Last Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C

Last Sunday after the Epiphany—Year C February 27, 2022 Last weekend, your vestry and I gathered for a retreat on Saturday morning. In our time together, we talked about the times in our lives when the Holy Spirit has shown up. The stories your vestry shared were beautiful and moving and unique and holy. One vestry member talked about how during the times when the Holy Spirit has showed up in his life it was like a gentle tap on his shoulder and an understanding of “Hey, maybe I should go do this….” Others talked about doors opening, about a certain kind of knowing that stole over them that was beyond their own mind or understanding. Then we looked at the story of Moses and the burning bush. This comes from Exodus 3, much earlier in Moses’s story than our reading for today. Moses is just kind of hanging out, tending the flock for his father-in-law, and all of a sudden, he notices that there is this bush that is on fire but isn’t being consumed. He says to himself, “Hmmm, this is interesting, and it may be something I need to pay attention to. Let me turn aside from what I’m doing and go over there to take a closer look at this curious thing.” And it’s as if God is waiting for Moses to stop and take notice, because only after Moses approaches the burning bush to check it out does God speak to Moses. God tells Moses that Moses is going to be God’s agent of deliverance for God’s people who have been enslaved by the Egyptians. In that very first encounter, it took a willingness on Moses’ part to turn aside from what he was doing, to stop and see what the Lord is up to before God speaks to him. It’s important to remember this history when we encounter our Old Testament reading for today, which has this whole weird thing with Moses talking to God and Moses’s face shining so brightly that he feels the need to wear a veil around the children of Israel unless he is telling them what God has told him. These regular, super-shiny conversations with God all started with a willingness on Moses’s part to turn aside and look to see what work God was already doing in the world around him. Then we have our gospel reading for today. Jesus takes three disciples up to the top of a mountain, and while there, they witness his transfiguration-the revelation of God’s glory in and through the person of Jesus-along with his conversation with both Moses and Elijah. Luke is unique in telling us that the disciples are feeling “weighed down by sleep” but that since they manage to stay awake, they are able to see the miraculous events unfold right before their eyes. Are you, too, feeling weighed down these days? What is it that is weighing you down? Is it weariness, monotony, the tediousness of the mundane? Is it fear, anxiety, anger, or frustration? Is it busyness, the tyranny of the urgent? Is it a limiting of your physical capacity? Are you, as the prayer book puts it, “wearied by the changes and chances of this life”? Take a moment now to name what weariness you are fighting. Now, take a moment to turn aside and look. Where have you seen a burning bush, the unexpected revelation of the presence of God, in your life or in the world lately? What invitation might God be extending to you in and through this revelation?

