God’s Promises: Do You Believe Them?

2^nd Sunday after Pentecost

June 14, 2020

Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 10:1-20

This month we are going to focus on God’s promises. Last week we talked about God’s promise that I am with you always, from the beginning to the end. In the Ezekiel bible study we read about God’s promise that I am with you always, no matter where you are, whether you’re in your own country or in exile. This week we’re going to talk about trusting God’s promises. Do you believe what God promises? Do you trust God’s promise that God is always with you? Do you believe God loves you unconditionally? Do you trust God to do what God says?

In Genesis this morning we read the story of Abraham and Sarah offering hospitality to three strangers. Their story began when God told Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”[1] Abram and Sarai go, not knowing where they’re going, or how long it’s going to take them to get there. God promises them, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.”[2] Abram and Sarai have some adventures along the way, and by three chapters later, Abram is starting to doubt God’s promise of making him into a great nation. This is when God has Abram go outside and tells him, “Look up at the sky and count the stars if you think you can count them. This is how many children you will have.”[3] Abram believes him, and they move on. However, in the next chapter, this is now Genesis 16, it appears that Sarai thinks the problem is with her. She tells Abram to sleep with her maid, Hagar, which was a common practice back then. Abram agrees and Hagar gets pregnant with Ishmael. So, now Abram and Sarai think God’s promise is fulfilled. Abram has a son. They made it happen. They think their work caused God to keep his promise. But that’s not how God works, is it? That’s not how God is faithful. It’s not because of anything we do. God is faithful because that’s who God is. God keeps his promises because God is faithful. God doesn’t keep his promises because we force his hand.

Now we’re up to Chapter 17, and God repeats the same promise to Abram, because apparently Abram and Sarai don’t believe him. This is when God gives them new names, Abraham and Sarah, and promises Sarah, “I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”[4] At this point, Abraham laughs, and says, “I’m going to have a son at 100 years old? Oh, this is rich! God, maybe you should just take Ishmael.” God says, “No, your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him,” too.[5]

Then we get to today’s reading. And this time, this time, God doesn’t waste much time. After renewing the covenant with Abraham for the third time, over ten years after God first called Abraham and Sarah from their home, after they’ve tried to make God’s promise come true on their own, God sends these three strangers to visit. Abraham greets them with extravagant hospitality, bringing fresh bread and milk for them to eat. One of the strangers says, “this time next year, your wife Sarah will have a son. Sarah, who’s eavesdropping from around the corner, laughs. She laughs! Wouldn’t you? Sarah is over 90 years old; she’s post-menopausal. She’s heard this promise time and again. She’s at the point where she doubts God’s promise, and the truth is, she has good reason to: it still hasn’t happened yet! While Sarah is chastened for laughing, her laughing is completely understandable. She’s been hearing this promise for so long, it’s been unfulfilled for so long, and now some stranger says it’s finally going to happen? I think I’d be incredulous, too, because I’d also be scared to get my hopes up. I would doubt, because I’d be afraid of being disappointed, again. It would be a self-defense mechanism to keep me from getting hurt. There are times God takes his sweet time fulfilling promises.

In our Gospel lesson this morning Jesus sends out the twelve disciples with very specific instructions. He tells them, “Go to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”[6] Moreover, the disciples are to do this with no money and no suitcase, no supplies. They have to trust that the town they go to will offer them hospitality: a place to stay, food to eat, and a change of clothes if theirs get torn. They have to trust God will provide what they need. They have to rely on the generosity of the people to whom they are sent. If the people are unwelcoming or hostile, then shake the dust off your feet and move on. Trusting in a stranger’s hospitality can be a scary thing. You do it, anyway, trusting God promise that you’ll be taken care of. It may not be food you really care to eat. It may not be the type of bed you sleep well in.

