Faith

Back when I was in high school, I went on a church service trip to Annville, Kentucky. We mostly worked on painting projects and simple construction tasks for those who were elderly or had some disability that made these tasks difficult for them to do themselves. One day, however, I was selected to help the local youth director with his weekly adventure outing. This week they were going rock climbing.

Having grown up in West Michigan before the days of indoor rock walls, rock climbing was not something with which I had much experience. Everything was new to me, so the middle schoolers we took out that afternoon delighted in showing me all that was needed in properly putting on a harness, getting the belay in place, connecting to the climbing rope.

After a couple of the local youth scampered up the forty-foot cliff we were climbing with little difficulty, it was my turn. I took considerably longer than they had, but with my long legs and long reach, I found I had some natural advantages that, despite my overall lack of strength, still played in my favor.

As I scrambled over the top of the cliff, coming face to face with the scrawny youth who had been belaying me, I said a prayer of thanks that I had not lost my grip on the way up. Was it truly possible that such a small kid could have kept me from falling had I slipped?

While I was still contemplating the likely pain of such a scenario, the director came over and declared that the two of us were switching places. It was this kid’s turn to climb—and I was the one going to belay him. Since being the one belaying means that you’re responsible to hold the climber from falling to the ground if he or she were to lose their grip, I thought this was a terrible idea. You don’t know who you’re asking, I thought—I have no upper body strength whatsoever… In all of grade school, I recorded a total of one chin up. One. Even though we were tested on them every year. And I think that one was a fluke.

Belaying actually isn’t as hard as it sounds. The rope is wound through the harness in such a way that it doesn’t take much strength at all—you just need to be sure to be holding it in such a way that the natural physics locks up the rope if there’s a sudden tug. The challenge is taking in the rope at just the right amount so that the climber is free to maneuver unencumbered but won’t fall too far if he or she were to slip. You want some slack in the rope, but not too much.

Since we were belaying from the top, I was positioned in such a way that I was staring down over the cliff edge at the climber down below. The climbing rope was wound through a clip in my harness and my harness in turn was tied to a thick tree behind me. In theory, if the climber below me were to fall, my harness tied to the tree would keep me from falling over the cliff edge and I, holding onto the climbing rope wound through the clip in my harness, would keep the climber below me from falling.

What the director didn’t tell me, however, was that he intentionally left some slack in the rope that connected me to the tree behind me. As the climber below me was halfway up the cliff, the director called out to him and suddenly the climber let go and started to fall. My eyes went wide. My heart raced. I pulled back on the rope and held onto it with all my puny might. The slack in the climbing rope quickly went taut and suddenly I found myself skidding along the top of the cliff and over the edge. In a flash, I tried to find somewhere to brace my feet, but there was no real estate left. I thought for a moment of trying to launch myself off the top of the cliff into the top of a tree whose nearest branches were about five feet in front of me. I closed my eyes while getting ready to spring—and came to an abrupt halt, dangling half off the edge of the cliff.

I heard a bit of a laugh behind me. I turned around, and there was another youth standing there. The climbing rope I had been holding onto went through a clip on his harness and he was tied to the same tree I was. He was belaying behind me as an added precaution—in case I let go.

The director came running up. He seemed surprised that I had held onto the rope despite seemingly being launched off the edge of the cliff. “Hey—good job,” he said. “Most people let go.” I’m not sure it ever occurred to me to let go—it certainly wasn’t nobility that had caused me to keep holding on. “But that’s what faith is like,” he continued. “Holding on…even when it seems like everything’s falling apart around you and you’re flying off a cliff.”

Then it occurred to me that everyone else had been in on this act. Apparently, it was some sort of initiation that all the new guys went through. An intense, sort of life-and-death faith lesson. The climber below me grabbed back onto the cliff face and started climbing again as if nothing had happened.

I’m not sure it was the wisest way to teach about faith, but it’s a lesson that’s never left me. And it strikes me that it’s particularly appropriate for today. Faith is holding on, even when it seems like everything’s falling apart around us. And I might take it even one step further—it’s also continuing to support one another, even when it feels like we ourselves are being launched off a cliff.

Birds, Flowers, and a Song

Last weekend we had finally caught our breaths enough to spend some time showing our kids our pictures from our trip to Israel. They’d seen a few we’d sent each day, and some of the ones we’ve included in the blog, but this time we showed them all 300 of them. They (mostly) looked and engaged with interest, and one of their questions was “why are there so many pictures of flowers and birds?” And it’s true -if you ever end up sitting through all of our photos, you’ll notice this too. We, and especially me, took a lot of pictures of flowers and birds.

I’m not the gardener or the birder in the family (that’s Jay), but I found myself paying attention to the flowers and birds we were seeing in Israel. And we saw them everywhere – not only in nature (there were doves all over the place at the site of Jesus’ baptism!) but in art too. On churches and ancient Roman floors and carved into pillars and stones for synagogues, were flowers and birds. No wonder they came to Jesus’ mind as he was preaching: 

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life . . . look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them . . . See how the flowers of the field grow . . . if that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith?

Our trip to Israel wasn’t what we thought it would be, and it was hard to have it cut short, to not see things I’d been looking forward to seeing. But I’m so grateful for the time we did have, and I can’t really imagine living in this time without the gift of that time first. I’m still trying to pay attention to the birds and the flowers now that we’re back, to delight in them and receive them  as reminders of Jesus’ words about not worrying, but trusting God’s loving care.

For the past several weeks the song ‘Always Good’ by Andrew Peterson has been running through my mind. The chorus includes these words: You’re always good, always good.  Somehow this sorrow is shaping my heart like it should. And you’re always good, always good.... Will you help us to trust your intentions for us are still good?

It’s a cold dreary morning as I sit to write this. Things have already not gone as I planned or hoped - we’ve had a lot of yelling and tears and it’s not even time for morning recess yet. And a bird is singing, there’s a daffodil blooming near the window – reminders that God is good, and God is taking care of us, and God is using this time to shape us to be more and more like Jesus.

God's Love When Hugs Are Not Allowed

Every week we’ve been having church online, I’ve been posting the prerecorded sermon on youtube and then linking it to the church website and posting it on Facebook—both the Boston Square Facebook page and the Boston Square Facebook group.

This week when I went to post the sermon on Facebook, I noticed that the banner photo on the top of the Boston Square group page had gone missing. Not having much time at the moment but also not wanting to leave it blank, I quickly searched through the photos that had previously been posted by members and looked for one that had a number of Boston Square folks in it. I found one, without too much trouble, of many of us gathered together around the dumpster in back of church—with piles of trash all around us. It’s a picture we take almost every spring—the “after” shot of all of us picking up trash in the neighborhood.

As I posted it, I reflected briefly on what has become a lovely springtime tradition at Boston Square. We don’t invest that much into it and it doesn’t require too much of our time or effort—and yet it makes a real difference and we’ve even had neighbors send cards to the church in appreciation. I lamented the fact that we probably wouldn’t be picking up trash this year—though I did wonder for a bit if we could still pick up trash in a socially-distanced manner (one person per side of street, taking turns dropping off trash bags at the dumpster…and why is it that the trash piling up on the sides of Kalamazoo Ave doesn’t seem to be abating while everyone is staying at home?!?). And I had a pang of loss as I smiled at seeing familiar faces and missed our gatherings together.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that Facebook alerts group members that the photo has been updated. And that means that a number of Boston Square folks saw the photo of us together. And there was a wave of group lament—yearning for the day when we can gather together and hug one another again.

Technology has been a real blessing in the midst of this time of social-distancing. Our kids have been able to connect with cousins over Zoom in ways they otherwise would have needed to wait until summer to be able to do. We’ve had people from all over the United States and all over the world join us for worship on Sunday morning. And yet, one thing technology has not been able to do is replace hugs. Hugging our loved ones far away. Hugging our loved ones living just down the street. Hugging friends—even those we normally would never even hug.

I had one friend who spent last week creating what his family called the “Hug-able”—a sheet of plastic that could be taped around the doorframes of the front door of a house. They had cut four holes in the sheet and taped garbage bags over the holes—two going in one direction and two in the other so that one person could stand on one side of the sheet and another on the other and they could each put their arms in the holes with the garbage bags and reach out and hug the other—with plastic separating them the whole way like some sort of grown-up version of those devices they have in the NICU that allow parents to reach in and touch and hold their premature babies without risking contamination. I’m pretty sure my friend’s contraption doesn’t meet CDC guidelines—but when they brought it to his mother-in-law’s house and recorded her reaction in being able to hug her daughter and her grandchildren again for the first time in a month, it was absolutely profound and beautiful.

As part of the recording my friend made, his wife, moments before hugging her mother, noted that her desire to hug and hold her loved one—her mother—was just a small microcosm of what God’s love for us is like. God’s desire to hug and to hold us. After this whole coronavirus crisis is over, I don’t think I’ll ever read the Parable of the Lost Son quite the same again. Envisioning God as the father, constantly looking out the window, over the fence, down the road, yearning…yearning…yearning to be able to hug us again. Longing for the day we will come into his embrace. So deeply desiring to hold us and never let us go. That is God’s love for us.

Washing Feet

Help us to see with new eyes

and hear with new ears

the story of shame and triumph,

suffering and hope, that this week reveals.

Mold us to be like Jesus, dying and rising with him.

In the name of Christ, our Lord, Amen. (from Boston Square's Palm Sunday prayer of confession)

We have a calendar of family photos hanging on the wall in our kitchen, and one of the pictures for the month of April is of our kids washing each other’s feet. We try to do this every year before Easter, and every year I have idealistic expectations of how it will go – that it will be calm and peaceful and the water will be warm and soothing. Instead, we often we fight about who will wash the feet of whom, I lose my temper, and the water gets cold and all over everyone’s pants. And somehow something holy still happens. This gesture of love, the vulnerability of kneeling and receiving touch, shapes us.

We try to do it each year, because it’s a way to enter into the story of Holy Week, a way of doing what Jesus did. And it seems particularly important this year to remember with our bodies, to experience with our senses, this sign of Jesus’ love for us.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like I concentrate very well these days, remember things very well these days, even pray with words particularly well these days. I need practices that involve my body. It’s easy with all of the distancing to feel that God is distant too. I need tangible experiences of God’s love. I need to remember my baptism as I wash my hands. I need to taste Jesus’ love with my mouth each week during communion. And this week, I need to wash feet and let my feet be washed.

For those of us who are alone, I encourage you to lovingly wash your own feet. This much aloneness is hard; this is a way to treat yourself with tenderness. Embody and receive Jesus’ love for you, for your feet, his compassion for your struggles in these days.

For those of us who are with others, I encourage you to lovingly wash one another’s feet. This much togetherness is hard; this is a way to treat one another with tenderness. Receive Jesus’ love for you, for your feet, his compassion for your struggles in these days. Embody this love and compassion for those you live with by washing their feet.

It might be awkward – the bending and kneeling, touching someone else’s feet or your own, feeling their callouses, smelling their smell. If things at our house go as they have in the past, there might be arguing over who gets to go first and who washes whose feet, the water might get cold. But that’s all the point – that Jesus loves us, loves our bodies, even our feet; that Jesus’ compassion extends to us in all of our struggles. And when we experience and embody Jesus’ love in these practical, tangible ways, it shapes us to be more and more like him.