Thoughts from Pastor Michelle Fountain
The following are some of Pastor Michelle's recent weekly sermons and scripture readings. We hope you find these words helpful for your spiritual growth. You can contact Michelle by email, or use the contact form found on this website.
Unpacking Privilege Workshop
This workshop was taught by Pastor Michelle in April at the Annual Meeting of the Vermont Conference of the United Church of Christ in April, 2022 and on September 11 at the United Church of Ludlow. The objective of the workshop was to look at privileges that some have that others do not and to consider how privilege can be shared. Click here for the recording that is from the presentation in April.
This workshop was taught by Pastor Michelle in April at the Annual Meeting of the Vermont Conference of the United Church of Christ in April, 2022 and on September 11 at the United Church of Ludlow. The objective of the workshop was to look at privileges that some have that others do not and to consider how privilege can be shared. Click here for the recording that is from the presentation in April.
Service for Easter March 31, 2024
Sermon: Emerging from the Wilderness
Epistle Reading: Colossians 3: 1-4
Gospel: John 20: 1-18
This Lent we have followed a theme of wilderness. We have been traveling through the wilderness, sometimes feeling worn out and barren like the branches on the altar; sometimes feeling lost in the challenges we face personally, the challenges our very divided country is facing and the challenges of war, famine, disaster, and conflict that our world faces. It is easy to feel so lost in the wilderness of pain and anger in this world, that we cannot see the path out. We feel like we are surrounded by thorns pricking us from every direction.
But we have also been reminded that we are never alone. Even when we step off the path, getting lost, God is there walking with us, ready to guide us back. In fact, many of us have realized that we need our quiet times in the wilderness to regroup, to begin anew, to finally hear God calling us: that time in the wilderness gives us new hope, even joy. Time in the wilderness of struggle, doubt and pain, for ourselves and the world, prepares us to encounter resurrection.
And on this day, of all days, we want to sing out the alleluias and celebrate the resurrection, as we will. But we have to begin by acknowledging the wilderness that Jesus went through between that last meal with his disciples, his friends as he called them, and the magnificence of the resurrection.
Let me take you back. On this past Thursday night, sixteen of us shared in a Maundy Thursday service downstairs in the fellowship hall where we recalled that last meal that Jesus had with his disciples. In his final time with them, he served them by washing their feet, breaking bread and telling them that this was his body, given for them and sharing wine saying that this cup was the new covenant of his blood. Jesus enjoyed this meal among his closest friends even though he knew that Judas would betray him. He used the post meal time as a final time to teach them and some of his last words were to tell them to love one another and really, by the example of his life and his earlier teachings, he was telling them to love everyone, just as they are, just as he does.
After their meal they went for a walk to the Mount of Olives, to the Western slope where the Garden of Gethsemane is. There Jesus went to pray with Peter, James and John. Jesus told them to sit and wait for him while he took some private time, his own wilderness time, to pray. As it says in Matthew 26: 39, he prays, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but you want.” Here we see Christ’s humanity in full force. As the son of God he knows what he has to do; as a human, it is scary, he knows it will be painful, and like we would, he would rather avoid it. But he defers to God, “Yet not what I want, but what you want.” He is deep in this wilderness time, knowing what is ahead but struggling with the reality of it and he needs the support of his friends, so he turns back to them only to find them asleep. 40: “So could you not stay awake with me one hour?” he says to them in frustration feeling more alone than before. He goes away two more times and each time finds them sleeping upon his return. By the time he wakes them up the 3rd time, Judas and a crowd of chief priests and elders are approaching with swords and clubs: certainly a difficult wilderness time.
After an ironic kiss of betrayal from Judas, Jesus is arrested and, although one of his disciples pulls out a sword to defend him cutting off a servant's ear, Jesus, as always, stops the violence and in Luke’s Gospel, he heals the servant even as he is being taken away to his death. He shows love to his enemies to the very end.
He is taken to the home of the high priest at this late evening hour for a kind of informal trial where they sought to gather witnesses against him, questioning him, but Jesus does not respond until finally the high priest said to him in Matthew 26:63-64 “I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the son of God. Jesus said to him, “You have said so, but I tell you from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of Heaven.”
This was enough. Those who wanted Jesus dead thought of this as blasphemy and began to spit on him. They blindfolded him and hit him. They asked him to prophesy and say who had hit him. Then they took him early Friday morning to the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate seeking his crucifixion. Despite finding him to be innocent and trying to release him, since no evidence was really offered against him, Pilate goes along with the crowd and allows the criminal Barabas to be released for Passover and Jesus to be crucified.
Before they crucify Jesus, they mock him. Give him a purple robe, put a crown of thorns on his head - a literal representation of the wilderness that is painfully pricking him.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus had to carry his own torture device, a wooden cross, alone. In the other Gospels, a bystander, Simon is pressed into service to help. Imagine the wilderness of that walk, being among people but feeling alone. The disciples have scattered. Peter who followed along has denied association with Jesus three times as predicted and is now full of remorse. A very painful death is close at hand and yet Jesus still forgives those torturing him saying as he is on the cross in Luke 23:34, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
Jesus is nailed to his cross between two criminals being similarly crucified. But on Jesus’ cross, Pilate has written: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. One criminal, even as he is crucified with Jesus, mocks him. The other rebukes him noting they deserve to be there but Jesus does not. He says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” and Jesus, loving and welcoming all people even as he was dying said, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise”.
Consider the message of hope from God who forgives even those torturing him and who welcomes a repentant sinner as one of the first people to join him in paradise. Jesus showed that it is never too late to learn and emerge from the wilderness.
Crucifixion is a slow and painful death that could take days. Instead for Jesus, the sky went dark for three hours from noon to 3pm and Jesus dies, by Luke’s account saying, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.”
In John’s account, some of Jesus’ female disciples are there at the base of the cross watching this: his mother Mary, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. They would have to witness the soldiers pierce his side to ensure that he was dead, watching the water and blood run out. You can imagine the wilderness of their grief watching this happen. In some accounts, they were able to watch Jesus be placed in the tomb that Joseph of Arimathea, a secret follower of Christ, purchased and placed him in.
All of the disciples, male and female, felt lost as that tomb was closed. They were plunged into the wilderness of sorrow, disappointment and doubt as they did not yet understand about the promise of resurrection despite Jesus’ teachings. They had believed in Jesus as their savior yet they saw him crucified like a common criminal. What hope was there now?