It reminds me of a story I don’t think I’ve ever shared from Nicaragua. Before seminary, I spent about a year teaching in Nicaragua with a non-denominational mission agency called Food for the Hungry. One of the places I taught was in the remote village of Santa Maria. To get to Santa Maria, if you don’t have private transportation, which I didn’t, you get on the bus that runs between the cities of Leon and Chinandega. When you get on, you sit near the front and ask the bus driver to let you off at the manicera, the peanut plant. The bus driver looks at you funny, because why in the world would a gringa want to get off there?? But when you do, there’s a horse and cart waiting for you to take you the couple kilometers off the main road and down a dirt road into the village. The village didn’t use to be here. It used to be on the other side of the main road, up the side of a mountain. Then Hurricane Mitch came in 1998 and horrible mudslides that wiped out half the village. Everyone lost someone. And the village decided they couldn’t stay there; they had to move. Many Christian organizations worked with the people of Santa Maria, including Food for the Hungry, offering counseling, relief work, and eventually training in other marketable job skills. My second visit was on the eve of the 7^th anniversary of the mudslides, in 2005. I’d been in Nicaragua about six weeks at the time and had been whisked around the Pacific side of the country learning about what Food for the Hungry and their partner organizations were doing. That particular night, we were fed dinner by the local pastor, some beans and a tortilla and some of the local cheese. It wasn’t enough, and I went to bed hot, dirty, and hungry. Beds and mosquito netting were provided for us. My mosquito net had big holes in it. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well. In the morning there was no breakfast. I ended up skipping the anniversary commemoration. There was heavy rain forecast for the day, and when a colleague with a car decided to leave early, I asked to go, too. As I mentioned, after that, I made weekly trips on my own out to Santa Maria. But I never again spent the night there, nor did I eat another meal there. I made sure to eat before I left and I ate again when I got back to Leon (where I lived).

God kept his promises throughout my time in Nicaragua. I had enough. I lived with a middle class family where the mom was a teacher and the dad was a doctor who taught at the university. I grew close with a couple other American families serving with other mission agencies as well as colleagues from my own. There were still lots of times when I was overwhelmed. There were still times during the dry season when I asked God why he didn’t send me somewhere with air-conditioning! Yet God kept, and keeps, his promises. I expect each of you have your own stories to tell of promises that God has fulfilled for you, or even some you’re still waiting for, like Sarah and that baby.

God does not call all of us, or even most of us, to leave our homeland and our people and go to a different one, like Abraham and Sarah and my call to Nicaragua. Most of us are called to serve God right where we are. The disciples weren’t sent out to another place or people but to stay right there in Israel. They even may have been going back to their hometowns. Sometimes going to a people you know is harder than going to a people you don’t know. The people you know expect you to act a certain way, to talk a certain way. When you change, as we all do, it may become harder for the people who know to accept you if you don’t fit their expectations of you. Sometimes, we fall back into old familiar patterns. Familiar places trigger old behavior. When we’re growing in Christ, when we’re stretching ourselves, challenging ourselves, learning more about ourselves and about God and about who God’s calling us to be, we have to be careful to not fall back into those old ways. We have to keep moving forward, becoming who God’s calling us to be, going where God’s calling us to go, always standing on those promises, no matter how long it may seem to take God to keep them.

Let us pray…

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[1] Genesis 12:1

[2] Genesis 12:2

[3] Genesis 15:5

[4] Genesis 17:16

[5] Genesis 17:19-20

[6] Matthew 10:6-8

God’s Promise: I Am With You Always

Trinity Sunday

June 7, 2020

Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Matthew 28:16-20

Days 1-6 of creation drawn by my children (ages 5 and 7) and me

            This is one of those Sundays when I especially miss children’s time. The story of creation is such a great one for counting and doing a timeline and just lends itself easily to a children’s lesson. It’s also a Sunday when I’m glad I get to preach outside, in God’s creation, as we read the story of creation, separating the light from the dark, day from night, seeing the plants and trees, flora and fauna from that first garden. It’s the story of order coming out of chaos, God creating ex nihilo, out of nothing, and declaring each part of creation to be good. It’s also a story showing how God was there in the beginning, just as God will be there at the end, and not just God the creator, God the Father, but all three persons of the Trinity.

