pain – Salvaged Faith

I See You

Posted on September 19, 2021Leave a comment

Text: 1 Samuel 1:1-18

Where does it hurt?

I distinctly remember an incident when one of my nephews took a tumble and as soon as they hit the ground the wails and the tears began.

I rushed over to offer comfort and care.

Where does it hurt? I asked…

And though they couldn’t form the words, they could point to the scrape on their elbow.

“Oh no!” I replied. “It’s so bad we might have to cut your whole arm off!”

And suddenly the tears turned to giggles and a kiss and a hug from Aunt Katie made everything better.

Oh how I wish that hugs and kisses from aunts could make every hurt go away so quickly.

But the reality is that we have all experienced pain and suffering.

We try to put on a brave face and when someone asks we say we are fine.

But there are days when we are not.

And on those days, we need someone to see us.

To acknowledge our pain.

To hold it up as truth, rather than to dismiss or minimize it.

I am thirty-nine years old. I have been married for fourteen years. And my spouse and I have been unable to have children.

We have nine nieces and nephews that we love dearly and two cats that are our babies.

But we do not have children.

And some days that hurts.

I know that there are other folks in this room today that have known this kind of hurt.

The pain of infertility or miscarriage or the loss of a child.

Some of you have known the hurt of Hannah from our scripture today.

And when I think about Hannah’s story… and my own story… and maybe your story… I have to first acknowledge that Hannah is more that that one piece of her story.

Hannah is a daughter. And a wife. And a faithful believer.

She is loved.

She is whole and complete just as she is.

And… there are days when it hurts.

Our scripture for today talks about how every year the family would make their annual pilgrimage for worship and sacrifice.

And every year, that experience brought her pain.

It was the pain of how Elkanah’s other wife, Peninnah would taunt and bully her for not having children.

It was the pain of how her husband would try to minimize her pain, “why are you upset? Aren’t I enough for you?”

And it was even the pain of how those who served in the sanctuary made assumptions about what was wrong with her.

In the Message translation of this passage, it says: “Every time she went to the sanctuary of God she could expect to be taunted.”

Can you imagine if that place that is supposed to be holy and safe is the place where it hurts the most?

Well… some of you can.

The church is not perfect.

And at times has been downright terrible.

I confess and lament that the church and its people has been the source of harm.

It is not okay.

And I hope and pray and work so that this church is a place of God’s grace and love and mercy and welcome… for everyone.

When Hannah went to the sanctuary of God, she felt the hurt of childlessness more profoundly than at other times in her life.

And the text tells us that faced with others who couldn’t/didn’t listen to her hurt, she pulled herself together, and pretended that the pain wasn’t there.

Oh – how often do we do that.

We hide our pain.

We smile through gritted teeth.

We have been dismissed so many times that we start to feel that what we are experiencing is shameful.

Whether it is a job loss… or addiction… or a loved one in prison… or your mental health… or chronic pain… we carry the hurt quietly.

But all alone, in the sanctuary, in prayer… Hannah spoke aloud her hurt to God.

As Lisle Gwynn Garrity created this image for our worship series, she thought of this woman.

She writes, “In Hannah, I see a woman who has been mocked, shamed, diminished, and ignored. However, she refuses to be silenced. In the presence of her pain, she grits her teeth, pours her heart out before God, and insists that we see her: “Just look at my pain and remember me!” (1 Samuel 1:11) I decided to render her body as fading into the scene to symbolize the invisibility she feels, and also the vulnerable transparency she exudes.” (A Sanctified Art)

“Look at my pain. Remember me,” she cries out.

And friends, here is the gospel truth.

God hears our cries.

In the presence of God, all hurt is seen.

It was there that Eli, the priest, came across her weeping.

He initially made assumptions… she must be drunk… carrying on like that.

But having just been honest with God, Hannah finds the courage to be honest with Eli.

“I am a very sad woman.” She replies. “I am carrying a great burden.”

And for the first time… someone sees her hurt.

Eli can’t fix it.

He can’t make any promises.

But he sees her.

He sees her pain.

And he prays for her… praying to the God who knows all our hurts and who is always with us.

And here is the powerful thing about being seen.

When we are seen, we are no longer alone.

The hurt might still be there… but suddenly it isn’t something that we have to carry by ourselves.

Our passage for today says that once Eli sees her and prays for her, Hannah is able to get up.

She is able to find some peace.

She walks away and she no longer feels that deep sadness.

As I think about the stories that Rev. Brittany shared about her work with the homeless, there are so many problems and hurts in this world that we cannot fix.

But it is enough to be seen.

To be treated with dignity.