Wilderness times of pain, doubt, and sorrow cannot be avoided, no matter how much we try. They are a part of humanity as Jesus showed. But what Jesus also showed us is that our time in the wilderness is what brings about the resurrection, that hope is never lost, even when we are. Hope was reborn with Jesus in that empty tomb on that first Easter day.
Throughout Lent our altar and our window ledges were adorned with the wilderness of barren branches, sand, rocks and moss. Today we have grown from that wilderness time and our altar shows the beauty of new growth even in the wilderness. Flower bulbs are living models of resurrection. They die only to be buried anew in soil; nurtured by living water and the sun above, they burst forth in glorious beauty. We give flowers to the sick as a sign of beauty and hope. We give flowers to our friends and partners as signs of love. The Easter Lily is sometimes referred to as the “white robed apostles of hope”.
My friends let us embrace our struggles, our wilderness times, knowing they are part of our journey towards the hope and beauty of resurrection. Peter and John believed but ran back home after seeing the empty tomb. Mary stayed at the tomb in the wilderness of her pain and sorrow and because she was still and waited, she met the risen Christ.
Remember Psalm 46.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
And from the stillness of the wilderness comes the birth of hope. Theologian Father Richard Rohr calls Easter the Feast of Hope, noting, “This is the feast that says God will have the last word and that God’s final judgment is resurrection. God will turn all that we maim and destroy and hurt and punish into life and beauty. What the resurrection reveals more than anything else is that love is stronger than death. Jesus walks the way of death with love, and what it becomes is not death but life.”
After school on Good Friday, I realized I needed some contemplative time to consider what Jesus went through on that day so I took an hour around the perimeter of the Evergreen Cemetery in Rutland. As I considered all of what happened to Christ from Maundy Thursday to today, I occasionally stopped to read a monument or tombstone. One in particular caught my attention. It was an obelisk style monument for Solomon Foot, a U.S. Senator from Vermont who died while he was in office in Washington D.C. In 1866. On the back of the monument, facing the road is carved these words: “As he was expiring he said, “I see it, I see it! The gates are wide open. Beautiful, beautiful!”
To be a Christian means to believe in that beautiful mystery as Rohr explains it, “nothing dies forever, and that all that has died will be reborn in love,”
Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.
Service for March 17, 2024
Old Testament Reading Ezekiel 37: 1-14
The Gospel John 11: 17-45
Sermon: Jesus Wept
I have never seen my father cry. He was raised in a culture that said, “Men don’t cry” presumably because crying showed weakness. Men were supposed to buck up and keep going, no matter what. Even women, in order to be stronger, to move up the corporate ladder, are encouraged not to show emotion or not as much. I think that is very sad. Crying shows compassion and it is also a release, a cleansing of sorts. If you think about it, crying is breath work. A good cry involves having to catch one’s breath, to breathe more deeply - a kind of automatic reset - a calming mechanism almost like yoga breathing.
One wonders where society got this idea that crying was bad when even Jesus cried not once but twice in the Bible. The first recorded time was the story that we read today about the death and resurrection of Lazarus. And one has to wonder, why did Jesus cry when he knew he was about to resurrect Lazarus? He had even already told Martha that. Jesus cried because he was experiencing empathy. He could feel the pain of Mary, Martha and all the others who loved Lazarus and were mourning him as well as his own pain at his loss. The scripture says when Jesus saw Mary and the Jews who came with her weeping, “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved”. After asking where Lazarus was entombed, he began to weep. He joined all of Lazarus’ family and friends in their sorrow even as he knew he was going to end that sorrow by resurrecting Lazarus.
To me, this shows Jesus’ full humanity more than almost anything else.
Theologian and Catholic Priest Richard Rohr says, “In Jesus, God reveals to us that God is not different from humanity. Thus, Jesus’ most common and almost exclusive self-name is “The Human One” or “Son of Humanity.” He uses the term dozens of times in the four Gospels. Jesus’ reality, his cross, is to say a free “yes” to what his humanity daily asks of him.”
After Lazarus’ death, being fully human for Jesus meant being there for and with his friends and family - feeling with them, which is what empathy is.
This, however, is not the only time that Jesus weeps. He also weeps as he reaches Jerusalem riding in on a colt in Luke 19 just before he reaches the Temple and drives out those who were selling things there saying in verse 46 “It is written “My house shall be a house of prayer but you have made it a den of robbers.” In this scripture he foreshadows the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. In verses 41-44 it says, “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God. “
Here Jesus is not crying with empathy but with frustration and sympathy. He cannot connect to them empathetically because they have not listened, they have not recognized what Jesus has been teaching. And what was he teaching, what do they need to recognize? “The things that make for peace.”
Jesus always cares, always loves: feeling with us when we let him in and feeling sympathy for us when we don’t.
Father Richard continues, “ It seems we Christians have been worshiping Jesus’ journey instead of doing his journey. The worshiping feels very religious; the latter just feels human and ordinary. We are not human beings on a journey toward Spirit; we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully human, which for some reason seems harder—precisely because it is so ordinary.”
Jesus showed us both what it means to be fully human and to be fully divine. While we are not divine, we can live into Jesus’ model of being fully human. We can do that journey.
Joyce Rupp in her daily meditation book, Fragments of Your Ancient Name, gives 365 names for God, the one for March 12 is “One Who Weeps” partially inspired by the passage from John that we read today as well as the Luke passage. Hear her reflection:
Scripture tells twice of your weeping. But undoubtedly there were other times besides your tears for a friend entombed and a heartless city swept up in selfishness. Surely your tender tears continue to emerge as you look upon this hurting planet today. Tears for children who are brutally betrayed and every person’s wrenching desolation, Tears for the world’s greed and plunder and the careless way we treat one another.
I don’t know about you, but it is not uncommon for me to start crying at the news. Watching the continued war in Ukraine and the attacks on Gaza, my heart breaks with concern and worry for everyone involved: the Ukranians, Russians, Palestinians and Israelis. Seeing the continued acts of prejudice, violence, hatred, and cruelty in our country and world, I am saddened and frustrated like Jesus was with Jerusalem. I want there to be peace but I sometimes feel like those useless, dry bones thinking what can I do? I feel lost in the wilderness of my own challenges, let alone the world’s and I am not sure of the way out.
