Resting in God

One of the books I pray with often is the prayer book Seeking God’s Face – it’s one that we used for several years with council and one that we read and preached with for a year as a whole church several years ago. And this week, it’s been the repeated daily invitation at the beginning of the prayer time that has caught my attention: “Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders.” Deuteronomy 33:12

The first thing I notice in this is an invitation to rest secure in God. Our book discussion of Liturgy of the Ordinary concluded last week, and the final chapter was about rest. Resting is related to accepting our limits, remembering that we are not God. One of the interesting insights from the chapter was how in Genesis 1, as we noticed a few weeks ago, the rhythm is ‘there was evening and there was morning, the first (or second, etc) day.’ The day begins in the evening, with rest. Rest comes first. God’s goodness, God’s provision, God’s love is there before we do anything. And as I read this invitation from Deuteronomy first thing in the morning, before I do anything, there’s an invitation to rest. To trust God’s goodness, to remember that God is God and I am not.

A couple of weeks ago Jay and I had the honor of officiating Josh Hiemstra and Meredith Fennema’s wedding, and in his meditation, Jay quoted this sonnet from Wendell Berry:

Whatever is foreseen in joy

Must be lived out from day to day.

Vision held open in the dark

By our ten thousand days of work.

Harvest will fill the barn; for that

The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled

By work of ours; the field is tilled

And left to grace. That we may reap,

Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood

Rests on our day, and finds it good.

This invitation from Deuteronomy reminds me to rest in the goodness of God, even before I begin my day, so that I can attend to my daily tasks well.

A couple of images come to mind with this invitation too, with the part about resting between God’s shoulders. The first is a scene from the Lord of the Rings movies when giant eagles appear and rescue Gandalf and his friends. As I remember it, Gandalf rides on an eagle’s back, between its shoulders. The image of God as a mighty eagle, bearing us up, rescuing us. There are moments when I would love to fly away on the back of an eagle….

The second image is a memory of how Jay and I would carry our kids, when they were small, on our backs in a cloth backpack when we were hiking or taking long walks. The image of God carrying us, safe and secure, snuggled in on God’s back.

And even though I might sometimes wish for God to swoop in like an eagle and rescue me from my fears and from some of the challenges of daily life, it’s this second image I’m finding most helpful this week – the reminder that God is really close, really near. It’s awfully easy for me to forget this in these times of so much uncertainty about what is ahead, and in these times of separation from people that I love. I need this daily reminder that God is not up, not far away, not distant, but near, carrying me on God’s own back, snug and secure. Holding me when I am afraid and uncertain, when I’m upset with myself or others, carrying me in the ups and downs of each day. God is with me, holding me safe between God’s shoulders.

I’m keeping this image in mind as I’m praying for you all this week – praying for peace of mind, for rest, praying you will know you are held close by God in love.

 “Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders.” Deuteronomy 33:12

Weeding Out the Evil

Over the past several years, we’ve been slowly expanding a vegetable garden in the strips of soil along the south side of church by the door closest to the church offices. The goal is to have fresh veggies for church folk or neighbors to grab on their way by. Last year we had tomatoes, green peppers, chili peppers, lettuce, beans, and broccoli. A number of the chili peppers made it into our homemade salsa for the year—a particularly good vintage, I must say. And it was a delight, on an almost daily basis, to watch a neighbor walk through the parking lot with her son and stop to pick tomatoes.

It was not all a success, however, as some items grew better than others (sorry, broccoli…). And it was particularly challenging to beat back the weeds. Indeed, by about midsummer, I gave up and let the veggies fend for themselves. That meant that when springtime rolled around and it was time to start anew, clearing out the soil was a particularly daunting task.

I recruited Peter as a helper and we set to it, trying our best to pull all the weeds out by the roots so they wouldn’t come back. As I dug through the soil, however, I was surprised to discover, hidden between the weeds, several red lettuce plants struggling to poke through. I hadn’t planted them there. They must have self-seeded from out-of-control plants from last year. And they brought me great delight.  