To know that someone is standing alongside us in the midst of it.

There are people in each of our lives that are hurting… for one reason or another.

And sometimes we feel helpless and hopeless because we can’t solve their problems or make it all go away.

But friends, all you need to do is listen.

Be present.

See them. Remember them. Walk with them.

Drop a card in the mail.

Leave a voicemail.

Look them in the eyes.

Hold their hand.

Let them be more than the place where it hurts, without ignoring that sometimes… it does hurt.

And folks… if you are hurting… this place is a safe place to share.

Please reach out to me… I am happy to sit with you, cry with you, yell at the heavens with you…

And there are lots of other good folks right here that are willing to do the same.

You are not alone.

Mystery: Restored!

Posted on November 25, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Job 42:1-6, 10-17

This morning, I want to tell you a story about little Henry.
Henry walked to school every morning with his grandpa. And along their way, Grandpa would stop at the neighborhood store for a newspaper and a cup of coffee.
At the register, there were bins full of candies and gum and chocolates and every single morning, Henry would ask Grandpa if he could have some.
Every single morning, the answer was no.
Well, after several weeks of watching this, the cashier started to have a soft spot in her heart for the little boy. So one morning, as Grandpa and Henry came up to the register, the cashier said, “Good morning, Henry! How about this morning you reach in and get some of that candy you want… on me!”
Oh, he was SO excited! He reached out his hand to get some candy and then quickly pulled it back.
Instead, he grabbed Grandpa’s hand and shoved it into the bin with all of the sweets.
Grandpa was a bit stunned, and pulled back a whole fist full of candy.

As they kept walking to school, Grandpa was a bit puzzled. “Henry,” he asked, “Every single morning you ask me for candy… this is exactly what you have always wanted… why didn’t you pick out the candy yourself?”
Henry looked back at Grandpa with a grin on his face. “It is, Grandpa… but your hands are so much bigger than mine! My little hand was too small to get everything I wanted!”

There is a sense of Henry’s wisdom in our story of Job.
You and I, we are so small.
Compared with the stars and the oceans and the mountains and the vast diversity of creation, we are tiny specks of dust.
We might want to reach out and grab knowledge and answers and truth and faith… but our little hands are too small to get everything we want.
God’s hands are much bigger.
God’s wisdom is far greater.
God’s power is beyond our comprehension.

Last week, our youth took us through some of the mystery of God’s power and might.
We were reminded through song of just how powerful God is and how through the grace and the love of God, we can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and not be afraid.
When oceans rise, we can rest in God’s embrace.
In our troubled seas, God is our peace and God’s love will lead us through.
When we can’t feel a thing and are falling short, God says that we are loved and that we are held.

These messages of power are so important to the story of Job that we have been following these last few weeks.
At the beginning of November, we began to explore this little morality play in which a perfect, upright man, Job, is tested by God.
The Accuser has this question… will Job continue to be perfect and upright and faithful if things start to go badly for him? Or is he simply a fair-weather friend?
God allows this little experiment to proceed and Job’s flocks and livelihood and children are taken away from him. Even his own bodily health is impacted and he is covered in sores and finds himself in pain all day and night.
But still he refuses to turn his back on God.

The second part of our story involved Job’s friends.
They are convinced that Job must have done something wrong in order to have all of this punishment brought upon him.
They, like Job, firmly believed that good things happen to good people and that bad people get what they deserve. They see God as being the arbiter of retributive justice – where punishment and blessing is given out based upon someone’s faithfulness and goodness.
But for every one of their speeches, Job has one of his own.
He has done nothing wrong. He is innocent. If only he could have his day in court and stand before God, he could make his case and God would have to relent.
Job still believes at this point that God gives people what they deserve… and if he is being punished it is undeserved… and therefore… God is wrong.
Job is actually putting God on trial.

And as Isabel and Olivia reminded us in their message last week… God might be annoyed and a little upset at Job’s whining… maybe even perturbed at Job’s accusations… but the message God speaks out of the chaos and directly to Job’s heart is this: I created this whole world. I made everything in it. I understand how it works and am the very power that sustains it all. And… I love you. I’ve got your back.

For three chapters, God goes on and on and on about “the incomprehensible magnificence and immeasurable power of divine majesty.”
Were you there when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Have death’s gates been revealed to you?
Where’s the road to the place where light dwells?
Can you guide the stars at their proper times?
Do you know when mountain goats give birth?
Did you give strength to the horse?
Is it due to your understanding that the hawk flies?
Can you control the great beasts of the earth like the behemoth and the leviathan?

