MARY MAGDALENE

Today is the feast day for Mary Magdalene, and when I saw that, I started to think about how much I love Mary Magdalene and how often I have written about her.

In fact, I started writing about Mary Magdalene in college, almost thirty years ago.  I was taking a poetry writing class and my professor was real big on structured, formal poetry, not the free verse that I had been doing since elementary school.  My professor wanted us to concentrate on form, on meter and rhyme and though I am still a free verse poet, I did fall in love with a particular type of poem called the villanelle. 

Perhaps the most recognizable villanelle is one by Dylan Thomas—if you remember the Michelle Pfeiffer movie Dangerous Minds, or the Robin Williams movie Dead Poet’s Society, then you will recognize this poem.  Thomas writes, “Do not go gentle into that good night/old age should burn and rave at close of day/rage, rage against the dying of the light.” 

The villanelle intrigued me as a form because of the song-like quality of the meter which is iambic pentameter and the repetition of lines that form a refrain for each stanza.

And so when it came time to write my own, I chose to do a villanelle on the moment when Mary Magdalene goes back to the tomb on Easter morning.  Each stanza alternating between Mary and Jesus and beginning with these lines, “Mary, why do you weep over death, says He/Your Lord is alive, is no longer dead/Come back to the tomb, come back to me.”

And if you’re thinking, Kendra you were writing Bible-themed poetry in college, how did you not wind up in seminary immediately after graduation?  The answer is—I was close.  I was very close—this close to seminary.  But no regrets.  In the multi-verse, I’m sure there is a version of me that went to seminary right after college and is now the pastor of a Disciples of Christ church.  You lucked out with the Episcopal Church version of me.

Over and over, again and again, I have written different poems, different versions of Mary’s time in the garden on Easter morning where she greets the risen Jesus.

But one thing I have never addressed in my writing until just recently is the story of Mary Magdalene before she met Jesus.  Much like Jesus’ childhood, there is not a lot in the gospels on who Mary Magdalene was.  There is a common misconception that she was a prostitute, but the only thing we know for certain appears in Luke 8:1-3 which reads, “Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.”

In other words, we know that Mary had seven demons cast out of her and we know that she and these other women, some named, some unnamed are providing financially to Jesus’ ministry.  What does this mean for Mary?  It means it’s possible she had money.  Where did she get that money?  Possibly she was a widow.  But you see how even those two questions open the door for a huge Mary story that we are never shown.

Over the years, pop culture has portrayed Mary Magdalene in this early state in different ways.  The Chosen, from what I’ve seen, seems to portray Mary Magdalene as someone who is fundamentally good but is tormented by her demons in a mostly euphemistic way—at times she would not be out of place in a horror movie today.  But this Mary has suffered trauma and as a result suffers from depression.  She also has problems with alcohol. 

In the movie Mary Magdalene, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus, Mary Magdalene is shown as someone her family considers possessed because she will not conform to society’s expectations of women at that time.  She will not be forced into marriage to her brother’s friend.  Her family drags her to the water and tries to exorcise her by almost drowning her.  This traumatizes Mary further.  Only when Jesus appears and offers Mary “purpose” that gives her agency over her life, is she relieved of her mental anguish.

In earlier performances of Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Weber, Mary is seen as a temptress.  And of course in books like The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as perhaps the wife of Jesus.

All of these suppositions make compelling stories.

But who is the true Mary Magdalene?

It was a question I attempted to answer in my new book Your Light Has Come: The Miracles of Jesus when I decided to tackle Mary Magdalene and her seven demons.

My new book is written in the same style as my two books Witnesses to the Passion of Christ and Witnesses to the Resurrection.  Using, what I call “spare verse” poetry, that is free verse that concentrates on images and the importance of each individual word, I put myself in the heads of these people and write from their point of view as they either witness Jesus’ death or His resurrection, or in the case of my new book, I write from the point of view of the people who benefited from His healing miracles.

How in the world would I do Mary’s story justice when there is so much left unsaid?

I considered leaving her out of the book completely, but then I remembered she is such a big part of the other two books, that I would be leaving her story unfinished if I didn’t try to tell the story of the worst time of her life.

Everything I write in the book about Mary Magdalene is from my imagination, anchored only by the verses in Luke 8. 

I wrote Mary as someone suffering from deep grief and deep emotional pain—so severe that she has almost shut down physically—her behavior so odd that the only word the people had at the time to describe it was possession, because she is not herself.  Her first encounter with Jesus involves Him taking a literal physical burden off her shoulders and from then on, she begins to climb out of her pit and toward the first light of hope she has seen.

The exact circumstances of Mary’s first encounter with Jesus are not what’s important.

Because we know the results.

We know she followed Him.

We know she followed Him all the way to the cross.

We know He chose to make her the first witness to His resurrection.

Peter may have been the rock on which Jesus built His church.

But Mary was the apostle to the apostles.

It doesn’t matter where Mary started. 

