Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church of Baltimore, MD
November 29, 2020

Wake-Up Call
Mark 13:24-37

 

Dary and I have always done a lot of hiking.  We love to be outside in the quiet cathedral of a forest, leaves crunching underfoot, no sound but birdsong and your own heart.  When Maddie was born, we were quick to get a variety of backpacks and carriers so she could come along, too, and she did – happily – for about the first year or so.  But when she really got the hang of walking, she insisted on it.  And as you might imagine, the pace and tenor of our hikes changed a bit.  I always thought I hiked because I enjoyed being in the woods, and I do… but hiking with a toddler helped me realize that I really hike to cover ground.  Part of the enjoyment for me is arriving somewhere – the lookout point, the mountaintop, the waterfall.  So I had to shift my thinking about what was fun about being out on a trail.  This applied to walks in our neighborhood, trips to the park or the zoo, really going anywhere.  Little kids take their time.  They aren’t preoccupied with arriving anywhere in particular, they’re just glad to be on the journey… until they’re not, and that’s why God made snacks.

 

As a toddler, Maddie was fascinated with everything: rocks on the path, leaves, lichen, moss, mushrooms, flowers, insects – anything unusual was subject of interest.  This meant her best walking companion turned out to be my mother, the founder and president of the Greyland Drive Nature Lover’s Club.  Honey is happy to stroll along at a snail’s pace, and appreciate the wonders of the world with her granddaughter.  It helped me to realize there is a psychological reason for this dawdling: little kids haven’t yet learned to prioritize information.  Everything around them has the potential to teach them something, so everything is potentially important, and worthy of attention.  For better or worse, they don’t screen anything out.  Grownups can’t make it through the day like that – we have to categorize, prioritize, block out distractions, and focus – hike the trail, get to the top!  Take in the view!  Turn round, head home.  There’s something to be said for efficiency, but hiking with Maddie has woken me up to some of the beauty and wonder I’d been missing.

 

This is the first Sunday in Advent, which means it’s the beginning of the church year.  Always refusing to conform to culture, the church starts its new year in November, a month before the calendar year ends.  We church folk begin at the end: that is, we start the new year not by making resolutions or setting goals for the immediate future, but by thinking about THE END OF TIME.  That’s why the lectionary gives us this apocalyptic text about the second coming of Christ.  The church starts its year with a wake-up call.  We don’t know when the end will come.  The text says no one knows the day nor the hour – so we should be vigilant and stay alert, so we can be ready when the time comes.  It’s a drumbeat for Mark’s Jesus – keep awake, keep watch he says.

 

We all get wake up calls from time to time.  Sometimes the call is personal: it may come in the fluorescent light of a doctor’s office, with paper crinkling on the exam table and a scary diagnosis ringing in our ears.  It may come as a fall that inspires us to take better care of ourselves.  It may be a phone call late at night, or an unexpected knock at the door, with news of an accident or a death.  And it’s not always bad news that wakes us up– it could be your baby’s first cry on the day of her birth, or a milestone birthday or anniversary that makes us realize the passage of time.  Anything that shakes us from our slumber, turns our world upside down, and inspires us to live life more fully and more faithfully can be a wake-up call.

 

But I don’t know if we really need a wake-up call this year.  2020 has been one long wake-up call, hasn’t it?  (And this congregation seems like it was pretty woke even before that!)  The events of this year, the pandemic, the uprisings for racial justice, the vicious election cycle – the whole year has shaken us from whatever slumber we might have existed in before.  Our institutions have been shaken to their foundations, our healthcare system and those who make it run stressed almost to the breaking point, small businesses and restaurants obliterated, the routine of daily life overturned like an applecart.

 

It has all felt a bit apocalyptic, hasn’t it?  After all, an apocalypse is a revelation, it reveals that which was hidden before.  And we certainly can see more clearly now the fragility of our economy, with so many out of work and in need of help that isn’t coming; the disparities in health and education that have come into sharp focus over the past 9 months; and the cultural fault lines that divide our communities and country are even more pronounced.