But then I pause, take a deep breath and sit with God. I sit with my questions. What can I do for x situation and y situation? I sit and breathe, pray and listen. And a lot of the time I don’t get an answer and I learn to sit with that too. I learn to live with the questions and the mystery. With enough prayer and meditation, it gets a little bit easier to not have the answers but to trust in the possibility - to remember that in all of my feelings, I am not alone. If I let God in, I can be reassured by the empathy - the shared feelings of sadness, frustration, even anger and I can remember that I am not alone on this journey but walking through the wilderness with God.
And sometimes, I can feel God breathing new life into me, inspiring me to do something, to change something. But I can only feel God’s breath of energy, God’s guidance, when I make the room for it, when I quiet my mind and heart to listen, to feel, to see God’s outstretched hand, to see the tears that God is crying with us and for us.
And it is then that I remember that we cry for a lot of reasons. We cry in frustration, sadness and anger, but we also cry tears of joy and love and amazement as I am sure that Mary, Martha and all those mourning Lazarus did when Jesus resurrected him. Isn’t it strange that the very thing we do in our negative emotions, we also do in our most positive ones? Maybe but maybe not. Instead, might tears of joy be a resurrection of sorts? A washing away of the worry, sorrow and all the negatives?
Now that I think about it, I do remember hearing that my father cried at least once, but they were tears of joy. My maid of honor bet my father $5 that he would choke up at my wedding. Dad confidently took that bet but as we all processed out at the end of the ceremony, he was caught on video handing Joanne a $5 bill, while wiping his eyes.
Service for February 25, 2024
Old Testament Reading Genesis 12: 1-4
The Gospel John 3: 1-17
Sermon: Mapping the Journey
I do not know about you but I do not like being lost. I plan ahead so that does not happen. Whether it’s a map or atlas like this, printed directions from a friend or Mapquest, or the more modern GPS on my phone. I want to be plugged in to where I am going.
However, despite the best planning, I still get lost. Not having the greatest sense of direction, I often read the map wrong. Trusting printed directions, what happens when there is an unplanned detour due to road construction? And despite the wisdom of satellites, I am sure that I am not the only one who has found myself led astray by a GPS. One time, on the way to one of my son’s college ski races in Maine, two pots of soup with duct-taped lids in the back, the GPS led me straight into someone’s driveway in some random town along the way. I later heard that the Colby Ski Team had the same problem. We all turned around and heard that infamous: “Rerouting” and prayed that this time it would work.
Rerouting is exactly what God often does with us without a map, Mapquest, or a GPS; God asks us to have the faith that the Spirit will guide us towards the right path when we might have gone a different way.
Abram (soon to be Abraham) was in Haran, which means “highway” or “crossroads” when God calls and says “Go from your country, and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” So the call begins with a command that is followed by a promise, “I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”
And what did Abram do in answer to this call? He did not ask where this land was; he did not ask for a map; he did not ask how at the age of 75 with a barren wife, God could possibly make a great nation of him. He just went and his nephew Lot (and his wife Sarai, soon to be Sarah, and I am sure many others) went with him.
Abram, led by his faith, rerouted his life at age 75, venturing out into the wilderness knowing that God would equip him with what he needed to find his way. He was answering God’s call and believing in God’s promise: the blessing of new land that would be a great nation and an heir to continue the work. God also says “I will make your name great” but this is not so Abraham can feel like an all-powerful leader who will rule over others, but instead so that he “will be a blessing.” Abraham will receive gifts that are meant to be shared. It is clear with God, that it is never all about the individual. God’s gifts or blessings are meant to be shared with all of God’s creation: the planet and all the creatures and people whom God created.
Abraham did not need a map, faith was the map and God’s blessing provided the route.
The Pharisee Nicodemus had faith, he knew that Jesus was a teacher who came from God based on what he had seen him do, but he was not prepared to admit this publicly; he went to Jesus in the night seeking a map. He was essentially saying to Jesus, “show me how a person can be reborn from above, from the Spirit? Map this out for me, will you?”
Jesus tries. He says to him, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
This is not the map Nicodemus wants, it literally blows his mind but not with the Spirit as he asks, “How can these things be?”
“How can these things be?” Seems like a good question for all of this but it illustrates Nicodemus’ lack of spirit. In asking the questions, in asking for the map, he is essentially blocking the Spirit. Being born of or accepting the spirit is a letting go of sorts. Through faith, we let go of having to have all of the answers. Instead, we listen for the Holy Spirit that, like the wind, comes blowing in, gently guiding, gently answering the questions we hold in our hearts: no map required.
Letting go is hard, it might even feel irresponsible or frivolous at times. We need to plan, we need our maps - what happens if we get lost in the wilderness in the middle of winter? We have all heard the horror stories of those who did not survive. We think of the Donner Party trapped in the winter, forced to cannibalism to survive, but that is not the wilderness that God is inviting us to. God does want us to plan as best we can for our physical journeys and God provided Abraham and Sarah and Lot with what they needed for their journey, just as he did with Moses.
However, it is in our faith journeys that we are called to let go and let God. If Nicodemus had been able to really listen, to hold the questions in his heart rather than his head, to just pause, then the Spirit would have come in like a gentle breeze providing the answers: the understanding of what Jesus was saying. Then he would have been able to listen and learn with his heart.
Part of being in the wilderness is pausing. It’s why many of us seek time in the woods. We put a pause on the busyness of life for a reset: a restorative walk in God’s creation without the distraction of the stuff of this world. Hearing the crunch of the leaves or snow under our feet, the birds calling above, feeling our hearts beating in our chests as we travel on a forest path, we can more easily listen and let the Spirit in. Holding our questions as we walk, we can sometimes feel the answers drift in map-like showing us the way our lives should go. The challenge is creating the time and place to let the spirit in. It could be on a literal walk in the woods, field, or beach but it also can be in a metaphoric one. A time carved out to just be and to listen, to come with our burdens, our prayers, our questions and sit with them or walk with them, making room for the spirit to come in maybe not with an exact answer but maybe a gentle nudge to do something or a feeling of acceptance or reassurance.
Jesus spoke of being born of the water and the spirit. The very nature of our physical birth involves water. We float in amniotic fluid which supports our growth and development before we enter this world. We also have the water of Baptism where we are welcomed into the community of faith, often when we are babies, the choice made by our parents.
Allowing the spirit in is a more adult choice. To be spiritual is to open to a sense beyond the physical world; it is where belief/faith resides. Some claim to be spiritual but not religious. They feel something beyond themselves but can’t put a name to it or consider it more cosmic than God. They are still on the journey. Those of us with a belief in God, can name the Spirit as Holy and know that it is of God. Being born of the Spirit is the acceptance of and belief in God in all forms: Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit even though there will always be more to learn. It means we are trying to make time to listen to and feel the Spirit’s guidance in our lives.
