Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
February 28, 2021

What Does It Mean to Follow?
Mark 8:31-38

 

My sister-in-law, Kate, once accidentally ran a half-marathon.  Or almost.  How does someone do that, you ask?  Good question.  One explanation is that she’s just that kind of person – in good enough shape to be able to pull it off.  But really – she was planning to run a few miles of a marathon with a friend who was racing, to encourage her along the way.  She hadn’t registered and wasn’t wearing a number, so she ended up getting kicked off of the course by a race official. She’d expected, I think, to catch a ride back to her car, so where she left the course was miles away from where they’d parked. By the time she finally jogged back to the parking spot, she may as well have run half the race.

 

Blisters, aching legs – Kate was pretty sore the next day.  It usually takes at least a couple of months to train for a half, and her usual long run was six miles – not 13.  If she’d known what was going to happen, she probably would not have agreed to follow her friend.  But by the time she had to leave the course, she didn’t have much choice.

 

I wonder if the disciples knew where they were heading, and what was in store for them in Jerusalem before Jesus made this prediction.  Up to this point, they’ve seen him heal countless people.  Cast out demons.  Eat with sinners and tax collectors.  Challenge unfair religious rules, rile up the scribes and provoke the priests.  He has shown them what he was about, but he hasn’t done any explicit teaching about where his ministry was leading.  Not till now.  And the teaching… its not what they want to hear.  They can’t even believe it.  So Peter rebukes him.

 

Peter has just confessed him to be the Messiah –the promised one, who would save Israel from its enemies.  The prophets promised a military victor anointed by God to overthrow their oppressors and uplift the poor.  Peter’s right, Jesus is the messiah, but not that kind of messiah.  That isn’t what he came to do.

 

Jesus offers liberation, absolutely.  He heralds a coming kingdom.  But the freedom he promises is not without risks.  In fact, he goes on to tell them that he must suffer, be rejected, and killed before rising again.  To the disciples, this is unbelieveable.  Their savior couldn’t be executed!  Why would they allow that to happen – much less follow him on the path to destruction?

 

What the disciples don’t yet understand is that by predicting these awful things, Jesus is just telling the truth.  Some amount of suffering is inevitable for those who challenge oppression, because people with power do not give it up easily.  You know this: the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears of any campaign.  The weary days, the long nights.  We who have the courage to stand up for love and justice in a world full of fear and greed have a fight ahead of us.  Jesus is just telling it like it is, and then he issues a challenge – those who wish to be his disciples must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him.

 

Jesus says some confounding things, doesn’t he?

 

What do we do with this here and now, in the 21^st century US?  It’s an incredibly challenging statement.  The culture in which we live is self-centered.  Self-indulgent.  Individualistic.  People with money in this country can have anything we can afford delivered to our doorstep within 24-48 hours. Deny ourselves?  Why would we ever want to do a thing like that?

 

And I know, and surely you do, too or can imagine, how this passage has been abused, mis-used, misinterpreted to justify all sorts of terrible things: to keep people in abusive relationships, to justify the enslavement of human beings, to maintain all sorts of injustices, suffering is called just a cross to bear.  So much so, that many feminist and womanist theologians reject the cross completely.  Suffering doesn’t save us.  Love saves us.  The life and work of Jesus, acts of kindness, liberation, and mercy are salvific, not the violence of the cross.  Not suffering.

 

Still, this crucial teaching – deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me – appears in all three synoptic gospels.  We who wish to follow Christ at some point must try to understand what he’s calling us to do.  Matthew Meyer Boulton’s commentary on this passage has helped me.  He says, Jesus does not tell us to seek out a cross.  Instead, Jesus says take up your cross.[1]  This assumes the truth that all of us will or have experienced some amount of suffering – we don’t have to seek it out, suffering finds us.  No matter where or when we live, no matter who we are brokenness, loss, and pain are part of life.  People we love will die.  We will make mistakes and have to deal with the consequences.  We do not always get what we want.  Our bodies are fragile, our resources limited, the systems in which we live are bound by sin.  Suffering is inevitable.

 

Students of Buddhism know that one of the Buddha’s foundational teachings is the four noble truths. The first truth is that life is dukkha, suffering. It just is.  The second truth is that suffering comes from want, from craving the things we don’t or can’t have. The third, that we can find release from suffering by letting go, emptying ourselves.  And the fourth, the way to do that is by following the path of moderation, meditation – called the eight-fold path.  (forgive this simplistic summary).  It’s not hard to see how the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh could write a book called Living Buddha, Living Christ.  He has said, “on the altar in my hermitage are images of both Buddha and Jesus, and I touch both of them as my spiritual ancestors.”[2]  There is much that resonates between their teachings.

 

The past year has taught us more about selflessness and suffering than we probably ever wanted to learn.  We have stayed home to stop the spread and flatten the curve.  We’ve forgone visits and bypassed holidays and milestones with those we love to keep them safe and well.  Those of us who are essential workers have risked our own health and the health of our families to do our jobs.  We’ve seen friends and family members get sick, suffer, and die, many of them alone.  We’ve seen the rise of the share economy and mutual aid groups delivering food to people’s doorsteps and checking in on elderly neighbors.  We’ve rationed toilet paper and used gallons of hand sanitizer and learned to mask and double mask.  We understand now, perhaps better than ever, what it means to sacrifice what we want for the common good.  To limit ourselves, so that everyone can thrive.