The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C

7th Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C February 20, 2022 When I was in middle school, we lived in an ante-bellum home in downtown Canton right next door to the Catholic church. For years, we didn’t have a key that worked in the door lock, so we just didn’t lock our back door when we left the house. We would often leave each other notes pinned to the straight back of the chair that you saw when you opened the door to the house—notes like, “Debra (that’s my mom), I left the cash on top of your jewelry box. Love, Steve (my dad). One day, someone broke into our house. They took the cash, mom’s and my jewelry, tvs, vcrs, and my leather-bound bible with my name embossed on it, among many other things. We did all the things you’re supposed to do; we filed a police report, we got the lock fixed and started locking our door; my dad started frequenting the pawn shops in Canton, and he recovered some of the electronics. We thought we were safe once we started locking the door. But then they broke in again-forcing entry into our home and taking more stuff. Eventually, the police caught them- they were two teenagers-and we went on with our lives, although I never really felt safe in the house after that. Years go by, and my dad was serving on staff at Kairos, an Episcopal spiritual renewal retreat that is similar to Cursillo or Happening but takes place in prison. Late in the weekend, a young man came up to my dad. He said, “You probably don’t remember me, but I’ve met you before. The last time I saw you, I was handcuffed in the Canton Police Department; I’m the one that broke into your house. I’m so sorry. Will you, please, forgive me?” “Jesus said, "I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Our Old Testament reading for today gives us another glimpse of what it means to forgive those who have wronged you. We pick up in the middle of the Joseph story—one of my childhood favorites, thanks to an early encounter with Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. This is toward the end of Joseph’s story. You will recall that Joseph was most beloved by Jacob his father of all his brothers, and he had the gift of interpreting dreams which had been given to him by God. What Joseph did not have, at that point in the story, was wisdom or humility, and he proceeded to tell his already jealous brothers that he had a dream which showed him that he would be raised up higher than all of them and that they would eventually worship him. So the brothers did what most jealous siblings would do. The sold him into slavery in Egypt. While serving as a slave there, Joseph was falsely accused by his master’s wife and thrown into prison. And that could have been the end of it all right there. But while Joseph was in jail, it came to Pharaoh’s attention that Joseph could interpret dreams, and since Pharaoh had been experiencing a rash of troubling dreams, he called upon Joseph to interpret them. Joseph divined that Pharaoh’s dreams meant that Egypt was about to have 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine, and he instructed Pharaoh to start collecting the food and resources from the years of plenty to see them through the years of famine. As a result, Pharaoh releases Joseph from prison and elevates Joseph to a position of trust in his court. Our reading for today picks up two years into the 7 years of famine, when Jacob’s sons have come to Egypt to seek assistance because they are all starving in Canna. Joseph revels himself to his brothers in our passage for today, and rather than offering them some well- deserved retribution, Joseph humbly forgives them and tells them how their actions, though meant for evil, have been a part of God’s plan to bring about good for all of them. It’s an astonishing moment when we think about all that has happened to Joseph and how he had been so haughty in relationship with his brothers before. And there is only one explanation for how Joseph could have reacted the way that he did. That is that both he and his brothers have been transformed by God’s grace. I’ve been thinking about forgiveness in light of all this—the story of my dad forgiving the man who robbed us and of Joseph and his brothers’ reconciliation. One thing that helped me this week was listening to a podcast on forgiveness. Here’s what they said in the podcast: “Forgiveness is not reconciliation. Forgiveness sets us up for reconciliation if God opens up for that opportunity and if the other person is willing and all that. But forgiveness doesn’t require anybody else. It’s something that we do as a spiritual practice within our own relationship with God that can open us up to other things, but it sets a realistic expectation for what forgiveness is and what it isn’t.” i God, through the Holy Spirit, is the one who begins the work of forgiveness in us. We can pray and ask God to help us be open to receive that work; and it doesn’t require any other person in order for us to forgive. Reconciliation is what comes when the other person is willing to participate in our forgiveness journey, or when, like Joseph’s brothers, the Holy Spirit has been active in transforming other lives as well. Your invitation this week is to think about an area of your life in which you’d like to be forgiven or to offer forgiveness to someone else. Begin praying to the Holy Spirit to open your heart that you may be ready for the work God will do in and through you. i. https://transformingcenter.org/2021/08/season-13-episode-8-invitation-to-forgive/