 

This year has been scary, uncertain… Many of us were taken by surprise.  Cast your memory back to the third week of March, and the plans that we made then to accommodate a temporary shut-down.  A few weeks of vigorous hand-washing and life would be back to normal!   Wake-up calls can be surprising, even scary.  They disrupt everyday life, disorient us, and make us question what we thought we knew about ourselves and the world we live in.  As this year has taught us, disruption and disorientation are not easy to navigate.  But hopefully, the questions that arise bring us closer to understanding God and ourselves.

 

I know, this text is a bit scary – looking toward the end of time can be terrifying.  It’s important to remember that Mark calls his whole story “Good News.”  Our passage starts with the phrase, after the suffering…  after!  In the previous chapter, Jesus says the suffering of the present day are but the birth pangs of something new that is being born!  Apocalyptic prophesies were intended to bring hope to desperate people.  Remember, around the time of Jesus’s birth, many faithful people were convinced that the world would end in their lifetimes with a cataclysmic battle between good and evil.  Prophets predicted God’s intervention to put an end to suffering and political oppression.  Jesus, then, is giving his disciples a wake-up call: calling us to be ready, keep watch for God to intervene.  Our job is to be vigilant – faithful – even in the face of desolation.  Even when we feel hopeless.  Be alert, keep awake Jesus says.  No one knows when or how, but we must trust that God is hard at work, transforming this broken old world into something new. Stay true to the path and work of discipleship, Jesus says, and watch closely for what God is doing.

 

Driving around the city, it seems like people have been preparing for Christmas for weeks now, hanging tinsel and lights, putting up trees and decorating them.  In fact, earlier this month, news outlets from Denver to London were reporting that people were decorating for Christmas earlier than ever this year.  Maybe you’ve noticed this, too, or maybe you’ve had your tree up for weeks already, too!  There are multiple reasons for this – decorating makes us happy, and it’s been a hard year.  Bright pops of color and lights in the darkness help stave off the winter doldrums.  We feel nostalgia for Christmases past when we put up our décor, remembering friends and family even when we can’t be together.  Many of us are just ready for this year to be over, so we’re looking toward Christmas in the hope that 2021 will just hurry up and get here already!

 

But that kind of preparation is not necessarily what Jesus is calling us to.  Don’t get me wrong, I love carols and cookies as much as the next person!  Put up lights if they make you happy!  But Advent invites us to prepare by being present here and now, so that we can attend to what is being revealed in the world around us.  To look past the lights and decorations and see people desperate for good news, and hungry for hope. And to realize that God is already present, working in and through people like you and me, working for transformation.  Like little Maddie on a hike, we are called to stop and notice God’s presence and activity in both small and astounding ways.  To expect divine intervention!

 

So this Advent, maybe instead of wanting time to hurry up, what we need to do is slow down.  Notice what is happening all around us.  And expect good news.  What’s more, what might happen if we found someone to come alongside and walk with us, to help us notice the wonders of the world.  After all, everything has the potential to teach us something, and is worthy of our time and attention.  So friends, keep awake.  Go slowly.  Find someone to walk alongside at your pace.  Notice what is being revealed.  And trust that God is already at work making all things new.

 

 

 

Cat Goodrich

Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD

November 15, 2020

Risk Big

Matthew 25:14-30

 

About a week and a half ago, three climbers got their gear ready.  They filled chalk bags, and stocked backpacks with water and granola bars and fruit.  They checked their ropes, and packed up their harnesses, carabiners, and climbing shoes.  Feeling ready, they set out in the dark, heading across the floor of Yosemite Valley.  It was cold, November in the high Sierra, but they had good light from the waning gibbous moon.  A deer stopped to watch them as they made their way to the base of the mountain, gravel crunching beneath their feet.  Two of them, a man – Alex Hannold of Free Solo fame, and a woman, Emily Harrington, got into their harnesses, squeezed into their tiny climbing shoes, and started to climb.  It was 1:30 in the morning.  Less than 24 hours later, she pulled herself over the top of the wall – and became the first woman to free climb the Golden Gate route of El Capitan in a day.  An amazing feat: a feat of strength, climbing ability, courage, and tenacity.  It is risky to attempt to climb that giant granite cliff face at all – some 25 people have died trying – much less to climb one of the most difficult routes in just a day.  Harrington herself had tried before and failed.  But not this time.  This time, despite a fall halfway up that left her head bloodied and her confidence shaken, her big risk paid off.

