Number in Series: Eighth

Don’t Settle for Dirty Water

For this week’s events and happenings, click “Download PDF.”
To watch the worship service, click the YouTube link above.
For this week’s spiritual practice “Why Am I Here?” led by Ivy Anthony, click HERE.
Jeremiah 2:4-13 (NRSV)

4 Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. 5 Thus says the Lord:

What wrong did your ancestors find in me
that they went far from me,
and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?
6 They did not say, “Where is the Lord
who brought us up from the land of Egypt,
who led us in the wilderness,
in a land of deserts and pits,
in a land of drought and deep darkness,
in a land that no one passes through,
where no one lives?”
7 I brought you into a plentiful land
to eat its fruits and its good things.
But when you entered you defiled my land,
and made my heritage an abomination.
8 The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?”
Those who handle the law did not know me;
the rulers transgressed against me;
the prophets prophesied by Baal,
and went after things that do not profit.

9 Therefore once more I accuse you,
says the Lord,
and I accuse your children’s children.
10 Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look,
send to Kedar and examine with care;
see if there has ever been such a thing.
11 Has a nation changed its gods,
even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory
for something that does not profit.
12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
says the Lord,
13 for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
and dug out cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns
that can hold no water.

“Peace Be With You”

For this week’s events, click on “Download PDF.”

Today was our Graduation Sunday in Virch. Congratulations, Graduates of 2020! We love you!

Click YouTube link to watch our virtual service, with a special video just for our grads.

Part 1: Wounded Nation

Good morning, my friends. It’s good to be with you today. 

We are in the midst of two pandemics.  The Covid-19 pandemic that has claimed the lives of at least 107,000 people in the United States.  

And we are in the midst of a racism pandemic. 

And we grieve. Oh we grieve, the exponential loss of black lives.  We grieve so recently the loss of Breonna Taylor – who’s 27th birthday, would have been this past Friday.  We remember and say her name once again today, Breonna Taylor. 

This racism pandemic is one that has plagued our nation since it’s birth.

And so not surprisingly the vulnerabilities and inequities laid bare by the covid pandemic have fallen hardest on Black bodies.  Revealing to us how we have long been deeply sick as a nation, with no balm for the aching.  

As the delayed waves and ripples of awareness make their way across our country uncovering where we have left the wounds of black people raw and untreated,  for 400+ years  – we have a lot to learn about the power and the tenderness of wounds. …how to let our black siblings rest – and how to get at the underlying work of dressing those wounds. 

 

We are a wounded nation. And we have long been a wounded nation.

 

On Monday this week our family talked of vigils, rallies, marches which ones we would be a part of in the days to come – realizing what a privilege it is to have the luxury of choice.  A part of – what that means… to be in solidarity to be an ally?  What we could be a part of changing…. We talked around all of these points – but hadn’t acutely brought Jesus into the conversation.
 

My daughter interrupted and asked, “But does it really matter if we pray?  I mean it’s been so long, people have been praying for so long – and it seems like nothing has changed – nothing is working. So does it matter?”

 

Scott and I reflexively went into a discourse on prayer, “well – it depends on how you think about prayer,  action v. sitting at the periphery… blah, blah, blah…and how our own experiences of faith in our past have led us down these different paths of prayer.”

 

And she interrupted again and said, “Stop – I want you to answer my question – does prayer matter?”

 

Such a disruptive question. 

 

A question that holds within it the bewilderment of what she bears witness to.  Such deep pain, wounding in the world – and the truth of what she knows of God – to help… and yet calling out that this mode of prayer  – does not seem TO WORK. 

We need to start paying attention to, and listening to the voices that say, “Things aren’t working”… whether it’s a 13 yr old – or the wounded crying out in pandemics – or a disciple like Thomas, (who we will spend more time with this morning).  Because these voices will be what HELPS us into building/creating alternative landscapes of care in our world – that hold both the power of the resurrected and wounded Jesus.  

 

[PRAYER] God, show us what’s in these wounds. Invite us into the most intimate, deepest, HARD & messiest parts of ourselves and others. Help us to keep pressing in – to listen and learn – so we can move trusting that this is where you reside also.  

 

Part II: Scripture
Let’s read together the story of the disciple, Thomas.  I invite you into this ancient story this morning – to see how it translates to your own unique, story… let’s read together:

 

John 20:19–29 (NIV)

19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger [IN] where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
****

Jesus has just died. The disciples’ wounds of grief, and despair are so raw. And they are sheltering themselves in a room, they have retreated in fear of the leaders who demanded Jesus’ death, and are still circling – looking for Jesus followers.  And so the disciples go back to the last place they were with Jesus alive.  To find peace. ..

You see these disciples had imagined and believed for a world that was not governed by state-sponsored violence. They had dared to dream and to hope for a world where flourishing of humanity would lend itself to equitable life…a world where healing could be realized for everyone.   

They believed IN resurrection.  

Yet instead they saw death.  Death on the cross of their friend and teacher, their rabbi. And with his death, the dying of their own vision and dreams – for this new kin-dom of God.

And so here they are in a liminal, in-between space, this waiting room.   WAITING. 
Their grief is so much though, and maybe doubt is creeping in too –  this waiting space between death and hope is hard to be in – when everything is atrociously the same as it was the day before. 

What the disciples want in this waiting room is, “peace”.  A version of peace that allows them an escape from the loud threats, a place to quiet their inner turmoil and grief, a temporary loss of sensation – some numbing agent – some anesthesia. They want a version of resurrection to burst into that room, like the sun – shining with warmth and permeating, obvious hope… not a version of resurrection that in it’s sunbeams reveals the injustice and suffering of the world, as abundant as dust particles.  And they ask their own disrupting questions at that familiar table, “What is resurrection then? What is peace?”

And then their answer comes.  Jesus appears to them from behind these locked doors. Resurrection in the flesh. With Bleeding, Open, Raw wounds  – embodying the very thing they don’t want to see aymore – the wounds of injustice… but saying the very thing they hoped for, “Peace be WITH you”.   A bewildering picture, but one they immediately notice as their Lord.


