Journey to the Light, Part 1: Awake

Mark 13:24-37

I saw a t-shirt recently that said, “I miss precedented times.” I have to agree; this year, “unprecedented” has worn out its welcome. But here we are in the season of Advent – a season that tells us to expect unprecedented things. The sun and moon will go dark, stars will fall from the sky, the Son of Man will come in the clouds, and no one knows the day or the hour. 

Every year it feels a little strange to begin the Advent season, because it’s a thing that most of the world doesn’t recognize. To most people, this is the Christmas season, or maybe the Thanksgiving leftovers season. It is the time of the year when the church is the most out of sync with the world around us, because we are waiting for Jesus – in a world that detests having to wait for anything. But also because it seems as though we are waiting for the end of the world.

It is complicated, and sort of mystifying.  In Advent we are simultaneously waiting for Jesus to be born and waiting for him to return.  We are waiting for the moment when the Kingdom of God is quietly ushered in, in a Bethlehem stable, and we are waiting for the time when the Kingdom is here in its fullness...the end times, as they are often called.  Two completely separate and different times that we are waiting for at once.

And, in general, I would venture to say, we are fine with the first part but not so much with the second part. Jesus born in Bethlehem, 2000 years ago, baby in a manger – all good.  But Jesus coming back, well, that makes us a little nervous. If Jesus coming back means all the things he describes in this passage, we’re not really sure we’re comfortable with that.

Although, some people are. Periodically, someone comes along announcing that the end of the world will take place on such and such date. That they have read the stars, calculated the numbers, interpreted the scriptures and … the world will end on May 21.

That’s what Harold Camping said. Do you remember that name? He had his five minutes of fame about a decade ago when he made some big, splashy predictions about the end of the world. May 21, 2011 would bring the beginning of end of the world according the Mr. Camping. May 21 would be the eve of destruction, after which we would see an onslaught of fire and brimstone, plagues and death. He had interpreted the clues in the scriptures, and he was quite confident.

May 21 came and went, and he offered a revision. He said, well, actually, the world experienced a spiritual death on May 21, but the physical destruction would occur a few months later – October 21.

I was working as a campus minister at that time. Some of the students I worked with were prone to anxiety and were somewhat unnerved by this prediction, which, for reasons beyond me, was getting a lot of play time in the media. So we decided the best thing to do was to face our fears head on. We planned an end-of-the-world party on October 20, 2011.

We had our end of the world playlist on the iPod:  that old 60’s song, “Eve of Destruction;” Prince’s song, “1999,” that other doomsday that came and went; “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door;” “Time to Say Goodbye,” that pretty love song by Andrea Bocelli, that takes on a whole new meaning when you put it in this mix.  We ate lots of junk food because, why not? If it’s the end of the world.  And we talked. 

What they told me was that while they knew Christians shouldn’t be afraid of the end, they really did feel some distress about it because all their stock was in tomorrow.  As college students, they felt like everything they were doing was for some day down the road when they graduated. They were in the habit of preparing for some future here on earth – and if that future was not even going to happen, they would feel massively cheated.

Intellectually, they knew that Harold Camping didn’t really have any idea what he was talking about; no one knows when the last days will come.  We talked about the scriptures, the stories Jesus tells his disciples where he says again and again: no one knows the day or time.  No one knows, not even the Son of Man and the angels in heaven.  So enough with the predictions, already!  Yes, you have to do your homework assignment that’s due tomorrow, and you have to study for that scheduled quiz. The world’s not going to end tomorrow, right? That’s just silly, we know.  

Although...it could.

It’s like a master who has gone on a journey and left his slaves in charge of the estate.  They don’t know when he will return, but he will return.  It could be any time of the day or night, so they simply have to watch and be ready.  Be awake.

It’s like the wedding party waiting for the groom to arrive – they don’t know when he will get there but they need to be ready when he arrives – watch...stay awake for that time no one knows.

You know, Mark’s gospel was the earliest of the four gospels.  It’s also the shortest, and it seems almost like it was written down in a hurry – to get it down on paper so the church would have a written account of things.  It’s written simply, without a lot of theologizing or analysis.  Just the facts.  People often say that when you read Mark’s gospel you feel the urgency, the immediacy of it.  