 

When is the last time you took a risk?  Stretched yourself?  Attempted something even though you weren’t sure what the outcome would be?  Said yes to a challenge?  Tried something new?

 

The idea of risk has taken on new meaning for me this year.  You might have already guessed this that about me, but I’m a fairly risk-averse person.  I love new experiences, but I want to be safe while trying them.  One of the most stressful parts of the pandemic is that Covid makes normal everyday life activities potentially risky – shaking hands. Eating in a restaurant.  Working out at the gym. Singing in church.  Having friends over for dinner.  Traveling to celebrate Thanksgiving with extended family.  All of these normal events have suddenly become risky. They could mean illness for some, or even death for others.

 

Some believe the parable of the talents is a story about risk.  They hear it asking, what will you do with the gifts you’ve been given?  What are you willing to risk for the sake of the kingdom?

 

This is one of the last stories Jesus tells in the gospel of Matthew, right before the last supper and all that comes after.  He is preparing his disciples for life after his death.  It’s important to know that there were a lot of faithful people at this time who believed the end of the world was imminent.  Matthew’s community thought Christ would return in their lifetimes.  So how are they to act in the meantime?  Are they going to be like the first two servants, taking risks to grow what has been entrusted to them?  Or will they play it safe, keep their heads down, and bury their gifts like the third guy?

 

This is, in some ways, a problematic story.  It’s hard not to read parables as allegories, to see a direct correlation between the characters and real life.  But that gives us the image of God as the generous but harsh slave owner.  What do we do with that?

 

We’re Presbyterians, so we know that God gave us brains and expects us to use them.  The Bible is a book bound by space and time.  Slavery was a part of the Biblical world, and so there are references to enslaved people and those who owned them throughout the old and new testaments.  Wrestling with this imagery, Stillman College religion professor Dr. Joe Scrivner, said – look, Jesus was teaching in the first century.  He told stories that made sense in that context.  Slavery was rampant at that time, part of everyday life.  The Israelites themselves had been enslaved.  He used the imagery available to him to teach.  He wanted to raise questions, provoke conversation – with this story, it seems like he wanted to show his followers how they were to carry on after his death.  It’s possible he also wanted us to think about what we believe God is like.  Is God a cruel and merciless master?  Or is God generous and kind, merciful and just, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love?  Parables aren’t allegories, they’re conversation starters!

 

In this parable, the landowner gives his servants an absurd amount of money – a talent was about 15 years of wages.  If average income today is around $40,000, then that means the first two slaves are entrusted with almost $3 million dollars.  They take risks, play the market, invest and double their money – well done.  The third slave, however, fearing failure and the harsh capriciousness of his master, buries his.  Nothing ventured, nothing lost.

 

When I read and hear talent, I don’t think of money – instead, I hear talent!  Giftedness, innate ability.  It makes me wonder, how do we use our giftedness for the benefit of God’s kindom?  Do we offer what we have, risking everything, in the hope that the Spirit compounds our gifts?  Or do we play it safe, dream small, mitigate risk, to preserve what we have and avoid the possibility of failure?

 

Do we act in faith, or do we act out of fear?

 

Renowned social work professor Brene Brown does research around shame and vulnerability.  One of her first books is called Daring Greatly – and in it, she talks about how much people hate vulnerability – we do everything to protect ourselves, to avoid it.  But it’s necessary – she calls vunerability the midwife for creativity, for growth, for love.  Life involves risk, it just does.  Big risks, like writing a novel, or starting a business, or changing jobs, or falling in love – are scary!  Of course they are.  The possibility for failure is real.  But taking risks can lead us to incredible joy!  The growth that comes through risk and change and trying new things, makes us come alive.  It ignites our imagination, heightens our senses, leads us to places we might never have thought possible.