I cleared out the rest of the weeds, careful to leave the lettuce plants undisturbed, and smiled at the glimpse of goodness and order in the midst of the chaos. And I was reminded of Jesus’ parable of the weeds in Matthew 13 (also known as the parable of the wheat and the tares). In it Jesus describes a field of wheat that has also been overgrown with weeds. The temptation is to pull out all the weeds to let the wheat grow unencumbered, but the farmer decides against it, worried that pulling the weeds would also uproot the good wheat.

That concern didn’t stop me from pulling all the weeds around our struggling lettuce plants. But it did help me think about our world. There are times I wish God would just pull out all of the weeds. All of the chaos. All of the sin and the evil that threaten to choke out the good.

But then I get thinking. And I wonder if sometimes my life isn’t more weed than it is wheat. And I realize life is rarely black and white—and there’s a little bit of weed and a little bit of wheat in each of us. And maybe it’s a bit of grace that the weeds aren’t all just pulled out. And we, together, get a bit longer to figure out what living as wheat looks like in the kingdom of God.

Later in chapter 13 Jesus explains the parable of the weeds and describes the judgment day when all of the weeds are pulled out and thrown into a fire. Then, Jesus says, the wheat that is left will shine like the sun.

There are glimpses of that brightness already. Glimmers of the good that is to come. Sometimes it is struggling to poke out among the weeds. Sometimes we need to peal back the layers of chaos and evil to see it. But it is there. Just like the lettuce in the garden at church.

Being Brave Together

Peter and I have been reading and rediscovering some of the Frog and Toad stories this week, from the children’s books by Arnold Lobel. Last night we read the story, ‘Dragons and Giants,’ from the book Frog and Toad Together. In the story Frog and Toad read a book of fairy tales and wonder aloud if they are brave. They decide to climb a mountain together to find out, and they encounter a snake and a rock slide and a hawk on the mountain. And as they encounter each one and run away, they shout, ‘I am not afraid.’ In the last scene of the story, they run home. Toad jumps into bed and hides under the covers and Frog jumps into the closet, and the story ends with: “They stayed there for a long time, just feeling brave together.” Peter burst out laughing, ‘But they’re not!’ 

 

And today that image of them both hiding, and that phrase ‘feeling brave together’ are on my mind. Partly, I suppose, because there’s plenty to be afraid about, plenty of things I’d like to hide from. Concerns about loved ones getting sick, getting sick ourselves, long term economic effects of the pandemic, entrenched racism and violence, foreign interference in our elections – the list could go on and on – there’s a lot of snakes and rock slides and hawks on this mountain. And yet Frog and Toad are in it together, encouraging each other and sometimes hiding near each other, learning how to be brave together.

One of the chapters we discussed in our book study of Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren this week was about the church and relationships in the church – how faith is not a private, individual matter, but something we’re in together, with Christian friends and especially with our local congregation. And often this is lovely and sometimes this is painful. She writes of our relationships within the church and our worship together: “We tell each other over and over, back and forth, the truth of who we are and who God is.”

The truth of who we are is that we are beautiful, made in God’s own image and beloved of God. We see this in each other at Boston Square, we tell this to each other as we worship together and fellowship with each other. We celebrate each other’s gifts and achievements. We honor each other, we express gratitude to each other.

And the truth of who we are is that we are broken – we are often afraid, we hurt each other, we participate in racism and injustice, we are impatient, we are wounded. And we tell that truth too: as we confess our sin in worship, and as we sometimes have hard conversations with each other. We’re in this together, and we tell each other the truth of who we are.

And we tell the truth about God – who is loving, kind, and brave, who bore the weight of our brokenness, and who is bigger and stronger than any of the snakes, rock slides or hawks we might want to run from or to hide from. Who loves us and delights in us, and chooses us, beautiful and broken, to bear Jesus’ love to the world.

As we tell the truth to each other, about who we are and who God is, we learn to be brave together. To live with integrity, to resist evil, to admit our failures and change our ways. We are in this together, and God is in it with us, working to make all things new.

