All Saints 2020

 I had the privilege this week of spending a little time at our church preschool, Little Doves since our director Dawn was on vacation.  I got to see what an amazing staff we have and the comfort they provide for the children here.  I gave our staff breaks at nap time and I found myself patting the backs of little children who were having trouble falling asleep.  It was a very tender and sweet time and I couldn’t help but think of this tender act described in Revelation when God will wipe every tear from their eyes.

                I am feeling the heavy weight of this day and this time of year.  I am grieving my friend Ray who died suddenly in March.  A few of his colleagues gathered for text study last week and shared some memories, dreams we’ve had about Ray, pictures that keep popping up on Facebook.  I miss people from our church, too, talking to Lillian and Bonnie on the phone.  Lillian had such great stories and always a word of encouragement.  It feels really heavy to be grieving.  And the grief is compounded by the weight of the lockdown and the specter of disease and illness.  I had a dream early on Thursday morning.  I was in a small room, a churchy space.  A couple of you filed in.  I was so happy to see you.  Then more started coming in.  I started to get nervous.  Folks were still sitting apart from each other and keeping space.  Then even more filed in.  There was nowhere safe to put all these people.  Then a guest walked in.  I was torn between being welcoming and wanting to keep everyone safe.  It was my responsibility to keep my flock safe, but also my responsibility to keep them from wandering.  I didn’t know how to do both things at once.  This disease hangs over all of us.  Is this cough or sore throat related to Covid?  Am I just a little more tired because of the coming of winter or because I’m coming down with something?  Does this person carry a disease?  Could I carry illness to someone who is vulnerable?  It is a heavy time of grieving the gatherings we aren’t having.  And it is a time of grieving those who have died.  Whether they died of Covid or not, we could not gather the comforting way we usually do, we could not grieve the way we usually do.

                The grief is heavy.  Our nation suffers from divisions based on political affiliation, race, and ideology.  We are hurting each other with our words and actions.  We are losing the ability to listen with empathy to people with experiences and ideas different from ours.  I feel grief over this pain and loss and some level of fear about how we treat each other when we can’t listen and when we dehumanize each other.  I am weary.  I feel sad.  I feel on the edge of tears, frustrated, fearful.

                In this heaviness and grief, I got to pat some babies on the back.  I listened to their breathing.  I watched their little eyelashes.  I saw how they were snuggling their blankets.  I could feel God patting my back.  I could see God patting your backs, comforting you, letting you know it is safe to go to sleep, that you won’t ever be alone, and that a face you trust will greet you when you wake with a snack and a smile and an encouraging word.  I could see God holding close all those sobbing with grief, looking into their faces, drying their tears.  I found myself wondering about the hanky of God.  Over the years it has dried the tears of people who suffered, who experienced losses like we do, who were oppressed.  God has held the grieving ones, the peacemakers, the merciful and the persecuted. 

                Blessed are they, Jesus says in his very first sermon, there on the mount.  Who is he speaking to?  He’s speaking to those who followed him there to listen, who had a need, who were longing for something different, that the world would not be so harsh, that there is a better way.  These are hopeful people, receptive people.  That’s partly what grief can do to us, for us.  It can open us, make us more receptive, to see things that others don’t see, to know another person’s pain.  Merciful people are open, they see and hear and feel at a deeper level.  Peacemakers wouldn’t be peacemakers if they had never seen war—something terrible is motivating them to choose a different path.  Those who are meek or humble, they don’t have all their walls up against learning something new, they are ready to listen rather than tell people what to do. 

I see us on a continuum.  I am somewhere between hungry and filled, at any point in the day.  I am somewhere between meek and bold, depending on the situation.  I am somewhere between a peacemaker and a troublemaker.  Maybe what Jesus wants us to do is to look for God’s blessing in the more tenderhearted points in life, to cultivate openness in ourselves, to recognize God in vulnerability and pain and weakness.

God chooses to show up in the most unusual way.  If you consider the gods of other nations as Jesus walked this earth, they were warriors.  They were better because they would crush you.  They were bigger, louder, stronger, and victorious.  Even God in the Old Testament is different from these other gods—pining for a people that won’t listen, asking Abraham to be vulnerable and move his family among strangers, guiding a people who were weak and enslaved and really bad at listening, and begging to go back to their captors.  Our God took the time, had the patience, to walk with this ragtag bunch of stragglers, some former slaves of Egypt, others seemed to have latched onto this group traveling through the wilderness, joining the throng.  God taught them patience, not to take more than what they needed, to look out for the health and safety of the whole group, to trust.  In some ways we are still walking this wilderness journey with them, learning to trust, learning to let go, learning to be vulnerable, in uncomfortable places among strangers, learning to be meek peacemakers, learning not to retaliate when we are mocked.

Now comes Jesus!  He is not brave or big or strong.  He is asleep in the hay.  He is pursued by Herod, driven from his country.  He is a refugee.  He is undocumented.  He is from the most backward place.  His followers are foolish.  He doesn’t carry any money or weapons.  And he hangs out with people that are forgotten, of no account to anyone.  He upsets the usual systems, challenges those in power.  He dies vulnerable, naked on the cross, denied, abandoned, forsaken.  He embodies these beatitudes that he names in the sermon on the mount.

Yet Jesus is full of blessing.  He blesses by his presence, by sharing power.  And maybe that’s the word I want to use, because to say “Blessed are they” is so removed from any concept we understand.  He is saying there is power in grief—it can turn you to caring for others and to being comforted.  There is power in hunger—it opens you to be filled.  There is power in meekness—you have room in your life for the gifts God is giving you and the lessons God is teaching you.  There is power in being persecuted and rejected—you are in good company. 

We are on this journey, this struggle, and we find God with us.  God will never leave us or forsake us, but maybe we don’t look up to notice that until we’re in a tight spot, until we’re hurting.  We find God has been there all along.  And then we get so disgusted with the world as it is—divided, taking advantage of the poor and helpless, warring, focused on money—we get so disgusted with this messed up world, that we open ourselves to God’s vision that he lays out in Revelation, one  that our loved ones who have died already experience: People of all nations gathered together, praising God and singing, no more hunger or thirst, all are satisfied, God sheltering and protecting them, God at the center, clean flowing water giving life, and God wiping away all the tears.  This is a vision of heaven, but let’s not forget that in Revelation, the city of God comes earth, and so this vision breaks into our world.  It is not some far away, long distant promise or vision.  It is God’s vision for our world now.  It happens every time people share their food, every time a crew cleans trash out of a creek, every time someone comforts a child, every time someone makes a sacrifice to help someone else, every time someone accompanies someone who is grieving.  God’s vision is happening and we can be a conduit of God’s blessing.  We can be powerful with vulnerability, following Jesus in lives of service and radical love.