            In both of this morning’s readings, one about beginning and one about ending, we find the Trinity, God in three persons. The Bible, the story of God and God’s people begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God spoke…” In the beginning there was God, the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Creator. The Spirit of God hovered over the water, the Holy Spirit, who’s usually considered the third person of the Trinity, God the Sustainer. And then God spoke God’s Word. The Word is Jesus Christ. The Gospel of John says “the Word of God became flesh and came to live among us.”[1] Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, God the Redeemer, fully God and fully man. All three persons of the Trinity are present there in the beginning at creation. And all three persons will be there at the end as well. Matthew ends his Gospel with what’s called the Great Commission. Here, Jesus’s final words are to tell his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching God’s word. Baptizing in only one part of God misses the fullness of God. It’s important that God is the creator, the maker of heaven and earth. It’s important that God is the Son, the redeemer, who laid down his life so that all who believe in him might have eternal life. And it’s important that God is the Holy Spirit, the ongoing presence of God with us today. It took a couple centuries for the early church to adequately explain the doctrine of the trinity, so if this sounds confusing, that’s okay. What I want to make sure you know this morning is that God knows about relationships. God is in relationship with God’s self. God is not schizophrenic or multiple personalities; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all still God. God accomplishes different work as different persons; it’s all still God. All of God was there at the beginning and all of God will be there at the end.

            However, let’s talk about that middle. The middle is messy. Sometimes it feels like the hugest fluster cluck there ever was. God made this beautiful creation, pronounced it good, and appointed us as caretakers of all creation. Sadly, instead, we became greedier and started fighting more. We wanted to do things our own way and be in charge. We take things that aren’t ours. We don’t share what we have. We don’t live how God wants us to live. We don’t take care of all that has been entrusted to our care. We don’t make sure that God’s world and the people and the animals in it are cared for. God’s good world is broken, and we have felt that especially these last couple weeks. God says “take care of everyone,” and we have looked to our own instead. God says “share what you have,” and we hoard toilet paper instead. God says, “resist evil, injustice, and oppression,” and we say “it’s ok, as long as it doesn’t affect me directly.” We forget that when our brother or sister is hurting, we all hurt. We forget that when one is missing, instead of staying in our security where we’re safe, we’re to go looking for that one who is missing. Or sometimes it’s a conscious decision and we say, “It ok, because I’m here, so it doesn’t matter that someone else is missing.” God says we need all of us for his family to be complete.

God says to go looking for those who are missing, to tend to them, to make sure that they have what they need, too – air, food, water, shelter, security. Too many people in our world are missing these basic things. Too many people in our country are missing these basic things. And the Coronavirus has made the gap between rich and poor even wider, disproportionately affecting those who are poor, have fewer resources, who literally don’t eat if they don’t work, and so are more at risk for getting the virus. I’m on the Conference Committee for Hispanic/Latinx Ministries and I’ve been hearing these stories from my colleagues who serve in those ministries. I’ve also been hearing stories from African-American colleagues about how when their grown children are pulled over by the police, they call their parents and put them on speaker phone during the whole stop. It is terrifying. And they are terrified for their children. They are terrified when they go out at night. Beloved, this must stop. This is not part of God’s purpose and design for creation. Our own security and salvation is wrapped up in everyone else’s as well. When Cain killed Abel, the first murder recorded in the Bible, God told Cain, “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” The same thing is happening today. We are accountable to God and to each other for each other. This is part of being in relationship; this is part of taking care of each other; this is part of being part of humankind. All is not as it should be. All shall be well, but all is not well right now. Our brothers and sisters are hurting, and instead of having empathy and compassion and love, we are blaming them for their own hurt. (When I told the story of the police, how many of you thought that it was their own fault they were pulled over? How many times have you been pulled over? I’ve been pulled over twice in my life, once for doing a supposedly illegal u-turn, when there was no sign saying no u-turn, and once for being one month over my license plates’ expiration date, which I’d completely forgotten about.) Let’s stop blaming the victim. Let’s stop holding others down. Let’s stop holding ourselves down. God created us to live and to thrive and to help others do the same.

            This is where and why we need God’s promise in the Great Commission that “I am always with you.” I am with you when you mess up. I am with you when you don’t speak up. I am with you when you’re hurting. I am with you when you don’t pay attention to the effect that your words and actions have on another person. I am with you when you’re greedy and when you’re kind. I am with the oppressor and with the oppressed, the oppressor to change their ways and the oppressed to break their chains and set them free. I am here to redeem you. Nothing is beyond redemption. Hope is never lost.