It is not by accident that Jesus goes from talking about being born of water and the Spirit and then foreshadows his resurrection. He takes advantage of every opportunity to teach knowing that if the listeners do not get the message now, it will make sense later. He grounds his teaching in what they know: Moses was directed by God to lift up a staff with a serpent on it to cure his people who were bitten by poisonous serpents in the wilderness. Jesus too will be lifted up to cure his people, so to speak. As Jesus says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
And after this we get the scripture that is probably the most well known in the New Testament: John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”
For God so loved the world. Jesus is God’s gift of love to a world gone astray. He provided the model of how to love: unselfishly, even sacrificially, and whom to love: everyone, without exception, all are invited in. God brought a flood before when people went astray but left the rainbow as a promise that, that would never happen again. The second time people needed to be rerouted, God sent love into the world in human form.
This is the Spirit that we need to be open to, to listen for and let blow through us and into us, the Spirit of Love. And guess what? It is already here: no map required.
I want to conclude with a poem “The Wilderness is a Place of Mystery and the Unknown” by Sarah Are
It’s only in the wilderness that you can see the stars.
That’s what city living has taught me.
We can shine a light on the things we want to see–
Fluorescent and bright, lighting up dark alleys.
However, it’s only in the wilderness that you can see the stars.
And it’s only in the dark of night that the questions come.
What is my purpose here? What does God have to say to me?
What does God have to say to suffering?
The sun falls and my doubt rises,
For it’s only in the dark that questions come.
So like Nicodemus in the night,
I will throw my big questions at the sky.
And my voice will reverberate among the stars,
And my questions will echo throughout the dark.
For there in the night, my words form constellations.
And there in the wilderness, my prayers form galaxies.
So there, in the unknown, I trust that I am found.
A light shines in the darkness, friend.
So if ever you’re in the wilderness,
Look up and find the stars.
Amen
Service for February 4, 2024
Old Testament Reading Isaiah 40: 21-31
The Gospel Mark 1: 29-39
Sermon: Serving Gratitude
I have to admit, the feminist in me struggles with the fact that Simon/Peter’s mother-in-law is healed by Jesus, then immediately gets up and serves them. One could get the idea that they needed someone to make lunch so that is why Simon and Andrew told Jesus about her being in bed with a fever as soon as he walked in.
But then I thought about it some more. What would I do if I had been sick in bed and Jesus cured me? I would jump up to serve Jesus as well. I would be so full of gratitude at feeling better, well, and so thrilled that Jesus came for lunch, that I would be happy to cook and serve. When I think about it, that is often how I show my love – in service — and I get as much pleasure out of it as I give, as I am sure many of you do as well.
And this service that Simon/Peter’s mother-in-law gave Jesus was truly a gift because it was a very brief respite for Jesus in between teaching and healing. At sunset that very same evening, the scripture says, “they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons” and it goes on to say “the whole city was gathered around the door.” Wow! How overwhelming! Jesus healed many, quieted and cast out many demons or mental illnesses and was likely exhausted. I can imagine that the gift of service that he received from Simon/Peter’s mother-in-law was greatly appreciated as it sustained him for all of this work.
In fact, Jesus needed to recharge his batteries even more, so he got up early the next morning, while it was still dark, and went out to a deserted place to pray. I do not know about you but I take comfort in knowing that Jesus modeled self-care: a quiet time away from others to center oneself on God, to offer prayers of gratitude, and to gain the strength to do God’s work. Jesus certainly needed that strength because even as he was taking this centering time, the disciples were as the scriptures say “hunting” for him. There was just so much work to do. From there he tells the disciples, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came to do.” And he went forth teaching and healing throughout Galilee.
Jesus was fulfilling the scripture from Isaiah “he gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless…(allowing them to) renew their strength.” But even though the Isaiah scripture says the Creator “does not faint or grow weary” which God doesn’t, Jesus, God in human form, was modeling for us, showing us both that we need to serve others in love and gratitude but also that we need to take time for ourselves: time to rest, pray, and recharge so that we too can do God’s work. We all need time to reflect on what we are grateful for, what we need, and what God is calling us to do.
Gratitude is the title of a very short but powerful book by Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, naturalist and writer. You may have heard of his treatment of a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness encephalitis lethargica that allowed them to move on their own for the first time in decades. It was captured in his book and the movie Awakenings.
As Sacks neared the end of his life, he wrote, “I cannot pretend that I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and given something in return; I have read, and traveled and thought and written...above all I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.” That collection of his final essays was published posthumously under that name; it is a quick read, which I highly recommend.
Raised as an Orthodox Jew in England, Sacks split from his faith at 18 when he admitted an attraction to men and his mother called him an “abomination” likely quoting Leviticus on this subject. I wish she could have instead followed Jesus’ model of loving all people and accepting them all just as God created them. Luckily, Sacks did find acceptance from his relatives later in life. Yet, even without faith, in his final essay “Sabbath” he writes of “the peace of Sabbath, of a stopped world, a time outside time” that his cousin Robert John Aumann, who received a Nobel Prize for his fundamental work in economics, followed religiously calling the Sabbath “extremely beautiful” and noting he would have turned down the Nobel prize if he had to travel on a Saturday. In the end, Sacks felt some nostalgia for the Orthodox Sabbaths of his youth that were just time for prayer and family and a break from the chores of life. He wrote “I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.”
In planning for his final rest, Sacks wanted to see the night sky unobscured by the lights of man. Using Milton’s words, he liked seeing the sky “powdered with stars” and told this to friends who promised to get him outside to see that sky when the time neared. This idea recalls our Isaiah scripture where the Holy One says, “Lift up your eyes and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them by name.”
I hope that when it is my time to leave this earth, I can have Oliver Sacks’ sense of gratitude coupled with the faith that allows me to thank God for it.
A sense of gratitude in the face of adversity is really the ultimate weapon, the ultimate cure. It allows us to focus on the positives - what we have or have experienced – rather than on the negatives, some of which are outside our control.
But gratitude is not just for times of adversity, times of sickness, or at the end of life. What if we could harness the feeling of gratitude on a daily basis?
According to UCLA Health, “Research shows that practicing gratitude — 15 minutes a day, five days a week — for at least six weeks can enhance mental wellness and possibly promote a lasting change in perspective. Gratitude and its mental health benefits can also positively affect your physical health.”
