April 27, 2021

Stuck in our own ditches, Investing in sheep

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, it is helpful to remember the reality of working with sheep.  They can be very smart, especially the bell weathers, and at other times they can be, well, not the cleverest animals you have ever met, and just as prone to mistakes as we humans can be. Here's a video to remind us what sheep can be like: (99) Sheep gets stuck in trench, jumps back in - YouTube. So they can get into ruts and need help getting out, only to fall into bigger and deeper ruts.  Not unlike humans.  We can get caught in emotional ruts and intellectual ditches unintentionally, we can get stuck and not know how to extricate ourselves from the holes we are in.  

Cue the shepherd, and not just any shepherd, the good shepherd as mentioned in our scriptures this morning.  One thing I learned this week was the word for ‘good’ used in the original Greek might be better translated as ‘model’.  So, although the shepherd in our scripture is contrasted with a hired hand who doesn’t have a relationship with the sheep other than their paycheck, it’s not so much that the shepherd is ‘good’ and the hired help is ‘bad’.  It is that a model shepherd, an ideal shepherd, the kind you want to hire to take care of your flock, invests more than time into the flock.  It’s not just about the paycheck, it’s about where the heart is invested.

Both our scriptures talk about Jesus, our model shepherd, as being so invested in the flock that he was ready and willing to sacrifice even his life for those sheep.  To be so into a loving relationship that the gospel writer later wrote, “greater love has no one than this that someone lays down their life for another”.  Our model shepherd loves so deeply that they will risk their body for not just another person but a whole community.

That is quite the model to follow.  That’s quite the inspiration, that’s quite the big shoes to step into.  Jesus said that this love was so big that it encompassed others who were not a part of the inner circle, the disciples and followers that were part of the flock.  Jesus specifically spoke about the other sheep that were also needing a shepherd.  The ones who were lost, the ones who had wandered off, the ones who were isolated, the ones who were in pain or in danger.  Jesus wasn’t there just for the 12, or just for the people of Israel.  Jesus was there for the big picture.  Jesus was deeply, emotionally invested in the wellbeing of each and everyone in the world.  That’s quite the model.

We see plenty of examples where people are not following the model of being invested in the wellbeing of everyone.  Anti maskers who want their businesses reopened and so what if a few old people die here or there.  Racists who think it’s fun to use a microphone with a noose attached to it during a public demonstration in Northern Alberta.  Politicians who don’t support their own party’s stance on health regulations.  A legal system that throws out tickets issued to people flaunting the health regulations. Police officers who think it’s okay to kneel on someone’s neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds.  Plenty of stories of people who are more like hired hands than role models.

We too are called to listen for the Shepherd’s voice and become loving, invested role models for our community.  This is not easy work.  How do I love the person who thinks that I am bad or political when I wear a mask or sign up for a vaccine?  How do I love the person who tells me I am a sheeple, and stupid for believing doctors, scientists, and politicians?  How do I love the neighbor who thinks it’s okay to pollute the world with facemasks?  Or the family member who promotes conspiracy theories every time we call?  Sacrificial love is not easy in these situations.

Where are the role models who care to the point of sacrificial love?  I recently learned about a movement in Minneapolis that started after the George Floyd murder.  One lady courageously donned her clergy collar, e-mailed her colleagues, and went out into the riots to listen and support protestors.  She became part of a growing team who wear bright orange t-shirts with the word ‘chaplain’ on it in bold letters.  They hand out everything from bottled water and pizza, but mostly they listen.  They listen to trauma, fear, anger, frustration, racism, injustice and more.  And day by day, they are modelling what it means to be a caring and loving presence in the world.  It is not easy work, it is not safe work, but it is work that they have felt called to do.  To bring healing in a time where the world feels out of control.

Sacrificial love for ordinary sheep is the model shepherd’s highest intention.  The model shepherd is not me, and not you, but we can become inspired to imitate that model to our best abilities.  Just as Jesus had very clear intentions centered around loving his flock, we need to wrestle with our intentions.  Why do we feel the need to pick up that phone, write that letter, talk to that person?  Is it out of love for our community or is it out of anger or fear?  Can we see that individual as part of our flock that we are called to guide?  There are some sheep that are in a deep hole of anger, distrust and fear because that’s how they are meeting their needs for safety.

And we need to be aware that we can feel more like the hired hand than the shepherd.  Our ability to love that sacrificially might not be there yet.  We may not be as healed as we’d like from our own feelings of fear and anger.  We may not be invested in their welfare as much as our own.  This may be the Model Shepherd’s voice calling us to rest patiently until we gain our own strength and safety before we try to rescue others.  It’s very easy to think we can fix things and people when we are stuck in our own ditches.  And trying to fix other people because we know best is the very definition of colonial oppression which led to residential schools and other racist interventions; because we did not have our intentions grounded in sacrificial love. 