Particularly, reading this section of Mark’s gospel, which is sometimes called the “Little Apocalypse,” you hear that the important thing to know – is that Jesus is coming back.  He’s going to come back.  And, the people Mark was writing for were really yearning for Jesus’ return...because they missed him. They missed him.

It’s not about fear.  It’s about longing and hope.

They were so full of yearning for his return, they were easily led astray by false prophets, those types that we still have among us even today, the Harold Campings, who would like to have us believe that they possess some secret knowledge, that allows them to interpret the signs that no one else can, not even the Son and the angels in heaven.  

For most of us, it’s different.  There isn’t the same feeling about his return as there was in the first century when they really truly expected that he was coming right back.  It’s all so terribly remote to us now.  But I want to tell you something:  I would really love to know what it feels like to miss Jesus and long desperately for him to come back.  To be waiting and hoping each day for his return.

All these years later, we’ve learned a different kind of waiting.

We wait in a way that acknowledges the belief that he will come again someday but in the meantime the focus of our life is elsewhere.  We wait as a sort of an afterthought; an epilogue to our statement of faith – that Jesus will come again in glory, etc, etc.  We wait in a manner that would fool anyone into thinking that we’re not waiting for anything at all.  

But there is a better way.  

The waiting we are invited into is something different. The waiting we are invited to practice is a hopeful expectation that because he came once, he will come again, and in the meantime he is as near as the next breath.  

After all is said and done, the purpose of Advent is to channel our hopes and expectations in a direction that will serve God. Pay attention to the signs. Be awake to the suffering around you. Know that, in the midst of all kinds of false hopes, the Son of Man, the Christ, is our best hope – and the world very badly needs this hope.

In the interest of fairness, I want to tell you something more about Harold Camping. Early in 2012 he said in an interview that he had been wrong. No kidding, right? He also said that he realized now that his efforts to nail down the date of the second coming had been sinful. He said that he had turned his attention to the task of living more faithfully. Perhaps he had finally realized the most urgent meaning of these words of the gospel.

During this season of Advent, let us be awake to Jesus in our midst.  Let us prepare the way for him to be born, a child of flesh and blood, just like us.  Let us prepare for him to return at any time and let us prepare for the joy that will be ours at that moment.  And let us prepare to receive him in our hearts at this moment...and at every moment.  Be awake to the present moment, to every breath, because this is where Jesus is.

No matter what else you are expecting this season, make room in yourselves to expect this miracle of God’s love.

Be alert, watchful, stay awake to each moment, because Jesus is in it.  

 

Crime and Punishment and Forgiveness

Matthew 25:31-46      

There is a story about two little girls in a small English village who decide to spend their summer searching for Jesus. The book is called The Trouble with Sheep and Goats. It’s a little bit of a mystery, but it’s a lot more than that.

Something has happened in the village: a neighbor woman has gone missing. The girls are at an age where they can understand some of the adult conversation, but not enough to really know what’s going on. They gather that there is a story behind this disappearance, something all the adults in their street are in on, but they don’t know what it is.

One of the girls, Grace, is mulling it over one day outside the church. When the priest approaches her, she asks: why do people get lost. She means it quite literally, but he hears it as a metaphorical question so he tells her people are lost when they don’t have God in their lives. They need God, who is a shepherd to all lost sheep. Grace takes his words to heart and decides that she must find God. She and her friend Tilly will go out in search of Jesus, God in the flesh, so he can save their little community, find the lost, and bring them back into the fold.

They decide to start at the home of the most pious family in town – it seems a natural place to find God. But once inside the door they begin to see things they would not have seen from the outside of this tidy house and garden. Inside they see the unhappiness that resides there. They see abusiveness and old unforgotten secrets. These girls see it all.

This becomes the pattern of their journey that summer. In search of God they find every kind of unhappiness, old grudges, and unconfessed sins. Grace and Tilly learn that there is a little bit of goat in us all, even the whitest sheep among us.

The parable, called the separation of the sheep and the goats, is one the girls heard in church. It has made a strong impression on them – not surprisingly. The parable gives a strong, clear directive: Whenever you did as much for the least of these who are members of my family, you did it for me. Whenever you fed or clothed or comforted the neediest among us, you did as much for Jesus himself.