It only matters where she wound up.

That’s how her story becomes a universal story.  That’s why her story is so appealing to so many women in particular—I’m not saying her story can’t be important to men—but to women—we know how women were treated in Biblical times. 

We also know how important Mary was to Jesus.

That makes her worth celebrating on this feast day, for her story can be our story.

God had great things planned for Mary Magdalene.

And He has great things planned for you and me.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

IS THE END OF READING HERE?

Years ago, a teacher friend of mine invited me to speak to her fifth graders about writing.  I brought copies of my latest book Jules Verne and A Raven Named Poe and made sure every student had a copy.  And then, I read the book to them.  It was a small book.

But by the second paragraph, two boys in the front row, sitting right in front of me, put their heads down and went to sleep.

I had been a teacher myself, but had been out of the classroom for years, so when I saw them go to sleep, my first thought was, “Yep, I still got it.”

The rest of the visit was uneventful.

A week or so later, my friend sent me thank you notes from the kids.  The notes were sweet, but one in particular stood out to me.  In this note, a boy had included an illustration of one of the scenes in my book.  It was just stick figures, but I smiled when I saw it.  He had illustrated the scene just as I had originally imagined it.

Think about that for a second.

Because this is why reading and writing, the connection between author and reader is magical.

I had to first visualize the scene in my head.  Then I had to find words to describe it.  Then I put those words to paper.  The boy then read those words.  He visualized the scene in his head.  Then he drew that scene on paper.

It’s telepathy.  It’s magic.

More importantly, it shows how reading novels and stories strengthens our ability to empathize with others.  A good book puts us in the shoes of others.

Recently The Atlantic had an article entitled The End of Reading Is Here.  It asserted that we are officially living in a post-literate society.  It argues that while we are still reading and reading many words every day, that reading is confined to short excerpts, think of Instagram or Twitter/X or the text messages we receive all throughout the day.  Or maybe you are like me and leave the closed captioning on the TV screen constantly.  We are reading. 

What we are reading has changed.

Only 38% of people surveyed in 2022 read a novel or a short story.  Another survey said that only 16% of people report that they read for pleasure.

When I was teaching roughly fifteen years ago, I read a novel a quarter with my eighth graders.  We read as a class and with a book on tape.  I generally chose books that I knew would capture the imagination of even the most reluctant reader, mystery books, comedies etc.  And virtually every year, I would have students come up to me and tell me that that was the first book they had ever read.

My guess is that number would be much larger these days.

So what are the consequences when a society stops reading books, especially novels?

I would argue that the chief consequence is that we become a society that is far less empathetic, a society that can no longer identify with people who are different than them, a society where we can’t imagine ourselves in the same situation and so we become unsympathetic.  We turn away from the suffering of others.

Jesus addresses this lack of empathy in today’s reading from Matthew 25:31-46.  He says, “'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me … for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'”

Jesus asks His disciples to see Him, to see Jesus in the face of those that society ignores, the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner.

To be able to see Jesus in everyone is the height of an empathetic relationship.

I was reading elsewhere this week that the “incarnation itself is God’s act of radical empathy.”

If you want to know how God values empathy, look no further than Jesus.

Jesus understands humanity because He is human.

He understands suffering because He himself suffered.

He understands grief because He himself grieved.

He understands hunger because He himself hungered.

He understands pain and loneliness and all the ways that human beings suffer because He himself lived and died as a human being.

So, what good books have you read so far this year?  May I recommend Canticle by Janet Rich Edwards and Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth and The Children by Melissa Albert.

Strengthen your empathy muscle today.  Feed it with the voices of people different from you.

Read a book.

Amen.

 

GIVE FREELY, LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY

Many years ago, a friend of mine, who was a guidance counselor at the time, gave a survey on bullying to our students.

One of the questions, an obvious question, was whether or not they had ever bullied someone, and if so why?

One of the students answered that yes, he had bullied kids and the reason he gave was one word … angerment.

Yes, you are correct “angerment” is not a word.

And yet this new word seemed perfect.  Anger is something you feel.  Angerment is something you have.  It is something you own.  It is a part of you, to the bone.

There are still days, decades later, where I will text my friend and tell her, “I have angerment.”

In our readings over the past few weeks, including today’s reading from Matthew, we see a Jesus that has some angerment.

And it may be a side of Jesus that makes us uncomfortable.  It’s not a side we’re used to seeing.  Recently I have been watching various episodes of The Chosen.  I am in the middle of writing my new book and I want to make sure that my stories, my interpretations of Jesus’s miracles, specifically, are different than other interpretations.  I don’t want to be accused of copying.

But what amazes me as I watch The Chosen is just how loveable Jesus is.  The people of the time expected the Messiah to be a soldier, a King David, to lead them into battle.  But the Jesus we see in The Chosen is … quite frankly … and I mean this respectfully, a big old Teddy Bear.  He is someone you want to be embraced by.  He is someone you want to hear tell you how much God loves you.