And maybe we need to recognize that we are not the shepherd called to help them out of that hole, or that this is not the right time for us to help. Our most loving action may be to rest and pray that we be pulled out of our own ditches and that they may find someone wise and patient who has the skills to pull our neighbors out of their ditch too.  There are many resources that we can refer people to. But we can choose to invest in the most loving outcome for people who are struggling, just like us, to make sense of the world.

We are not Jesus, the model shepherd who is deeply invested in our welfare.  But we can listen for Jesus and remember to do our best to love others as we have been loved, deeply, unconditionally, and love ourselves as well especially when we feel like we’re caught in a ditch like a silly sheep.  We are loved, even then, and thanks be to God for that sacrificial investment of love!

April 13, 2021

Who Ya Gonna Call? Lock Busters!

 

People say that it takes a lot of repetition before we remember something.  Well, it took more than a few years of repetition before I realized that we always hear the story of Thomas the first Sunday after Easter.  The early church thought it was so important, that it is right up there with the Luke passage on Christmas Eve.  Even the Road to Emmaus is only once in three years.  It’s a pretty special story, and one that is trying to get the critics and cynics to hear a message they don’t want to hear.

There’s a lot of that around these days.  Locked doors, locked minds, locked up emotions, locked up because we’ve been living with Covid and we humans are not very good with dealing with curtailments of our freedoms and our lives.  We have a difficult time with thinking about short term sacrifices for long term gains.

There’s an old experiment where children were told that they could chose to eat a marshmallow right away or they could wait and eat two marshmallows when the tester came back.  They were left in an empty room. A third of the kids ate the marshmallow as soon as the tester left.  The rest were able to wait, some as long as 15 minutes.  Interestingly, the kids who waited were more successful in school, in work and in their personal lives.  Waiting for the future, giving up things for a benefit down the road, these were all predicted by their ability to hold off eating the marshmallow. 

We want what we want when we want it and some folks want it now.  Some of us can wait, some of us choose not to wait.  When tragedy hits, we don’t know what to do with our wants.  We don’t know how to deal with the loss of our dreams and expectations.  We go into trauma mode.

That’s where the disciples were.  The anguish of losing their leader to state-sanctioned torture and brutal execution, the fear that they would be the next victims of that violence, the grief of having their dreams and hopes brutally stopped unexpectedly had put them into full-blown trauma reactions.

When we are faced with a stressful situation, we will instinctively respond in one of three ways, fight, flight or freeze.  We see that most clearly in war zones.  Some choose to become refugees and take flight, some pick up weapons to join a side and some hunker down waiting for the war to pass.  All are normal responses to conflict.  We too are likely to respond in one of those three ways.

Given the circumstances that the disciples were living in, an occupied country with extreme poverty amongst the Jewish people and extreme wealth for the upper-class elite especially the Romans and the collaborators, there was already a sense of Fight and Freeze.  The disciples thought they were going to serve Jesus as the king’s advisors and the Zebedee brothers were squabbling over who would get the best seating near Jesus’ throne.  Insurrectionists were a source of constant trouble for the Romans, and the temple authorities didn’t want Jesus to continue to stir the pot.  So, there was already trauma and conflict brewing.

No wonder the disciples, after facing the arrest of Jesus, scattered and ran and denied they knew Jesus.  No wonder after the execution, they gathered in fear and trembling behind locked doors.  They were living with trauma!

So what takes people who are locked down, scared for their lives, denying their faith and afraid to take a stand and transforms them into powerful public preachers?  How do we reconcile the fearful disciples with the man who wrote boldly, “We declare to you what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands…”  That is a strong and passionate statement to start a letter with, don’t you think?  How do we connect the dots between the locked doors and the courageous writer?

It keeps coming back to Jesus.  Not once but twice does he do his magic Houdini act, appearing behind locked doors.  He keeps showing up!  Again and again.  He’s willing to have Thomas touch him in his wounds, a most intimate act.  “See my suffering!  Hear my comforting words! Touch my trauma!  And please, let’s not wag fingers at poor Thomas.  After all, the rest of the disciples saw Jesus first and they still met behind locked doors.  What is striking about Thomas is that one appearance was all it took.  The others needed more, and could not convince Thomas that what they were saying was true.  Not because he was at fault but maybe because they still were not completely sure themselves.  They were teetering on the edge of transformation, from disciples to apostles, from students to teachers, and they were not quite ready.

What pushed them from trauma to new life, new hope, new vision and goals and expectations?  Jesus.  He pushed past the locks they had put in place to keep themselves safe.  He encouraged them to ask questions, comforting them with new challenges and thoughts.  He kept showing up in their lives and they grew to trust him.  He gave them choices and opportunities to touch him.  Thomas didn’t take Jesus up on the offer to touch the bloody cuts, but he appreciated the invitation.

