Thursday Thoughts

Lent, like Advent, is a season of waiting. Unlike Advent, Lent feels heavy. We know that Easter Sunday is coming - but the only way to get there is through Good Friday. Through death. Through weeping. Through grief. Through fear and disillusionment.

I bet Mary, Jesus’ mother, wanted to skip Friday. Even after Sunday, what had happened on Friday was still imprinted in her mind. She had been there when her son was cruelly and publicly murdered. She had seen his feet pierced - the very same feet she had kissed at his birth. I wonder how Easter morning felt for her. Was she relieved? Did she feel joy? Or was she incredulous that God had let Friday even happen? I imagine her feelings were mixed - joy and grief wrapped up together.

Lent feels heavy because its path goes through grief. Grief that we have to pass through in preparation for Easter morning. Grief of a mother’s loss of her first son. Even Jesus’ own grief that we hear in his cry of abandonment on that cross. 

Lent feels heavy because it touches on our own grief.

I know grief. The kind of deep, black, heavy grief that shrouds life and from which you wonder if you will ever rise. The kind of grief that pulls you down into an isolated tomb where the rock hasn’t been rolled away. The kind of grief that causes you to pour out tears so long and so hard that you wonder how you haven’t drowned in them. The kind of grief you look back on and wonder how you are even still alive. The kind of grief that never really goes away - even when the life days come. 

When Jesus was on the verge of death, he cried out using words from Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Once we get to Easter we talk about how even in his forsakenness Jesus was close enough to God to cry out like this, close enough to God to pray. But right now we are still in Lent, still facing Friday’s events to come. Let us sit with Jesus as he cries out these words, feeling deep in our bones that Jesus knows the depths of grief. That we are not alone in ours. 

The morning after

the Son rose and supposedly

vanquished death for always

feels suspiciously like the previous morning

and what I imagine all the mornings

to come will feel like.

Will the next morning after and the

one after that still feel like the grave

where no one has remembered to roll

back the stone?

Will the grave cloths wrap too tightly

around our faces,

pressing shame, and loss, and fear

over us,

extinguishing us,

holding us down?

Will we dig our way out,

dirt and grit under our fingernails

reminding us of the lies and hurts and losses,

the little death stings

that buried us in the first place?

I wonder what resurrection feels like to those

already in the graves,

to those who are already dirt?

What is their morning after?

Who will roll back their stones?

Will the children dancing on the grass outside

call them forth from their fears

and into a morning after they can't imagine?

What does it mean to live again when the

grave cloths won't let go,

when the mornings after seem unimaginable,

when our fingertips can't reach the light?

The Son has risen

and we can only trust that the rays of a new morning,

the morning after our next morning,

will roll back our stones.

That this resurrected love vanquishes even death,

and grave cloths,

and all that put us behind those stones.

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

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As I was preparing to move to Rhode Island last year, someone told me that this tiny state has the most coastline of all 50 states. A few weeks ago when the young-ish adults were gathered at my house, we decided to source check this claim. It turns out that little Rhody does not have the most coastline - in fact it turns out that we aren’t even second: we are state 20 out of 23! Of the 23 ocean coastal states, only Maryland and Delaware have less coastline than do we.  What we do have is the greatest coast to inland ratio. I think this means you can’t get far from the coast and still be in Rhode Island….

Number 1 or number 20, it doesn’t take long to be within sight of a river, creek, pond, lake, bay, or the Atlantic. Ask my pastoral search committee, they will tell you that when I came for my initial interview what I specifically asked for was to see the ocean. I wanted to imagine myself living so close to my favorite kind of place - a large, open body of salt water. 

Water is therapeutic for many people, whether swimming in it or watching its surface undulate with the tides. You can even buy noise machines with the calming sounds of waves or falling rain. Water heals and water calms. 

In our Lent family practice this week, using the Bless this Mess materials, we were asked to use water to remind us of our baptisms. Whether making a pot of tea, washing our faces, anointing ourselves with water, or washing dishes, we can feel the baptismal waters again. One of the recommended practices is to sit down with our beloveds and to talk about our baptism memories. Then we are to name three things we are proud of about ourselves. 

