The Big Thaw

 Just a week ago I walked down to the river. for me it’s a short trip, but it was amazing to see that there was still a lot of ice.  It was just starting to show water in places here and there.  And now a week later, it’s all thawed with nary a speck of ice or snow.

And we can see how fast it runs now that the ice is gone.  It is moving swift and silently once again.  The geese are nesting, the fish are biting, the flies are hatching, the bulbs are sprouting, and the grass is greening.  The season is changing before our eyes and another winter is behind us.

When we still had snow and ice, it seemed like nothing would change and spring would never come. Saul was frozen into such an attitude.  He had built an ice jam of cold fury towards people he saw as a threat.  He would not be moved from that position that these new-fangled ideas were an abominable twisting of the Torah. The more he heard them, the more he listened to them, the more of a threat they seemed, and the more icy he became to their ideas.

He became so obsessed with the followers of ‘The Way” that he asked for special authority to deal with them.  He wanted that ‘double 0’ designation that gave him licence to arrest and kill.  And he was willing to walk all the way to Damascus in Syria!  That’s 275 km away.  At the average speed of most humans, Saul was willing to go on a two week journey to round up and arrest malcontents so they could be punished.

All he could see was the threat.  All he could think of was preserving the status quo.  All he wanted to do was hurt.  He was frozen in his attitude towards people he hadn’t even met in person, condemning them without a fair trial.  Even helping with their execution.  He was the one who held the coats of others while they executed Stephen, he was the one described as ‘ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both women and men to put them in jail’.

But he wasn’t the only one frozen into a particular opinion and attitude.  The real hero in this story, I think, is Ananias. He also was stuck in the attitude that Saul was a threat to his family, friends and his new faith.  He didn’t want to deal with this dangerous man.  He only saw the danger and not the opportunity that lay before him.  No way he wanted to go and be nice to Saul!

But Ananias was a follower of the Way and knew that Jesus taught them to pray for their enemies.  He knew that the resurrection had turned all their assumptions about the way the world worked upside down. He knew that he might not be the greatest at preaching the gospel to cynical people, but he was the ‘johnny on the spot’, the one God could connect with and send.  He was the one who healed Saul’s deep, frozen soul.  He was the one that started the river flowing, and what a river it was!

Saul who was so frozen in his ways and his attitudes and his hate, broke down in front of humble Ananias.  He realized his stubbornness and anger had been not only so unhealthy it impacted him physically, it also pushed him into behaving in ways counter to the faith he honored.  His extremist mindset pulled him into what today’s psychologists call ‘cognitive dissonance’.  Instead of honoring God and studying the Torah, he was persecuting people he didn’t know, breaking the Torah’s command to love God and love neighbor.

Who do we connect with?  Are we a Saul, stubbornly frozen in sure we know what is right and best for our neighbors, and willing to do whatever it takes to prove that we are right, and certain they deserve punishment?  Are we an Ananias, wondering how on earth we can talk to someone as angry and hurting as Saul?  Are we Saul’s companions, helping guide him to the support he needs?  Are we the followers of the Way, wondering what we can do to keep ourselves safe during the threat Saul is bringing?

If we are honest with ourselves, there are times when we are frozen in resistance to God’s message of compassion.  There are times when we are called to help someone in pain, and we feel like we don’t know where to start.  There are times when we can speak a word of comfort, not realizing how thawing simple words can be.  Ananias was not one of the twelve, and we don’t have letters in the bible from him to the other teachers.  This is the only sermon he preached.  This is the only story we have of him.  A simple man, following a simple message, speaking in faith and hope and courage to someone he never dreamed he could influence.

On this Christian Family Sunday, when we honor the many people in our lives who have been sources of love and healing, may we find the courage to speak out to the Sauls in our families who are frozen in cognitive dissonance and hurting enough to recognize their need to change.  May we find the honesty to face our own stubborn blindness and know it persecutes not just family and friends, but even and especially our Holy God.  May we help guide those who are in pain to safe places where they can thaw and find healing.  And may we find God’s healing presence taking the scales from our eyes and bringing us back our sight and energy to flow like a mighty river in God’s plan to end conflict and hate for all.  May we continue the story of ‘The Way’, one step at a time, one story at a time, one thawing river at a time. Amen.

Pointing to Love

 My in-laws have a sturdy little sundial on the deck made out of black wrought iron.  It’s supposed to tell the time by the way the shadow falls. But it doesn’t work unless it is pointing North.  Last summer when I was staying there, I decided to rearrange the deck chairs and the sundial got shifted around.  Since it no longer pointed north, it no longer told the time.

