Ok. So. We are currently in the middle of a pandemic with a mutating virus. White Supremacists tried to take over the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. And there is intelligence from the FBI that suggests that they are or were planning more destruction today, possibly as we speak, as well as on inauguration day. Our current president is the first president in history to be impeached twice. The National Guard has been sleeping in the halls of the Capitol, you know, just in case. The United Church of Christ just put out a statement warning more liberal leaning and progressive churches to be on guard for retaliation by those who don’t share their views and are planning to do some harm. Our dinner conversation with our boys, just the other night, was about the Nazi flag. We showed them what it looked like. What it stood for. And if they are ever standing on the same side as that flag, they should quickly cross the street.
So yeah. Things are a little bit crazy right now. It’s a running joke that the word “unprecedented” has totally lost its meaning. But as a leader, a pastor, a Christian, I need to come up with something to say today, something that will remind us of who we are and whose we are. That’s all I got. That’s all I can think to do. If we remember. If we try to embody, try to re-member, who we are and where we came from and what is at the heart of all of us, then, maybe, we just might have a fighting chance against all this brokenness.
Before kids, Dan and I had this amazing chocolate lab named Robin. She was the best. We adored her. Anyway, our favorite thing to do, which we didn’t do nearly enough, was to take her out into the woods, let her off her leash, and all hike some trails together. One long weekend we went backpacking, hiking all day, camping at night, and it was like her dream come true - the never-ending walk. Each time we let her off her leash, she’d dart ahead, zigzagging her way through the trees, smelling all the smells, chasing all the squirrels she would never catch, romping through the mud and just generally enjoying the freedom that is “dog.” Dan and I’d walk at our own pace. And we never really worried about her running off. Every 100 yards or so she’d stop, turn around, and sit and wait for us to catch up. This would repeat itself for the whole day. She’d dart ahead, get just a little too far away, stop, turn around, sit, and wait. We called it her “checking in.” She wanted to know that even though we let her go, even though we gave her her freedom to run and explore and just generally “dog,” she wanted to know that we were still there, still watching over her, still waiting for her to come home.
I think we all need to check in right about now. We need to stop what we’re doing, stop what we’re saying, and just check in. We need to check in with God. And we need to check in with each other. Don’t get too far ahead that you lose sight of the ones who are taking care of you, ya know? So. How are you all doing? What’s got you up at night? What’s the worrying thought you can’t let go of? Let’s stop. Check in.
And that’s what I think we need to do with God. We need to check in. Stop our racing forward. Stop our rushing from one decaying smell to another, and we need to just check in. Check in with who we are and whose we are. Check in with what any of this craziness is truly about.
Psalm 139 is that check in. It’s that touchpoint. It’s “base” in a game of hide and seek. It’s a reminder that God knows us. God knows us and sees us and is connected to us. Like in a game of hide and seek, like in the nervous freedom of letting our dog off her leash, like letting your toddler wander the aisles, thinking he’s all on his own, like being that toddler, thinking you’re out in that brave wild world, all on your own, it’s both exciting and comforting, terrifying and fun. God has searched us and God knows us. God knows all the things about us. What we think. Where we’re going. Where we’re staying. When we’re leaving. God knows who we are better than we do. All. The. Things. Like when Robin would race ahead, losing sight of us for a minute, and yet we always knew where she was, or when Mom was always looking out for us, even when she was shopping for bras and we were hiding in the middle of the racks of nightgowns, God can find us even when we can’t find ourselves.
Last week I talked about sin. I talked about how sin is like those turtles from that myth. How sin goes all the way down. One sin caused another sin which caused another sin which caused another. Back and back and back and back. But that’s not the only thing that goes all the way down. That’s not the only thing that goes back and back and back and back. There’s this grace thing, too. “Original Sin” gets all the press and all the commentary. It’s way more dramatic. Much more sexy. It makes a better soap opera or prime time medical drama. But grace, grace can get kinda, well, boring. Original grace doesn’t make it into our theology textbooks quite as prominently because, well, it’s just so…there. It’s constant and committed and steady and present. All the way down. Back and back and back and back. Fallen angels and a bag of thirty silver coins, murdered brothers and serpent approved apples, they’re the stuff of real drama. That’s where the questions are. That’s where the uncertainty is. But grace, grace is like the air we breathe, it’s like water to a fish, it’s the grey clouds of a Pittsburgh winter and the mysterious leftover casserole in the back of the fridge. Grace is. It just is. It’s there. All the time.
And it can sort of haunt us. Grace is kind of a stalker. Where can we go from God’s spirit? Where can we flee from God’s presence? If we go to heaven, there’s God. And if we end up in hell, God’s there, too. We can try to escape to the farthest reaches of the ocean, we can try to hide in the darkest corners of hell, we can let this nation fall into the hands of white supremacy and hatred and racism and injustice, and God is still there. If we get as far away from God as humanly possible, as far away from God as Christ on the cross, there God is, right there, with us.