A Dry and Thirsty Land

Elizabeth and I don’t spend a lot of time at church these days. When we stopped worshiping in person, we shut the boiler off at church to save on gas bills and let Community Kids, who were still using the church library as an office, use the church space heaters. That left our offices cold. Of course, we could easily have brought in other space heaters, but there were still the concerns with shared bathrooms. Plus, with our kids finishing up online school and needing increased attention and direction, it was simply easier to work from home.

We’ve still made regular trips to church, however. Sometimes to pick up a book. Or to bring something back to church that we no longer need at home. Sometimes to grab some tech equipment that will help with the next sermon recording or zoom worship service.

Occasionally when we get back to church, we have reason to go into the sanctuary. It’s eerie. It’s a moment frozen in time. As if everyone just up and left at a moment’s notice. It’s still sacred space, but it’s clear it hasn’t been occupied for some time. The decorations for Lent are still in place: purple banners, burlap sackcloth, the banners with handprints, dried plants. It feels a bit like a desert or a wilderness. My heart catches in my throat each time I walk through. I need to steel myself before entering.

What particularly gets me is the baptismal font. The bowl rests on purple burlap cloth, and in the bowl are three stones. Dry stones that would get drowned in abundant water every Sunday in our worship when we poured out the pitcher during the assurance that our sins are indeed forgiven. But now those stones have been dry for a long time. And there are calcium rings all the way down the side of the inside of that bowl. As if no one emptied the font the last time we poured water into it and everything has now dried up. A physical sign and seal that we are a dry and thirsty land longing for the waters of renewal.

For the last two months, I had been thinking of this image as a reminder of our longing to be able to worship together in person again. To gather together. As good as it’s been to experience community through zoom worship, and to rethink what’s important and what it means to be church, and to be able to connect with folks in new ways and across oceans, worshiping online is not how we were created to worship. We long with the Psalmist in Psalm 42 to be able to go to the house of the Lord again.

For the last two months, I had connected the image of the dried-up font with the effects of the coronavirus. With the uncertainty and tumultuousness of the world. With the longing for normalcy.

But now, in the last two weeks, with the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, and then Breonna Taylor, and then George Floyd, and then with the protests and riots that are spreading through our nation and our world, and the deep lament that is taking hold within my heart, I’m seeing it more as a symbol not of something that has recently taken hold, but as something that has been true for a long time. We are a dry and thirsty land desperate for renewal, for life. The sin of racism has too long eaten away at our souls. Our inability and unwillingness as a nation to do the hard work necessary to dismantle racism—our unwillingness even to listen to those who are trying to tell the rest of us they can’t breathe—is tearing us apart. My heart cries out at my own complicity.

I balk at the work that lies ahead. At the colossal effort it will take from all of us just to make a little progress. But I know it is necessary. I’m not even entirely sure where to begin; I just know I have a lot to learn and it will be hard. I take hope in the words of Isaiah 44:3—and while they originally were written to a people returning from exile, surely they apply to us as well: “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.”

There’s something strange about walking into the sanctuary at church these days. Almost a tangible feeling of lament. A deep longing for things to be different. A thirst for life and renewal.

As I sit to write this reflection, Peter is having his final zoom meeting with his class, and the rain outside this morning seems appropriate for the feelings of the day. There’s some relief – it’s not been easy for any of us (though my Spanish is improving – I just learned the word for worm, lombriz). But there’s also grief – it’s hard to say goodbye to friends and a beloved teacher, even when (maybe especially when) you haven’t seen them in person in 2 months.

On the table is a bouquet of lily of the valley cut from our yard. Lily of the Valley are some of my favorite flowers – the way the bright white peeks out amidst all of the deep green, and the sweet smell of the blossoms. I watch for them each spring and I’m glad they are blooming now.

There are some gospel hymns about Jesus as the lily of the valley; I did some research online this morning and learned that the flowers are considered a sign of a return to happiness, or renewal of love. I also learned that they are very fruitful – apparently a single root can grow 50 bulbs. One site claimed that as spring flowers they are a symbol of the second coming. They’re also associated with May Day, and the labor movement. Who knew one flower could mean so many things?