 

In my organizing work in Alabama, a friend named Chris Stewart, a Black Baptist preacher, challenged me and my white colleagues, asking – what are you willing to risk for this work?  What are you willing to risk to confront and dismantle racist systems in this state?  Are you willing to put your body in places that are uncomfortable?  Are you willing to put yourself on the life to create change?  Chris would say, I don’t have a choice about it, I’m always at risk.  You do.  So what are you going to risk?

 

I think about the activists walking onto highways to block traffic, braving tear gas, putting their bodies in harms way to call for police accountability, to proclaim that black lives matter – their risk is creating change.

 

I’ve long been an admirer of the Berrigan brothers, Catholic priests who struggled against nuclear proliferation and war by demonstrating at nuclear sites, and throwing their blood on the steps of the Pentagon.  A friend of this congregation, John Hutchins, introduced me to a new saint and co-conspirator of the Berrigans – Sister Ardeth Platte, who died not too long ago.  Ardith was a Dominican nun who lived in a Catholic Social Worker house in DC.  She spent more than 15 years in prison for her own peace activism.  Instead of lamenting the time she spent behind bars, she continued her work for love and justice there, seeing it as an opportunity to minister to the poor, teaching and serving the other women she served time with.  In her obituary, a friend says Ardeth was “a renegade and lawbreaker who was truly inspiring.”  [She and her best friend] “truly lived the gospel, with a wonderful sense of humor and exuberance and joy.”[1]

 

This problematic parable is easy to domesticate – easy to think that it’s about not burying your talents, using your gifts in small ways for the benefit of the community.  It is right and good to do this, of course.  But what is your El Capitan?  What is the wall that beckons you over, the challenge you are willing to put your life on the line to confront, to struggle to overcome?  What are you willing to risk everything to accomplish?

 

In an interview after her incredible climb, Harrington was asked – how did she overcome her fear to do this?  She said, “I didn’t…”. She deals with fear all the time when she climbs, she said, she carried it all the way up.[2]  But she has learned to move through it – because embracing fear and pushing through is how you grow.  Courage is feeling afraid and doing whatever it is anyway.

 

We are at the beginning of a new chapter in the life of Faith Church.  I don’t need to tell you that the challenges of this time are many.  But God, who is loving and just, merciful and kind, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love – God has given us what we need to thrive: hands to serve.  Hearts to love.  Lives to offer in pursuit of justice, to build the kindom.  Don’t be afraid!  There are incredible joys in store.  Let’s risk big together.

 

[1] Schossler, Eric, qtd. by Penelope Green, “Ardeth Platte, Dominican Nun and Antinuclear Activist Dies at 84,” The New York Times, October 8, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/us/ardeth-platte-dead.html.

[2] Harrington, Emily, interviewed on the Today Show, https://www.today.com/video/meet-emily-harrington-1st-woman-to-free-climb-el-capitan-famed-route-in-1-day-95638597929.

Cat Goodrich

Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore

November 8, 2020

Free to Choose

Joshua 24:1-3, 14-25

 

Life in the US in the year 2020 involves a lot of choice.  We might have more options available to us than any other humans in history.  Think about it: With the internet in my pocket, the world’s libraries are literally at my fingertips.  Add a charge card, I could choose to buy a million different books, thousands of different pairs of shoes, a dizzying array of kitchen gadgets and articles of clothing.  I could order practically any meal I could imagine from hundreds of different restaurants and have it waiting at home when I get there after worship.  And choice isn’t only online.  Anyone who has travelled in the 2/3s world can tell you how disorienting it can be to go to a grocery store here in the states: an entire aisle of breakfast cereals, fifty-two flavors of ice cream, not just eggs but eggs that are extra large, cage free, free range, grain fed, natural, pasture raised, local, and organic.  Our choices as consumers in this country are limited only by our resources.