Therefore, the message we have drawn from this is clear, if not easy: do not pass by some poor, weak, neglected person. If you do, you might be passing by Jesus. The lesson for us is to seek always to see Jesus in the eyes of someone you encounter. Clearly, this would be a much better world if we all did that, right?

But what is not so clear is who Jesus is speaking about. When he says, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,” who does he mean? Even these “sheep” he praises do not seem to know.

In the story, Grace and Tilly continue their search for Jesus until one day they find him. They see the image of Jesus on a drainpipe. Yes, in the great tradition of Jesus’ face appearing in unlikely places – a cheese pizza, a piece of stained plaster, or a Walmart receipt – the Lord appears in a stain on a drainpipe.

As soon as they hear, the people of the village flock to the site, full of excitement and hope. When they see the image of Christ’s face on the drainpipe they all make the same observation: He doesn’t look very happy, does he? Nonetheless, the people want to be in his presence. Every day they pull up their lawn chairs or sit on the grass, making a little congregation. They spend all their free time at the drainpipe. Those who don’t have jobs to go to, sit there all day. What they are waiting for, no one seems to know. But, inevitably, after a while they begin bickering with one another.

Two of the women get into a heated argument about which one of them is more worthy to sit close to Jesus. They’re slinging bible verses at each other like spitballs. They throw accusations back and forth. Each of them feels more sheep-like than the other; each of them believes that the other is really just a goat. Each of them sets herself up as judge over the other.

In fact, everyone on the street is doing that – setting themselves up as judge.

The real trouble with sheep and goats is that we really don’t know which category we, or anyone else, falls into.  Grace and Tilly begin by assuming that the people who live in their neighborhood are all sheep – the good ones. But the more they explore, the more goat-like qualities they find: people who care more about covering their assets than caring for others, who are often angry when they should be sympathetic. And it isn’t that Grace and Tilly were wrong about their neighbors; it isn’t that they aren’t sheep. It is only that they are human beings and, like all human beings, troubled by sin.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So says the writer of the first letter of John. There is not one among us free from sin, and like the people of this village we might find that our more goat-like tendencies come out when we are unhappy, when we are stressed. When we are not where we want to be, not with the ones we love, not doing the things that give our lives meaning. Like this year.

It has been a hard year, and it is getting even harder as we approach the holidays, knowing that the celebrations we so look forward to are off-limits this year. Maybe we get cranky and start sniping at others, just like the people of the village do. Maybe we get angry and start blaming others for the miserable way we feel. It must be somebody’s fault we feel this way. Maybe we even start sorting people into the good ones and the bad ones, the sheep and the goats.

One of the underlying themes of Matthew’s gospel is that we simply cannot do this. At every opportunity, Matthew reminds us that the judging is God’s to do, not ours. John the Baptist said to his followers that he came to offer them a baptism of repentance, but another would come after him with more power, the power to separate the wheat from the weeds with his winnowing fork.

The image is seen again in Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds. A farmer sows good seed in his field but sometime later weeds are found among the wheat. Rather than try to clear out the weeds from the wheat, Jesus says, let them grow up together and they will be separated at harvest time, the time of judgment. Leave it to the Lord to judge between them. “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

It is simply not ours to say who is worthy and who is not. The parable of the sheep and the goats suggests that we don’t even know how to judge ourselves, let alone others. The parable strongly implies that we would do well to greet every person we encounter, particularly the least of these, as an opportunity to serve Jesus. And why not? As lovers of Christ, why would we not embrace every opportunity to serve him?

Yet, we will never get it fully right, because we are, alas, a little bit sheep and a little bit goat. We will make errors in judgment on a routine basis. We will be guilty of failing Jesus and faulting others, and bringing more pain into the world. But still, every day we are presented with opportunities to bring a bit more light into the world, to serve Jesus with our acts of compassion and generosity. The question is, will we do it?

Will we?