In the episode where He meets the woman at the well, He is almost pleading, begging her to believe Him.  He has tears in His eyes.  It’s not that He needs her to believe for His sake.  It’s that He wants her to believe for her sake, because He knows how much she needs this, to know that God is watching over her, that God sees her.

But the Jesus who says in today’s reading, “You brood of vipers,” is a Jesus with angerment, not bullying angerment, but a righteous anger.  Between Matthew 23, today’s reading, and Mathew 26 where Jesus is betrayed and arrested, Jesus makes many comments about the end times, about the signs of the times, and final judgement. 

Jesus’s words in today’s reading are harsh.  They are not gentle.  They are not kind.  Jesus is running out of time.  And it forces Him to get real so to speak.

“For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth,” Jesus says. 

These are words that speak to us even today. 

In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which you may have read in high school, but is definitely required reading if you are an English major in college, a man, Dorian Gray, sells his soul for eternal youth.  A painted portrait of him, hidden in the attic does all the aging for him.  But the story is more than that.  Given a life where consequences are meaningless, Dorian Gray engages in some truly awful behavior.  It is not just that the picture shows his true physical age, it also shows the monster within him, the evil that he has done.

Dorian Gray is Jesus’s “whitewashed tomb” and his portrait is what is filled “with all kinds of filth.”

As I have said many times, it is so easy these days to become cynical about the state of our world.

But even as I was writing this, right after I finished the Dorian Gray sentence above, there was a knock on the door. 

It was the little girl, the one who has been knocking on my door from the time I first moved here, trying to sell me things, but who I have not seen in a very long time.  Last night, she had books and she wanted to know if I wanted them for the Little Free Library, but here’s the thing … she wanted money for them.

And while I was good with giving the kids money for things they made like bracelets and other artistic things, I knew I had to draw the line with books.  That’s not the purpose of the Little Free Library.

So, I told her I would trade her, books for books.

She didn’t seem thrilled by my offer.  She hemmed and hawed about it for a minute but she had a boy with her who was her age or maybe younger and who I hadn’t seen before.

And he looked at her and said, “Yeah, let’s take the books.”

So I asked them what kind of books they liked and while they put their donations in the library, I went looking through my shelves.

I wound up giving them Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants of course and some books based on Disney Pixar movies and some other graphic novels that I thought they might like.

The boy called them picture books but because I had called them graphic novels, the little girl corrected him. 

She had already realized that calling them graphic novels elevates them.  They’re not little kids books.

For the past several weeks, I have been talking about our reading where Jesus warns people not to put stumbling blocks in front of the children.  Now I have taken that as to say we should not put stumbling blocks in front of any of God’s children and we are all God’s children.

But I don’t want to take away from the fact that Jesus consistently shows how much He values children, our little ones.

Earlier yesterday, I had been so cranky.  I had such angerment.  I was so frustrated with people behaving badly. 

I have no idea what those kids will do with those books.  Maybe someone will tell them they can get money from Half Price Books if they take them there.  Maybe the books will wind up discarded in their yard.  Or maybe they’ll find a space on a bookshelf.  Maybe they’ll be treasured.

But what happens to the books is not the point.  Did you see how quickly wondering like that can turn cynical?

The point is … the joy is … in the giving.

And so maybe the answer to angerment is simply this … give freely.  Whatever is most precious to you, share it with someone else.  Do it freely and unconditionally and without expectation of return.  After all this is exactly what Jesus did.

And remember this which I said so often back in the spring.

Love God.

Love your neighbor without exception.

Amen. 

Labor and Delivery

Six weeks ago, early in the wee hours of a Friday morning, I was in a tiny, closet-sized room in the hospital Emergency Department.  I had two separate IVs in my right arm, pumping me full of fluids and electrolytes; they were drawing blood out of my left arm.  Every time someone walked into the room they apologized for the size of the room.

I was like, hey, I have a bed, a TV and a door, I’m good.  Every time they opened the door, I got a peek of a woman in a bed parked by the nurse’s station, so I wasn’t going to complain.

The severe abdominal pain that had sent me to the ER six hours earlier was beginning to lessen, but the numbers that showed up on my bloodwork didn’t lie.  I had known I had gallstones for ten years, and by watching my diet, I had been able to avoid surgery but finally, that night, the pain became more than I could bear and the bloodwork was clear, something, most likely a gallstone or the nasty, tar-like sludge that had been collecting in my very diseased gallbladder for years had blocked my bile duct and my liver was very unhappy. 

I needed surgery, so the hospital admitted me, but I was still stuck in the ER.

Finally, after several hours, the nurse burst into the room, “We have a bed for you!”

“Great!” I said.

“It’s in Labor and Delivery!” she said.

They had found me, a fifty-year-old woman, a bed in the maternity ward.