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany_Year C

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C February 13, 2022 When is the last time you thought about delight? To charm, to enchant, to captivate, delight is a subtle emotion that steals over us and because of its soft nature, it requires attention from us to even be acknowledged. If you’re anything like me, you probably haven’t had too many occasions to think about delight lately. This week, I stumbled upon The Book of Delights—a book of essays by poet Ross Gay. In his preface, Gay writes, “One day last July, feeling delighted and compelled to both wonder about and share that delight, I decided that it might feel nice, even useful, to write a daily essay about something delightful. I remember laughing to myself for how obvious it was. I could call it something like The Book of Delights.” He continues, “ I came up with a handful of rules: write a delight every day for a year; begin and end on my birthday, August 1; draft them quickly; and write them by hand. The rules made it a discipline for me. A practice. Spend time thinking and writing about delight every day.” He concludes, “…It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study. A month or two into this project delights were calling to me: Write about me! Write about me! Because it is rude not to acknowledge your delights, I’d tell them that though they might not become essayettes, they were still important, and I was grateful to them. Which is to say, I felt my life to be more full of delight. Not without sorrow or fear or pain or loss. But more full of delight. I also learned this year that my delight grows-much like love and joy-when I share it.” i This has all helped me this week, as I’ve contemplated Luke’s version of the Beatitudes for today. Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes, probably the more familiar version that is ensconced in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, is all about the blessings: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth….” It goes on like that, all blessings. But Luke’s version of the Beatitudes which we have for today, happens in Jesus’s sermon on the plain. Rather than preaching these teachings from a mountain, like in Matthew, Jesus is on a level, flat place. In Luke, Jesus includes a list of woes that are the counterpoint to his blessings: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” But “"But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” But “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” But “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.” “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets." But “"Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets." And while this version in Luke has a nice symmetry to it, if we are really listening and paying attention, it probably makes us a little uncomfortable. I’m an Episcopalian. I don’t like to think of Jesus casting woe on anyone, especially his disciples, who Luke tells he is looking up at as he is preaching, and coupled with the passage from Jeremiah where God is easily throwing around curses on people, the whole thing makes me squirm. What has helped me was going back to Luke, and looking at the words that are translated as “blessed are you” and “woe to you.” The phrase or word for “blessed are you” is better translated for us as “good for you if…” or even the Australian saying, “Good on you!” Good for you if you are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Good for you if you are hungry now, for you will be filled.” “Good on you, mate,” says Australian Jesus, “if you weep now, for you will laugh.” And the woe part can better be translated, “Watch out!” or “Pay attention if…” or even “Trouble ahead!” but it also has the connotations of grief surrounding it. So maybe like when you give someone a warning but you know they aren’t really listening or aren’t going to follow it? “Pay attention if you are rich, for you have received your consolation.” “Look out if you are full now, for you will be hungry.” “Trouble ahead: I’m going to warn you and you probably aren’t going to listen so it’s going to be bad--if you are laughing now, at your own good fortune and others’ distress, then eventually you, too, will mourn and weep because ultimately that makes you a miserable human being.”ii And what Ross’s Book of Delights helped me recognize in the Beatitudes this week is that most of the time, we are not in an either/or state. We are in a both and state. Delight, being captivated or paying attention, shows us the beauty and wonder in our lives and the world around us, and sometimes, it even springs up from suffering and woe, in those times when we should have been paying better attention to our own humanity and the humanity of every person around us. Your invitation this week is to look for delight in your life and in the world around you. Pay special attention to it during times of suffering or woe, and look for it in your humanity and the shared humanity of those around you. i. Gay, Ross. The Book of Delights. Algonquin: 2019, pp xi-xii. ii. Levine Amy-Jill and Ben Witherington III. The Gospel of Luke: New Cambridge Bible Commentary. Cambrige UP: 2018, pp 177, 178, 179.