Perfect Love

Matthew 25:14-30      

There is an old familiar saying: Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. It comes from that wise fellow, Aesop, who told a story about an elderly man trying to gather up some firewood and finding that he is too frail to carry the load. In exasperation he called upon death to come and get him. To his surprise, death appeared and asked, “What can I do for you, old man?” The startled man said, “O! nothing at all; sorry to have bothered you.” We sometimes wish for things simply because we haven’t thought it through well enough.

We wish to win the lottery without thinking through the various costs such good fortune might present. There are enough cautionary tales about people who did win the lottery and have nothing but bitterness and woe from the experience. If you are like me, you think, “But I would handle it much more wisely.” Maybe we would, but that doesn’t guarantee it wouldn’t come with a whole host of headaches or that it would increase our quality of life.

Be careful what you wish for.

This parable we hear from Jesus in today’s text seems to be another situation in which the old saying might apply. Three slaves are summoned by their wealthy master. The master is preparing to go on a trip that will keep him away from his estate for a long time. He has decided to entrust the management of his property to these slaves, so he distributes his funds among them, to each according to his ability.

The master apparently thought the first slave had great ability. He gave him five talents. The second slave fell short of great, and he gave him only two talents. And the third slave, who is just so-so, received a paltry one talent.

But hold on – let’s consider the kind of money we are talking about here. A talent was a unit of currency, the equivalent of 6,000 denarii. You might recall from the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, a single denarius was the usual daily wage for a laborer. So get out your calculator and see that one talent is the equivalent of about 16.5 years of labor – that is, if you worked seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

The low guy on this totem pole received what might possibly be a lifetime’s worth of wages. The next guy got two of those and the best guy got five. Literally, he was handed five times as much money as he could expect to earn over his adult life.

Granted, this wasn’t a gift. The master handed over these sums to his slaves as a trust. The master was expecting his slaves to steward these funds – that is to say, make good use of them, manage them responsibly, while the master was gone.

The first slave went to work and turned five talents into ten talents, by trading wisely. The second slave did just as well with the amount he was given, doubling his money. When the master returned, they proudly handed over these very impressive gains.

But the third slave was different. He did something that was not uncommon in that time and place. If you simply wanted to safeguard your money, you would bury it in the ground. There would be no real benefit, but no loss either. It might seem like a smart thing to do, but in contrast to the other two slaves, it looks bad. It was lazy. It was gutless, unadventurous, unimaginative. The master says it was wicked.

And I can see his point. Is it good stewardship to let such a valuable resource just sit in the ground? Or under the mattress? Or in the bank?

There is another story from Aesop. A miser buries his treasure in the ground. And makes frequent trips to visit his gold. Someone notices his coming and going, gets curious, finds the treasure and steals it. The miser wails in grief about his loss. One friend suggests that he take a rock, wrap it up in cloth and them bury it in the same place and think of it as his treasure. Because, he says, that will do you just as much good as the treasure did, buried as it was underground.

The third slave dug up the talent when the master returned, brushed the dirt off it, and presented it to his master. Here you are, Master, exactly what you gave me – no more and no less. And the master, undoubtedly, demanded an explanation. The other two slaves did so well. What happened here? Why were you unable to do the same?

The slave’s reason? He was afraid. Let’s take a moment to ponder that.

What kinds of things has your fear stopped you from doing? I think of the times I didn’t dance, for fear of making a fool of myself. The times I didn’t speak up when I disagreed, for fear of making people angry. The times I didn’t loosen my grip on something, for fear of losing it. The times I didn’t say I love you, for fear of being rejected.

The times I didn’t help another, for fear that I might not have enough for myself. All the times I didn’t take a chance, for fear that I would somehow fail.

This fearful slave was so paralyzed by fear that all he could manage to do was bury the talent and feel relieved that it was no longer his burden. All of us do this at times. Even churches do this. But let me tell you about a church that was different.

Back in the 1970s, the LaSalle Street Church in Chicago went into a partnership with three other churches in the city to build affordable housing. Each church put their money, time, and energy into this project and ran a thriving mission in the city for decades. Eventually, they sold the building, dividing up the proceeds between the partners. LaSalle Street’s share of the profit was $1.6 million. This was much more money than they had ever seen at one time.