Studies show practicing gratitude in this way lessens depression, anxiety, stress and even heart problems.
When we practice gratitude, we feel better and when we feel better, we have the ability to help or serve others. The practice of gratitude has the power to have a ripple effect, like a rock thrown in a pond, those ripples can extend in concentric circles around God’s creation helping God’s people: all people.
So let’s start serving gratitude regularly, whether that involves going to a quiet place to reflect and pray, writing or teaching about it, serving others - or all three. We, too, can make ripples. Amen.
Epistle Reading: Colossians 3: 1-4
Gospel: John 20: 1-18
This Lent we have followed a theme of wilderness. We have been traveling through the wilderness, sometimes feeling worn out and barren like the branches on the altar; sometimes feeling lost in the challenges we face personally, the challenges our very divided country is facing and the challenges of war, famine, disaster, and conflict that our world faces. It is easy to feel so lost in the wilderness of pain and anger in this world, that we cannot see the path out. We feel like we are surrounded by thorns pricking us from every direction.
But we have also been reminded that we are never alone. Even when we step off the path, getting lost, God is there walking with us, ready to guide us back. In fact, many of us have realized that we need our quiet times in the wilderness to regroup, to begin anew, to finally hear God calling us: that time in the wilderness gives us new hope, even joy. Time in the wilderness of struggle, doubt and pain, for ourselves and the world, prepares us to encounter resurrection.
And on this day, of all days, we want to sing out the alleluias and celebrate the resurrection, as we will. But we have to begin by acknowledging the wilderness that Jesus went through between that last meal with his disciples, his friends as he called them, and the magnificence of the resurrection.
Let me take you back. On this past Thursday night, sixteen of us shared in a Maundy Thursday service downstairs in the fellowship hall where we recalled that last meal that Jesus had with his disciples. In his final time with them, he served them by washing their feet, breaking bread and telling them that this was his body, given for them and sharing wine saying that this cup was the new covenant of his blood. Jesus enjoyed this meal among his closest friends even though he knew that Judas would betray him. He used the post meal time as a final time to teach them and some of his last words were to tell them to love one another and really, by the example of his life and his earlier teachings, he was telling them to love everyone, just as they are, just as he does.
After their meal they went for a walk to the Mount of Olives, to the Western slope where the Garden of Gethsemane is. There Jesus went to pray with Peter, James and John. Jesus told them to sit and wait for him while he took some private time, his own wilderness time, to pray. As it says in Matthew 26: 39, he prays, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but you want.” Here we see Christ’s humanity in full force. As the son of God he knows what he has to do; as a human, it is scary, he knows it will be painful, and like we would, he would rather avoid it. But he defers to God, “Yet not what I want, but what you want.” He is deep in this wilderness time, knowing what is ahead but struggling with the reality of it and he needs the support of his friends, so he turns back to them only to find them asleep. 40: “So could you not stay awake with me one hour?” he says to them in frustration feeling more alone than before. He goes away two more times and each time finds them sleeping upon his return. By the time he wakes them up the 3rd time, Judas and a crowd of chief priests and elders are approaching with swords and clubs: certainly a difficult wilderness time.
After an ironic kiss of betrayal from Judas, Jesus is arrested and, although one of his disciples pulls out a sword to defend him cutting off a servant's ear, Jesus, as always, stops the violence and in Luke’s Gospel, he heals the servant even as he is being taken away to his death. He shows love to his enemies to the very end.
He is taken to the home of the high priest at this late evening hour for a kind of informal trial where they sought to gather witnesses against him, questioning him, but Jesus does not respond until finally the high priest said to him in Matthew 26:63-64 “I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the son of God. Jesus said to him, “You have said so, but I tell you from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of Heaven.”
This was enough. Those who wanted Jesus dead thought of this as blasphemy and began to spit on him. They blindfolded him and hit him. They asked him to prophesy and say who had hit him. Then they took him early Friday morning to the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate seeking his crucifixion. Despite finding him to be innocent and trying to release him, since no evidence was really offered against him, Pilate goes along with the crowd and allows the criminal Barabas to be released for Passover and Jesus to be crucified.
Before they crucify Jesus, they mock him. Give him a purple robe, put a crown of thorns on his head - a literal representation of the wilderness that is painfully pricking him.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus had to carry his own torture device, a wooden cross, alone. In the other Gospels, a bystander, Simon is pressed into service to help. Imagine the wilderness of that walk, being among people but feeling alone. The disciples have scattered. Peter who followed along has denied association with Jesus three times as predicted and is now full of remorse. A very painful death is close at hand and yet Jesus still forgives those torturing him saying as he is on the cross in Luke 23:34, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
Jesus is nailed to his cross between two criminals being similarly crucified. But on Jesus’ cross, Pilate has written: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. One criminal, even as he is crucified with Jesus, mocks him. The other rebukes him noting they deserve to be there but Jesus does not. He says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” and Jesus, loving and welcoming all people even as he was dying said, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise”.
Consider the message of hope from God who forgives even those torturing him and who welcomes a repentant sinner as one of the first people to join him in paradise. Jesus showed that it is never too late to learn and emerge from the wilderness.
Crucifixion is a slow and painful death that could take days. Instead for Jesus, the sky went dark for three hours from noon to 3pm and Jesus dies, by Luke’s account saying, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.”
In John’s account, some of Jesus’ female disciples are there at the base of the cross watching this: his mother Mary, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. They would have to witness the soldiers pierce his side to ensure that he was dead, watching the water and blood run out. You can imagine the wilderness of their grief watching this happen. In some accounts, they were able to watch Jesus be placed in the tomb that Joseph of Arimathea, a secret follower of Christ, purchased and placed him in.
All of the disciples, male and female, felt lost as that tomb was closed. They were plunged into the wilderness of sorrow, disappointment and doubt as they did not yet understand about the promise of resurrection despite Jesus’ teachings. They had believed in Jesus as their savior yet they saw him crucified like a common criminal. What hope was there now?
Wilderness times of pain, doubt, and sorrow cannot be avoided, no matter how much we try. They are a part of humanity as Jesus showed. But what Jesus also showed us is that our time in the wilderness is what brings about the resurrection, that hope is never lost, even when we are. Hope was reborn with Jesus in that empty tomb on that first Easter day.