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C

5th Sunday after Epiphany February 6, 2022 Let’s talk about failure. What does it mean to you when you hear that word? What feelings arise? What are the times in your life when you have felt like you have failed? Now, imagine, if you will, that God comes to you face to face. After you get over your initial shock and awe, you hear God saying: “I have a special job for you to do for me. I need you to go do this work for me and to fail miserably.” There you are, face to face with the Almighty God, and God is asking you to take something on that you know that you will fail at. Would you do it? Would you be able to say yes? That’s what happened to Isaiah in our passage for today. We see God’s call or commissioning of Isaiah to be God’s prophet, but God tells Isaiah to say to God’s wayward people: “Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.' Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed." Then Isaiah says, “Um, ok. But how long do I have to do this for?” And God tells Isaiah, that he will do it until everything that he’s ever known and loved has been completely devastated; the people will be sent far away, and the land becomes desolate. Only then, will the seed of hope be planted. In our gospel reading for today, we see Jesus’s call to Peter that also comes out of a night of failed fishing. After having caught nothing all night, Jesus invites the fishermen to take him out in the boat with him and to cast their nets into the deep water. Peter is skeptical, but he does it anyway, and then they make a ridiculously abundant catch of fish, more than they can take in by themselves. Then fisherman just leave the biggest catch of their careers on the shore with their boats to follow Jesus, whose own mission will eventually seem to end in failure—with his death on the cross. Scripture shows us, over and over again, that where we see failure, God sees hope and possibility. And it is curious to me that in the seasons in my life where at first glance I seem to have failed, I have been called to dip into deeper waters in my relationship with God. Are there areas in your life right now where you have looked upon certain aspects as failures? If so, what would it mean for you to try to see these aspects through God’s eyes of hope and possibility? In the failures in your life, where has the new life unexpectedly sprung up like a seed sprouting from a stump? By all human standards, my time at my last church was an abysmal failure. And yet, one of the seeds of hope that sprung up in the midst of that challenge and suffering in my life was an unexpected move to the beautiful Isle of Hope in Savannah, Georgia. And what a gift of new life this has been for me, and how much I have learned about God, who is always faithful, myself, the church, and the world through and because of my supposed failure! In conclusion, I’ll share with you a meditation by Steve Garnas-Holmes that invites you to examine your failures to find the hidden blessings and to grow deeper in your relationship with God and others. “Let down your nets”i “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” —Luke 5.4 What might it mean for you to let down your net in these deep waters? To listen deeply to someone, for what they are saying or not saying, beneath the surface… To seek even in your most disappointing failure the blessing that lurks beneath… To seek, in someone hard to love, the divine child, wounded, hidden… To let the net of your heart down into the vast depths of humanity and take it all in, with tender compassion…. To love this world and let your heart down into its darkness, trusting the grace of the Beloved schools there… i. https://unfoldinglight.net/2022/02/02/let-down-your-nets/

The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany-Year C

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C January 30, 2022 I’m going to say something that may upset some of you. This passage from 1 Corinthians that we read today isn’t really about the love between a couple. While it is the favored passage for many weddings, this passage is so much more than just the blissful state of love that almost newly-weds find themselves in. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth which he founded, and he is really angry and disappointed with them. He’s received word that they are fighting about all kinds of stuff, and so this letter is to remind them of who they are supposed to be. “Love is patient; love is kind,” he urges people who have been impatient and unkind to one another. “Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude,” he chides people who have been lording it over one another based on social status and who they were baptized by. “It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth,” he exhorts people who have been spreading lies and rumors about each other. “[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” Paul reminds this group of Christians who have made bitter enemies out of one another. To get the full effect of Paul’s challenging words on love, think about someone in your life who you have gotten cross-wise with, someone you absolutely cannot stand to be in the same room with because of how they act, what they think, how they have treated you. And now imagine Paul is saying these words about love to you about that person. But Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes on to talk about all the things that will come to an end before love ends. Some scholars think that this list of spiritual gifts is something that the community in Corinth prides itself for having: the gifts of prophies, speaking in tongues, and of knowledge. And Paul is telling them that these gifts that they value so highly in themselves as a community of faith are nothing if they are done without love. Imagine Paul naming out the things that we most value about our community—our gift for hospitality, for creativity, the relationships that have been cultivated over decades—and Paul is saying, if you have all those without love, then they aren’t worth anything. In his book Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubled Times, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry writes about this passage from First Corinthians. He talks about how the opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s selfishness. The opposite of love is a life that is completely centered on the self. He talks about how this love that Paul writes about isn’t a noun or a sentiment. He writes, “This love is a verb: it’s an action with force and follow-through. When we pull love out of the abstract, really put it to work, it starts to reveal its extraordinary power. Love as an action is the only thing that has ever changed the world for the better…Love is a commitment to seek the good and to work for the good and welfare of others.”i I’ve been working on a project for a new formation offering at the diocesan level. It’s a leadership development training that has its roots in the old Church Development Institute. For our first session, one of the topics is how we nurture relationships inside and outside of our churches. The model we are using has an exercise that participants are invited to do—where all but one participant create a body sculpture that depicts a tight-loving community in which the one outsider has difficulty breaking in. The second body sculpture the participants are invited to make is one that focuses solely on reaching out to outsiders. And the third body sculpture is one that depicts a community that values both internal and external relationships.ii The point of the exercise is to teach that a focus on tending to both internal and external relationships in the church is important in order for a church to be healthy and to live into its mission of “restoring all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” iii We at St. Thomas are really good at practicing love as an action with each other here. The many, deep, long-standing relationships here are a testament to that. This year, I’d like to invite us to look for ways that we can build and tend relationships with people, both inside and outside the church, who we don’t know as well. We had 25 people join the church last year! That is an amazing gift to our community, and it is a testament to the spiritual gift of hospitality that is one of the cornerstones of this church! How well do you know them? What can you do to get to know them better? How might we be called to restructure things around here to be more inviting to people who haven’t worshipped here for many years? How might we be called to practice love in action beyond the existing bonds of common affection that exist in our faith community? How might we be challenged to put love into action out in the greater community? i. Curry, Michael. Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times. Avery: New York, 2020, pp 18, 19, 22. ii. This model comes from the book Holy Currencies by Eric Law p 23. iii. Book of Common Prayer. The Catechism. p 855