Isn’t that an interesting combination: remembering our baptism and bringing a little bit of love to ourselves. I like it. One of this week’s texts came from Matthew 3:17, where following Jesus’ baptism God speaks from the heavens: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Baptismal waters and affirmation wrapped up in one important story.

This week, perhaps you might use the water that comes your way, be that through snow, rain, the ocean or Narragansett Bay, or even just the washing of your hands, to remember your own baptism and to let God speak from heaven directly to you: “This is my child, with whom I am well pleased.” 

Baptism means newness and life. It means putting off the old ways of being burdened down and broken and being that which God has called and created us to be. 

God has called and created us to be loved and to love.  You are God’s child. With you God is well pleased.

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

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This past week I was blessed to visit one of our much loved house-bound members. While there, she gave me the stained-glass cross in the image above. With it was a typed note that reads: “The stained glass used in your cross was salvaged from the original [1901] Phillips Memorial Baptist Church building during the renovation to create our present Children’s Center. It is at least 100 years odd [sic] and a most suitable memory piece for our 100th year celebration. October 15, 2000.”

I was struck when taking this picture at seeing Dave’s Market through the color of the cross. Not just the yellow, but the idea of letting the cross itself shape my perception of the world around me. Muriel Lester, one of my favorite Baptist theologians, shifted her life from a comfortable middle-class existence to the poverty of London’s East End at the beginning of the 20th century. In her work she showed great respect for the people of the East End and called on the rest of the church to do the same. Reflecting back on her transition she wrote that you can either go down the streets of the East End in fear and disgust toward the poor, or you can go down the same streets “with God” - in which case you see the beauty in the people. This is from her book, Dare You Face the Facts, in which she is urging folks toward pacifism in the face of WWII. Love your enemies, especially those who have been made enemies by someone else, she declares. 

Essentially - see them through the color of the cross, a color that destroys the category of “enemy.”. The old Sunday School memory verse of John 3:16-17 is a good reminder to us of what it means to walk “with God” through this world. 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, 

so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, 

but in order that the world might be saved through him.

God’s intention toward this world and all who live in it is love and salvation. God’s love even extended to Christ’s living a full human life - all the way to the grave - a life of service, faithfulness, compassion,  humility, and love. 

As we enter next week into the Lenten season, let us together remember to look at the world around us through the color of the cross; with love, compassion, service, faithfulness, and humility. And let us remember to look at ourselves through the same lens - for even we are part of God’s good creation!

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

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Rev. S. M. Lockridge (1913-2000), pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in San Diego, preached one of the most memorable sermons of the past century: “It’s Friday. But Sunday’s Coming.”

He concludes the most shared portion of this sermon with the words, 

It’s Friday

Jesus is buried

A soldier stands guard

And a rock is rolled into place

But it’s Friday

It is only Friday

Sunday is a comin’!

I suspect one of the reasons this sermon has maintained such notoriety is its poetic reminder to Lockridge’s listeners, us included, that even the darkest, bleakest day won’t get to win in the end. God’s glory and grace will shine into all the world’s pain, betrayal, suffering, and even death - and we can’t stop it. They can’t stop it. God’s grace is coming. Resurrection is coming. Life is coming. 

As I write this on Wednesday, fully aware that Thursday is coming (as it does every week), I sit and wonder if God will show up this week in these words.  Every. Single. Week. The Israelites surely wondered in that 400 year gap between the Hebrew and Christian scriptures if God was done speaking to them through prophets. And on our dark nights I know we wonder if the light of day will come. Will God show up with me now, in this place? Will God speak to me now, at this time? Will God love me now, in this pain?

Sunday, Jesus’ resurrection, is the promise and the fulfillment that the Fridays don’t get to last. They may be long, but Sunday will always outshine them.

In the New Testament letter to the Colossian church, the author reminds his or her readers that the glory of Christ’s resurrection is also their glory.

So, if you have been raised with Christ, 

seek the things that are above, 

where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 

Set your minds on things that are above, 

not on things that are on earth, for you have died, 

and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 

When Christ who is your life is revealed,

 then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

(Col. 3:1-4)

In your dark nights, when you wonder if God will show up for you, hold onto the promise of the resurrection. It might be Friday now, but Sunday's coming. You might be buried in fear and pain now, but Sunday's coming. Friday certainly happened for Christ, just like for us, but so did Sunday.

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

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