Throughout Lent our altar and our window ledges were adorned with the wilderness of barren branches, sand, rocks and moss. Today we have grown from that wilderness time and our altar shows the beauty of new growth even in the wilderness. Flower bulbs are living models of resurrection. They die only to be buried anew in soil; nurtured by living water and the sun above, they burst forth in glorious beauty. We give flowers to the sick as a sign of beauty and hope. We give flowers to our friends and partners as signs of love. The Easter Lily is sometimes referred to as the “white robed apostles of hope”.
My friends let us embrace our struggles, our wilderness times, knowing they are part of our journey towards the hope and beauty of resurrection. Peter and John believed but ran back home after seeing the empty tomb. Mary stayed at the tomb in the wilderness of her pain and sorrow and because she was still and waited, she met the risen Christ.
Remember Psalm 46.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
And from the stillness of the wilderness comes the birth of hope. Theologian Father Richard Rohr calls Easter the Feast of Hope, noting, “This is the feast that says God will have the last word and that God’s final judgment is resurrection. God will turn all that we maim and destroy and hurt and punish into life and beauty. What the resurrection reveals more than anything else is that love is stronger than death. Jesus walks the way of death with love, and what it becomes is not death but life.”
After school on Good Friday, I realized I needed some contemplative time to consider what Jesus went through on that day so I took an hour around the perimeter of the Evergreen Cemetery in Rutland. As I considered all of what happened to Christ from Maundy Thursday to today, I occasionally stopped to read a monument or tombstone. One in particular caught my attention. It was an obelisk style monument for Solomon Foot, a U.S. Senator from Vermont who died while he was in office in Washington D.C. In 1866. On the back of the monument, facing the road is carved these words: “As he was expiring he said, “I see it, I see it! The gates are wide open. Beautiful, beautiful!”
To be a Christian means to believe in that beautiful mystery as Rohr explains it, “nothing dies forever, and that all that has died will be reborn in love,”
Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.
Service for March 17, 2024
Old Testament Reading Ezekiel 37: 1-14
The Gospel John 11: 17-45
Sermon: Jesus Wept
I have never seen my father cry. He was raised in a culture that said, “Men don’t cry” presumably because crying showed weakness. Men were supposed to buck up and keep going, no matter what. Even women, in order to be stronger, to move up the corporate ladder, are encouraged not to show emotion or not as much. I think that is very sad. Crying shows compassion and it is also a release, a cleansing of sorts. If you think about it, crying is breath work. A good cry involves having to catch one’s breath, to breathe more deeply - a kind of automatic reset - a calming mechanism almost like yoga breathing.
One wonders where society got this idea that crying was bad when even Jesus cried not once but twice in the Bible. The first recorded time was the story that we read today about the death and resurrection of Lazarus. And one has to wonder, why did Jesus cry when he knew he was about to resurrect Lazarus? He had even already told Martha that. Jesus cried because he was experiencing empathy. He could feel the pain of Mary, Martha and all the others who loved Lazarus and were mourning him as well as his own pain at his loss. The scripture says when Jesus saw Mary and the Jews who came with her weeping, “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved”. After asking where Lazarus was entombed, he began to weep. He joined all of Lazarus’ family and friends in their sorrow even as he knew he was going to end that sorrow by resurrecting Lazarus.
To me, this shows Jesus’ full humanity more than almost anything else.
Theologian and Catholic Priest Richard Rohr says, “In Jesus, God reveals to us that God is not different from humanity. Thus, Jesus’ most common and almost exclusive self-name is “The Human One” or “Son of Humanity.” He uses the term dozens of times in the four Gospels. Jesus’ reality, his cross, is to say a free “yes” to what his humanity daily asks of him.”
After Lazarus’ death, being fully human for Jesus meant being there for and with his friends and family - feeling with them, which is what empathy is.
This, however, is not the only time that Jesus weeps. He also weeps as he reaches Jerusalem riding in on a colt in Luke 19 just before he reaches the Temple and drives out those who were selling things there saying in verse 46 “It is written “My house shall be a house of prayer but you have made it a den of robbers.” In this scripture he foreshadows the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. In verses 41-44 it says, “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God. “
Here Jesus is not crying with empathy but with frustration and sympathy. He cannot connect to them empathetically because they have not listened, they have not recognized what Jesus has been teaching. And what was he teaching, what do they need to recognize? “The things that make for peace.”
Jesus always cares, always loves: feeling with us when we let him in and feeling sympathy for us when we don’t.
Father Richard continues, “ It seems we Christians have been worshiping Jesus’ journey instead of doing his journey. The worshiping feels very religious; the latter just feels human and ordinary. We are not human beings on a journey toward Spirit; we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully human, which for some reason seems harder—precisely because it is so ordinary.”
Jesus showed us both what it means to be fully human and to be fully divine. While we are not divine, we can live into Jesus’ model of being fully human. We can do that journey.
Joyce Rupp in her daily meditation book, Fragments of Your Ancient Name, gives 365 names for God, the one for March 12 is “One Who Weeps” partially inspired by the passage from John that we read today as well as the Luke passage. Hear her reflection:
Scripture tells twice of your weeping. But undoubtedly there were other times besides your tears for a friend entombed and a heartless city swept up in selfishness. Surely your tender tears continue to emerge as you look upon this hurting planet today. Tears for children who are brutally betrayed and every person’s wrenching desolation, Tears for the world’s greed and plunder and the careless way we treat one another.
I don’t know about you, but it is not uncommon for me to start crying at the news. Watching the continued war in Ukraine and the attacks on Gaza, my heart breaks with concern and worry for everyone involved: the Ukranians, Russians, Palestinians and Israelis. Seeing the continued acts of prejudice, violence, hatred, and cruelty in our country and world, I am saddened and frustrated like Jesus was with Jerusalem. I want there to be peace but I sometimes feel like those useless, dry bones thinking what can I do? I feel lost in the wilderness of my own challenges, let alone the world’s and I am not sure of the way out.
But then I pause, take a deep breath and sit with God. I sit with my questions. What can I do for x situation and y situation? I sit and breathe, pray and listen. And a lot of the time I don’t get an answer and I learn to sit with that too. I learn to live with the questions and the mystery. With enough prayer and meditation, it gets a little bit easier to not have the answers but to trust in the possibility - to remember that in all of my feelings, I am not alone. If I let God in, I can be reassured by the empathy - the shared feelings of sadness, frustration, even anger and I can remember that I am not alone on this journey but walking through the wilderness with God.
And sometimes, I can feel God breathing new life into me, inspiring me to do something, to change something. But I can only feel God’s breath of energy, God’s guidance, when I make the room for it, when I quiet my mind and heart to listen, to feel, to see God’s outstretched hand, to see the tears that God is crying with us and for us.