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C

Epiphany 2C January 16, 2022 “I hope my babies can be in the wedding service.” A colleague who had been a priest for over 30 years was telling me a story of the latest wedding he had done in his church, and this is what the bride kept telling him over and over. “I hope my babies can be in the wedding service.” “Well, of course your babies can be in the wedding service,” he kept reassuring her. It did occur to him to wonder why this bride was so insistent on her babies being in the wedding while at the same time so insecure about it, but he quickly stowed those thoughts away. On the day of the wedding, the bride showed up with her babies proudly in tow—male and female chihuahuas dressed in a tux and a bridal gown. She proceeded to have them wheeled down the aisle in a baby carriage as a part of the wedding procession, much to the dismay of my friend who had assured her repeatedly that her babies could be in her wedding. He concluded that conversation by saying, “and that’s why, every time we have a wedding, here at St. Mark’s, I have to update the wedding customary. This week I added the line: “no chihuahuas.” Weddings are fraught with expectations. In these very public celebrations of new life and new family, the expectations of all the major players—bride and groom, their parents, sometimes their siblings and extended relatives and others-collide. It’s not uncommon that right around the time that we do our pre-marital counseling session on conflict for there to have been some significant conflict around the wedding—either between the bride and the groom or a member of the wedding party and a parent--which we spend time unpacking and discussing to learn more about how the couple handles both conflict and expectations of others. It’s interesting to me to see in our gospel passage for today a snapshot of similar dynamics at work in a wedding during Jesus’s own day. Jesus’s mother (who is never called by name in John’s gospel) learns that the wedding feast is about to run out of wine. This is a huge scandal and would reflect very poorly on the new couple and their families. Mary goes to Jesus and tells him the situation, and Jesus responds: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Mary doesn’t answer him, but instead tells the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.” And then he just does it. Jesus turns the water into wine and no one except the servants and his disciples even know that he has done it. I can’t help but wonder what shifts in Jesus in that moment after he answers Mary? Why does he decide that it is his concern and that ok, maybe the time is right for his first miracle? (One of my colleagues has suggested that maybe Jesus decided that it was easier to just go ahead and change the water into wine that to deal with his mamma after they got home.) It’s interesting, too, that this change in Jesus’s understanding of the timing of his mission happens in the gospel of John, where Jesus is so unemotional, unmovable, so focused on his mission, and more divine seeming than human. I’d like to understand what happens here when Mary’s expectations for Jesus collide with his own expectations and understanding of his mission. Last weekend, my family and I watched the Disney movie Encanto. Encanto is an animated film that tells the story of the Madrigal family, who received a lineage of unique, magical gifts for each of their offspring after their Columbian village was overrun by armed men in the dark of night. In addition to the magical gifts, the family is given a magical house, and they have decided to use all of these resources to protect the other members of their village and keep them safe from harm. The movie follows the story of Mirabel, the main character, who is the only member of the family to not receive a magical gift, and it explores the weight of expectations on key members of the family to use their gifts in a way that is of service to the family and the community. Mirabel isn’t able to live into the expectation of having a magical gift, so she overcompensates by trying to be super-helpful. Other characters feel burdened by the weight of expectations to use their gifts to the fullest, often to the sacrifice of their own wellness. And when facing the threat of losing their gifts, they begin to question their own self-worth. Mirabel’s oldest sister Luisa, whose gift is super-strength,has a whole song about this: “If I could shake the crushing weight of expectations Would that free some room up for joy? Or relaxation, or simple pleasure? Instead we measure this growing pressure Keeps growing, keep going 'Cause all we know is Pressure like a drip, drip, drip that'll never stop, woah Pressure that'll tip, tip, tip till you just go pop, woah Give it to your sister, it doesn't hurt and See if she can handle every family burden Watch as she buckles and bends but never breaks No mistakes” In Encanto, the characters realize that expectations of others do not have to define their identities or self-worth. They learn to evaluate expectations of their own and that they have received from others, (especially their Abuela, who is the head of the family) and to determine which ones should be kept and which ones could be discarded for them to be healthier and more whole. All this makes me wonder if Jesus’s change is less about succumbing to his mother’s expectations of him and more about reevaluating and shifting his own expectations of his ministry? In this season where all of our expectations for life continue to be disrupted and upended, this is a helpful reminder for all of us. What expectations of yourself do you have that are deeply engrained that you may need to reevaluate during this season? Where in your life are expectations crushing the possibility of more joy, more relaxation, more pleasure? What might be a way that God is calling you to change or grow in a way that is different from your expectations of how things should go?