The pastor and the elders of the church decided to take 10% of the money and give it to the members – $500 to each member. The only instruction that came with it was to use it, in whatever way you see fit, to do God’s work in the world.

Some chose a charitable organization to give their portion, doing it in a way where their gift would be matched, turning their $500 into $1000. Some started a program to provide shoes for the homeless or coats for kids. One man started a local chapter of Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Others gave the money to someone they knew who was struggling financially.

But some never cashed the check. Perhaps they were afraid of making the wrong decision.

By coincidence, perhaps, the New Castle Presbytery did something like this a few years ago, when they cashed in some resources and sent a check to each congregation for $5,000 to start some new ministry. The money still sits in our bank account. I wonder why. Are we afraid?

Fear can prevent us from doing God’s work, and it is actually sinful to the extent that it reflects our failure to love and trust God.

The first epistle of John reminds us that perfect love casts out fear. It is good for us to remember that getting past our fear doesn’t come from being strong or courageous or exceptionally capable in every way. Getting past a powerful, paralyzing fear comes from finding a powerful, enlivening love.

Believe me when I tell you, I am as familiar with fear as anyone, perhaps more than you. But just as I can think of the many times I have let fear stop me, I can also tell you of times I pushed past the fear and stepped out in faith. Every time Kim and I have increased our pledge, not knowing exactly where we would find the extra money, it was out of love for the church and trust in the Lord.

Perfect love casts out fear. Our love may not be perfect, and our fear may never be erased. We are, each of us, a work in progress – if we dare to move toward love. On this stewardship Sunday, I pray that you will let love be your guide.

Taking Care

Matthew 25:1-13        

Tara Westover wrote a memoir a few years ago called Educated. It’s the story of Tara’s upbringing in a family of survivalists. They lived out in the mountains of Utah, as off-the-grid as they could manage. Distrustful of government, these parents raised their seven children to be self-reliant. The government agents might come for them at any time, her parents taught them. They all needed to be able to fend for themselves. Each member of the family packed their own head-for-the-hills bags.

Food rations, weapons, thermal blankets – these were the kinds of things they put in their bags for the escape, if and when it would be necessary. As a small child, Tara took her bag with her to bed at night. She understood from what her parents taught her that it could happen any time of the day or night, that they must be alert, be awake, be prepared. If the moment arrived, they would each be responsible for their bag. It would be every man, woman, and child for themselves. Tara never had to use her bag. The government never came, but it’s easy to imagine what a vivid and lasting memory that would be.

Tara and her family were living in a world of darkness, full of mistrust, anger, fear – a world where most things were painted black or white, good or evil, us and everybody else.

Tara Westover’s family looked at their enemy and saw that the best course of action for them was to be prepared to flee. They would go hide out in the hills until, I suppose, they figured out the next step. Maybe flee the country, look for refuge elsewhere. Maybe organize with other like-minded folks and start a civil war. Maybe just wait it out or wait for the rapture.

In the world where Jesus lived, there were surely plenty of folks who promoted such a view of the world. There always are some. And I wonder, if any of them were listening to this parable of the ten bridesmaids, how they would have received it. I assume they would be nodding along, affirming the virtue of being prepared, ever-vigilant, watchful and ready.

I suppose they would have found nothing surprising in the parable. Of course you should have a supply of extra oil, always. You should have whatever you will need to survive. And if you fail, don’t expect someone else to bail you out. Trim your own wicks, keep your own fire, guard your own oil. Be awake. Be ready, for you never know the day or the hour.

I suppose the survivalists in first-century Jerusalem would have felt affirmed by Jesus’ words. Yes, they would have thought, we are doing the right thing. We are on the right side. We are the wise ones, everyone else is foolish.

And if this is so, then most of us ought to be concerned. Because I don’t think there are many survivalists among us. I know I don’t have my head-for-the-hills bag ready. Do you?

And so that would put me in the category of the foolish bridesmaids, the ones who neglect to bring extra supplies of oil. The ones who might not think about the possibility of this bridegroom being so late that everyone falls asleep and the lamps burn out. The ones who maybe just assumed that, should something so weird happen, it would be enough for some of them to bring extra oil that they could divvy up between the ten of them. You know, sharing?