Some days I feel like a sundial that is not pointed in the right direction.  Maybe something unexpected happens, I sprain my ankle, there’s bad news on the radio, a friend’s house burns down, or a photo of a flag with a swastika is spotted in Boyle.  Instead of feeling like a calm grown-up Christian, I feel like a grumpy grouch that doesn’t know how to love her neighbor, especially one with a penchant for flags that are so horrific.

Enter the scriptures.  Jesus has a penchant for fixating not on the north pole, like a sun dial, but on Love.  Love is the true north that Jesus constantly points to.  Jesus is no sundial, but more like a compass that swings to point to the right direction.  Unlike humans and sundials, Jesus is unwavering in his commitment to be loving.  And not just any kind of loving, but one that is willing to take risks that seem irrational and dangerous.

This is no cheap or over-sentimentalized card or poem, this is a robust, muscular love.  In our society, we use love to describe anything from our enjoyment of flowers and chocolate to our sense of profound deep astonishment when we look into the eyes of a newborn baby.  Talk about sentimentalization!

Sentimentalization is not love.  We think that love is just sweet emotions or gentleness.  But real love leads to action and change.  I heard the story recently of a church who had a new person join it for worship.  One Sunday morning the newcomer had a panic attack because someone wore a red shirt.  It triggered memories of a trauma experience she had at the hands of a bully.  The congregation was concerned.  Should they ban red shirts?  Should they say to the newcomer, “I’m sorry but you don’t belong here if you can’t handle a red shirt or two from time to time”?  How would that help her in her day to day life ?

We have had a similar debate for years that flared up online this week with United Church ministers.  Do we call this service “Mother’s Day Service”, “Christian Family Day Service” or just “Sunday Service”?  For some folks the word ‘Mother’ triggers memories worse than any seen in movies like “Mommy Dearest”.  Others struggle because of fertility issues or because of life circumstances.  Or tragedy strikes when they least expect it, and motherhood becomes a memory rather than a lived reality.

When I was growing up as a child, we didn’t know much about grief.  We didn’t have funeral resources for stillborns, miscarriages and infants.  And we thought that the most loving thing we could do for a person in grief was not to talk about it for fear of upsetting someone.  We pretended the tragedy didn’t happen, or that a pregnancy that didn’t end happily was no big deal as one could always try again.  We didn’t treat single women or couples who didn’t procreate with a lot of respect.  We didn’t make space for the many tiny moments of grief that came into everyone’s life. And we didn’t talk about the ways in which people coped with those stresses, the addictions to cocktails, the risky behaviors, the mental illness, the depression, the abuse or family violence and the anxiety attacks that resulted from trying to live as if pain and grief did not exist.

That was not love.  That was supposed to be love, protecting each other from pain and hurt, but it was not love.  It enabled people to keep stuck, keep the grief suppressed, keep the emotions bottled up, keep the pain at home where it belonged, in private.  It kept people feeling isolated and alone.

Real love says, “I am here with you.  I hear you.  You are not alone.  Your pain may be unique, but others have gotten through what you are going through.”  Real love says, “this is going to hurt but I will hold your hand”.  Real love says, “these are birth pangs and I can’t take them away from you, but I can breathe with you”.  Real love says, “let us weep together a while.  We will one day rejoice together too.”  Real love says, “let us have a memorial service for that stillborn” even if it happened 40 years ago.

Dr. Katharina Manassis, a member of St. Mark’s United Church in Scarborough and both a Child Psychiatrist and University of Toronto Professor Emerita said this about such real love by her congregation:

My introduction to a community of faith didn’t come until middle age, after a traumatic bereavement. The minister on call to the local funeral home listened intently to my distraught, guilt-ridden tale of loss and validated my experience. I was reassured that… my emotional response was not unique… I … became a member of his church. I came to understand that in some circumstances compassionate pastoral care is even more helpful than counseling by a mental health professional, because rather than singling out the person as having a psychological problem, it recognizes suffering as part of the human experience.  Within my faith community, I found supportive friends, inspiring role models, and people who were just good fun. Coffee time, whether in person or over Zoom, is a valuable mental wellness activity for many of us. Knowing there are like-minded people struggling with similar challenges can make a huge difference in well-being, especially when we are feeling alone. 

When we love deeply, compassionately and bravely like this, we transform our world.  Whether it’s getting an ugly flag pulled down in our county, letters written to MLAs about racism in the proposed curriculum, or donating to the Mother’s Day Mission and Service appeal this year, together, when we remember that like sundials we must orient ourselves by the true north of love that Jesus taught, we make a real difference in the world.  May it be so for us all.