I can remember as a little girl going with my grandmother to my great aunt’s house – the house they both grew up in - to dig up some lily of the valley from the yard to transplant at my grandparents’ new home. I don’t know if it was in connection with any symbolism, or if she just liked them, but now they remind me of her.

I’m grateful for the reminder today – of roots, of nourishing love, of growing things, of new life. And I’m reminded that sometimes it seems to take forever for things to grow – so much happens underground, hidden before we see shoots and leaves and blossoms.

One of my favorite stories from the Frog and Toad books for children is about a garden. Frog gives Toad some flower seeds and tells him that if he plants them, he will soon have a garden. It is hard for Toad to wait. He yells at the seeds to grow. He wonders if they are afraid to grow. He waters them, he reads to them, he plays music for them, he finally falls into an exhausted sleep and wakes up to tiny green plants poking through the soil. Sometimes it seems to take forever for new things to grow.

I’ve had several conversations this week about how much waiting and uncertainty are part of our pandemic experience, and also how this pandemic magnifies issues we had before, as a society and as individuals. My prayer is that even in the waiting, when many things seem hidden or even afraid to grow, good things will be magnified too – the kindnesses we show each other, the wonder of ordinary things like worms in the dirt and lily of the valley peeking through the dark green, the small daily ways we seek shalom.

I was reminded this week of this prayer for growth and of lament from Mechthild of Magdeburg. Mechthild was a Christian mystic who lived in Germany in the 1200s.

Lord, my earthly nature is stood before my eyes

like a barren field

which hath few good plants grown in it.

Alas, sweetest Jesus and Christ,

now send me the sweet rain of thy humanity

and the hot sun of thy living God head

and the gentle dew of the holy Spirit

that I may wail and cry out the aches of my heart.

Amen.

The Unexpected Staircases of Life

It’s been almost exactly five years since our family arrived in Chiapas, Mexico, for ten weeks of our sabbatical during the summer of 2015. Our intent was to study Spanish at a language school in San Cristobal de las Casas, a beautiful colonial town nestled in the mountains.

We arrived on May 10. We remember this because it was Mother’s Day. We didn’t realize this at the time, but Mother’s Day is always on May 10 in Mexico. And Mother’s Day is an even bigger deal in Mexico than it is in the United States. Despite this, however, friends of Mariano and Rosy Avila met us at the airport and welcomed us into their Mother’s Day celebration. They fed us well, gave us our first taste of agua de sandria (watermelon water), and showed us around the airport city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

Late in the afternoon, we headed up into the mountains to find the house that we had rented for our time in San Cristobal. It was about an hour away, and I still remember the first glimpse of the city as we pulled around the bend on the mountain road and looked down into the city nestled in the valley below. San Cristobal is a beautiful city.

It quickly became clear, however, that while our hosts traveled frequently to San Cristobal, they were not familiar with the neighborhood where our house was located.

Now—I like to be in control. Especially with unknowns—at least as much as possible. So I had researched fairly thoroughly where this house was. I had printed a map. I had written out directions—in both English and Spanish. I had even downloaded a map onto my smartphone that gave us real-time step by step directions.

So when our host looked at us as we pulled into the city, clearly hoping that we knew where we were supposed to go, I looked back at him for a moment, a little distressed that he didn’t know even the main direction we needed to go, but then quickly pulled out my trusted smartphone app. I started directing him down narrow roads, slowly weaving closer and closer to our intended destination. I was even navigating an incredible maze of one-way streets. I was feeling good about myself—that I had thought of downloading this map app that worked even in Mexico.

We were getting close. Had made our way through downtown and toward one of the surrounding neighborhoods. We were making our way along a long road through a valley neighborhood of homes backed up along some farmland when the app told us to take a sharp left. Our driver slowed and began to make the turn, and then stopped. The road before us rose at a sixty-degree angle and was not a road as much as it was a staircase. Rising up about four hundred feet.

No matter—there were five or six streets farther down that could take us to our destination. Surely we’d be able to drive up one of these. But in each case we were met with a staircase rather than a road. The house we had rented was clearly at the top of this hill/mountain, but there was no way I could find to get there. So much for my app—I was no longer in control.