And I laughed.  And I kept laughing throughout the rest of the day.  I laughed every time someone texted me asking me how I was and I got to tell them, “I’m in Labor and Delivery!”  And when my dad, who had left to get some things for me back at my house, texted to see where I was, I said, “Check in with Labor and Delivery!”

Later in the afternoon, when I had two liver doctors in my new room and the surgeon and her resident popped in, the surgeon said, “Well, it’s a party in here!”

And I said, “It’s always a party in Labor and Delivery!”

And I kid you not, my surgeon started to dance.

And every bit of this was perfect.

You see Reverend Jane had asked me several weeks before if I would preach on June 14^th and when I pulled up the readings and saw the Genesis reading with Sarah laughing when God told her she was going to have a baby, I knew I wanted to preach on laughter, but I also like to give personal stories when I preach and I just didn’t have anything that fit with Sarah.

Until they told me at the hospital that I was headed to Labor and Delivery for my gallbladder.

The bad news was I needed surgery.  The good news was that I was going to have an awesome story to share.

In our reading today from Genesis 18 and 21, Sarah also winds up with an amazing story to share.  Sarah and Abraham are having a normal, routine day when three strangers approach their camp. 

Abraham treats the men as he would any strangers, providing them food and water, encouraging them to eat and rest and wash their feet.

The men ask Abraham where Sarah is and the fact that they ask for her by name should tell Abraham that these are no ordinary men.

Abraham says that Sarah is in the tent.  Actually, Sarah is hiding behind the tent flaps eavesdropping, because of course she is.  This is probably the most excitement she has had in a while, certainly the most interesting thing that has happened to her that day.  Let’s not kid ourselves.  We’d all be hiding behind the tent flap.

What Sarah doesn’t know is that her day is about to get wilder than she could ever imagine.

Because one of the men, who we are told is the Lord, tells Abraham that by the time He passes this way again, Sarah will give birth.

At this, Sarah laughs—we are told she laughs to herself, but I imagine she was a little vocal about it and that her laugh was more of a scoff or a snort, because Sarah is ninety years old.  She is long past the age where she can have children.

God, still addressing Abraham, asks why Sarah just laughed.  Does she not believe that anything is possible with God?

Now Sarah knows she’s in trouble.  She pokes her head from behind the tent flap and denies ever laughing.

But God, and I imagine Him smiling, says something along the lines of this, “Oh, Sarah, do not try and gaslight the Lord, your God.  You were laughing.”

Why was Sarah laughing though?

In Romans 5:1-5, Paul writes words that we are familiar with, that suffering produces endurance, endurance character and character hope, but at ninety years old, Sarah has long given up hope she will have children.

Sarah laughs not because she doubts God’s power, but because she doubts God’s grace.  Why would God gift her, Sarah, a child after all these years?  Why has He decided to answer this prayer now?  Sarah’s laugh was born from a lifetime of disappointment.

Later, after giving birth to Isaac (a name which incidentally means “he laughs”), Sarah laughs again, but this time with joy.  There is an implication that people used to laugh at her, mocking her, deriding her, shaming her for her lack of children.  But now, Sarah acknowledges, they are laughing with her; they are sharing her joy.

That Saturday morning when I had my gallbladder out, afterwards, they took me back to my room in Labor and Delivery.  You could hear babies crying.  Periodically, I could hear little feet belonging to a new older brother or sister running down the hallway outside my door.  It was a ward filled with joy.  What better place to be brought back to after having surgery.

That night was surreal.  Nights in hospitals are generally a surreal time, especially following surgery.  You live in a dreamlike state, a haze from the leftover anesthesia and the painkillers.  You never feel fully asleep or fully awake.

At one point as I drifted into waking, I asked the night nurse about the compression sleeves on my lower legs, the ones that inflate and deflate to keep you from developing blood clots.  I asked her if they were really necessary.  She moved to the foot of my bed and began undoing the sleeves, as she checked my legs for signs of swelling. 

When she began to take off those lovely, bright yellow hospital issued socks with treads on the top and bottoms, I started to feel embarrassed.  After everything I had been through in the last 48 hours, I was embarrassed for her to see my feet.  Afterall there hadn’t been time to stop for a pedicure when my dad raced me to the hospital.

She carefully examined my feet for signs of wounds or other red flags and then she walked to the bathroom.  A moment later, she reappeared carrying some of that no rinse soap they give you before surgery and a washcloth.  She walked back over to my bed and then she began to carefully and thoroughly wash my feet.

There are times when we only see God in hindsight, in retrospect, in memory.  We are Moses getting a glimpse of God only after He has passed us by.

But sometimes we see God in real time, in the moment, because when a nurse begins washing your feet at one o’clock in the morning after you have been through one of the scariest moments of your life, that is Jesus-love at work.  When you are vulnerable and weak, an unexpected moment of kindness and tenderness can humble you to such a point that, like the old hymn says, your soul begins to tremble, tremble, tremble as it wakes itself to a higher truth.