Part I(b) – revisited:  US

We too – are in a waiting room my friends.  This inbetween place… Where  like the disciples we are witnessing death and waiting for resurrection.   

The kind of resurrection that Jesus brings is one with the promise for tomorrow, a way forward when it only looks like dead-ends – an upheaval of unjust systems – flipping tables and turning everything on its head…it’s hope. It’s resurrection. 

But it’s messy and gritty and it will require us to be close to pain.  Now for . And move. And act in love. 

Jesus likes to disturb, surprise and provoke- to roll back stones, and bust through walls .

He asks us to do the same.  He breathes the HOLY Spirit on to these disciples – to send them out into the world – to create a new humanity – to birth something different. New.
And so, instead of “waiting” behind closed doors – Jesus shows us in this scripture how to bring resurrection to our world… and that is to not give in to despair -and not deny the pain – but to get close to the wounds – “proximate to pain”, as Bryan Stevenson the author of Just Mercy tells us.   
Many of you who inhabit black bodies, know this pain by lived experience.  And my words to come are not to ask you to inspect your pain – you know it so well.  My words are for my white siblings to come and lean in closer – but not by probing black people for information,  adding a fresh layer of trauma – 

But by asking one another these disrupting fundamental questions – like “does prayer matter?”, “Is America possible?” “what do i feel or not feel?” “ IS Jesus alive?”

And with the breath of the Spirit, discover the answers – by walking them out – by going into the wounds of our country, by getting closer,  to look at them deeper in ourselves – and follow Jesus in standing in solidarity with the pain of the world around us.  We need to try to continue to agitate ourselves to be proximate to the pain.

So that we can look at such pain, such wounds in Jesus’ hands, his feet, his sides… such pain in our nation,   and say STILL  – HE IS ALIVE… that is resurrection. 

Because to be proximate and ask questions – will help bust down long standing walls and structures.  And seeing the risen Jesus reminds us that the power of love can not be deadened within us.

Part III: Thomas & doubt:

Thomas loved Jesus so much.  He cared so much for the power of resurrection that could be brought to the world..  And he does not shy away from asking the uncomfortable questions  – earlier in this gospel, he says to Jesus, “NO, I don’t know where you are going?  How are we to know where you are going?”  And here in this scripture we see Thomas say to his friends, “Really? You have seen the Lord?  Is it so that Jesus is alive?  I must see it for myself.” 
Because, I doubt it. 

This is vulnerable work.  He too, witnessed the injustice, the violence the brutality  -the death of his teacher, Jesus.  And he too knows that Jesus said he would come back, resurrect.  He cares so much that this be true, for himself and humanity – that he can’t just stand on the outside and passively accept it as true.

So he says, “I must see and touch the wounds.”  The power of vulnerability, how to not just go close to pain and injustice, but to know more about it – to press into it…. 

A friend of mine says that, “Doubt is the friend of questions and the teacher of truth”. (Padraig O’Tuama).  Perhaps Thomas’ disruptive question here, “Is Jesus alive?” – unveils the truth – that yes, Jesus is alive – and this alive-ness looks like resurrection and woundedness.   

Doubt, questions are vulnerable – because they challenge the status quo.  The word vulnerable from the Latin word, “vulnus” – means “wound.”

 

So it makes sense that Jesus’ response to Thomas’ doubt, invites him to touch his wounds, a vulnerable action. If we re-read the words of Jesus – in these verses – we see that Thomas’ need for proof didn’t strike Jesus as a challenge – but was an invitation for Thomas to open up, to be vulnerable to go deeper. “Put your finger [IN] here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it INTO my side. Stop doubting and believe.”  COME IN, Thomas. COME IN from the periphery of the room, the periphery of your faith. Faith in me, is getting close to the pain, the wounding, – within yourself too.. because from here is where the gospel resides and goes forth. 

Doubt, our disruptive questions….. are our faculties for understanding what’s about to happen and where we need to go.  Jesus says, go to the “wounds”.  Go to the places, the people, the cracks where hurt is, pain, discomfort is – and embody Jesus there. BE a prayer there.

Our prayers, our dreams, our hope are birthed often from the spaces where wounds are, where we’ve paid attention to what’s hurting, learned of the injustices, how these wounds were caused. 

My daughter’s question at the table – revealed to me, a peripheral version of prayer.  A way to shelter behind a word, like the disciples, locked behind doors – hoping for  “hollow peace”.. .removed from the debris, the noise, the ache of life. ..” These words prayer, peace – hold no vision if they aren’t embodied…

Proverbs 29:18 says that, “where there is no vision, the people perish” – but Jesus reminds me as he busts through locked doors and hearts –  that he and WE can embody both resurrection and woundedness –  we can call for justice and peace – and in this people LIVE.

Thomas shows us that the vision that he and his fellow disciples had for the kin-dom of God ..the dreams they held of sharing the good news with so many – the hope they had for a more just world… would only be birthed when they became embodied….  When they took on flesh, broken, wounded flesh. 

 

Today I ask to touch Jesus’ wounds  – his hands his feet his side.  Because I grieve today – I have grief upon grief … because I need to know that he is tender, and alive in this crazy waiting room of life  – where I strain to see resurrection.   And I ask to touch Jesus’ wounds as a prayer – to draw me from the periphery of my “stilted” faith, to active faith.


How many of you today, are walking around with fresh wounds? 
How many of you have wounds that have been gaping and aching for a long, long time?

Part IV: “Peace be with you”
Jesus says, “Peace be with you.”  “Peace be with you.”

This peace goes beyond what the disciples were hoping for when they went into that upper room.  This peace is a deep call, an embodied prayer.  Birthed from known places of woundedness and injustice.  And from a place where the HOLY SPIRIT breathes her powerful breath. 

I invite as Jesus does – for those black siblings among us who need peace to be REST.. to rest.  To find peace in the  familiarity and comfort of trusted friends.   And I am inviting those who CAN to find peace in action.  To act, to go out and disturb unjust peace – on behalf of those who need rest.  