We didn’t know it at the time, but there are only three ways to drive into this neighborhood. Two from the back side and one from the direction we had come. And to use this last one, you need to take just the right combination of turns starting about a mile back from where we now found ourselves stuck. Thankfully, our host stopped trying to listen to us, asked a couple of people on the street, and soon made his way up this hidden access way.

Other friends of Mariano and Rosy were already at the house waiting there to greet us, wondering what took us so long in getting there, and then quickly filling our cupboards with some essentials to get us started in this new place.

Looking back now five years later, we’re still incredibly grateful for the amazing hospitality these people showed strangers on a Mother’s Day long ago. And we’re reminded that sometimes we think we’re in complete control, have it all figured out and know right where to go, and then we turn a corner in life and are met with a staircase that comes seemingly out of nowhere and makes the way forward suddenly seem incredibly and unexpectedly hard.

The book of Job is a hard and difficult book to make sense of. We’re left in many ways with more questions than answers. In the end, however, after God has declined to explain to Job why all this bad stuff has happened to him and instead essentially tells Job to trust him without knowing the explanation, Job makes an extraordinary statement of faith: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). When those staircases suddenly appear before us in life—especially those we cannot understand or even begin to explain—and the way ahead seems incredibly hard, it’s important to remember that God can indeed do all things, and no purpose of God can be thwarted.

Entering into the Chaos

One of the places I was looking forward to most on our trip to Israel was the Jordan River, the site of Jesus’ baptism. The story of Jesus’ baptism has become an important story in our life together at Boston Square as we seek to be mindful each week of the gift of baptism, as we seek to grow in our awareness of our baptismal identity.

This year I got to preach the story from the gospel of John, where Jesus, having recently been baptized, invites some of John’s curious disciples to ‘come and see,’ to come and spend the day with him. As I worked on the sermon, I tried to imagine the scene – the light sparkling off the water, a warm sunny day, and I was very curious when we were in Israel to see if the scene would be anything like I imagined it. It wasn’t really. We pulled into a parking lot full of buses and you couldn’t see the river. Instead what you saw were people. Crowds of people from all over, dressed in every way imaginable – there were the huge tour groups dressed in matching brown safari vests, there were pilgrims from Eritrea in beautiful white dresses and suits. And doves flying all over the place.

To get to the river you had to go through the crowds, down terraces with benches, to a roped off section of the river, which was also full of people, some being baptized, some dunking themselves, children splashing each other and no clear order about who should go where when. The water was the color of hot chocolate; it was the people who sparkled in it, not the water itself. There were the sounds of splashing and singing and praying and shouting in lots of different languages.

Pastor Bill, before we went down to get into the water, reminded us that in scripture water is often associated with chaos. In the creation story God takes the waters of chaos and makes shalom, the garden, with everyone and everything in right relationship. And in Jesus’ baptism, he entered the chaos, the mess of this world, to be with us and to restore shalom. We were then invited to get into the water (if we wanted to) as a way of saying ‘I am willing to enter into the mess, the chaos, in Jesus’ name, so I can bring shalom, good news to the world.’ Did I mention that you couldn’t see anything in the water? That it was brown? There were steps built under the water for you to wade in, and we couldn’t really reach the bottom…

Some of us are reading the book Liturgy of the Ordinary together, and the first chapter is mostly about baptism, about remembering each day as we wake up in the morning, that we are beloved children of God. As the title suggests, there’s an emphasis on the ordinary. The author quotes Martin Luther who reminded his church folk to consider their baptism as a garment to be worn daily. I’ve been thinking about that as I get dressed in the morning – I’m clothed in Christ. And I’ve been thinking about the chaos of the Jordan River too. Remembering that Jesus is with me in the murky waters of my mind, in the emotional turbulence of another day of online school, in the uncertainties ahead. Jesus is with me in the chaos and invites me to be in it with him, to follow him into the waters each day, remembering that I am clothed in Christ and God’s beloved child.