God is present. 

He is present in the night nurses and others (like the Stephen ministers we’ll be commissioning shortly) those who have answered Jesus’ call in Matthew 9:37-38 to be a laborer for the harvest.

God bless those laborers who have committed themselves to bringing God’s healing and love to others.

God bless the grace they bring, the hope they stoke and kindle within our souls.

And God bless their joy.

Right before they were set to wheel me back for surgery, the nurse who was checking me in and prepping me, looked at me, looked at my dad, looked back at me and said, “Do you want to give your glasses to your husband?”

I pretended to think for a second and then pointed at him and said, “Sooo, that’s my dad.”

The nurse was embarrassed, but we all had a good laugh about it.  I have a young dad.  I’m fifty.  He’s seventy.  His mother, my grandmother, is ninety-one and depending on the day we might all look the same age. And on that day, right before surgery, I probably looked somewhere between seventy years old and—you know—zombie.

When the surgeon appeared a minute later, she looked at me, looked at my dad, looked back at me, pointed at my dad and said, “And who’s this?”

And then we all started laughing again.

Author Anne Lamott calls laughter, “Carbonated holiness.”

And it was that holiness I felt bubbling up inside of me in those final moments before surgery.  I had no fear; I felt only excitement.

Suffering, a chaplain once told me, is a thin place, that place where the veil is thin and God’s presence is palpable, but I would add that hope and joy are also thin places.  God is with us through all times, both good and bad.

He is with you right now, as near as your own soul.

May God’s presence bring you joy today.

And may that joy be rich with laughter.

Amen.

When Fawns Laugh, They Do It Through Their Feet

The other day, early in the morning, I noticed my orange cat, Loki, sitting by the back door staring out the window.  He isn’t the talker that Pippin is.  Pippin will chortle and chirp at chipmunks, squirrels and birds.  But one thing Pippin and Loki are silent for is deer.

“Whatcha see?” I asked Loki as I walked to the back door.  Loki glanced at me over his shoulder and then returned to the window.

Sure enough, there in the back yard, with just her head and neck showing from behind my car was a deer.  I assumed that it was the same deer I had seen in my yard almost every day for the past few weeks.  It is still strange to me that there are deer here so close to the city.  I’m not downtown, but it’s definitely an urban environment.

The other day, when I left for church, and turned around to lock the back door and when I did I startled a deer I didn’t even know was there.  I jumped as suddenly there was an explosion of rat-tat-tat-tat, as the deer’s hooves made contact with the pavement as she leapt from the grass.

Whirling around, I caught sight of the deer who then froze at the sight of me. 

I froze too.

And we both just stood there, until finally I dared to breathe and the deer took off, leaping again over the neighbor’s fence.

Looking back at my interactions with the deer those couple of weeks, she seemed more jumpy and skittish than I have seen before in neighborhood deer.  And as it turned out, there was a reason for that.

That morning I spotted Loki by the window, the second I stepped to the window, the deer noticed me.  She stopped and stared right at me.

I took a step back from the window, hoping somehow I would just vanish, but she continued to watch even as I took another step back and reached for my camera.

(I am smart enough now to keep a camera by the back door.)

Still she refused to look away.

I slowly raised the camera to my eye and zoomed in as best I could through a dirty window.

I always have my camera set to bird mode, so that it takes a series of rapid fire pictures and I sound like the paparazzi outside some celebrity’s house.

Still the deer didn’t move.

I held my breath and prepared for another series of pictures when I saw something move just out of sight of my camera lens.

And then I gasped.

A small fawn had emerged from around the front of the car.

Knobby knees and speckled, still young enough to wobble, still fresh birth thin.  I could see the fawn’s ribs.

I had gasped when the fawn stepped out and I hadn’t taken another breath.

Isn’t it funny what makes us gasp?

In the hospital, when the surgeon wanted to see if it was truly my gallbladder that was inflamed, she took the knuckle of her index finger and dug it in up under my ribs on the right side. 

The pain was so intense, I gasped.

We gasp when we are in pain.  We gasp in fear. 

We also gasp in shock, both good and bad.

We gasp in awe.

That little fawn was so precious and so beautiful and so new, I gasped as I felt my heart grow large in love for God’s creation.

The mama deer had not stopped looking at me and even though I was no threat, when I finally did breathe and let the camera slide down, both mama deer and fawn took off down the alley.

I ran through the house, to the front door and opened it just in time to see the two deer fleeing across my small street and into the neighbor’s yard.

In the dew-laden grass, the fawn did not step as her mother stepped.  The fawn leapt.  She danced.  She bucked.  And dare I say that if fawns laugh, they do it through their feet.

There was so much joy in the fawn.

The mother was scared and protective of her child.

But the child had no idea.  She only knew that there was so much of everything, of space, of air, of smells of grass and trees with bark still spongey from last night’s rain.