Peace be with you, as you move OR as you rest.  For those of us who move – know that peace is not an escape from what is hard, or from what is loud, or  painful – but it is a way into the wounds with hearts and eyes and ears wide open. It’s not a word to shelter under, to stay separate from the world.  It is what we pray for to STAND IN the wounds, it’s what we pray for to CALL out injustice, it’s what we embody when we get proximate to those who ache, are tired and hopeless.  PEACE is a strong, powerful, ACTIVE force that generates and binds us to one another, that helps us resist numbness and keeps us intimately engaged.

So many of us wish to return to normal, rush to regain a sense of previous familiarity.  But if the therapists among us are right – we will not return to “normal,” ever again..we will forever be marked by this time…    And if the black voices among us are right – we should not want to return to “normal” ever again.  


So it is time for us to come close to Jesus, with our  doubt, to get intimate, vulnerable, to be uncomfortable….  Not just intellectualize or create policy or laws to help thwart pain and injustices… BUT use our bodies to  speak  -and drive justice…to change hearts and heal.  THIS IS why I think JEsus says “peace be with you.”  We can’t feel that peace, without justice… and we can’t feel that justice without going to the source of the pain..

What will we shape, imagine, dream, vision for – and how will we pray? What will we embody?

What do our mouths ask for? – and how will our own bodies/our flesh be part of the answer?

Thomas shows us where to begin – with the wounded, resurrected Jesus.  

The one who holds the whole world in his hands.  The  pain and joy and trauma and beauty – and asks US to also hold it too –  asks US to embody him in the world .  

May we greet today as resurrected and wounded people, and may we be greeted by Jesus at every turn saying “peace be with you”.  “Peace be with you.”

 

Ending Prayer:

I’m thankful today for how my daughter pushes me to pray connected to wounds and resurrection in my body….  and how the scriptures echo her thoughts, “not to pray like the hypocrites, who love to pray standing in the synagogues – (and in front of churches) – and on the street corners to (merely) be seen by others.” Matthew 6:5…..but to pray,

9 “Oh God, Divine parent of us all – *in whom is heaven* (New Zealand Prayer Book).

Holy, Loving, wounded one is what we call you. 

May your love be enacted in this world THROUGH us.
and may you be our LIVING guide to create the world now, and as we imagine it to be.
11 Give us what we need to do this work – today, our daily bread.

12 And forgive us our debts,  as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us – Oh God, deliver us –  from the evil one.’

Peace be with you.  Peace be with you.  Peace be with you – today, my friends.

There is Enough

We’ve got a lot going on today so I’m going to get right into it here with some words from Jesus.  We are finishing up our spring prophetic living series. Next week, and for all 11 weeks of summer at Reservoir, our pastoral team will speak at our 10:30 services as we’re guided by the Bible texts of the day. Rather than choosing those texts as part of a series, we’ll draw them from a shared Bible reading plan called the lectionary, that churches in many traditions use. We keep a daily version of this Bible reading plan on our website, where it’s called Read the Bible Together, and we’ll be using the Sunday weekly version of that calendar this summer, just like we did last year.

But today we’re wrapping up these 8 weeks we’ve called Prophetic Living – living as if our best hopes in God are timely and true. We’ve drawn from a smattering of the wisdom of the ancient Hebrew prophets in our Bible’s Old Testament, and a bit from Jesus when he’s functioning as a prophet too. Both Christianity and Islam esteem Jesus as a truth teller; I think the teaching of Jesus holds pretty broad respect in non-religious American culture at large as well. Although most Americans, just like most Muslims and just like most Christians, haven’t really grappled a lot with the content of the teaching of Jesus.

Jesus’ words are on the one hand so simple, and at the same time so deep they’re kind of inscrutable. Jesus tells these stories about farming and fish and water and widows that are earthy and grounded and at the same time seem to nudge us toward a life that impossible – impossibly hard, impossibly beautiful, impossibly provocative, impossibly good. I come in and out of passion and interest with most religious things, but I think I will never tire of the words of Jesus.

Let me share a few of them right now. In Luke’s good news, Jesus tells this little story. Jesus says:

15 Then Jesus said to them, “Watch out! Guard yourself against all kinds of greed. After all, one’s life isn’t determined by one’s possessions, even when someone is very wealthy.” 16 Then he told them a parable: “A certain rich man’s land produced a bountiful crop. 17 He said to himself, What will I do? I have no place to store my harvest! 18 Then he thought, Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. That’s where I’ll store all my grain and goods. 19 I’ll say to myself, You have stored up plenty of goods, enough for several years. Take it easy! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself. 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?’ 21 This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.”

-Luke 12:15-21 (CEB)

Jesus, what a story you tell, Jesus. It’s funny. This guy is so excited, so pleased with his own good luck and clever ideas. And then God enters the story, and depending on your point of view, or the mood you’re in that day, it gets even funnier, or it gets kind of dark.

“Fool, tonight you will die. How’s that barn doing for you now, fella?”

Jesus’ listeners, who were largely what we’d consider really poor, probably would have cheered this turn in the story. But it’s provocative too, isn’t it? I’m not going to try to answer all the questions this story raises, because I want to focus on something else. But I really wanted to tell this story, and raise the questions it asks about how we accumulate and what’s important.

This guy and his barn and what it all means at his death – I’m going to mainly just let it hang there. I don’t think the takeaway is to spend zero energy planning for our future – to give no thought to our future is sometime to ensure our future regret and to ensure trouble for our loved ones.

But to my mind, Jesus is suggesting that a focus on accumulating possessions and wealth and security for ourselves, makes us not a very good friend of God, and not even a very good friend to ourselves.

Why is that? And what is the prophetic alternative Jesus is pitching?

That’s where I want to go. Let’s keep reading the rest of this section of Luke.