And it is then that I remember that we cry for a lot of reasons. We cry in frustration, sadness and anger, but we also cry tears of joy and love and amazement as I am sure that Mary, Martha and all those mourning Lazarus did when Jesus resurrected him. Isn’t it strange that the very thing we do in our negative emotions, we also do in our most positive ones? Maybe but maybe not. Instead, might tears of joy be a resurrection of sorts? A washing away of the worry, sorrow and all the negatives?
Now that I think about it, I do remember hearing that my father cried at least once, but they were tears of joy. My maid of honor bet my father $5 that he would choke up at my wedding. Dad confidently took that bet but as we all processed out at the end of the ceremony, he was caught on video handing Joanne a $5 bill, while wiping his eyes.
Service for February 25, 2024
Old Testament Reading Genesis 12: 1-4
The Gospel John 3: 1-17
Sermon: Mapping the Journey
I do not know about you but I do not like being lost. I plan ahead so that does not happen. Whether it’s a map or atlas like this, printed directions from a friend or Mapquest, or the more modern GPS on my phone. I want to be plugged in to where I am going.
However, despite the best planning, I still get lost. Not having the greatest sense of direction, I often read the map wrong. Trusting printed directions, what happens when there is an unplanned detour due to road construction? And despite the wisdom of satellites, I am sure that I am not the only one who has found myself led astray by a GPS. One time, on the way to one of my son’s college ski races in Maine, two pots of soup with duct-taped lids in the back, the GPS led me straight into someone’s driveway in some random town along the way. I later heard that the Colby Ski Team had the same problem. We all turned around and heard that infamous: “Rerouting” and prayed that this time it would work.
Rerouting is exactly what God often does with us without a map, Mapquest, or a GPS; God asks us to have the faith that the Spirit will guide us towards the right path when we might have gone a different way.
Abram (soon to be Abraham) was in Haran, which means “highway” or “crossroads” when God calls and says “Go from your country, and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” So the call begins with a command that is followed by a promise, “I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”
And what did Abram do in answer to this call? He did not ask where this land was; he did not ask for a map; he did not ask how at the age of 75 with a barren wife, God could possibly make a great nation of him. He just went and his nephew Lot (and his wife Sarai, soon to be Sarah, and I am sure many others) went with him.
Abram, led by his faith, rerouted his life at age 75, venturing out into the wilderness knowing that God would equip him with what he needed to find his way. He was answering God’s call and believing in God’s promise: the blessing of new land that would be a great nation and an heir to continue the work. God also says “I will make your name great” but this is not so Abraham can feel like an all-powerful leader who will rule over others, but instead so that he “will be a blessing.” Abraham will receive gifts that are meant to be shared. It is clear with God, that it is never all about the individual. God’s gifts or blessings are meant to be shared with all of God’s creation: the planet and all the creatures and people whom God created.
Abraham did not need a map, faith was the map and God’s blessing provided the route.
The Pharisee Nicodemus had faith, he knew that Jesus was a teacher who came from God based on what he had seen him do, but he was not prepared to admit this publicly; he went to Jesus in the night seeking a map. He was essentially saying to Jesus, “show me how a person can be reborn from above, from the Spirit? Map this out for me, will you?”
Jesus tries. He says to him, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
This is not the map Nicodemus wants, it literally blows his mind but not with the Spirit as he asks, “How can these things be?”
“How can these things be?” Seems like a good question for all of this but it illustrates Nicodemus’ lack of spirit. In asking the questions, in asking for the map, he is essentially blocking the Spirit. Being born of or accepting the spirit is a letting go of sorts. Through faith, we let go of having to have all of the answers. Instead, we listen for the Holy Spirit that, like the wind, comes blowing in, gently guiding, gently answering the questions we hold in our hearts: no map required.
Letting go is hard, it might even feel irresponsible or frivolous at times. We need to plan, we need our maps - what happens if we get lost in the wilderness in the middle of winter? We have all heard the horror stories of those who did not survive. We think of the Donner Party trapped in the winter, forced to cannibalism to survive, but that is not the wilderness that God is inviting us to. God does want us to plan as best we can for our physical journeys and God provided Abraham and Sarah and Lot with what they needed for their journey, just as he did with Moses.
However, it is in our faith journeys that we are called to let go and let God. If Nicodemus had been able to really listen, to hold the questions in his heart rather than his head, to just pause, then the Spirit would have come in like a gentle breeze providing the answers: the understanding of what Jesus was saying. Then he would have been able to listen and learn with his heart.
Part of being in the wilderness is pausing. It’s why many of us seek time in the woods. We put a pause on the busyness of life for a reset: a restorative walk in God’s creation without the distraction of the stuff of this world. Hearing the crunch of the leaves or snow under our feet, the birds calling above, feeling our hearts beating in our chests as we travel on a forest path, we can more easily listen and let the Spirit in. Holding our questions as we walk, we can sometimes feel the answers drift in map-like showing us the way our lives should go. The challenge is creating the time and place to let the spirit in. It could be on a literal walk in the woods, field, or beach but it also can be in a metaphoric one. A time carved out to just be and to listen, to come with our burdens, our prayers, our questions and sit with them or walk with them, making room for the spirit to come in maybe not with an exact answer but maybe a gentle nudge to do something or a feeling of acceptance or reassurance.
Jesus spoke of being born of the water and the spirit. The very nature of our physical birth involves water. We float in amniotic fluid which supports our growth and development before we enter this world. We also have the water of Baptism where we are welcomed into the community of faith, often when we are babies, the choice made by our parents.
Allowing the spirit in is a more adult choice. To be spiritual is to open to a sense beyond the physical world; it is where belief/faith resides. Some claim to be spiritual but not religious. They feel something beyond themselves but can’t put a name to it or consider it more cosmic than God. They are still on the journey. Those of us with a belief in God, can name the Spirit as Holy and know that it is of God. Being born of the Spirit is the acceptance of and belief in God in all forms: Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit even though there will always be more to learn. It means we are trying to make time to listen to and feel the Spirit’s guidance in our lives.