I thought of last week’s reading of Jesus saying how we must be like the little children to enter the Kingdom of God and woe … woe to anyone who places a stumbling block in front of one of these children.

As I watched that little fawn, for a moment, I understood the protectiveness that God has for all of us.  We are all His children.  Because as I watched that fawn, I thought I would do anything to protect her.  I ached worrying about her safety with so many cars around.

Imagine, if you can feel this way about a wild animal, how much more does God love you?  How much more does God delight in you?  How much joy do you bring God when you dance, when you laugh?

God loves everything about you.

You breathe.  God loves.

Your heart beats.  God loves.

You smile.  God loves.

Remember that.  We are all newborn fawns to God.

Amen.

Walking On Sunshine

Several weeks ago, I found myself in the emergency room late one night with severe abdominal pain.  I had turned 50 just a month before and apparently my gallbladder had reached its expiration date.

All through the night, it seemed like whoever came into my room, nurse, PA, doctor—they all had the same question.  Had I taken anything for the pain?  What did I take for the pain?

To me, it was a very confusing question, maybe because the pain, and lack of sleep and lack of food made concentrating difficult, but eventually I said to the doctor, “I wasn’t aware there was anything that could help.”

I mean—right?  You don’t take Advil for a tummy ache.

What I didn’t tell the doctor was that I had tried something for the pain.

Prayer.

I had tried prayer.

Like many desperate people, I had turned to prayer and like many desperate people who turn to prayer, I tried to bargain with God and like many desperate people who turn to prayer and try to bargain with God, my end of the bargain was ridiculous.  And like many desperate people who turn to prayer and try to bargain with God by offering ridiculous promises, I believed one hundred percent in mine.  I would have done anything to make the pain stop.

And so I said to God, “Lord, if You stop this pain, I promise I will Never. Eat. Again."

Today’s readings highlight the stories of three mothers or mothers-to-be, Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary.  Really, these should have been our Mother’s Day readings from a few weeks ago.  All three women have one thing in common.  They all required a bit of divine intervention to become mothers.  But only one woman, only Hannah, became a mother after she made a bargain with God.

We tend to bargain when we are in pain, physical pain like I was in, but also emotional and spiritual pain.  Bargaining is widely known as one of the stages of grief.

So know that when Hannah attempts to bargain with God, she is suffering.  In that suffering, she asks God to give her a child and in return she makes what seems like a non-sensical offering.  She tells God that she will give that child back to Him, to serve Him.

It’s mind boggling.  If Hannah wants a child so much, why make a deal where God gives her the child and she gives the child right back (after he’s been weaned)—so almost right back?

What happens next is either inspiring or crazy—because God does give her a child, and unlike me who did not fulfill my end of the bargain when God took away my abdominal pain—in the form of a ragey gallbladder— (I am still eating), Hannah does exactly what she promised to do.  She gives Samuel to God.  She brings him to the temple and entrusts him to the priest Eli.

Samuel will go on to become a prophet and not just any prophet but the man who would anoint the first king of Israel, Saul and also Saul’s successor David and by doing so connect Jesus all the way back to a woman who prayed so fervently for a child that Eli thought she was drunk.  Hannah’s bargain, her decision, her promise to God winds up connecting her directly to Jesus.

And yet, her choice still seems so illogical.  It’s almost like asking God for a million dollars and when He gives you the million dollars, you hand it right back.

What is it that Hannah really wanted?

What if it’s more complicated, more nuanced than just wanting a child?

Hannah was married to man named Elkanah.  She was not his only wife.  His other wife had given him many children, but Elkanah seemed to favor Hannah.  He also seems to realize that Hannah is heartbroken over not being able to bear children.  And so he says to her, “Am I not worth more to you than ten sons?”

The Bible doesn’t tell us how Hannah answered but I imagine she answered in one of two ways.  Either she patted Elkanah on the shoulder and said, “Of course, sweetheart—of course you are worth more than ten sons.”  I imagine her with a sorrowful, wan smile.  Or perhaps she was completely honest and said, “No, no you are not—this isn’t about you, Elkanah.”

Perhaps she was just silent.

What does Hannah really want?

For pretty much all women at this time, having children was their purpose in life.  But this doesn’t seem to be Hannah’s motivation here.  Her husband has made it clear he loves her whether she bears him children or not.  Nor does it seem like a woman who felt her purpose in life was to have children would then offer said child right back to God.

So maybe Hannah wants a child to improve her social standing, to quiet people like Elkanah’s other wife who derides her and mocks her for being childless.  But that too doesn’t seem like the motivation of someone who would promise that child to God.

Hannah is not someone who wants a child just to have children.  She even references it in today’s reading, also known as “Hannah’s Prayer” or “Hannah’s Song” because it is very similar to Mary’s Magnificat, perhaps we can call this Hannah’s Magnificat.  Mary says, “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” (I love the King James Version here) and Hannah begins her song with “My heart exults in the Lord!”  I actually prefer the Message version which reads, “I’m bursting with God-news!  I’m walking on air.  I’m laughing at my rivals.  I’m dancing my salvation.”