22 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. 23 There is more to life than food and more to the body than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither plant nor harvest, they have no silo or barn, yet God feeds them. You are worth so much more than birds! 25 Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? 26 If you can’t do such a small thing, why worry about the rest? 27 Notice how the lilies grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. 28 If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, how much more will God do for you, you people of weak faith! 29 Don’t chase after what you will eat and what you will drink. Stop worrying. 30 All the nations of the world long for these things. Your Father knows that you need them.31 Instead, desire his kingdom and these things will be given to you as well.

32 “Don’t be afraid, little flock, because your Father delights in giving you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to those in need. Make for yourselves wallets that don’t wear out—a treasure in heaven that never runs out. No thief comes near there, and no moth destroys. 34 Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.

-Luke 12:22-34 (CEB)

So I think what we do with these words has a lot to do with the tone that we imagine Jesus speaking them. Now I hate it when people tone police my words, like when I say something to one of my kids, and they’re like: Dad, why’d you have to say that? And I’m like, I said: Hey, what do you need? And they’ll say to me: No, it’s that tone of voice you said it in.

Which is totally annoying, and totally fair, because I do the same thing to them, like: Don’t you look at me with that tone of voice.

It’s true. So much of our communication is beyond the words themselves – our tone and posture and body language. And here we have these words of Jesus on the page, and what and how we think about Jesus is going to have a big impact on how we take these words.

So if we imagine Jesus to be kind of strict and fed-up and annoyed with people who are getting in the way of the whole Son of God thing he’s trying to do, then we’ll hear these words as something like: Get. It. Together. You faithless people, who are so obsessed with money, knock it off. Pay attention to God instead.

And you know what, if we think this is how Jesus talks, we may or may not agree with the point we think he’s making, but we will not do it. He’ll seem too strict and too hard, and we’ll ignore his words and get all defensive or ashamed about it, but we will not do anything he says. Or we’ll do what we think he’s saying, but we’ll be as smug or critical or superior as we think Jesus is, and that too will be full of anxiety and an empty heart. And that will miss the point as well.

Instead I encourage you to believe that Jesus is gentle and that even the provocative things he says are said kindly and without any anxiety. So here, Jesus is like: “Sweetie.” He actually says, Little Flock, which is affectionate and warm, but I’ve never really been around a flock of anything before, so it doesn’t land. But I have this one friend who calls me Sweetie sometimes. It was weird and frankly horrifying to me for a while, and you do not have permission to call me that if you’re not related to me, but with this one friend, I got used to it, and now it’s warm and I take it with the affection he means when he says it.

Anyway, Jesus is like: Little Flock, sweetie, it’s OK. I know that life is hard. There is so much you can worry about. But there’s a better way. I’ve got your back. I know what you need. But take a look over here. There are people, there are treasures, just waiting for you.

I had this thing with Jesus recently when I was reminded how gentle he is and reminded about striving too. It started when I got ridiculously obsessed with exercise for a month or so. Part of my ADHD involves some impulsivity and a tendency to hyper-focus now and then on certain things. And last month, that involved working out, probably too much. OK, definitely too much.

Now there are worse things than working out, I suppose, but I was feeling a little embarrassed by how much time I had put into this, and kind of judgy on myself as well. And I had spiritualized that self-judgment, because when I talked to Jesus about this, I thought maybe Jesus was asking me what I was doing, in a particular judgy way I won’t get into right now.

So I tell this friend of mine, someone called a spiritual director – he’s basically my pastor – about this and about what I thought Jesus was saying.

And my friends says: just to be clear, those judgmental questions – are you sure they were the voice of God, or is it possible those were your thoughts about yourself, Steve? And he waited to say more, as I thought about it and realized: you know, I’m not so sure the judgment on me was coming from Jesus. That may have been me assuming how God sees me again. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. So many of us shape our image of God in the image of the angry or emotionally shut down or neglectful or critical authorities of our youth. And so we make gods for ourselves that don’t particularly honor God or ourselves.

But now, open that the real God might see me kindly, my friend suggested some other ways to interpret all the exercise I’d been doing: a less judgmental, even a more positive way of framing it. And somehow, it opened me up to what I came to believe was the actual voice of Jesus. Where in a silence in that conversation, this thought came to mind that felt like Jesus to me, saying Steve, this is good that you’re taking care of yourself. And Steve, I love that you’re joining in with your kids in things to do together too. But Steve, sweetie, is there a reason you’re going after this so much? Why are you striving, Steve? What are you striving for?

This to me sounded like Jesus, affirming the good he saw in me, like someone who knows and loves me and is gentle with me. And in the context of that gentle knowledge and love, raising something I need to see: why are you striving?

That word striving means so much to me. Because striving – working hard, working ambitiously, even impulsively, is in many areas of my life, part of how I’ve built a good life for myself. I’ve gotten some good things from striving.

But striving – pushing myself hard, ambitiously – is one of the ways that since I was teenager, I’ve tended to avoid my pain and not engage the most important things going on in my life too.

Some of us strive because we worry, and that’s our predilection. We struggle with anxiety. And thankfully there is help for that and we can make peace with that too, that this is part of who we are, and that’s OK, and we can learn with help to manage it. I’m not talking about that kind of worrying and whatever striving that might produce. And I don’t think Jesus is either.

I’m talking about the striving that people like me do, putting all this energy and self-protective labor into our drive because we’re trying to avoid an ache in our lives or because we’re afraid of the future.

Jesus says: I understand. But look at the flowers, look at the grass. God makes it so beautiful and how much more will God do for you. If we strive because there’s this ache or this problem we’re trying to avoid, we don’t have to, because God loves us. And we can sit with our lives with that same compassion. How much more will God do for you.

And if we strive because we’re afraid of the future, for what it holds for us or for our kids or for this earth, Jesus is like: look at the birds. They have no thought of the future, but God takes care of them, and no offense to the birds, but you are worth so much more.

When it comes to worry and striving, Jesus addresses our pragmatism. He asks: when has this ever worked? When have we made our life longer? When have we clenched our teeth and gritted out our way into joy? Jesus even manages to slip in a little dig at the famous King Solomon, the archetype of wealth and power in his culture. Jesus does this little side by side comparison. On the one side, there’s King Solomon – all the wealth and glory and fashion you could ever dream of striving your way up to. On the other side, grass. King Solomon, grass.