You know, there are lots of really good reasons why we don’t remember our births. It sounds horrible. It’s painful and messy and chaotic. That moment when our lungs fill with air and our skin feels the chill and suddenly this switch is turned on and all of our bodily functions have to perform on their own sounds like having a root canal, doing colonoscopy prep, and taking a calculus final all at once. It’s traumatic and overwhelming and thank you, God, for wiping it from our memories. But. But there is something we miss. Something we all miss. We don’t get to remember that look on the face of at least one person in the room who sees us and sees nothing but pure perfection. We are battered and bruised, we’re covered in this cheesy bloody muck, some of us have cone heads and patchy skin and our faces are contorted in shock and pain and rage. And someone looks at us and thinks, “that’s perfect.” “That’s it. Right there. Exactly what I’ve been waiting for all my life.” And even if that’s the only moment and the only person and it only lasts half a second, it’s there, I guarantee it, for all of us. Whether you’re the first or the fourteenth kid, whether you were expected and longed for or a shock and an inconvenience, someone in that room, maybe just for a flash, someone was so happy to see you here. Someone looked at your contorted, bruised, helpless and flailing body and thought, if nothing else, “Thank God you’re here.”
We don’t get to remember that moment. We don’t get to carve that picture into our brains. It goes so quickly. But it was there. It existed. It is a part of who you are. It’s a flash of that original grace.
Unfortunately, we can’t tap back in to the feeling of that moment whenever our world is turned upside down, when we’re terrified, when things are so uncertain, when we’ve strayed a little too far down the trail and we can’t see the ones who are supposed to be looking out for us.
We like to focus on the sin stuff. We like to focus on all the ways that we’ve failed and all the mistakes our parents made and all the things that are wrong and broken and crashing down and breaking apart in the world. We definitely like to point out all the ugliness in others, all the ways that they are wrong, and all the things they’ve said and done to make this world such a hard, messy place to live in. We like to storm the boundaries and invade the capitols and plant our flags and rage about all the wrongs done to us. We like to draw lines about who is in and who is out. And we really, really like to cower in the corners, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of our own failures. It’s got more dramatic flair, sin does. But what it doesn’t have is the final word. We tend to forget that.
Even the psalmist seems to forget this, right in the middle of their song about how original grace is! “O that you would kill the wicked, O God!” The psalmist hates and loathes and counts their enemies. How quickly the poet goes from relishing in God’s steadfast love to indulging in judgmental name calling. They’re bloodthirsty and wicked, they’re malicious and evil and enemies.
But then the psalmist stops. The psalmist runs back to home base. The poet turns around in the crowded grocery store and looks for mom again. The psalmist checks in. Oh yeah, right, there’s really only one Person who knows us. There’s only one being who was there even before we were born, who looked upon us with so much grace and so much love and said, “Yup, absolutely. I’ll follow this one down. Down all the way to death. Yes. Perfect. That’s it. Right there. Exactly what I’ve been waiting for all my life.”
So let’s take a moment to stop forging ahead. Let’s stop. Turn around. Check in with the thing that goes back and back and back and back. It’s grace. It’s the look on God’s face when God first thought of you, when God first created the thought of the thought of you. When God saw all that you are and all that you would be and all that you’d fail to be, when God formed you and knit you, knowing all the while that you, too, would bring sin into the world, God said, “Yes. Perfect. That’s it. Right there. Exactly what I’ve been waiting for all my life.”
When that moment becomes a reality for us, then we can see that moment in others. We can see their original grace going back and back and back and back. Even when they’re storming the capitol and threatening our elected leaders. Even when they’re waving Nazi flags and inciting riots and are so so terrified. And if we can see that original grace going back and back and back and back, if we can at least come to recognize that flash of a smile that came across someone’s face when they were born, if we can at least somehow come to accept, even for just a millisecond that this psalm is about them, too, then…well, they still won’t be right. They still must be stopped. They will still be damaging relationships and destroying good things that have been built and participating in that horrible sin that goes all the way down. They’ll still be oppressing and abusing power and still be covered in that original sin that goes back and back and back and back. But if we can see that original grace, too, maybe, some little piece of what God gave them when they were just a fleck of dust on an idea in the briefest of thoughts just waiting to be formed can be restored. Some resurrection can happen.
But let’s “take a selfish.” Let’s start with ourselves. Let’s check in. Let’s stop our wandering and rushing and racing ahead. Let’s turn around and wait and look and find that God never lost track of us, even when we lost track of God. God knows us and knows us and knows us and knows us. All the way back. All the way down. And God loves us and loves us and loves us and loves us. In the midst of our sin. Because of Grace. Original Grace. Let’s take a moment to listen to the words God spoke to us - the words God spoke to you and still speaks to you - before COVID or white supremacy or racism or violence or apples or deception or any of this mess was ever a thing: “Yes. Perfect. That’s it. Right there. Exactly what I’ve been waiting for all my life.”
Thanks be to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment