and then put the fan in place.

Satisfied that the exhaust fan was now doing its job, I started my way down the stairs when I had a sudden thought. I had no memory of removing the storm window when I had placed the original exhaust fan in its place back at the beginning of summer. A little troubled, I made my way to the original fan and, to my alarm, discovered that the storm window was completely down, blocking the fan in its entirety. We’d been running this fan all summer, every Sunday morning, to no avail. It’d been blowing directly into a closed window all summer long.

I pulled this exhaust fan out of the window, took out the storm window, and replaced the fan so it could begin actually pulling hot air out of the sanctuary.

Sometimes what we think has been helping us all along turns out to have been ineffective the whole time—or worse, even working against us. Sometimes what we think is a vibrant faith life turns out to just be going through the motions. Sometimes we convince ourselves that everything is a-okay and we’re growing in our walk with God when in reality we’re slowly wilting away.

James talks about faith without works being dead. That is, we think we have faith. We think our spiritual lives are just fine. But we’re deceiving ourselves if our faith doesn’t shape the way we live. If we don’t put that faith into practice through a life of service or prayer or extravagant love. If our faith is only about something we believe—well, it’s a bit like a fan that blowing directly into a window. It’s not very useful. And we might be fooling ourselves.

Rich Mullins, a contemporary Christian singer who was popular when I was in high school, had a short song, Screen Door, that’s stuck with me since I first heard it:

It's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine
Faith without works baby
It just ain't happenin'
One is your left hand one is your right
It'll take two strong arms to hold on tight
Some folks cut off their nose just to spite their face
I think you need some works to show for your alleged faith

Well there's a difference you know
'Tween having faith and playing make believe
One will make you grow the other one just make you sleep
Talk about it
But I really think you oughtta take a leap off of the ship
Before you claim to walk on water
Faith without works is like a song you can't sing
It's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine

Faith comes from God and every word that He breathes
He lets you take it to your heart so you can give it hands and feet
It's gotta be active if it's gonna be alive
You gotta put it into practice
Otherwise

It's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine
Faith without works baby it just ain't happenin'
One is your right hand one is your left
It's your light your guide your life and your breath
Faith without works is like a song you can't sing
It's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine

Faith without works—about as useless as a screen door on a submarine. Or perhaps a fan that’s blowing directly into a window.

Paddle Boarding and the Slow Work of God

One of the rooms at the Hermitage Retreat Center in Three Rivers has this quote hanging near the doorway, from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything

to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something

Unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through

some stages of instability –

and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you.

Your ideas mature gradually – let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on,

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances

acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.

 

I mentioned this quote to a friend this week and we both wondered aloud about Chardin’s context. (i.e. Did he have children? a spouse? household chores to do or persuade others to do? Was there a global pandemic going on?) I have yet to research this . . .

 

It’s really hard to trust the slow work of God – in terms of the pandemic (What is God doing? How long?), in terms of racial injustice (What is God doing? How long?), in terms of so much suffering and deep division (What is God doing? How long?). It’s hard to trust in the slow work of God when so much seems unknown. And it’s hard to trust in the slow work of God when we long to be transformed – to be more the people God created us to be.

 

I spent Monday morning paddle boarding on Spring Lake. We have an inflatable paddle board, and this was my second time using it. The first time, my brother’s girlfriend, watching me from the relative comfort of a kayak asked, “Is it fun or just nerve-wracking?” I’m guessing she could read on my face both my intense concentration on balancing and my fear of falling . . .

 

She didn’t ask the question again on Monday, but I thought about it, as I paddled carefully through the calm water, willing my knees to stay slightly bent, trying to look around, but mostly focused on moving slowly forward. I kept thinking about her question and I also kept thinking, there’s some analogy for faith here. Walking on water? Not looking at the waves? Trusting it won’t be awful if you do fall in? Maybe the connection is going slow, and trying to balance, trying to hold the grief and longing of these days with the gratitude for sunlight and water and paddling and the love that holds us all.

 

I wonder about Chardin and his context, but I think the call to trust the slow work of God is right on, especially the last line, Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

Small Tents, Big Views

Our family vacation this summer was the first time I had been in Yellowstone National Park since my friend Matt and I camped there on our cross-country trek home from Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, more than 20 years ago. By the time we figured out our plans and made our reservations back in February, the only lodging available in the park was camping. 

The family was a bit skeptical when I made this announcement, so I pointed out that we often did some sort of camping adventure each summer, albeit typically much closer to home. And maybe for not quite as long. And eventually they came around.