Have you been outdoors this spring? Grass wins. Really. This world God made and sustains is so beautiful.

What King Solomon-type are you striving to be? What vision of success or wealth or power or beauty or worthiness are you wishing you could worry or work or white-knuckle yourself into?

You’re better than that. You be you, the beautiful one God made, the beautiful one you are already.

You are enough, this world is enough, has enough, because, Jesus says, God is enough.

All the nations of the world want the things you want, Jesus says. And God, your good parent, knows what you need.

But think about what happens to us when we don’t think we’re enough, when we don’t think God has enough, when we’re striving and striving.

Our gaze becomes very focused and very small. Jesus calls it food and clothing, but it could be a lot of things. We can only see that next rung in our achievement, or that next dollar, or that next better day in our future. Or more often than not, we only see that opportunity that passed us by, that failure behind us or looming in front of us, that fatal flaw in our appearance or our family or our children or our fate.

Worry and striving lead us to a small and unhappy gaze.

While Jesus is saying, my Father has a Kingdom for you.

Now, a small aside here, we’ve spent time over the past year now and then encouraging us that some of the default patriarchal language and in our religious heritage isn’t the only vocabulary we have for God. Jesus again and again calls God Father, but there’s a subtext teaching us that God is Mother to us too. I’ve taught multiple times that family, or kin-dom, can be a great way of understanding what Jesus is getting at when Jesus talks about the Kingdom God is growing.

Today, in traditional church settings, is called Trinity Sunday, after the Christian formulation of the mystery that God is one being expressed in three persons – traditionally called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And theologians have been helpful to us in recent years in giving us broader ways, more language, to frame this three-fold personhood of God, so Father-Son-Holy Spirit can also be to us Maker-Guide-Wisdom, or Mother-Sibling-Advocate.

So much space in God, so much language to help us know and love and move close to God in ways that suit us today.

But this particular day being Father’s Day, I’m going to stay old school and just work Jesus’ language in this passage of Father and Kingdom.

Because what better gift can a Father give a child than to say: what you worry about today, I’ll help you take care of that. But look, there’s so much more for you too. Let me show you the best and biggest things in this world.

Perhaps a father, or if not perhaps a father-figure, has done that for you before – come alongside to help or encourage or protect and then also to help you see bigger or better or more beautiful things than you’d noticed before. Perhaps if you’re a father, you’ve done that for a child.

Jesus says this is what God is doing for God’s kids, to try to shift out attention from our striving and fears that we aren’t enough, that this world doesn’t have enough for us, and to show us this big and beautiful thing God is doing on the earth, this thing Jesus calls God’s Kingdom. God is growing people and places and spaces where God’s good and generous ways come to life.

And Jesus is saying: look at that for a while, be part of that, grow that with me. Open up your gaze. Find a bigger goal. Build a better treasure. Try trusting that the smaller things will take care of themselves.

I spent a lot of my late 20s with a smaller gaze, striving, worry that I wasn’t enough, that God didn’t have enough for me. Partly because of the family I was raised in, partly because of my own hang-ups, I was so afraid that my life wouldn’t amount to enough, that the story of my career and all the rest of me would be a failure. And most of that decade, I felt I didn’t have enough money, and so I worried about how money was spent in my household and felt and thought all kinds of judgy things about people and money in my life. And these not enough ways always made my life harder and smaller, but there were break-throughs in that first decade of my adult life in seeing the bigger, and more beautiful world God was trying to build and have me be a part of.

One of those ways was falling in love with and then marrying Grace. Because for me, that was a way of taking my eyes off of my own “not enough” and on to someone else, and starting to learn to love – to seek someone else’s highest good. I’m still not very good at this, but I’ve come to see some of the best and most beautiful things God is doing come when my gaze stays on someone else and on loving and appreciating and encouraging what I see. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be. Treasure your own needs and fears, and your heart just stays with you. Treasure others’ joy and fulfillment as well, and your heart gets tied up with them too, which is a path to some amount of pain, but a path to so much joy as well.

You obviously don’t need to be married or have kids to have this experience. For me, in my 20s, marriage and then having my first child were windows into learning to love. But so was youth work – first college ministry and then public education. And for you, it might well be happening in some other way.

I even had a little taste in my 20s of learning the Father’s beautiful, more than enough Kingdom on the terms that Jesus is going to in this passage, with money. Sell what you have and give it away to those who need it more, Jesus says. Make yourself better wallets – ones that will last.

I didn’t have a ton of money in my 20s, but with what I had, I made a lot of bad money choices. Who hasn’t? I blew money on a couple dumb things. I didn’t use money toward some great things I could have. There was even a time when one of my grandparents died and I got a life insurance payment, I hadn’t known about. I had a couple thousand dollars I was going to try to learn to invest with. One of my friends insisted I put it on this new company he was buying his books from online. He said it was called Amazon, and that if he had any money to invest, he’d put it there. I was like: Amazon, a book store you can’t even visit and open the books. No way.

If I had invested $1,000 in Amazon back then, I’d have $1,208,000 today. That’s a lot more money than I have. That might have been nice. I didn’t do that, though.

One thing I did, though, is know that it’s always broken my heart when kids are neglected and abused. And with the couple thousand dollars of the insurance money that Grace and I were ready to give away, I found an organization that would use that money to send four girls in Southeast Asia to high school and out of risk for human trafficking. And when we gave that money and got that report, I cried for joy as much as I ever had to that point. That just seemed like a huge treasure we had our found our way into.

And despite my many mistakes, and many moments of striving and fear and small-mindedness, each time I’ve been part of a big and beautiful thing God has done, it’s shaped my heart in ways nothing can change, and no one can take away.

But now I’m not in anything like my 20s. I’m mid-way through my 40s now. And so instead of asking: what life will I build for myself? Now I’m asking: how do I feel about this life that I’ve built, and that has been built for me? What parts do I treasure? What parts do I accept? What parts do I course correct?

