Scars and Locks April 18, 2020

When I was taking my biology class in Grade 9, it seemed like there were two kinds of students.  The ones who got right into the poking and prodding of dissected frogs, and the kinds (far fewer) who stuck their noses in the textbooks.  I enjoyed the Latin and the lists but not the smells or the sights of squishy things pickled in formaldehyde.  That science class seemed to go on forever, and I was relieved to get to high school where I could safely indulge in physics and chemistry, and the closest I got to biology was the adjoining door between the two science classrooms or the friendly chit chat between the two teachers.  I thought the biology teacher was wonderful, but not her subject matter.  My classmates thought I was weird for having such a squeamish attitude, especially the ones who grew up on the farm.  Even my mom, who hated collecting slimy wet eggs from under the hens first thing every morning was less squeamish than me.  So this scripture passage in a time of social distancing is hard to fathom.  Touching Jesus’ wounds would be hard enough at the best of times, but right now when we are not able to touch anyone, it’s unthinkable.

No wonder Thomas isn’t recorded as taking Jesus up on his invitation.  He spoke rash words in haste to stop the other disciples from badgering him with what he thought were ridiculous claims, and like most rash words, they came back to haunt him.  But also to heal him.  We can relate to Thomas for we too are inundated with claims and con artists, false news and clever phone calls designed to catch us unawares.  I have lost track of the number of phone calls I have recently received on my cell phone, saying that they are from Croatia or Dominica.  They hang up immediately and I fight the temptation to call back because that’s what the scammers hope, then they can charge long distance rates and rake in the cash.  Once it was a crying woman on the line sounding like she was in a panic too.  Turns out this was happening all around mainline Vancouver.  There are even people becoming famous on the internet for taking calls from scammers and playing with them, stringing them along and wasting their time so that the scammers don’t have as much time to get other victims.  The impact is real.  Seniors are especially targeted, and with the internet, it feels like we have to be increasingly diligent.  More like Thomas than otherwise. 

And yet Jesus said that we who believe are the blessed ones.  We who learn to trust in something we have never seen, who learn to turn to God with the innocence of a loving child.  Who may not always have concrete evidence or proof pickled in formaldehyde.  We who like Mother Theresa, roll up our sleeves despite our doubts and do the things that God would have us do to make this world a better place.  We who persevere despite what the doubting Thomases of the world might say or ridicule us for doing.

Today we are all locked in rooms of isolation and anxiety.  We do not know what the future will hold both for us as individuals but also for us as a community, a nation, a world.  On one hand, we are coming together for things like the “One World Together at Home” or the Friday night thank you parade honking for health care workers and grocery store employees, on the other hand we are seeing protesting demanding that curfews be lifted and jobs be reinstated.  Or the policies of companies like senior’s care facilities or meat-packing plants.

How do we deal with the doubt and the anxiety?  Sometimes we, like the disciples, need to lock ourselves in our rooms.  But God enters our isolation, God disrupts our assumptions of what the world is really like, God shakes up our understanding of what is real and what is important.  God is present right where you are, in this very moment.  In your space! 

Take a breath, a deep breath into your belly.  Look around you for five things you can see.  A crack in the ceiling, this piece of paper, Five things.  Breathe.  Four things you can touch like the doily or table cloth.  Breathe.  Three things you can hear, ticking clock or maybe a goose flying back north.  Breathe.  Two things you can smell, the smoke from your candle perhaps.  Breathe again and notice one thing that you can taste, not just yet.  Maybe the bread and juice that we will be sharing shortly.

We have an opportunity to practise this simple form of prayer, 5 sights, 4 touches, 3 sounds, 2 smells and one taste whenever we feel locked up and anxious.  We can practise opening ourselves up to God more intentionally in our day.  And we can remember that Jesus became present and real to Thomas not through his perfection, but through his wounds.  When we see wounds, we know the experience is real.  When we share wounds, we have the ability to heal.  When we admit to God and a trusted friend or family member that we are hurting or afraid or anxious, we can learn that we are not alone in our struggles.  There in our locked rooms, God is with us.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, we are not alone, halleluiah!