 

Life in any democracy – government by the people, for the people, and of the people – is governed by choice… at least in theory.  And we exercised our right to choose this week, voting for people to govern our city, and lead our nation.  A vote is a choice: a moral choice, where we put our power towards policies and people we believe will promote our values.  Richard Rohr writes, “voting is a deeply moral act for me… a decisive act of Christian faith that I matter, society matters, justice matters, and others matter.”[1]  It’s a relief to me that the kind of election that happened and was counted… and counted… and counted this week only comes around every four years.  But election or not, each day brings moral choices for us, albeit on a smaller scale.  A chance to respond with love to the people around us.  To listen to one another.  To use our voice to advocate for change.  To be honest and hardworking and compassionate and faithful.  What do we value?  Who do we serve?  Will we make choices that reflect those values, choices that testify to our faith?  Do our choices show a deep-seated belief that justice matters, that we matter, and that others matter?

 

At first glance, the speech Joshua gives to the Israelites seems light years away from the choices that govern our strange, 2020 lives.  He’s leading his people to renew an ancient covenant as they begin life together as a new nation in a newly conquered land.  To do this, he reminds them where they came from, and recounts all the ways God accompanied them and their ancestors along the way. God worked through Moses to liberate them from slavery, to feed, sustain, and guide them through the wilderness.  Joshua reminds them that their ancestors once worshipped other gods, but God has called them to be faithful only to YHWH, the one true God. And Joshua calls the people to account, saying – choose this day who you will serve… and then he makes a public proclamation: as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

 

Joshua is preaching from memory to hope.  He evokes the memory of what God has done for them, and calls them to renewed faith… reminding them of their thirst in the desert, slaked by fresh water pouring from a rock. Reminding them of how their bellies growled in hunger before God made manna appear to sustain them.  Reminding them that though once they were no people, now they are God’s people.  He gives them hope for the future.  Now, I know, Joshua’s speech feels far off.  But the question – the challenge – choose this day whom you will serve… this is a live question for us, for me.

 

As people of privilege in the US, there is so much we are free to choose.  And there are a lot of gods that compete for our attention, our loyalty.  In this pandemic time, it’s obvious that our personal choices – your choice and mine – are intertwined. For many, the need to work takes away the choice to stay home or stay distant to protect themselves. They don’t have a choice.  Which makes our choice to abide by public health recommendations even more important, for everyone’s health and well being.  The last eight months have taught us that our personal choices have wide social, economic, and political consequences.

 

Our choices as individuals, as consumers, and as citizens also reveal deeper truths about what we value.  About whom we serve and worship.  Each day is an opportunity to recommit ourselves to the God who has called us, saved us, sustains us, loves us.  By choosing to love, serve, and honor one another.

 

I struggled to know what to say to you this morning.  Words fall short under the weight of my relief.  The fragile ember of hope that I’ve sheltered for so long has caught fire again, and yet still I am cautious.  I’m wary of what the coming days might bring.  I’m also aware that there are those among us who are not feeling relieved one bit.  How do we find a way forward, loving, honoring, and serving God together, with hope for the future, in this fraught, fractured time?

 

Joshua was seeking to unify his people, calling on them to rededicate their lives to love and serve God.  It seems like what we might need to do right now, too.  With the huge divides that separate us, it seems impossible.  There’s probably more than one family feeling a sense of relief that Covid gives them an excuse NOT to have to gather around the Thanksgiving table with extended family of a different political persuasion, relieved that they don’t have to navigate that political mine field.  With family.  How on earth do we build unity and work for reconciliation?

 

By remembering the past, recommitting to serve God in the present, and looking with hope towards the future.

 

Many of you are older than I am, so you probably remember better than I do the wall that divided East and West Berlin.  It was built in 1961, to separate communist East Berlin from outside western influence.  When it went up, it cut people off from one another, separating families, friends, and people from their places of work – not unlike the wall across our southern border. In the almost forty years that it stood, hundreds of people were killed trying to cross over.  One street that ran beside a section of wall was called the street of sorrows, so many desperate people had died there.  A towering symbol of the Cold War, it was difficult to imagine how or when it would ever be torn down.