In other words, Hannah is the living embodiment of that 1980s song by Katrina and the Waves … she is walking on sunshine and starting to feel good.

In her prayer, Hannah presents this list of opposites in regards to God’s strength.  He brings down.  He lifts up.  He brings death.  He brings life.  He raises the poor to sit with princes.  And then Hannah says something interesting about mothers.  She says, “The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn.”

Becoming a mother to Hannah is more than just “heads in beds.”  It’s not a contest to be won.

Hannah doesn’t want a child just to have a child.  She wants—to borrow from another song, this time Queen—somebody to love.

To Hannah, motherhood is about love.

And because motherhood is about love, she can make that promise to God.  She can give Samuel back to Him.  She is not making a sacrifice.  She is making a gift. 

Samuel represents God’s most holy love.  God gifts Samuel to Hannah and she is so thankful and so filled with the light of that gift that it is not a hardship, not a sacrifice for her to share that gift with the world.  She wants to—she is compelled and propelled by her joy to share that love with everyone.

In Romans 12, Paul writes, “Love one another … rejoice in hope … rejoice with those who rejoice … be ardent in spirit ….”

“Let love be genuine,” he says or in other words, “Let your love be real.”

Hannah’s love for Samuel is real.  Her love for God is real and where the two intersect is when she presents Samuel to the priest Eli.

In the end, her bargain with God no longer seems foolish … it feels right … for her.

Ultimately, in those moments when we are desperate, and we turn to prayer and we try to bargain with God, we all want the same thing.  It’s more than just wanting a child like Hannah or relief from pain like my prayer in the hospital. 

What we truly want in those times is God, Himself.  We want His presence.  We want to know that we are watched and looked after.  We want to know that we matter to Him.  We want to be gifted with His love.

And He does.  He does gift us.  He does love us.  And that love requires no bargain on our part.  His love is unconditional. 

The only thing required of us is to not hoard the gift, but to share the love of God with others unconditionally as He has shared with us.

After all, that is exactly what I am doing with you now.  That night in the emergency room—and I told this story at Morning Prayer the other day—that night I was at just about the lowest I had ever been physically in my life.  I was in the restroom, bent over, hands on knees, seconds—seconds—away from passing out from pain.  I had been in pain before, many times in my life, but never anything like that night.

The emergency cord was too far away for me to pull, or I would have pulled it.

I was terrified and desperate and reached out to God in prayer.

And God spoke to my heart in that moment—I call it that still, small voice that speaks to us when the noise of the world is too loud to hear anything else.

God spoke to my heart and said, “You are right where you need to be.  Don’t be afraid.”

Yes, the hospital was right where I needed to be. 

But more importantly, I was there with God.

He was there with me, right where I needed Him to be.

God is here today with you, too.

May you feel the gift of His love, today.

May you know just how much you matter to Him.

And may you, like Hannah, walk on air in that knowledge and dance your salvation.

Amen.

 

 

The Breath of God Gives Me Life

The other day I was sitting at a stoplight when I looked in my rearview mirror and noticed my back window was spotted with rain, so I flipped on the rear window wiper to clear it and waited.  I could hear the little servo motor whirring to life, but the wiper wasn’t moving.  In fact, I couldn’t even see the wiper.  Sometimes it gets stuck though, bumped below the window and needs to be physically moved to get it working again.

So when I pulled up at my dad’s house a minute later, I got out of the car to take a look.

The wiper was gone.

Not just the wiper blade but the arm that holds the wiper blade was gone.  All that was left was a rusty bolt and some broken plastic.

When I explained to my dad that the wiper was gone, he asked me what I thought happened to it.

And I said, “Well, I’m thinking it might have gotten knocked off when you took it to the car wash the other day.”

My dad nodded.  “Yeah, could have been then.”

I continued.  “I warned you that it was possible the only thing holding my car together was dirt and that if you washed it, something like this might happen.”

Back when I lived in Florida and these little annoyances of life popped up, I would head out to the Wetlands or some of the other nature parks in the area and do what the Japanese call Forest Bathing.  It doesn’t mean actual bathing; it simply means immersing yourself in nature, breathing it in, listening to the sounds of God’s creation.  Ideally, it eases anxiety.

Most of the time, I found myself out at the nearby Wetlands with my camera first thing in the morning.  It was a good way to start the day, but sometimes, as my stress levels required it, I would head out later, around noon.

Around noon was lunchtime for the osprey.

That time of day at the Wetlands could be blistering hot depending on the time of year.  Some days the skies were cloudless and the sun so bright it washed out all color.  There were no blue skies only a limitless blinding white.

Somedays, though, there were clouds here and there and I would stare up and watch the osprey circle overhead.  The vultures would appear in another circle even higher than the osprey.  Even the vultures knew to give the osprey space when the bird was feeding.