Seeds of Stubborn Hope

Ever stop to think of how stubborn seeds can be?  They are the deadest looking things.  I have a package of seeds for growing sprouts, maybe alfalfa.  Been in my cupboard for years, back when people bought sprouts in the grocery store all the time.  I have a special box for growing them that hasn’t been used in years.  Well, those seeds have been sitting in a cupboard for I don’t know how long and I thought, why not dig them out and grow some greens for sandwiches again.  I soaked them as per the instructions and you know, they are growing already!  They are sprouting as if they were bought yesterday, and next week we will be munching them between two slices of rye.  Seeds are stubborn like that.

So when I was on the Naramata website listening to a poem prayer by Keri Wehlander who first introduced me to liturgical dance and using actions with hymns, her phrase, “seeds of stubborn hope” rang in my heart as much as my mind.  How dependant we are on seeds can be seen by when we go searching for flour at the grocery store.  Wheat is what brought so many immigrants to Alberta so many decades ago.  Not quite as high as an elephant’s eye, but it was the breadbasket of the world, and still helps feed many people.  And almost as stubborn as seeds are the farmers who plant that wheat.  Year after year, they get their tractors ready and you had better bet that they are waiting for the snow to melt and the ground to dry so that they can start planting their crops as quickly as they can regardless of how bad the weather has been these past few years.  Especially now that everyone seems to be churning out home-baked goods from their kitchens because they have so much time on their hands.  Easter is hot cross buns and braided bread, babka decorated with little birds or maybe cooked with a hard-boiled egg in the centre, and dried fruits in the dough.  Some pysanka beside it, carefully hand-drawn not machinery mass produced, and not needing to be 31 feet long to be a work of art.

The stubborn hope of seeds lies dormant, waiting to grow, resting in the dark, looking quite dead and lifeless.  Then something happens.  The sun’s warmth strikes down and shines on the seeds, they are not alone and solitary, they are scattered, sure, but not as unconnected as they thought.  The rain’s moisture softens their hard protective covering, and little by little, the seeds start to sprout and grow until they can ripen.  And seeds can look very similar – the seeds I am growing for our sandwiches look very similar to poppy seeds, but wouldn’t be very tasty if they didn’t start growing.  Sometimes it’s not until they are full grown that we know if we have planted Kentucky bluegrass or crabgrass.  And sometimes it has surprising properties.  According to Wikipedia, some countries take crabgrass seeds and grind them to make an edible flour, so for you folks out there short on flour, wait a little and harvest your crabgrass!

Yeah, but what’s that got to do with you and me and Easter and all this Jesus resurrection stuff which we’ve all heard about and many are weirded out by.  Well, sometimes we too can be dormant seeds.  Many of us are experiencing a time of dormancy, of a new normal we are slowly adjusting to, and for those who still have jobs, a new time of frantic work overlaid with anxiety.  Things are different.  Things are stressful.  Conspiracy theories abound, according to the fellow who waited his turn to get to the bank machine, and snake oil remedies are legion.  And above all, things are lonely.  We cannot hug one another, we cannot go to Paddymelon’s for a cup of our favorite beverage and a chance to catch up with our friends and neighbors.  We cannot go for Easter dinner with our extended family.  We are having to let our personal connections lie dormant.  We have to stay home except for necessary travel to grocery and drug stores.  We are waiting, stubbornly, for hope, for a time when once again we will be able to meet and greet our neighbors, to give a high five or share a jigsaw puzzle and game of cribbage with friends.  We wait for sunshine and rain and new growth.

This could be a time of resting and learning, not just of facts and figures, but a deepening of character, of our ethics, our values, our morals, and our beliefs.  It may look and feel like we are doing nothing, but we can be growing and preparing to put out new shoots.

One of my favorite inspirational stories is the movie, “Invictus”, the story of Nelson Mandela, beautifully acted by Morgan Freeman.  Nelson Mandela was a young man who grew up going to a Methodist Church in South Africa, and the Methodist Church is one of the founding denominations of the United Church of Canada.  As a young adult, he was arrested and jailed for acts of terrorism against the Apartheid State.  He spent 30 years locked down, often in solitude, and he took this enforced dormant time to practise stubborn hope.  He turned to a poem called Invictus, written I was surprised to learn, for a Scottish flour merchant.  It could be a description of Jesus, the ultimate unconquerable soul:

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Easter is when we stand in awe at the foot of the cross, the empty cross, the empty tomb and remember the testimony of women and men from long ago that have inspired people for centuries.  Our Song of Faith says that Jesus suffered abandonment and betrayal, state-sanctioned torture and execution.  He was crucified.  But death was not the last word.  God raised Jesus from death, turning sorrow into joy, despair into hope.  We sing hallelujah.