 

And yet, in 1989, it was.  Gradual thawing in surrounding countries led to the opening of the gates, and people on both sides poured through and took sledgehammers to the separation wall.  I was only 8 years old when it happened, but I remember the sense of astonishment, relief, jubilation on the nightly news, the images of people dancing in the streets.  My sister did a report on the wall’s history, and somehow came across a piece of it, a grey and jagged chunk of concrete you could hold in your hand, a symbol of the triumph of western democracy and diplomacy, of the people’s freedom to choose.

 

Last year, on the thirtieth anniversary of the fall, a public art installation was put up through the center of Berlin, on the street in front of the Brandenburg Gate where the wall once stood.  120,000 fabric ribbons were suspended in the air, making a path of glorious color, floating in the air, rippling in the breeze.  Written on the ribbons were greetings, wishes, memories, and messages of hope from Germans and people around the world, some sent from afar, some written on the spot to mark the occasion.  The sculpture was meant to symbolize the unity of the German people and their mutual hope for the future.  The visual impact of the installation was breathtaking – ephemeral, beautiful, an undulating wave of color overhead – a testimony to the common hopes and dreams of the people in the place where razor wire, watchtowers, and unthinkable division had once ruled.

 

Change and reconciliation are possible!  Worship each week is a chance to reclaim this truth, and to recommit ourselves to the possibility.  To remember who and whose we are.  To tell the stories of our faith to each other, to our children and our children’s children, so we remember who God is and what God has done for us.  To ignite our hope for the future.  We are called into this space by the one who reached out to the margins and brought outsiders in.  Who healed the sick and helped the suffering, who spoke truth to power and tore down walls of division.  Let us choose this day to serve him, because the world needs us.  And we have a lot of work to do.

[1] Rohr, Richard, “Why I Vote,” Sojourners Magazine, 11/2018. https://sojo.net/magazine/november-2018/why-i-vote

Cat Goodrich

Faith Presbyterian Church

Baltimore, MD

November 1, 2020

Blessed?

Matthew 5:1-12

 

My favorite community event in Birmingham was initially a surprise to us.  Our first year there, we stumbled upon what seemed at the time to be a magical day of the dead celebration, tucked away in a bricked courtyard under the stars. I remember walking through a winding display of candlelit altars, each one paying tribute to a friend or loved ones who had died, their photos surrounded by flowers and their favorite foods, tables piled high with fruits and sugar skulls and twinkle lights, incense wafting through the air.  Mariachis wandered through the crowds of people who came to be part of the celebration, their trumpets blasting out familiar tunes as we gathered around fires to warm our hands as night fell.  As the celebration grew, year by year, it changed venues to accommodate the growing crowds, but the culmination of the evening is always the roll call of the dead – a single voice naming those who have died, one by one, and the crowd responding by crying out “presente” – collectively claiming the person’s memory, proclaiming together, they are not forgotten.

 

I do not know what this celebration will look like this year.  I imagine those who build altars will do so anyway, in their own homes as is tradition.  Many will visit the graves of those who have died.  But the festivities will not happen at least not in the same way.  The crowds will likely not gather, incense will not hang in the air like the fog of grief, the collective cry of presente will not ring out.

 

It’s too bad, because this is a year when we need that kind of celebration, we need to give voice to our grief, to name and claim the memory of all that we’ve lost, to bear witness together to the promise of life despite death.

 

This morning’s passage from the sermon on the mount in the gospel of Matthew is called, as you may know, the beatitudes.   Beatitudes because in the Latin translation, the word beatus means blessed, happy, or fortunate– happy are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.  Happy are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  Another way to understand the original Greek word is: a reversal of fortunes.  To read these blessings as a promise of the future that God is making possible.