The ones who might have thought that any bridegroom who would keep them waiting this long, might have the decency to wait for them while they dash out and grab some more oil for their lamps. I guess I am among those foolish bridesmaids who, after all is said and done, might not even want to go to a party where people refuse to help one another out, and act like they don’t know you because you failed your survivalist training.

Parables are always full of potholes and sticking points, but this one has some major impediments, I believe. The easy interpretation is actually the hardest interpretation to deal with. 

The truth is, there are always the doomsday folks, looking for an apocalypse of one kind or another. An immoral and malevolent government. A natural disaster of epic proportions. Aliens from outer space. Something dire is going to happen. And so the doomsday folks are passionate about reading the signs. They want to predict the time and nature of the coming disaster. So they can be ready.

The problem, Jesus says, is that no one knows the hour or the day. No one – not even he could say. No one will arrive at the kingdom of heaven by being at the right bus stop at the right time, with their ticket in hand. No one will enter the kingdom because they packed a survival bag and ran for the hills. The kind of readiness Jesus means is, I believe, something quite different from following an “in case of emergency” checklist.

Perhaps he gave us a parable with so many strange and uncomfortable images in it so that we would think a bit more deeply about this kingdom of heaven to which he refers.

Jesus says to his listeners, the kingdom of heaven will be like this, as he launches into this story. He told so many stories that begin this way. To what can the kingdom be compared? It is like a mustard seed, like yeast – something small and yet with such great potential. It is like a hidden treasure, it is like a fine pearl, something so wonderful that a person would give up everything else to have it. It is like scattered seeds, some falling on fertile ground and taking root while others wither and die. Or a fishing net cast into the sea, catching up every kind of fish – you keep the good and throw out the bad. The kingdom of heaven is like a king settling accounts with his slaves, magnanimously forgiving, or a landowner hiring laborers, generous with their wages. The kingdom of heaven is like a wedding banquet – where many are invited, and some refuse the invitation.

The kingdom of heaven is doing the Father’s will, bearing good fruit. The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, is near.

The kingdom of heaven is far from this world, defying explanation. And yet near to us as our next breath. If we pay attention to all his words then we know: the kingdom is a way of being in the presence of God. 

And living in the presence of God? That takes some care. Some preparation.

So forget about the extra supplies of oil, you really don’t need that. You don’t need a head-for-the-hills bag or a backyard bunker. What we all need is the practice of those little habits that cultivate our readiness for the kingdom of heaven.

So I will ask you about your prayer life. I will ask you how you are doing with forgiveness – both the asking and the giving, because our world is starved for forgiveness. I will ask you how you are using your time, your energy, and other resources to serve God, to serve the least and the last and the lost.

The kingdom of heaven, if we listen to Jesus, is something utterly wonderful and completely available. It is generous and compassionate, nurturing and forgiving. It gathers up all, invites all, cares for all. The kingdom of heaven is offered with open hand. It is up to each one of us to receive it. No one can do it for you.

So when Jesus says about those foolish bridesmaids, “I don’t know you,” I am afraid what he means is, “you don’t know me because you never really tried.”

In one respect, life is easier when you just break it down into the wise and the foolish, the good folks and the bad folks and keep a checklist of kingdom entry qualifications. But the truth is the secret to the kingdom is just taking care. Taking care of yourself. Taking care of how you love your neighbor. Taking care to listen for God’s call, look for God’s light. We will best prepare by taking care. 

Photo: Grateful that some wonderful people take care of our oil supplies in the church.

Remembrance

Matthew 5:1-12

As we moved toward this day of remembrance, 2020, I did a little personal remembrance, looking back on this year. Where have we come from in 2020?

About a year ago, in the last couple of months of 2019, I was feeling a sort of restlessness, a sense that something was burgeoning, getting ready to be born. As the world turned to a new calendar year, I felt there was light right around the corner.

I remembered that way back in the beginning of this year I was very conscious of what 2020 means to us. 2020 is perfect vision. I began this year thinking about that and with the intention of making 2020 a year of seeing clearly. To me this meant a kind of spiritual clarity. I was drawn to the idea of seeing where and what God is calling us to. What is God drawing us into?