How in all that can I say: There is enough. With the help of God and friends, I am enough. Life has enough. God is enough.

Thankfully, I find that as I’m doing this, because of my engagement in this faith community, I’m surrounded by encouragement and models in this regard.

Last week I spoke with someone in their 40s who has more money than they expected to have at this point in life, and we were talking – not for the first time – about a way they felt a desire to use some of that money toward something beautiful they thought God was wanting to do in the world. And when I went to appreciate them for their generosity, they said: hey, it’s God’s money. And they said it so reflexively, so quickly, that it was clearly the result of years of thinking in that regard, years of learning that when their money is tied to God’s beautiful work in the world, they have treasure.

A couple weeks ago, I was with a colleague of mine who is based in Mattapan. He’s a Haitian-American pastor, who also runs a small business to support his family. And in his ministry, and through his business, and with huge swaths of his so-called free time, he advocates for his fellow immigrant congregants and customer and community members, whose immigration status and life in this country are less secure than his. I find myself wondering sometimes why he puts so much work into this when his life is secure now, but then I notice that he’s not striving to make his mark in the world or anything. He’s got a mission, and he finds passion and joy in it. And that encourages me to give a little more to God’s beautiful work securing the futures of vulnerable residents of my nation. I’m not alone in this congregation. Many of you are doing the same, which is why we’re celebrating World Refugee Day today, because there’s an awful lot of work to do on behalf of our immigrant and refugee and asylum-seeking brothers and sisters, but there are many of us to do that work, and many of us to do it. Stop by the tables in the dome at the end of the service to learn more.

I could tell a lot more stories about the people in this church, and the people throughout my life, that are inspiring me to find a better treasure by building a better wallet, who are encouraging me to step into the big and beautiful things God is doing around me.

But instead of more stories, I’ll just punctuate this by saying this is not another burden, not a set of hard things God is wanting to make you do, but a delight and joy for us all. This is part of what it means, Jesus says, for God to be a good Father to us all – to free us from our fears, to tell us we are enough and this world is enough because God is enough for us, and then to not shield us from pain or just give us everything we once thought we wanted. Good parents don’t give our kids everything they want, and we know that it’s not possible and not even good to shield our kids from every pain. Instead, God is a good Father, and a good Mother, to us all, by taking care of us, and especially to calling us into treasuring all the big and beautiful things God is doing around us, and letting God do some of that through us as well.

An Invitation to Whole Life Flourishing

In personal interactions and in systems, generously do what diminishes the causes of other people’s stress and striving.

Spiritual Practice of the Week

Rest. Refocus. Aim to serve the person and purposes of God.

The Good That Comes When We Remember We’re Dust

Today is the last week in our early fall series we called An Embodied Faith. The goal of these eight weeks of teaching and worship was to explore how a Jesus-centered faith can speak to us as whole people. After all, whatever you want to call all the parts of the human experience – body, mind, soul, spirit, whatever – we’re all in the end just one thing. You can’t split us into parts and still have us. And the really cool thing about a Jesus-centered faith is that it tells us God gets that at every level. God, after all, has joined the human experience incarnate, God in a body, which is what our tradition says Jesus was.

 

Clearly there are toxic forms of Christianity that only care about the afterlife and some part of us you’d call soul or spirit. And there are unhealthy forms of religion and ethics that shame our bodies or ignore our minds, or dismiss our deepest aspirations. But embodied faith connects the God who made us all with the whole of our experience.

 

And I thought: we can’t talk about embodied faith without talking about how to make meaning out of what are bodies actually are. Glorious as they are, they’re also awful. They get sick and fall apart. Our bodies remind us in big and small ways that we’re dying. We’re all made of dust.

 

You hear this phrase sometimes at funerals – ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It’s poetry that references a feature of the Jewish and Christian origin story. These faiths assert a special dignity and beauty of the human experience that is fairly unique in the pantheon of world philosophy and religion. But they also assert what is common really to all faith and science – an understanding that we are made of dust.

 

The Bible has this bit of existential poetry in a book called Ecclesiastes; that’s one of the places this is stated. It goes like this:

 

Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 (NRSV)

19 For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

 

Every year, our church makes a big deal of this six week season before Easter. We call it 40 Days of Faith. Traditionally, it’s been called Lent and begins with this holiday called Ash Wednesday, when pastors or priests smudge ashes on your forehead and remind you of your mortality. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We’re all going to die.

 

The first year I did that, I thought – this is somehow very intimate and very creepy and very sobering all at once. But I’ve also found that being reminded of this dust to dust nature of our bodies takes us to some good places, grounds us, uplifts.

 

So today, I’m going to share some meditations on the good that can come when we remember that our dying bodies are made of dust. In particular, I think we can grow connection and compassion, take away some really helpful thoughts about criticism along these lines, and move into profound hope as well.

 

So that’s the outline of this talk, if it helps you to follow along – connection, compassion, criticism, and hope. You ready?

 

Connection.

 

The other week, I found myself facing down a conference table’s worth of lawyers in our attorney general’s office, trying to represent a national network of faith-based organizers on immigration concerns.

 

When I realized I’d be playing an important role in these negotiations, I felt my shoulders tense a little. My mouth started to go dry. Like I used to feel when I was younger before track races, I felt my stomach start to turn over as I got ready to speak with powerful people about a topic they understand better than I do.

 

But then a friend – a fellow person of faith – told me: It’s alright, Steve. All power comes from God. There’s no one higher or lower than each other. We’re all the same.

 

That helped. After all, it’s true – we’re just human. We’re all going to die one day. We are all of the dust.

 

Remembering this doesn’t just help me overcome fear, but make connection, both to other living things and to the earth. We face something of an epidemic of fear and loneliness and alienation in our age. And yet to know that my neighbor and cashier and sons are all dust, that the public figures I most adore and those I most resent all share my same material origins and destiny, is to remind me that we are all connected. I can look into the eye of any human being and say – there is my sister, there is my brother.

And sometimes when I’m nervous or just a little unmoored, not feeling my place in things, I literally reach down and touch the ground and remember that no matter where I am, I am at home. I am from the earth, of the earth.

