 |
| Ashes to Go offered at Whitman College |
I wish I had taken a picture in children’s chapel that day. We had a dry wipe easel that sat on ground level in front of the children who were gathered in a circle. On this board every week we would record the prayer topics the children offered. That morning they named every natural disaster they had ever heard of. Prayed for people in Tornados Earthquakes Mudslides Avalanches Floods Hurricanes. Those things probably happened somewhere that week, but I don’t think they knew that. It was April 1999 in the Denver suburbs. The older children had spent several school days in lockdown. The coverage was nonstop and worldwide. It was the Sunday after the Columbine massacre. My church was about five miles away, when I stepped outside I could see the helicopters circling. We didn’t have any congregants at the school, it was the next school district to the west. But there were children of colleagues of parishioners, And friends of parishioners. We could barely comprehend it. So the children prayed for natural disasters Sought a shape and a story to contain the news that kept coming at us in waves. Flood epics are common in the sacred and folk stories of many cultures across the world. People experience natural disasters, everywhere. They also have experienced the brutal destruction of warring tribes and empires. The rubble looks much the same.
I was at the Reid Center on the Whitman Campus on Wednesday. It was Ash Wednesday. Marking friends and strangers with signs and words of our brokenness and immortality. And I looked up and noticed Someone had changed the channel on the lounge tv. I didn’t have to read any scrawl to know what type of image I was seeing. Again. I would tell you I am numb to it by now But the flood of gloom that has found me says that is not true. Maybe you asked what I asked this week. Why is this blight of un-natural disaster coming at us again and again? All the pain and grief and lost and lonely raging humanity unable to find balance or peace or the nerve to change. Sometimes I think that the Noah epic isn’t about God but it is about us. Our isolation and cruelty and ego and shame and dreadful capacity for lashing out. Other times I hope it is about both us and God, Because God changes. There are people who feel God to be changeless, but in a universe that is constantly in motion that would make God separate and apart and the only thing not in motion. My hope is that God is both - changeless in love and favor while also changing as any being in a relationship would change.
When I first looked at the lessons on Monday I thought it was the most lighthearted selection of First Sunday in Lent readings. Now Noah and the flood is much of what is on my my mind. If you feel like the devastation of the flood was wrong, which God seems to feel, Then we need to dive in and admit that our willful ignorance and failure of nerve is a repeat of the same story. Again. I am not sure right now if I have seen the rainbow and the assurance of never again. I am not so sure I can hear the voice of God saying we are his beloved. It is hard to hear over the torrent of cries and anger. Again. I do and I do not hear it. So I pray. When Jesus comes out of the waters of the Jordan river, Usually I picture the water as a few feet deep and calm. A pleasant sunny day at a festival down by the riverside. This week I need it to be a deep muddy and raging river. Our machinery is too powerful and our frustrations are too lonely, I fear we are being set up to wipe ourselves out. I need my savior rising from terrible waters and hearing all of you are my beloved and I need to feel it in every inch of my body. I imagine myself holding onto him, clinging to his back for dear life.
Nowhere in the Good News is it suggested that we are only with Jesus when he is the good shepherd. We are with him when he is under the raging waters of this trial and crucifixion. We are with him in the temptations of the powers that be. We are with him as he weeps. We are all in all of this together. I want a rainbow because the temptations and brokenness are so rampant. But I cannot grasp a rainbow. So we practice the sacraments because I need tangible outward and visible reminders of our deep connections with God and each other. The church begins each Lent as we did today with the Great Litany. Deliver us from pride and hypocrisy and malice. Maybe we should pray this Litany more often. Maybe we should pray it beyond the confines of our tiny ark. Prayer isn’t meant to be wishful thinking or pious pushy ineffectiveness. Prayer is relationship. Prayer is becoming open to possibilities we cannot discover on our own. If we are true and centered, what we pray to God should echo in our lives. Prayer is an opening through which God fills us with intention that is more than ours, while also blessing us with the freedom to act as free beings. In what ways could we translate the litany we prayed today into action? Is it by being open to being turned around, and ready to make real and reasonable changes to stem the tide?
The thinness of Noah gives us ample room to find ourselves in his story. The questions he doesn’t ask, we must ask. The feelings of being in the tumult of the storm, we need to know that we are not alone. And it is also the reminder that we have the resources to build the ark, or adjust the forecast and not be paralyzed. May we go out from our little ark, from breaking bread and offering whole body prayers not perfected, or shielded from tragedy, but bound to grieve with shattered neighbors and called by God to leave our complacency behind. We are all in this, all of this, together. Show us your ways o Lord, and teach us your paths. Echo in us the justice and mercy that we pray for. We are all in this, all of this, together.
Amen.
February 18, 2018
Walla Walla, Washington
No comments:
Post a Comment