The osprey always circled above the water.  And if you were patient, as they were patient, there would come a moment when it looked like the osprey had been shot from the sky.  It would fall, dive from above, seemingly reaching terminal velocity in seconds and would hit the surface of the pond in an explosion, a geyser of water, before emerging again, shaking the water from its feathers and holding a fish in its massive talons.

The only thing that rivaled the sheer coolness of that moment was when the bald eagle joined in the fishing.  As big as an osprey is, the bald eagle is even larger and while the osprey dives down from the sky, the bald eagle will swing down low, as if it was getting style points, as if it was posturing, showing off for me, maybe hoping I was with National Geographic. 

This one day, I watched a bald eagle swoop in low, its talons barely cutting through the surface of the water.  I took its picture, freezing it in time.

Think for a moment on our reading today from Genesis 1:2 … “… the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

Now picture again that bald eagle sweeping over the face of the waters at the Wetlands.

I dare you to spend time immersed in the natural world and not see the Holy Spirit at work.  Genesis tells us that the creation of the world took six days and on the seventh day, God rested, but every time I spend even a second in nature, I see that God’s creation is ongoing. 

What if the story of creation in Genesis is actually three stories, the story of what happened, the story of what is happening and the story of what will happen?  What if God is still creating?  What if God hasn’t rested yet?  What if the world is still changing, still growing—is, in fact, being reborn day after day after day?

Spring was always my favorite time of the year to visit the Wetlands—spring meant babies, not just birds, but alligators too.  I rooted for all the babies.  I rooted for the tiny little gators, yellow striped that emerged from the tall grasses by the water.  And I rooted for the sandhill crane chicks, whose parents demanded they be up and walking the moment they escaped the egg. 

I remember one year during a drought, I watched these day-old sandhill crane babies up to their necks in mud as they struggled to follow their parents to the road.  It was nerve wracking, but they made it and thank goodness because I was sure that if I waded into that mud to rescue them, their parents would have pecked me to death.

But the most awe-inspiring sight at the Wetlands happened on this island a ways back from the road.  You could hear the life before you could see it.  And you needed a good pair of binoculars or a superzoom camera to even see what was happening.

This was where ninety percent of the birds made their nests, Great Egrets, Cattle Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Little Blue Herons, the red-eyed Black Crown Night Heron and the angelic-appearing Roseate Spoonbills.  When all those babies hatched, the island was filled with crying, hungry birds.

In 2 Corinthians 13 verse 13, Paul writes, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

When I listened to those hungry baby birds, I felt a communion with them, because I was hungry too, not physically, but spiritually.  It was my Spirit that was crying out.

Once, when I took a friend to the Wetlands so I could show her a Great Blue Heron nest that sat close to the road, she was so focused on the nest, she almost missed an even more jaw-dropping moment when right then, a large, ten-foot alligator, forever known as Godzilla, began a leisurely walk across the road in front of us. 

On the other side of us, a car had stopped, the driver’s side door popped open, and a woman peeked her head out.

And meanwhile I was clawing and slapping at my friend’s arm, trying to get her attention, because she was still walking toward Godzilla, oblivious to him as she trained her camera lens on the birds’ nest.

She stopped eventually and then all three of us, the woman in the car included, held our breath and got very still.

Talk about a spiritual communion.

But at the Wetlands it was more than the Holy Spirit, it was the Word of God.

The Word of God, present at Creation, responsible for Creation as God literally speaks the universe into existence, that same Word existed at the Wetlands.

Whenever I stood in the Wetlands as nature came to life, I felt that Word in my heart.  And that Word was “Wow!”

Some years ago, I was driving somewhere with my dad and he ran his fingertips across the top of my dash.  “What is this?” he asked, rubbing his fingers together.  “Dust?”

I laughed.  “That’s Wetlands dirt.”

“How is it in your car?”

It was in my car because I didn’t always walk the Wetlands.  There was a dirt road surrounding the Wetlands and sometimes I drove that road with the windows down and that Holy Spirit wind, that same hot wind I imagine that struck the disciples in the upper room on Pentecost—that same wind raced through my car and left physical evidence of its presence behind.

I realize that this sermon may now sound like I am preaching against getting your car washed or detailed.

But seriously, on this Trinity Sunday, where Jesus promises in Matthew 28:20 that He is with the disciples always, to the end of the age, I want you to recognize that God is with you always—that the presence of God is always within and without.

There were times at the Wetlands, I was held speechless, both lost and lifted in God’s creation moment.

There were times all I could do was breathe.

I hope that you have had moments like that.

I hope that when you are caught up in our stressful world, you have a place to go where you can feel God’s presence, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

I hope that when your soul cries out in hunger for the presence of God that, at the very least, you can pause wherever you are at and breathe.

And remember this line from Job 33:4, “The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of God gives me life.”

Breathe.

Amen.