Even when we don’t have faith in our ability to live in this dormant time, even when we feel no hope that we will grow again, even when we feel isolated, alone and suffering, Jesus points out that at the darkest of times, God has faith in us, God has hope that we will grow again, that God knows one day we will be able to sing hallelujah, because God is with us, we are not alone.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, thanks be to God.

Who is Jesus?

Matthew 21: 9-11 The crowds—those who went in front of Jesus and those who followed—were all shouting, “Hosanna to the heir to the house of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Most High! Hosanna in the highest!”  As Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred to its depths, demanding, “Who is this?”  And the crowd kept answering, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee!”

The heart of the scriptures today is the central question, who is Jesus?  And why was he so special that a spontaneous parade could build up so fast and so memorably?

The Sunshine Coast is a lovely place to visit in the spring, and travel there is very efficient.  The ferries were efficient, and the boarding was smooth until I noticed a cavalcade of bikers driving up the ramp in impressive formation.  I nervously pointed them out to my dad, wondering if we were about to be inundated by a Hell’s Angels convention, but he said that they were probably there for my uncle’s funeral.  I found that hard to believe until I ran into the bikers on the top deck of the ferry.  They were pulling off their helmets to reveal not toughened thugs but lovely grandpas and grandmas, white hair, perms, some of the men with bald heads and Santa Claus beards.  Anything but what I had first imagined.

My uncle had been the president of the local Harley Davidson bike club and they had decided to pay homage to him with an honor ride for his celebration of life.  Later that day they made a spectacular sight driving down the hill to the community hall where the service took place.  Parades to honor special people can be very stirring and inspirational.  The parade for Jesus would have been that way too.  With a heartbreaking twist.  “Save Us, save us!” they cried.  People like you and me living in poverty, living in uncertainty, living with a government who had little respect for human rights, who allowed only full Roman citizens access to public justice systems, who had no foodbanks or schools or daycares or health services, a high infant mortality rate and widespread poverty.  “Save us, Jesus” was a desperate cry, and a prayer from the heart.

Jesus was seen as someone who would help them, heal them and listen to them.  Over the ages, many people have felt the same need to call out for him to save them.

One young lady 800 years ago also called out for help.  She was in her thirties, and was extremely ill.  While she lay on her deathbed, she had a series of visions, powerful images of Jesus.  She recovered and out of gratitude, she had herself locked up in a room of a church in the English town of Norwich, the ultimate in self-isolation, and lived there for the rest of her life, surviving the Bubonic Plague, civil war and religious persecutions.  While there, she wrote the first English book written by a woman, and became known for her image of Jesus as the mother of us all, who weeps when we are in distress, who comforts us when we are scared, and who loves us with a deep motherly love.  She had a little window in her room, and people would come to tell them of their troubles.  They would leave feeling comforted and encouraged.  Some psychologists see her as the first person to be a professional counsellor for the people in her town, the poor and the politician alike. She gave them hope not in herself, but in Jesus who inspired her.  Our own United Church author Ralph Milton, wrote two books about her, and said, “it’s hard to believe that such an open, eloquent, optimistic, joyful book could have been written in such a dark and painful time.”  Her name was Julian of Norwich, and she wrote some words that you have probably heard from time to time, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”  Sometimes those words seem empty and naïve, but when we remember the context she was living in, the state of violence, the rampant sicknesses, the levels of poverty and the lack of basics like food or shelter, her words become a signpost to keep the faith.

Jesus was not just mother to this lady, but inspiration.  Julian of Norwich, locked in her tiny room for more than forty years, over half her life, was comforted and sustained by her faith and shared that comfort to all who came to her.  The parade of people that showed up at her window made her a famous name and in turn she has inspired many.  We are isolated as she was, locked in because of a dreadful illness, and unsure of what lies ahead for us all.  Some of us are coping better than others.  Some of us have a strong faith that helps us pray, others are still new at this faith business, and unsure of how to pray, what to pray for and how it helps.  Regardless of where we are on our faith journey, let us remember that Jesus was a powerful inspiration to everyone who knew him and even those who only knew him through scriptures to turn to acts of love and compassion for one another.  Like Julian, let us listen in love to our neighbors, let us care for each other as best we can, but let us also remember to put our faith in Jesus, our teacher, our role model, our inspiration and our source of hope.  Amen.