            This past week in my Johns Hopkins CPE training we talked about discrimination and harassment and I heard the best definition of harassment I’ve ever heard. It said that the intent of the person whose behavior may or may not have been inappropriate is not what matters. The impact of the behavior on the recipient is what matters. I’m going to repeat that. The intent of your words and behavior are not what matters. The impact of your words and actions on the recipient is what matters. So start imagining. Howard County Public School’s socio-emotional lesson for young elementary school students this week was empathy. It’s putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, imagining how they feel. I remember a time when my daughter was only 18 months old and showed empathy toward my friend who was on speakerphone. My friend was sharing the story of her miscarriage. And my daughter heard the sadness in her voice, stopped playing and climbed up next to me, bent her face toward the phone, and started rubbing my back. This week, cultivate empathy. Put yourself in the shoes of someone you hear about one the news and imagine how you’d react and what you’d do. Let’s build some understanding and compassion around our human community, so that we can truly love each other as ourselves.

PRAYER FOR FORGIVENESS:[2]

God of justice and peace, we know that you created us in the diversity of your image but still we refuse to see you reflected in the face of our neighbor who lacks adequate health care, experiences hunger, doesn’t have a home. We don’t see your image in the face of our neighbor who has a different skin tone, worships in a different tradition, speaks in a language we don’t understand. Forgive us for lashing out from our sense of scarcity and greed, ignorance and fear. Turn us around to be peacemakers and justice builders, recognizing the abundance and balance of your garden.

WORDS OF ASSURANCE:  Paul writes to the church in Corinth, “agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”  In our faithfulness, we know that Jesus forgives us and guides us back to the garden path. Thank you, God. Amen.

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[1] John 1:14

[2] From Peace with Justice Sunday Liturgy http://s3.amazonaws.com/Website_UMCGiving/resource-files/2020_PWJS_Liturgy.pdf

Rise Up: Prophesy

Pentecost Sunday

May 31, 2020

Numbers 11:24-30; Acts 2:1-21

            I was not previously aware of this passage from Numbers in connection to Pentecost Sunday. It’s considered an alternate reading, yet it fits in with our theme for this morning. Today, as the Easter season concludes, is our last Sunday on rising up, and we’re going to look at prophets and prophesying. After all, on that original day of Pentecost, Peter quotes from the prophet Joel where “God says,

I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young will see visions. Your elders will dream dreams. Even upon my servants, men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”[1]

So, let’s start with this semi-obscure story from Numbers. It happens during the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. The chapter begins with the people complaining about having only manna to eat. They want a little variety in their diet. Specifically, they want meat. They are tired of being forced vegetarians. Never mind that the Lord has been providing this manna for them to eat, enough for every day. Never mind that all they have to do is go outside and pick it up; no hunting or foraging for food here. Never mind that they had figured out how to eat the manna in a variety of ways, sometimes cooked in a pot, sometimes baked into a loaf of bread. No, they complain and Moses is upset and takes it out on God. He asks the Lord, “Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors? Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep wailing to me, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me—if I have found favor in your eyes—and do not let me face my own ruin.”[2] In other words, Moses is overwhelmed and burned out. The people asking for one more thing is one more thing too many. He’s done.

The Lord has compassion on Moses. The Lord tells him to bring seventy of the elders of the people, people who are leaders in the community, and God will share the power of the Spirit with them so that they can share the burden of caring for the people and Moses will not have to carry it alone. Moreover, God says that the people are gonna get meat! Not just for one day, or two days, or a week or ten days, but for a whole month, until it comes out of their nostrils and they can’t stand it anymore! It sounds like an example of be careful what you ask for, because the text actually does say “come out of your nostrils.” Moses, however, still responding from a place of fatigue and burn out, says, “A month?! How am I going to get enough meat to feed them for a month???” And God replies, basically telling Moses that he’s forgetting just who he’s talking to and who has promised this.

That brings us to our passage today. Moses tells the people what the Lord has said. He gathers seventy leaders of the people and the Lord shares the Spirit with them and they prophesy. Then, there are two men who aren’t part of the seventy, Eldad and Medad, and the Spirit rests on them, too, and they prophesy as well. Joshua, acting from a place of scarcity, worries about God’s Spirit being spread too thin and tells Moses to make them stop. But God’s power is not finite; it is infinite and abundant. More people joining in doesn’t mean there’s not enough to go around; it means that more are being built up. It’s like a candle used to light other candles. The first candle doesn’t lose its light when the light is shared with other candles; instead, the light becomes even brighter. Moses recognizes this and responds, “I wish that all of God’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on all of them!”