It is not by accident that Jesus goes from talking about being born of water and the Spirit and then foreshadows his resurrection. He takes advantage of every opportunity to teach knowing that if the listeners do not get the message now, it will make sense later. He grounds his teaching in what they know: Moses was directed by God to lift up a staff with a serpent on it to cure his people who were bitten by poisonous serpents in the wilderness. Jesus too will be lifted up to cure his people, so to speak. As Jesus says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
And after this we get the scripture that is probably the most well known in the New Testament: John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”
For God so loved the world. Jesus is God’s gift of love to a world gone astray. He provided the model of how to love: unselfishly, even sacrificially, and whom to love: everyone, without exception, all are invited in. God brought a flood before when people went astray but left the rainbow as a promise that, that would never happen again. The second time people needed to be rerouted, God sent love into the world in human form.
This is the Spirit that we need to be open to, to listen for and let blow through us and into us, the Spirit of Love. And guess what? It is already here: no map required.
I want to conclude with a poem “The Wilderness is a Place of Mystery and the Unknown” by Sarah Are
It’s only in the wilderness that you can see the stars.
That’s what city living has taught me.
We can shine a light on the things we want to see–
Fluorescent and bright, lighting up dark alleys.
However, it’s only in the wilderness that you can see the stars.
And it’s only in the dark of night that the questions come.
What is my purpose here? What does God have to say to me?
What does God have to say to suffering?
The sun falls and my doubt rises,
For it’s only in the dark that questions come.
So like Nicodemus in the night,
I will throw my big questions at the sky.
And my voice will reverberate among the stars,
And my questions will echo throughout the dark.
For there in the night, my words form constellations.
And there in the wilderness, my prayers form galaxies.
So there, in the unknown, I trust that I am found.
A light shines in the darkness, friend.
So if ever you’re in the wilderness,
Look up and find the stars.
Amen
Service for February 4, 2024
Old Testament Reading Isaiah 40: 21-31
The Gospel Mark 1: 29-39
Sermon: Serving Gratitude
I have to admit, the feminist in me struggles with the fact that Simon/Peter’s mother-in-law is healed by Jesus, then immediately gets up and serves them. One could get the idea that they needed someone to make lunch so that is why Simon and Andrew told Jesus about her being in bed with a fever as soon as he walked in.
But then I thought about it some more. What would I do if I had been sick in bed and Jesus cured me? I would jump up to serve Jesus as well. I would be so full of gratitude at feeling better, well, and so thrilled that Jesus came for lunch, that I would be happy to cook and serve. When I think about it, that is often how I show my love – in service — and I get as much pleasure out of it as I give, as I am sure many of you do as well.
And this service that Simon/Peter’s mother-in-law gave Jesus was truly a gift because it was a very brief respite for Jesus in between teaching and healing. At sunset that very same evening, the scripture says, “they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons” and it goes on to say “the whole city was gathered around the door.” Wow! How overwhelming! Jesus healed many, quieted and cast out many demons or mental illnesses and was likely exhausted. I can imagine that the gift of service that he received from Simon/Peter’s mother-in-law was greatly appreciated as it sustained him for all of this work.
In fact, Jesus needed to recharge his batteries even more, so he got up early the next morning, while it was still dark, and went out to a deserted place to pray. I do not know about you but I take comfort in knowing that Jesus modeled self-care: a quiet time away from others to center oneself on God, to offer prayers of gratitude, and to gain the strength to do God’s work. Jesus certainly needed that strength because even as he was taking this centering time, the disciples were as the scriptures say “hunting” for him. There was just so much work to do. From there he tells the disciples, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came to do.” And he went forth teaching and healing throughout Galilee.
Jesus was fulfilling the scripture from Isaiah “he gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless…(allowing them to) renew their strength.” But even though the Isaiah scripture says the Creator “does not faint or grow weary” which God doesn’t, Jesus, God in human form, was modeling for us, showing us both that we need to serve others in love and gratitude but also that we need to take time for ourselves: time to rest, pray, and recharge so that we too can do God’s work. We all need time to reflect on what we are grateful for, what we need, and what God is calling us to do.
Gratitude is the title of a very short but powerful book by Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, naturalist and writer. You may have heard of his treatment of a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness encephalitis lethargica that allowed them to move on their own for the first time in decades. It was captured in his book and the movie Awakenings.
As Sacks neared the end of his life, he wrote, “I cannot pretend that I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and given something in return; I have read, and traveled and thought and written...above all I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.” That collection of his final essays was published posthumously under that name; it is a quick read, which I highly recommend.
Raised as an Orthodox Jew in England, Sacks split from his faith at 18 when he admitted an attraction to men and his mother called him an “abomination” likely quoting Leviticus on this subject. I wish she could have instead followed Jesus’ model of loving all people and accepting them all just as God created them. Luckily, Sacks did find acceptance from his relatives later in life. Yet, even without faith, in his final essay “Sabbath” he writes of “the peace of Sabbath, of a stopped world, a time outside time” that his cousin Robert John Aumann, who received a Nobel Prize for his fundamental work in economics, followed religiously calling the Sabbath “extremely beautiful” and noting he would have turned down the Nobel prize if he had to travel on a Saturday. In the end, Sacks felt some nostalgia for the Orthodox Sabbaths of his youth that were just time for prayer and family and a break from the chores of life. He wrote “I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.”
In planning for his final rest, Sacks wanted to see the night sky unobscured by the lights of man. Using Milton’s words, he liked seeing the sky “powdered with stars” and told this to friends who promised to get him outside to see that sky when the time neared. This idea recalls our Isaiah scripture where the Holy One says, “Lift up your eyes and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them by name.”
I hope that when it is my time to leave this earth, I can have Oliver Sacks’ sense of gratitude coupled with the faith that allows me to thank God for it.
A sense of gratitude in the face of adversity is really the ultimate weapon, the ultimate cure. It allows us to focus on the positives - what we have or have experienced – rather than on the negatives, some of which are outside our control.
But gratitude is not just for times of adversity, times of sickness, or at the end of life. What if we could harness the feeling of gratitude on a daily basis?
According to UCLA Health, “Research shows that practicing gratitude — 15 minutes a day, five days a week — for at least six weeks can enhance mental wellness and possibly promote a lasting change in perspective. Gratitude and its mental health benefits can also positively affect your physical health.”
Studies show practicing gratitude in this way lessens depression, anxiety, stress and even heart problems.
When we practice gratitude, we feel better and when we feel better, we have the ability to help or serve others. The practice of gratitude has the power to have a ripple effect, like a rock thrown in a pond, those ripples can extend in concentric circles around God’s creation helping God’s people: all people.
So let’s start serving gratitude regularly, whether that involves going to a quiet place to reflect and pray, writing or teaching about it, serving others - or all three. We, too, can make ripples. Amen.