Job is stunned into silence.
He thought he had God all figured out… that God’s justice was some kind of divine math in which your goodness earned you points and blessings.
It actually reminds me of the television show, The Good Place, a comedy that explores ethics and morality and what we owe each other. The foundation of the afterlife in this universe is that for every good thing you do with selfless intent, you rack up points that allow you to enter “the good place” a place of eternal satisfaction.
But when you cuss, or stiff a waitress, or murder someone, points are deducted and without enough points, you end up in “the bad place.”

Job is living his life in a certain way, following all of the rules, making sacrifices for not only his potential sins but also those of his children, because he thinks that is what faith is about. Trying to earn God’s favor and blessing.

What he didn’t realize is that he already had it.
We all do.
The God who set the stars in motion and who knows about the birth of every mountain goat and how to direct the flight of a hawk also knows you and me intimately.
God knows every hair on our head.
God knows the divine plans in store for each of us.
And God’s justice is not a math equation.
Rather, it is a complicated, holy, grace-filled effort to take every broken, hurting, sinful thing in this world and to redeem and transform it back towards its holy purpose.
Job had only heard about God before… but now Job has seen God.
And God is far bigger, greater, more awesome than he ever imagined and his tiny way of grasping and understanding the world has been torn apart.

I think, if anything, this morality tale we find in the book of Job was an effort by early Jewish theologians to take apart what they believed was a very limited way of seeing God in the world.
So many people think that God is an impersonal judge who tallies right and wrong and who sits on the divine bench handing out punishments and rewards. And with such a calculated understanding of the divine, we can make no sense of that ancient question of why bad things happen to good people or why there is suffering in the lives of innocent people.
But our scriptures of our faith have a vastly different message for us about who God is and how deeply God cares for us.
Our God got down in the dirt and formed the first humans and breathed into them the breath of life.
Our God took imperfect people like Abraham and Noah and Jacob and through them, in spite of them, because of them, set in motion the divine plans for all the people of the world to be blessed.
Our God heard the cries of the people when they were caught in slavery in the land of Egypt and raised up a leader to bring them home.

In the end, what we find in the Book of Job are not easy answers to the question of why there is suffering. In fact, Job gets no answer or explanation for why so much was taken from him.
Instead, Job discovers that we are allowed to cry out when we suffer.
We should protest against injustice.
And we should open our lives and our hearts up to discover the ways that God is far powerful and more holy than we could ever imagine.
Before, Job had only heard about God.
But in the midst of his suffering and his yearning for truth, he encountered the very presence of God.
God reached out to him and in the process, Job found himself having a real, deepened, humble relationship with the Lord.
In our lives, we will face difficulties.
We will encounter diagnosis and questions that we cannot comprehend.
We will find ourselves asking why such awful things are happening in the world.
In these last few weeks, I have heard this very community raising up cries of concern for the death of loved ones, illness, wildfires, mass shootings, war, hunger, and homelessness.
None of these situations are deserved.
Innocent lives are impacted or harmed or taken far too soon.
We want answers and solutions.
And I think what we discover in the Book of Job is that there is no quick fix for the problems of this world. We can’t explain away why these things happen in a few words.
What we find instead is the presence of a God who is with us in the midst of it.
A God who hears every cry.
A God who seeks, in the words of Sharon Lynn Putt, “not to condemn and punish but to reconcile, to redeem, and to restore all of us to each other and to God.”

In the verses that we skipped in our reading for today, God reaches out to Job and invites him to offer up prayers and offerings for those three friends who had such a limited understanding of what was happening in Job’s life.
You see, even in the midst of restoring Job’s possessions, God is also working to redeem those relationships between Job and his friends.
And God is working to help transform and expand their understanding of how this world hangs together, too.

Our task, as we live out the truths of the Book of Job, is to listen to the suffering of others. To listen to our own pain. To not hide it, but hold it up into the light where God can show us that we are loved when we can’t feel a thing. We are strong when we think we are weak. We are held when we think we are falling short. We belong to God even when we think we don’t belong.
In that moment, we, like Job, can relent. We can surrender. We can lay our whole lives at the feet of God… knowing, trusting, believing… that no matter what happens, we are held in the hands of God.
Like Henry, our little hands aren’t big enough to fully grasp and understand the ways of this world. But God’s are.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

illustration adapted from Discipleship Ministry preaching notes

Shake It Out… #gc2012

Posted on May 3, 20121 Comment

I’m not even sure there are words to describe the last 24 hours.

My roommate and re-acquainted friend from our youth days, Jessica Ireland, was hit by a truck in an intersection last night. She came out on the other side sore, scraped up, with deep scrapes on her foot that will take a while to heal… but with no broken bones. She came back to the hotel late last night and some of us young adult delegates from Iowa kept her company with pizza and conversation and laughter until the wee hours of the morning.