Well, Moses’s dream comes true on Pentecost. On that day, God poured out the Holy Spirit on all people, and they will prophesy! You didn’t know you were a prophet, did you? God’s Spirit has been poured out on you, too! So, the first step today is recognizing that you are a prophet, because the Holy Spirit is on you. And the question is: what are you prophesying? Are you a doomsday prophet? Do you go around saying that the world’s going to hell in a handbasket, or the equivalent thereof? What’s the story that you tell about the world? What’s the story that you tell yourself about yourself? This is important, because as a prophet, it matters what story you tell and whether or not you’re true to God’s story. It’s easy, especially when we’re tired, overwhelmed, or feeling insecure to give in to the negative stories. You know, “everything is always getting worse.” “I’m glad I’m not a kid now.” (That’s that unhelpful comparison we’ve talked about before.)  Or, maybe, “There are so many suffering people out there and I can’t help them all, so I give up.” No, you can’t them all, but, you can help one. And then maybe another one. God doesn’t say, “Help them all.” God says, “Go where I send you. I will be with you. I love my people. I love you. Show that love to the people around you and to the world.” God says, “I made this world and declared it good. I made you, and I declared you to be very good. You are my beloved child.” God also says, “I’m working on redeeming this world. I’m working on righting the wrongs. I’m working on lifting up the oppressed and freeing those in chains. Won’t you help me?” At some point this week, take some time to think about the stories you tell and how they line up with God’s story. In the places where they don’t, tweak them, figure out better words so that you, as a prophet, can tell a better and truer story.

The second step is defining the word ‘prophesy’ and clarifying it from the word ‘prophecy.’ Prophecy ends with a C-Y, rhymes with "see," and it is a noun. It is what a prophet says. Prophesy ends with an S-Y, rhymes with "sigh," and it is the verb. To speak as a prophet is to prophesy, and the best definition I’ve come across is that to prophesy, in the Christian sense, is to speak the reign of God into being.[3] To prophesy is to declare the kingdom of God is at hand. This is the same prophecy that John the Baptist said, “Repent and believe, the kingdom of God is near.” And it’s the same thing Jesus said early on, “Repent, the kingdom of heaven has come near.” While I could preach a whole sermon on the kingdom of heaven, let’s do an abbreviated description here so we know what we’re speaking into being. There’s the vision from Revelation 21:3-4 where “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” People and creation will be in right relationship with each other, with themselves, and with God. Whenever one of these relationships becomes healthier, then you have prophesied and brought more of God’s kingdom into being. Jesus gives a lot of analogies and metaphors for the kingdom of God. He says the kingdom of God is like a tiny mustard seed that grows into a huge bush, a pearl of great price that you sell everything to buy, buried treasure in a field that you do not stop looking for until you find it, yeast that you mix into flour until it’s worked throughout all the dough, and a great banquet where all included and all have enough to eat. Jesus also talks about how to enter the kingdom of heaven: like a little child, by selling all you have, and being born again by water and the Spirit. Finally, in Luke’s Gospel, the Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God will come, and Jesus answers, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst, [or, within you].”[4] Whenever you declare any of that, whenever you catch a glimpse of it, then you are prophesying. That is our work as prophets.

Last, you probably should know that prophets are not popular. In fact, they are usually run out of town, if not imprisoned or killed. The world does not like prophets. It’s not that the world doesn’t want to be healed; it’s more like the world doesn’t want to be changed. The powers and principalities of this world don’t like anything that threatens their power and Jesus and prophets certainly do that. So, to know that it’s worth doing, let’s look at that line where it says the young shall see visions and your elders shall dream dreams. From those of us who are younger, from our children and our youth, what are their visions for the future? What kind of world do they envision is possible? How do they see God’s kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven? And don’t just answer for them, but ask someone under 30. What do you want the world to be like? What do you wish it was like? Second, for our elders, what dreams do y’all have? What are your dreams for what will come after you? What do you dream of? Again, don’t presume to know someone else’s dreams but ask someone over 75. What do you dream for the world? What’s possible? Working for those visions and those dreams are what will keep you going when the going gets tough. Remember your call. God calls everyone. If you haven’t heard it, sit stiller and listen more. Remember your baptism, with water and with the Holy Spirit. If you haven’t been baptized and are interested, message me and let’s talk more. Remember who you are and whose you are, anointed with God’s Holy Spirit, poured out on all people. That includes you. Poured out to prophesy, to dream, to see visions, to speak the reign of God into being. May God grant us the grace and the courage to prophesy today. Amen.