We all are invited to a new holy and loving life.  We are invited to care about ourselves, our neighbors and our God.  We make mistakes and fall short, struggling to be honest even to ourselves about our flaws.  To hear John write that we all make mistakes is to hear that he too struggled with his own mistakes, his own fears and failings.  He too hid in a locked room, afraid to come out and share his truth.  But he testified that Jesus keeps breaking the locks to our own rooms and keeps coming into our own lives with the glorious Easter news that we are not alone, that God loves us with a passion beyond human experience and guides and supports us all in our times of trial.  Truly, blessed are those who have not seen Jesus and yet believe even in their fears and traumas.  Easter comes to us all, Halleluiah!

April 06, 2021

Sunrise moments

I know a friend who starts his day watching sunrises.  He drinks his first coffee watching the sun slowly come up above the horizon and flood the world with warmth and light.  

The last few days, I have been doing the same, going out with Tim’s camera and using it to capture the moment the sky slowly lightened up.  It was a time of stillness, but the squirrel started to scamper along the branches, the birds began to chirp, the geese flew overhead, and the clouds went from dark grey to soft warm pinks and golds.  They varied from one morning to the next, and they happen so slowly and gradually that it seemed like nothing had changed until there it was, the sun, and the day had begun.

Sometimes we feel caught in a perpetual nighttime of the soul, or a dull greyness of the pre-dawn cold morning.  When do we get to wake up, go outside and really know that the light has dawned, a new day has arrived, and new hopes and possibilities are just around the corner?

When the two Marys and Salome went out to the tomb, they had everything planned out.  They had traditions to follow, they had expectations of what they would do and what they would bring, they had a list. They had no idea what their day was going to bring.  

They needed the traditions that gave them clear direction on what to do.  They were dealing with the trauma of having seen their beloved leader tortured and executed.  Maybe they came as a group because one of them would train the others on what to do.  Maybe they came as a group because they needed each other’s support.  Whatever the reason, they didn’t get what they expected.  They didn’t have a decomposing body or the ripe stench of the tomb.  They didn’t have to wash the corpse of their leader and smear myrrh over him as they wept at the marks of torture.  Instead, they were bewildered and confused by what they found, terrified even, by this unexpected turn of events.  They had no idea of what the empty tomb meant.  They had no wise theologians or biblical scholars to explain what happened.  So, they ran.  

We might wish we could run from what we are experiencing now.  We are in the midst of terrible times, where we don’t know where to turn for trustworthy and safe news.  Where we long for the ‘good old days.’ Where all we can imagine is going back to the way life was over a year ago.  Where we wish the gloom of this not-quite sunrise, this not-quite easter would become a full, glorious turning back the clock and getting back to normal.

We’re tired of keeping on.  We’re tired of waiting for good news, we’re tired of isolation.  And we’re wondering when this will all end.  We are in a difficult place.

One of my favorite stories of ordinary people in difficult places is from the Lord of the Rings By J R R Tolkien.  Sam Gamgee, a gardener and cook, is half-way up a mountain with his friend Frodo, and it feels like they will never see the sun again.  Into that time of despair, he tells Frodo: 

It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo.

The ones that really mattered.

Full of darkness and danger they were,

and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.

Because how could the end be happy?

How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened.

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.

Even darkness must pass.

A new day will come.

And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.

Those were the stories that stayed with you.

Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.

Because they were holding on to something. 

That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

What are we holding onto?  What good will we find if we go to our Galilee? Will we watch the sunrise and see things in a new light?  Will we find our trauma and grief transformed into an energy and enthusiasm that would not stop for any reason, the way it did for Mary and Peter and the rest?

We know the rest of their great story.  We know that many of Jesus’ followers had an experience beyond words, beyond understanding, that pulled them from despair and grief into action and joy.  They found themselves living in new hope, in new ways of being.  They could not go back to the old ways, the old traditions.  They went forward with courage and resilience and love into an unimaginable future.

Even in the midst of Mordor, Sam knew that the sun would rise.  In the midst of the first Easter, faced with the empty tomb, the women knew that something had changed beyond description or understanding, that the sun would rise over Lake Galilee.  In the midst of our own challenging times, we know that things will be different one day.  We know that God has been with us when we least expected it, in the call of a friend, in an unexpected postcard or phone call, in the geese flying overhead, in the sunrises that flood our lives with new vision and new hope.  Our lives will be changed, just like the women at the tomb, and they will be changed in ways we least expect it.  Let us stay ready and open for God to flood our lives with the light of new faith, and new lives of unexpected beauty and joy.  Let us remember that God can plant sunrises of hope and faith in our lives.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, we are not alone.  Halleluiah!

(sunrise photos M. Rosborough, March 2021 from the church steps)