The rest of the family may have been unsure at first, but I was thrilled. For one, the adventure level of our trip just rose significantly. Why sleep in a nice soft bed when you could pretend to be Buffalo Bill Cody? For another, to be honest, we would end up saving hundreds of dollars per night, and this made the bottom line significantly easier on the budget. But truth be told, the biggest reason I was thrilled was because I remembered the campsite Matt and I had had back in 1999, and it was the best campsite in the world.

Our first campsite this summer in Yellowstone

I was transferring from Fuller Seminary to Princeton Seminary that summer, and my friend Matt graciously agreed to fly out and make the drive back to Grand Rapids with me.

We had about two weeks to complete the journey, and we attempted to cram as much of the country into our travels as possible. First we went north to Yosemite and hiked Half Dome. Then spent a night with my brother in Berkeley. North some more to a friend in Seattle. Then east to Glacier National Park. From there we jumped over to Yellowstone.

We arrived at the park late at night. This was a problem. We didn’t have camping reservations—back then a significant part of the campgrounds were first-come, first-served—and we’d arrived too late to claim any sites. I had planned to find a National Forest campground on the way into Yellowstone, but the night was so dark that we completely missed the signs for these campgrounds, and before we knew it we had arrived at the entrance gate to Yellowstone.

We thought briefly about trying to backtrack, but my ten-year-old Ford Escort hatchback, crammed full with all my earthly possessions, had developed a bit of a hiccup, especially going up mountains, and I didn’t want to risk going down out of the park and then needing to get back up to the park entrance. We double checked two of the closest campgrounds in the park, and seeing that they were both indeed full, we pulled into a parking lot near the visitor center and slept in the car.

Our second campsite in Yellowstone

While not the most comfortable, this had the advantage of us getting an early start on the next day. Up by 6:30 as the dawn was just breaking, we drove down to a more central campground and tried to find a spot. Indeed, a number of sites on the inner loop were already cleared out, and while they weren’t anything special, they would serve are needs just fine. We started setting up our tent.

As we were putting the rainfly on, however, I looked down the road to the end of the loop and saw the folks in the end site—the absolute prime location with the best possible view—starting to break camp. Before they were even off the site, I told Matt to go down there and ask if they were clearing out and if it would be okay for him to stay around to claim the site when they left. Turns out they were indeed leaving, so Matt sat at their picnic table while they finished up. I paused on setting up our tent, watched carefully until their camper was gone, and then I lifted our tent above my head and marched it down the road to the end site where Matt was waiting. I placed it in a flat spot with a great view of a spectacular meadow and a meandering creek, and started working on getting the rainfly on.

I soon noticed that Matt was no longer helping. I looked up to see him in a conversation with a preppy-looking guy in a polo shirt leaning out the window of a massive motorhome. This motorhome was massive. I mean…massive. Did I mention it was massive? This guy was leaning out the window of the passenger side just so Matt was able to hear him. Even so, Matt was looking straight up in order to be able to see him.

By the time I got there, I heard, “We’ll give you twice what you paid for the site…” These guys were trying to buy the campsite off us. The deal actually sounded kind of good to me—I was the one who had agreed to cover all the costs of our lodging on the way home, after all. But Matt responded, “No, thanks.” “Four times then.” Matt shook his head. “Nah. We’re good.” I almost strangled Matt. I would have taken the money. But it was too late now as the preppy-looking guy scowled and the motorhome drove on.

We finished setting up our dinky little two-person tent in this spacious site on the end of the campground loop, and the motorhome ended up taking the site right across the road from ours on the inside of the loop. I didn’t feel too bad—they still had a great view and our little tent was hardly in their way at all. Had it been reversed, however, their giant motorhome would have blocked the view of the meadow entirely and no one else in the campground would have been able to enjoy it at all.

We were there two nights, waking up to elk in the meadow down by the creek. It was fabulous. We explored the park by day and came back late in the evening to make our supper. We didn’t have camp chairs along, so we’d sit on the ground with our backs against a log and watch the light shifting in the meadow as the sun went down. And there was something about being in the shadow of that massive motorhome, knowing that at least once in this world money hadn’t been able to buy everything, that made those couscous tacos taste all the better.

Our campsite this summer in Grand Teton

Elizabeth will be preaching this week on James 2, where it warns against showing favoritism based on the wealth, power, or perceived influence of the other person. In the church, James says, the way you treat others shouldn’t depend on how much money they have. The small tents should get the nice spots, should be given the same power and influence, just as much as if not more than the massive motorhomes. It’s easy to focus on the bling, but James encourages us to focus on the person. And people, in God’s economy, are worth the same, no matter how preppy or drab they might look.

Our family this summer didn’t have quite the same campsites as the one Matt and I enjoyed back in the day. They were still nice—but not quite as other-worldly as that one long ago. And while we still enjoyed waking up to elk and to bison, and the overall trip was just as epic as I had envisioned, the missing motorhome made it just a bit less memorable.