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[1] Acts 2:17-18, quoting Joel 2:28-29

[2] Numbers 11:11-15

[3] Dr. Marcia McFee, “Rise Up” worship series, www.worshipdesignstudio.com

[4] Luke 17:20-21

“Surprised by Joy”

Midweek Reflection

May 27, 2020

Matthew 9:9-17

Intro – story of my kids this past Easter – didn’t want to dress up in the morning, but when we set the table for a fancy dinner (china, silver, centerpiece with candle), then they got it and went to go change into fancy clothes

1.      There are times when we’ve got to set the scene for how we want it to be.

a.       I’ve talked about this before – sometimes to feel better, all you have to do is dress nicer and the nicer clothes help to elevate your mood. Sometimes, you need to dress how you feel and wear the sweats. But other times, clothes can help get you out of the blues.

b.      Similar to “fake it til you make it” – dress better than you feel, act better than you feel, and you’ll likely start to feel better. John Wesley even had an experience with this when he was concerned that he couldn’t preach when he was experiencing some doubts about his faith. A friend told him, “Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.” It boggled John Wesley’s mind, but he found that it worked.

2.      “Surprised by Joy”

a.       Title of semi-autobiography by C.S. Lewis – story of his conversion from atheism to Christianity – he went looking for joy – book is about the events surrounding his accidental discovery of and consequent search for the phenomenon he labeled “Joy,” his best translation of the idea of Sehnsucht (German: longing). This Joy was so intense for something so good and so high up it could not be explained with words. He is struck with “stabs of joy” throughout his life.

b.      Title actually comes from a poem by William Wordsworth “Surprised By Joy — Impatient As The Wind,” about a time when Wordsworth was surprised by joy, and turned to tell his daughter about it, having completely forgotten that she had died. It was published in 1815; his daughter died in 1812. I couldn’t find out just when he wrote it, only the publishing date.

    Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind

    I turned to share the transport — Oh! with whom

    But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,

    That spot which no vicissitude can find?

    Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind —

    But how could I forget thee? Through what power,

    Even for the least division of an hour,

    Have I been so beguiled as to be blind

    To my most grievous loss? — That thought's return

    Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,

    Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,

    Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;

    That neither present time, nor years unborn

    Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

c.       Part of what I love about it is that it holds two strong emotions within the same poem – joy and grief. Wordsworth has this high moment of being surprised by joy, and then this low moment of having to remember again his daughter’s death.

3.      There is a relationship between joy and grief. In normal times, I’d say especially for those of us who work in helping professions (medicine, teaching, pastoring, etc.). During this pandemic, it is obvious for everyone. We are going thru trauma. We are hearing so much news of loss. We are feeling so much grief. I heard an interview this week with Gary Haugen, the founder of International Justice Mission, and he said, “Compassion is the job; joy is the oxygen.” Their job, and our job as the church, is to have compassion on those who are hurting. It’s to be like the Good Samaritan and help the wounded man on the side of the road. It’s to love our neighbor and not turn a blind eye to injustice and suffering. Compassion is the job. And compassion fatigue is real. I preached a whole sermon on it a few years ago at my previous appointment. One thing that helps combat it is finding moments of joy. It’s the antidote. It’s the oxygen in the room that lets everyone breathe and get through the hard stuff. And this is where my example of our fancy Easter dinner comes in. We all have stuff we’re saving for special occasions, right? Well, this is the special occasion. Make your own special occasion. Especially if the grief and time has been wearing down on you. Pull out the fancy china and crystal and have a fancy dinner. Put on your favorite music, be your own DJ, and throw yourself a dance party. This is the rainy day you’ve been saving for, because this is a time when we need extra-special things to get us thru. Pull out that dress you got for a special occasion but then you never had the chance to wear it. Tonight is your chance! Make your own special occasion. Tomorrow is not promised to us. We are only given today; that’s why it’s called the ‘present,’ right? Pull out whatever you’ve been saving. Create your own fancy occasion. And by doing so, you’ll find your spirits lifted. You’ll find joy. Maybe even be surprised by it.