The First Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C

The First Sunday after the Epiphany-the Baptism of our Lord Year C January 9, 2022 “Everybody hurts, everybody hurts, everybody hurts…sometimes.” i REM lead singer Michael Stipe crooned these words over and over as 7 of us sat on the floor of my freshman year college dorm room listening to the song over and again and again. We were a biology lab small group working on our lab project to test the way that listening to sad music affected the biometric readings of the human body—the connections between the body and the emotions. I don’t remember the results of that experiment but here is what I do remember from that day. 1. The REM song Everybody Hurts is a really long, and really depressing song. 2. It is really, really awkward to be a 19 year old sitting on a dorm room floor during such a long, agonizing song which both lifts up the pathos of the human condition and also acknowledges the shared condition and burden of suffering with a bunch of random classmates, relative strangers, who you have been thrown together with in a lab assignment. ii I was reminded of the song and the experience this week, when I read a portion of the daily meditation written by author, theologian, and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr. Rohr’s meditation could have easily been titled “Everybody hurts.” Here is what he writes: “I am no masochist, and I surely have no martyr complex, but I do believe that the only way out of deep sadness is to go with it and through it. Sometimes I wonder if this is what we priests mean when we lift up bread and wine at the Eucharist or communion and say, “Through him, and with him, and in him.” I wonder if the only way to spiritually hold suffering—and not let it destroy us—is to recognize that we cannot do it alone. When I try to heroically do it alone, I slip into distractions, denials, and pretending—and I do not learn suffering’s softening lessons. But when I can find a shared meaning for something, especially if it allows me to love God and others in the same action, God can get me through it. I begin to trust the ambiguous process of life.” He continues, “When we carry our small suffering in solidarity with the one universal longing of all humanity, it helps keep us from self-pity or self-preoccupation. We know that we are all in this together, and it is just as hard for everybody else. Almost all people are carrying a great and secret hurt, even when they don’t know it. When we can make the shift to realize this, it softens the space around our overly defended hearts. It makes it hard to be cruel to anyone. Shared struggle somehow makes us one—in a way that easy comfort and entertainment never can.”iii Our reading from Isaiah today is a love song from God to God’s hurting people. They have been scattered and exiled far away from their home, assimilated into the foreign empire of Babylon. They are deeply fearful that they will become extinct; they are doubtful of their future as God’s chosen and cherished people because God seems to have abandoned them. The prophet here speaks on behalf of God and reassures God’s people that are loved and cherished and not abandoned; that their suffering will not be endless but will give birth to hope and new life. This year in reading this familiar scripture once again, I am struck by the poetry that the prophet uses: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” I don’t think it’s an accident that the phrase “pass through the waters” calls to mind another time that God’s people were suffering and afraid, as the Egyptian army is bearing down on them to either recapture them and drag them back into slavery or even to kill them all. During that moment of fear and suffering, God proves that God is with them, working through Moses to part the waters of the Red Sea so God’s people can pass through them unharmed. Exodus 14:22 describes the event as the waters parting to create a dry path with walls of water on either side where the people walked—truly a terrifying experience but one through which they come out on the other side, into the first day of their life as a free people. Today in our liturgical year, we lift up the theme of Jesus’s baptism by John in the Jordan River. Every year on this first Sunday after the Epiphany, we read a gospel story about Jesus’s baptism, and it is a Sunday that is especially appropriate for either a baptism or for renewing our own baptismal vows. This Old Testament passage for today, coupled with the gospel passage which shows us Luke’s version of Jesus’s baptism, is a timely reminder of life’s hard places or as REM puts it, that “everybody hurts.” Our lives are a series of passing through the waters of hardship, fear, and suffering, through death (or a change), and into new life or resurrection. And God is with us in and through all of that, comforting us and reminding us that we belong to God and that we are precious in God’s sight. This is what we are baptized into; this is what we recall and remember when we renew our baptismal vows; this is what lift up before God when we gather around God’s altar: that even though we suffer and things may feel scary and hard right now, God will not allow us to stay in that spot for forever. We will pass through the waters and come out on the other side. Just before Christmas, I receive an email from my mom with the subject line: found prayer. Her brief email said that she had read this prayer on a blog that she follows and the writer said it had been sent out by her church. I’ve been praying it since just before Christmas and even though it is a new year, it still seems applicable. I’ll share it with you in closing. "God of the long and aching wait. This year has swelled with the grief and longing and loss of many. We want so much more than the present condition of this world. Where are you? There are seasons where it becomes difficult to believe in your nearness. Would you make it known to us now? That as we carry each other through this season, we would find the miracle in the mundane, tiny sacred flashes of good as we wait for a healing that lasts. Help us to dream. That we would find even our prayers grow large in this season, asking for those things which have seemed too good or naive. Help us to dream, not that we would pine for some mirage of how things used to be, but that we would hold space for visions of life where justice can breathe, where power is mobile, and where liberation leaves no one behind. Come, God. And we will wait." iv Amen. i. Here’s how to listen to the song and see the full lyrics (in case you need some comfortable melancholy or you were living under a rock in the early 90’s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rOiW_xY-kc&t=5s ii. The song is described as having a comfortable melancholy and REM guitarist Peter Buck wrote in the album notes “that ‘the reason the lyrics are so atypically straightforward is because it was aimed at teenagers’, and ‘I've never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the idea that high school is a portal to hell seems pretty realistic to me." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody_Hurts iii. https://cac.org/it-cant-be-carried-alone-2022-01-04/ iv.Here’s the original blog post with the prayer: https://fabricpaperthread.blogspot.com/2021/12/almost-christmas.html