This is kind of a new insight for me, but it’s an old one in the spirituality and thinking of First Americans. That we’re all related – humans to humans, and even humans to all living things and to the earth itself.

This is part of what Ecclesiastes is getting at in its own dour way, when it tells us that humans, animals, all life returns to the same ground from which we came.

We need to practice and teach this deep bondedness of all human beings to one another if we’re going to have an end to the kind of hate crimes and mass violence we saw in yesterday’s synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. And we explore the implications of this deep connection of all living things to one another and to the earth itself if we want our species and our planet to flourish over the next century and beyond.

Sometimes I’m ready for the big stage with this – human rights, ecology, public action. And sometimes I just need to touch the ground and have that help me remember – here I am, at home anywhere I go on the earth, grounded.

In the scriptures, though, to be made out of dust isn’t just to be connected through our shared mortality, though, it’s also to be connected to the fondness God feels for us, and that we can share with one another.

In the Bible’s songbook, we get this:

Psalm 103:13-18 (NRSV)

As a father has compassion for his children,
    so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.
14 For he knows how we were made;
    he remembers that we are dust.

15 As for mortals, their days are like grass;
    they flourish like a flower of the field;
16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
    and its place knows it no more.
17 But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
    on those who fear him,
    and his righteousness to children’s children,
18 to those who keep his covenant
    and remember to do his commandments.

 

This is beautiful to me – that when God thinks about us, he remembers what we’re made from. And when he sees all this carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and whatever else we are – this elaborately made, living, breathing pile of dirt – God doesn’t pity us or resent us or anything. Our earthy mortality and limits stir God’s compassion.

Unlike ourselves, the God of the Universe is relaxed about our weakness, and understanding of our flaws, because God knows we are dust.

A friend of mine sent me an article on obesity recently, particularly the great shaming that those of us who are overweight so constantly endure – from our culture, from ourselves, and even from our physicians. One of the takeaways was to wonder what it would be like for our sanity and health if we just were to accept that we each have to do the best with the body that we have. To be kinder to ourselves, and to experience greater kindness and acceptance from others, would have a greater impact on our health and well-being than any well-meaning advice or criticism.

Whereas shame kills, compassion and kindness stir life.

When I am most disappointed in myself or someone else, this has become my new mantra. We are only dust. When I remember this, I’m nudged a little toward acceptance and compassion, and better things happen next.  

Reservoir had a retreat Friday afternoon and yesterday. 260 of us spent the front half of this weekend bundled up in a seaside hotel as yesterday’s Nor’easter barreled through the Cape. Our theme was drawn from a beautiful little book by the late priest Henri Nouwen.

 

Henri Nouwen lived a remarkable life. He was a prominent academic – writing books, giving lectures around the world, holding prized positions at both Yale and Harvard. But then a chance encounter led him to a small community of people with profound physical and mental disabilities and their caregivers. Nouwen moved into this community as their pastor, and lived there – giving and receiving compassion in community – for the last decade of his life.

 

And this book he wrote there is called Can You Drink the Cup? The cup in this book stands for three things. It’s an image of suffering, as it is sometimes in the scriptures. Life’s long, we all suffer – can we handle the sufferings of life?

 

It’s also an image of what the prophet Jeremiah and what Jesus call the new covenant. The new promise to all people to know God internally. So Nouwen asks if we can walk with Jesus into a life governed by faith, hope, and love. Can we live an existence, even in our sorrows, that is still filled with love, joy, and peace?

 

But the last thing Nouwen is talking about is a cup as a metaphor for our whole life. There’s a lot in these cups of ours. At the start of this past week, I stood on a stage in front of 1400 people to help lead our city’s people of faith in pushing for love, justice, and the health of our city. I stood before dozens of you who were there with me. I stood alongside prominent clergy in our city, before important political leaders and public officials. It was kind of a heady evening.

And then at the end of the week, driving my family en route to our retreat, I was rear-ended in traffic by a tone-deaf driver who smashed our car, messed up our week, and barely apologized. Grace, me, the kids, we’re all more or less OK, I think, a little shaken, not badly hurt.

 

But there’s a week in the life – the high highs, the low lows, the little smiles and pains and joys and indignities in between. Our lives hold so many sorrows and joys and delights and sufferings. There’s so much mundane and rich, empty and full, sometimes right on top of each other.

 

And it can be hard to hold these cups of our lives. To stay present to it all, without numbing out in distraction and busy-ness and whatever else we’re addicted to.

 

But our lives aren’t hard for God to look at. We’re not too sad, or too failing, too fat or poor or lonely or anything else. God knows that we are dust, and God has unending, all-knowing, all-encompassing compassion for us all.

 

On this point of compassion, I want say a word about criticism as well. Because over the past decade, being in a couple of leadership roles in two different institutions, I have learned that we can be a harsh and critical people, we humans.

 

When you’re leading an organization, you sometimes become the center of its criticism – both the internal frustrations people feel with you and with the organization, and the external complaints as well. It was way worse as a principal – someone rolled up to me every day – in my office, on my email, out and about the school hallways – with a choice word about what I or the school was doing wrong.

 

As a pastor, I get a lot less exposure to criticism, but when it comes, sometimes it’s more colorful. Semi-anonymous letters, full of Bible verses, from angry-sounding people I’ve never met.

 

So, I think I’ve learned a thing or two about how to give and receive criticism, if we really believe we are people made of dust, called to lives of compassion.

 

So I want to pause mid-sermon here, and mention just two or three thoughts about better ways to give and receive criticism.

 

We need to give criticism sometimes. We need to know which restaurants deserve our patronage, we have to hold people accountable to their jobs and their promises. We need people to know how they’ve let us down, so they can stop and so they can grow.

 

Good criticism, though, is appropriate, it’s true, and it seeks to build someone up, not tear down. Good criticism highlights actions that can change, it encourages rather than shames. It is compassion, it is still fundamentally for the other.