With little sleep, but a heart full of gratitude that Jessica is okay… or at least will be with some time… we headed to conference.

Our agenda today dealt with sex, money, and power. Literally.

Human sexuality occupied most of our morning session… and I do mean most, because after we failed to pass legislation that claimed United Methodist people of faith disagree on the issue, a protest crossed the bar and occupied the space. We were heading into the morning break, so it didn’t seem like a big deal. Those of us who gathered shared communion because what else do you do when you feel so broken? Where else do you turn?

But as the conference returned from break, it became clear that those who were in the middle were not leaving. I was back in my seat, but others refused to budge. After the monitoring report in which our head of GCSRW took off her badge and prophetically helped us to see that all of us are children of God, Bishop Coyner declared that the conference was unable to continue its business, he dismissed us for lunch (1.5 hours early), and declared that when we returned from lunch at 2pm that the plenary hall would be closed to all but delegates.

I’m going to just say it. I am an ally of the GLBT community. I have not always been a strong ally or advocate in the past because I feel it is my pastoral duty to care for all of my flock and to provide a safe space for people wherever they are and whatever they believe. So, I’m not outspoken. But my mother-in-law is a lesbian. I have dear friends who are clergy and/or would like to be clergy who are out. I have friends and mentors from my years in seminary and working at West End who are gay or lesbian or transgendered and have helped me to become a better Christian. A good friend from my high school youth group came out to me as bisexual. I have congregation members who have GLBT sons or daughters or grandchildren or siblings.

So as I watched my brothers and sisters in Christ in pain, I was heartbroken. We had said once again that we can’t even agree to disagree about this issue. And I saw the faces of those I love and knew that I couldn’t stand by, I couldn’t leave the plenary space if they were there, singing their hearts out, around the communion table. Not knowing if as a reserve delegate I would be allowed back in if I left for lunch, I sat in my chair and wept with friends. I prayed with my Bishop. While I knew that I was not prepared or felt comfortable occupying the plenary space or facing potential arrest from the non-violent demonstration, I was determined not to be shut out of the room. I prayed for a peaceful resolution for that moment… knowing that a peaceful resolution for our denomination would have to wait another four years or longer.

For three hours, those who were around the communion table sang and marched. And as plenary gathered once again, it was announced all would be welcome back in the room. And then our Bishops became our pastors. They calmed our hearts. They spoke peace. It was not okay, and they spoke that truth. Bishop Wenner said: This General Conference and the polity of our church have hurt you. She was real. She was honest. And we all listened. And the protest ended and they marched out of the room holding one hand up in the sign of peace.

Someone tweeted that nothing quiets a protest faster than a discussion of actuarial tables and within minutes, we were ankle deep in pension discussions. And then we talked about delegating the powers of general conference to another body and the petitions (amendments to the constitution) failed. And all day long, I kept looking for the voices of women and people of color and they were few and far between. I’m not sure if we were tired or beat up or if we just couldn’t get a word in edgewise, but the entire afternoon felt very heavy…

When we came to worship this evening, we weren’t quite sure we wanted to worship. We weren’t sure our hearts were in it. But Marcia McFee did it again… the right words at the right time. The right songs to stir our souls. The right symbolic actions to bring us together as the body of Christ… and dear Lord, the right bishop to break open the word of God for us. Bishop Kiesey’s words were like healing balm for my soul. I was reminded that this work of two weeks is just that – long, hard, difficult work. But it is not everything. We are called to feed the lambs of God. We are called to feed the sheep of Jesus’ flock. And on Sunday I’m going home to be IN ministry. To love the flock God has entrusted me with… to lead them… to feed them… to care for and cast nets wide in search of those people in my community who are desperate for God’s love. None of this matters if we can’t leave this place and go and serve the ones Jesus loves. That’s it. Feed his sheep. Simple. Succinct. So True.

As we closed, the Lake Junaluska Singers broke it down like no other. A regular dance party broke out on the floor of general conference and we continued dancing until we had worked out all of the tension and stress and weariness of the day. It was cleansing to let go. It was holy to let the Spirit move us. It was joy in the midst of suffering, kindom fellowship in the midst of the broken world.

My friend, Sarah, told me tonight that there is a reason dancing is a part of a purging ritual in so many cultures. We can’t carry that pain with us everywhere. We have to shake it off. We have to dance it out. We have to let wild abandon come over us so that we can breathe deeply, replenish our souls, and start over again tomorrow.

Lord have mercy.