On the first Sunday of this year, Epiphany Sunday, I said to you: Get ready to have your world rocked.

That was January. Then, a very short time later, the pandemic hit us and rocked us off our feet. At first it didn’t seem like much, but then we watched the numbers increase exponentially. The numbers of cases rising, the numbers of hospital beds filling, the numbers of the dead going well beyond anything we thought was possible in our modern scientific world. A world where we rely on immunizations and antibiotics and a vast array of pharmaceuticals to address most any problem. Here we had nothing.

Everything we thought we knew, thought we could count on, was up for question. Our world was rocked. But where was the light?

This text we read today from Matthew, the beatitudes, we are hearing for the third time this year. It comes up pretty often – if not this text then Luke’s version of it. Yet, no matter how many times we hear these words they sound strange to us –that is because they are strange to us. And yet, there are moments these words seem most appropriate to the occasion. Sometimes, rarely, we see these words of blessing in human form. We see them lived out. Once in a while, we see someone whose words and actions say: this is what the beatitudes mean. Watch what I do and understand.

Jesus was one such person, of course. He was the living and breathing model of the beatitudes. His life gave blessing to the meek, the mourning, the hungry and thirsty, the persecuted. He showed us this new way of seeing the world, a new way of being in the world – our world – a world wracked by pain.

It has been a year of grieving for us. 2020 has indeed rocked our world, not in any way we expected. My intention I set at the beginning of the year about seeking clarity of vision got very muddled. Suddenly, I had no time for meditations on spiritual clarity. I was reading and videoconferencing and phoning to figure out how to make the adjustments we needed to make.

Suddenly we were all isolated and afraid. Where was the light? We were living in a world overshadowed by death, thrown off balance, trying to learn how to do everything a new way, exhausted by the effort.

We were facing all kinds of grief. The grief of being separated from our family members because we couldn’t travel or because we all wanted to protect one another from the risk of spreading this virus. We were facing the grief of being separated from our friends because state restrictions mandated that we stay home except for essential outings.

We were facing the grief of having loved ones in nursing homes or assisted-living, and unable to visit them. Some were unable to comprehend all of it, not knowing why their family didn’t come anymore. There were the ones who were hospitalized with sickness or surgery, and our grief over being unable to sit with them, pray with them. In the worst cases, being far away knowing that a loved one was dying alone, making that sacred journey with perhaps a stranger by their side, perhaps no one.

And there was grief, all kinds of grief.

At first, we thought this would end soon, because we didn’t know how to imagine something like this stretching into the future without an end point. We had not lived through a plague before. We thought we could endure it if we had to, because God will give us the resources to get through it, but surely things would soon get better. Things would return to normal.

But, as you know if you have experienced loss before, on the other side of grief you don’t find a return to normal. Once you have passed through grief, you are in a new land, and need to learn how to live in this new land.

As we look back on the year, we have passed through we see that there has been much heartache. Some of us have grieved the loss of loved ones. All of us have mourned the loss of life as we knew it. Our world has been turned upside down. We cannot simply set it right again because we are seeing a change from the way things once were to a new way which has yet to fully emerge.

A new way that we can’t quite see yet what it will be.

To a certain degree it is our choice. We didn’t choose this pandemic. Who would? And I don’t believe God chose it for us. It is too cruel to believe that. But we remember that it is always in the cruelest, the hardest, most agonizing circumstances that God is with us most powerfully. When we are in the depths of grief, we may feel God’s gentle strength pulling us back to life. When our world is rocked to its core, God will offer us new vision to begin to see things in a new way. The choice is whether to accept this new vision.

Are you willing to receive this?

In this new way of seeing, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. In this new way of living, blessed are the ones who mourn for they will be comforted. In the wreckage of this last gasp of the former ways of the world, on the threshold of newness, blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

The words of the beatitudes are not a promise to make things better, but they are a statement of how things are in the realm of God. How things are if only we can see it.

Go forward, beloved, into the new day that God has given us. Grieve as you must; mourn what you have lost but know that ahead of us is life. Do not be afraid of what is ahead, for God does not let us go alone. Let us follow Christ into this new way of seeing and living in the world.