 

Criticism – when we give it to others or ourselves, and when we receive it, wherever it comes from, can’t tear down our core sacred, beloved selves.

 

Hear this scripture from the prophet Isaiah.

 

Isaiah 45:9-10 (NLT)

9 “What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator.
    Does a clay pot argue with its maker?
Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying,
    ‘Stop, you’re doing it wrong!’
Does the pot exclaim,
    ‘How clumsy can you be?’
10 How terrible it would be if a newborn baby said to its father,
    ‘Why was I born?’
or if it said to its mother,
    ‘Why did you make me this way?’”

 

I love these lines.

 

A clay pot yelling at the potter, a newborn baby crying out to its parents – why did you make me? What have you done?

 

But when we take criticism too much to heart, or when we criticize ourselves, again and again rejecting our worth, we are practicing this crazy contempt of our maker, who made us good.

 

And so when we criticize somebody else, I think we’ve got to be careful as well to not do the same to them. If you can’t criticize with gentleness and compassion, don’t bother. If your criticism is laced with contempt, consider that your target is also made beautifully in the image of God, before you say or write a thing.

 

And when you’re criticized by someone else, sift out the true from the false, the useful from the not, and move on. This is hard to do, of course. As a pastor, I probably get 10 or 20 times as much thanks and appreciation and praise as I doi criticism.

 

And yet, the critical words still stick out. Even stuff from a stranger that sounds patently false and crazy can still cling to me. I remember it.

 

This is where the advice I got from a mentor years ago has been so useful to me. This guy was a very prominent and successful educator, and he spent time with me every couple of weeks when I was a first-year principal. And he told me that whenever I receive angry criticism, as I would a lot, I should remember that it wasn’t first about me, but that it was an opportunity to learn about the collective anxiety of the institution.

 

Criticism may speak truths about me I need to hear. In that case, I can take it like medicine – learn from it and move on. But often it said way more about the person doing the criticism. And I found my mentor was right. When I can see criticism as an opportunity to learn about the world of the critic, it doesn’t sting in the same way. It’s easier to hold even an unfair, angry critic with compassion.

So when teachers criticized me, it was an opportunity to relearn the stresses and frustrations endemic to the life of a teacher. When parents criticized me, it was an opportunity to gain insight into the particular anxieties of that community’s parents. And even when an angry, religious person criticizes me as a pastor, it’s an opportunity to learn about the religious dysfunction and anxieties of our age.

 

It’s important not to wall yourself off from criticism, especially if you’re a leader. Sometimes critics speak the truth you need to hear about yourself and your institution. So again, take a moment and ask if criticism holds some medicine you need to take. But then, take it and move on. And when the criticism says more about the critic’s anxiety than you, learn what there is to learn, but then break it off.

 

Literally – delete the email or throw out the letter. Treat the words like a curse, and pray a simple prayer of protection, even if it sounds a little old school or a little more other-worldly than you might normal be comfortable with. Like, I break off that curse in Jesus’ name. I don’t receive it or welcome it into my soul. And God, protect me. Give me strength to live humbly in your truth and in your compassion.

 

Before I end, I want to say one more thing about being made of dust. There’s connection, there’s compassion, there are better ways to give and receive criticism, but also, maybe counter-intuitively, there is hope.

 

One last scripture, from a letter by Paul of Tarsus in the mid-first century:

 

I Corinthians 15:42-49 (NRSV)

42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

 

This passage challenges our imaginations of the future. It asserts what we know –  that all people, from the very beginning, have been mortal, from the dust. We live in these dying bodies of ours. But then Paul says there is more to come, that we have not seen. Our bodies are destined for greatness.

 

Like Jesus, a resurrected body is in our future, beyond the grave.

 

I find this challenging, and a space of regular doubt given we haven’t seen it yet, and because we know so much loss and death. We know what corpses and ashes look like. We know the biology and the physics of death.

 

And yet Paul insists that as history has seen with a risen Jesus, so the future will see with us. God knows the biology and the physics of new life and resurrected bodies.

 

In my work as a pastor with dead and dying, I have seen suffering and frailty and despair. But as much as I have seen these things, I have seen the miraculous and ethereal dignity and beauty of the human spirit. I have heard stories of unexpected amends made as people face death. I have listened to the bone-deep faith and assurance of the dying that this is not the end of them. I have seen transcendent peace on the faces of the suffering and emaciated. We sing a song here now and then where we say to our Maker, “You make beautiful things out of dust. You make beautiful things out of us.”

The dust from which we’re made has coalesced into bodies that somehow find room for beauty, aspiration, hope, joy, and love, even in the bleakest times and places. As we hear in Jurassic Park: Life finds a way.

From dust we come, to dust we will return. But what dust we are now. And as to what we are becoming – who’s to say it won’t be even more stunning than what we have yet seen and known?

Let me close, as I always do, with two invitations to faith and practice. The first is to:

 

A Tip for Whole Life Flourishing:

Consider a vow to be a person of whole-life compassion. In particular, only give criticism that includes compassion. And when you receive uncompassionate criticism, swallow anything good and true like medicine and spit out the rest.

 

I use this sacred, promising language of a vow, because I think this is a place of holy and important intention. As the sociologist Brene Brown teaches, empathy – to sit with someone else in their pain, to not judge or pity or ignore, but to say I feel with you, I’ve been there – is a skill. We can all learn and choose to do it. But a life of compassion, a regular practice of being with others in kindness, presence, connection, and hope – this is a spiritual practice. It takes faith that there is compassion for ourselves and for all of humanity in the universe. For me, that faith is grounded in the living God, known in the person of Jesus. And so a vow of compassion is a whole-life practice and promise. It doesn’t mean we’ll always have compassion for ourselves and others, but it says we always intend to. So I’ll give you a chance to make that vow if you like, in a minute.

 

And lastly, our spiritual practice of the week. One that I’ve found useful.

 

Spiritual Practice of the Week:

Touch the ground once a day. Consider this is where you came from and where you are going. Remember that your father/mother God loves the work of art you are and the one you will become.

 

Let’s pray.