 

When Jesus describes who is blessed, it’s not who we’d expect. In fact, Jesus’s description of who is blessed and why is the opposite of how we typically think and talk about blessings.  Our culture tends to see successful people: strong, healthy, wealthy people as blessed.  We feel blessed when things are good, when life is going our way.  Right?

 

But Jesus turns our understanding of blessing upside down.

He’s preaching to a crowd of people, and a lot of them were sick.  Scripture tells us the crowds that followed him were people “afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics.”

These are not the people the world would call blessed, certainly not happy or fortunate.

These people are poor.  They’re hurting.  They are crying out for justice.  They need a reversal of fortune.

These are the people the world might call meek, people who really were persecuted.

And these people: the poor, the grieving, those longing for justice, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers, the persecuted – these are the people God blesses!

 

Jesus looks out at the crowd gathered around him, a crowd of the poor and destitute, the sick and suffering, and says, you who are poor in spirit – so down and out that you’ve lost the will to keep going – God sees you.  You are blessed.

 

You who are meek, and merciful – the world does not reward these things.  But God sees you.  And you can be happy with the knowledge that you will be rewarded with the goodness of creation; you will receive the mercy you deserve in the kingdom of God.

 

You who mourn are blessed, because you will be comforted, for God is making all things new, building a city where no one will hunger or thirst, and every tear will be wiped away.

 

Today is All Saints Sunday, when we remember and give thanks for those who we love who have died.  And on this day, in this year, some of us might not feel very blessed.  This has been a year of tremendous loss for our nation and the world.  More than 4,000 in Maryland, more than 230,000 in the US, more than a million worldwide dead from the virus.  It’s incomprehensible.  That loss of life is compounded by a thousand other losses – that add up in many ways to the loss of our way of life.  We’ve lost the happy chaos of classrooms, the easy banter of the office kitchen, the soaring joy of congregational song.  Restaurants, concerts, sports events, air travel, public transit – none of them are the same.  Layer on top of that the other losses brought just by life … lost jobs.  Separation from community and family.  Lost pregnancies.  Lost health.  Lost love.  The non-Covid deaths of loved ones.  Lost hope.

 

This year, I think we are all finding our way through the fog of grief.  God’s promise of comfort is a far cry from actually feeling comforted. But we are people called into community.  The good news is that God gives us each other so that we are not alone in our grief, to bring casseroles and to tell stories so that even shrouded in sadness we find love and sometimes even laughter.  God gives us each other to remind each other of the promises of the resurrection: grief and death do not have the last word.  Together, we can give voice to our grief, name and claim the memory of all that we’ve lost, and bear witness together to the promise of life despite death.  That is a blessing.  There is comfort in that.

 

Over the past week, a tree has grown in the chapel, bearing names of people who have died who we, collectively, proclaim are not forgotten.  People for whom we give thanks.  Those whose lives have blessed us, and for whom our grief is in fact an act of resistance against the death-dealing power of this world, a testament to the truth that blessed are we who grieve for we will be comforted.

 

By proclaiming all of these unexpected blessings, Jesus is urging all of us who mourn the world’s suffering to look towards the world that is to come.  To see the Spirit present in our struggle, bringing about the reign of God on earth.  Christ is promising the comfort that comes when our rage and grief at the way things are moves us to act to change things for the better.  Think of the moment of relief that comes when you’ve overcome your anxiety and picked up the phone to encourage someone else to remember to vote, or the blessing that comes when we are able to offer help to someone who needs it – things we’re able to do because God is at work within us, transforming the world around us into something better.

 

The promise of the beatitudes that we remember and claim today is that the pain and suffering of this world does not escape God’s notice.  And God’s peaceable kingdom is closer than we realize.  Those who are marginalized and dismissed by the powers of this world will be uplifted and valued in the kingdom of God.

 

And so we name names.  We light candles.  We say, “presente.”  We raise our voices in prayer, giving thanks for those whom we love who have died, and we promise to remember them, giving voice to the truth that love is stronger than death.  Thanks be to God.