September 15, 2024

         I am feeling the heaviness of the news of serious illnesses amongst members the past few weeks here at Trinity.  Two young men with ties to the congregation have died in the past month on top of that, so I am asking myself about what it means to let go, to die, to lose your life, and then also to take it back up again, to enter the joy of the resurrection, and to set our minds on divine things instead of earthly things.

          When I set my mind on earthly things, I feel heavy.  I feel the heaviness of illness, of pain and of suffering.  I feel the heaviness of the chore I have waiting for me at home of refinishing my kitchen cabinets, scraping layers and layers of paint to find the wood underneath. 

          Our cabinets are strong, built in 1951 of plywood.  It would be easier to pull them out and install something from Ikea or Home Depot.  But all that is chipboard covered in some vinyl.  We had chipboard vinyl cabinets at our rental in Tacoma and they warped and did not stand up well to wear and tear.  So we are removing the hardware and stripping off about 7 layers of paint, off white, yellow, green, blue, pink and some kind of barn red marbled effect.  It’s time consuming and messy and I have my respirator and goggles because there may be lead in there.

          Maybe our lives get covered in layers, like my kitchen cabinets.  We think we’re making improvements.  We cover our lives with vacations and jobs and hobbies and friends, but maybe that’s covering up something about who we are or what is at our core.

          Jesus had this pure core and people just kept pouring their expectations all over him.  Who was he, this son of Joseph from Nazareth?  Who was he, the warrior king, anointed one, Messiah, that would come and destroy their enemies?  Who was he, John the Baptist, about to be silenced or Isaiah, the prophet?  They kept trying to dress him up, to make him more presentable, But Jesus peeled away the layers and said no to each one.  What he revealed was the nature of God.  These human layers, trying to add riches, and might and weapons and a long life were not the divine things that defined him, as the Son of God.

          Peter is starting to be able to name Jesus’ identity, as Messiah, but that means different things to Peter than to Jesus.  For Peter, the Messiah adds so many layers of paint.  He has the layer of purple for a king, and red for other people’s blood he would shed, gold for the riches he would accumulate, green for the army fatigues he would wear in war. But Peter was setting his mind on human things.  One by one, Jesus peels the layers away.  No he would not be holding a sword.  Jesus’ blood would be poured out.  No he would not go to the fancy parties, he would be with the lepers and the poor and divorced people, the children, the foreigners and tax collectors.  No he would not be eating fancy food—instead he would say, “I thirst.”  Jesus would be arrested and go to trial and be tortured.  Jesus would be stripped down to the most powerless person and die on the cross, and yet there was something at his core that was so very solid, that could not be killed. 

None of that stripping away would change who Jesus was or how he saw his mission.  At his core was of God’s own nature and purpose, with grains interweaving for a different kind of strength, of community building and relationship and love and sacrifice.  And in death he was raised up on his throne, the cross, as the son of a carpenter, to bleed on a tree and to die there, to let go.  But that death did not destroy him.  It only revealed him as the good shepherd, the light of the world, the bread of life, the Son of God.  And it revealed us as his followers.

          As we take up our crosses, we too face the peeling of the layers.  Sometimes it is about other people’s expectations for us and getting to define who we are, what is at our core and whether to reveal it, who to be in relationship with, what will be the focus of our lives.  Sometimes it will be about the sacrifices we will make, what we will give up to be our true selves.  Sometimes it is about the choices we make about how to live and what to hold on to and what to let go of.

          I see this in many of you already.  Some have left places far away to come and define yourselves and your own values.  Some of you have left other religious communities that have hurt you and although it hurts to strip that away, you have found joy again.  Some of you are facing serious illnesses and you decide that illness will not define you or destroy who you are.  And all of us are always learning to let go and say goodbye. 

          From the moment our children are born we are releasing them into the world little by little.  I see this teen transition in my kid, pivoting from primarily a family focus to a focus on friends.  We will be there for him, but he is facing another direction from us.  Parents tell me that even when their kids grow up, you never stop wondering what they are doing and worrying about them. 

          All of life is saying goodbye and saying hello, stripping off the layers and finding another.  The seasons change.  Our bodies age.  We start jobs, change jobs, retire, and volunteer.  We say hello and goodbye to friends.  We strip away the layers of what is important.  I’m at the point I care a lot less what other people think of me.  I am more solid in myself and I don’t obsess as much as I used to about things I can’t change.  Life is change.

          We mark that change in remembering our baptism.  We come to the font and we remember that God washes away our sins and strips off the layers of human focus.  God sees us as we really are and offers us the solid strength of the divine point of view—there is a bigger picture, we are all siblings, love is what matters, seek forgiveness from yourself and others, we have a promise that we will all be drawn together in Christ.  Every day is a new chance to wipe away what is covering up the truth and to live the solid values of the Divine.

          Every day we are born anew, saying goodbye to our old self and embracing the new life God gives us.  Sometimes that means stepping into a new day when we realize our limitations.  Is it time to move to a one-level house?  Is it time to let go of some part of myself that I thought was essential, but maybe it isn’t.  It is about dying and about rising.  It is about letting go of what was and moving forward knowing that we aren’t alone and that we are loved and that life prevails, not this temporary life, but eternal life.  We wake up and let go of a view of our own health, and embrace a new definition of health and what that means even as we are aging. There can be health and healing, even as we are letting go and losing our temporary life.

          There can be health, when people face the reality of our mortality, when we make amends, when we tell the truth, when we give something up for the greater good.  I’ve really appreciated the witness of health and healing from some people I’ve walked with as they were dying.  One is Judith, who made friends with her tumors and talked to them each day.  She eventually couldn’t do anything about them, so she saw them as part of herself that had grown and multiplied too quickly.  She checked in with them, sked them to slow down a little.  And she allowed herself to be surrounded by those she loved.  We sang with her and to her.  A few months after she died she came to me smiling in a dream.  She was sitting in the sun in a red convertible car.  I knew she was ok.  I told her daughter about my dream and it gave her a lot of comfort.  Kathleen was another who was an example to me in dying.  I saw her a few times after a surgery in which she didn’t receive the proper medication after and her lungs filled up with fluid but she survived, only she never walked again and never recovered.  She lived on another year or more.  But we had the chance to talk and I shared with her my admiration that she had adopted two children. Our whole church had walked with her through these 2 adoptions.  She’s my favorite sermon example of sacrifice and love and hope, how when she brought her daughter home, she just held her and held her until her daughter knew she was loved and belonged and this was her forever home.  I used to babysit Kathleen’s kids and I got to see what a loving home looked like that was brought together from the far corners of the world, these unlikely siblings, Kathleen and the wild women she called their family.

If you’ve never read “Being Mortal” I hope you will.  I have a copy you can borrow.  It is about considering what quality of life you want when you become terminally ill.  It is about letting go and finding healing.  It is about not being afraid to go if it is your time.  It is about stripping life down to what is most important, telling your own truth, making your own decisions.  Jesus shows us that letting go of life is not giving up.  It is not losing a battle.  It can be healing and hopeful.  It can lead to resurrection life.

And for a congregation—what does it mean to give away our life?  What does it mean to make a sacrifice for the sake of another?  What does it mean to become a seed planted for future generations?  What does it mean to die and rise again?  That’s something to ponder as we learn to deny ourselves, follow Jesus, and take up our cross.  I’d like to pour some paint over it and say it will be rosy pink, but instead let us contemplate the strength of heavenly, divine things and peel away the layers until the truth sets us free.