 

Life as part of a community of faith teaches us these things, too.  I can remember a conversation I had with a college student in my last church.  At the end of a community meal, as folks were packing up and leaving, he seemed to be looking for someone, bobbing around, walking out and coming back in.  He was usually a pretty laid back kid, so urgency was out of character for him.  I asked him, “hey man, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, “but we gotta find Mr. Burt so we can get out of here.”

“Why?”  I asked.  “You have somewhere else to be?”

“No,” he said with a grin, “but if we stay much longer, we’re going to have to clean up all this mess.”

 

I laughed, because it was true.  And you know what?  They did help: clearing plates, folding chairs and tables, sweeping food off of the floor.  They even walked me to my car to make sure I got there safely.  Because this is what we do for one another.  We show up.  We pitch in. We trust that many hands make light the work, and so we work together for the good of the community, offering what we can to help out.  It seems like not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, that a couple of college students gave some time to clean up.  But it’s these small choices that build our capacity to take larger risks when they present themselves.  To show up, to speak out, to stand together.

 

The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet who has lived much of his life in exile and has seen many of his people killed and oppressed by Chinese government, observes, “… suffering helps [us] develop empathy and compassion for others.”[3] Life in community builds compassion.  It gives us a chance to do what Peter did: to listen to others speak the truth of their experience. To hear and understand how that truth calls us to action.  To go places we might not want to go.  To run the race that is before us even if it is far longer and harder than we imagined it might be.  To take up our cross and follow him all the way to Jerusalem, to confront the powers and principalities, all the way to Calvary, all the way to the empty tomb.

 

 

 

[1] Boulton, Matthew Meyer, “Cross Purposes: SALT’s Lectionary Commentary for Lent 2,” February 23, 2021, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/2/20/cross-purposes-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-lent-2

[2] Hanh, Thich Nhat, qtd. In “About Living Buddha, Living Christ 20^th Anniversary Edition,” Penguin Random House, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/352224/living-buddha-living-christ-by-thich-nhat-hanh-introduction-by-elaine-pagels/

[3] Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Carlton Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, Penguin Random House: New York, 2016, p. 242.

 

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
February 14, 2021

 

Transformation
Mark 9:2-9

 

My mom was a high school English teacher, which means that she is a purveyor and teller of stories, and not one to hold back from offering advice.  Having learned a thing or two about human nature from life and as an avid reader of fiction, she loved to advise me with stories – fables with morals that could not be missed.  A favorite of hers goes like this:

 

A man was walking along a forest path, deep in the woods, and snow began to fall.  Looking up at the grey sky through the trees and seeing the flakes begin to settle on the branches, he picked up his pace a bit, not wanting to get stuck out in the cold.  As he hurried along the path, hopping over roots and rocks, he heard a voice call out “– excuse me, can you help me?”

 

Looking down, he saw a snake slithering beside the path.  He jumped, because he noticed the snake’s sharply angled head and the pattern on his back and knew for sure that the snake was poisonous.  Edging over to the other side of the path, the man said, “I’m sorry, did you just speak to me?”

 

The snake’s tongue darted out, tasting the air as he lifted his head and said, “why yes, I did.  See, it’s cold and getting colder.  I’ll freeze to death out here if I don’t get back to my den.  But you’ve got that coat on with those big pockets.  If you could just slip me in there and carry me a little ways down the path, you’ll save me and I’ll be forever grateful.”

 

The man hesitated, feeling torn.  He didn’t want to be bitten by the snake, for then he would surely die.  But he didn’t want to ignore the snake’s plea and leave the animal to die, either.  As he weighed his options, the snake said, “Come on, please, just carry me a little ways.”

 

So the man gingerly picked him up, and slipped him headfirst into the pocket of his coat.  They walked quickly down the trail towards the edge of the woods when the snake finally poked his head out of the man’s pocket and said, “Stop!  Here!  This is it – you saved me!”

 

And when the man, eager to be rid of the snake, stuck his hand in his pocket to pull him out, the snake bit him.

 

The man swore and tossed the snake to the ground, crying in anguish – “How could you do that?  I helped you!  Why did you bite me?”

 

The snake slithered toward a hole in the roots of a tree and shrugged his shoulders and hissed, “you knew I was a snake when you picked me up.”[1]

 

The moral of the story: When someone shows you who they are, believe them.  Believe them.

It may not surprise you that the national news has reminded me of this story lately, especially coverage of the impeachment trial this past week.  And I think my mom would tell it to me as a way of helping me navigate the twists and occasional disappointments of building friendships and relationships when I was young, learning who and how to trust.

 

This story comes to mind because this is both Transfiguration Sunday and Valentine’s Day, and I’m thinking about change, and trust, and love, and our capacity for all of them.

 

Today we remember the dramatic revelation of the divine Christ on a mountaintop.  Until this point in Mark, Jesus has been making his way through Galilee, teaching and healing and challenging the death-dealing powers and practices that shut people out of communal life.  This mountaintop encounter is a turning point.  When Jesus and the disciples head back down the mountain, they turn toward Jerusalem and begin the descent into his final conflict with Rome and the religious leaders.  Here at the edge of Lent, we, too, are turning toward Jerusalem, to make our own journey toward the agony of Gethsemane and the darkness of Calvary, the pain of Christ crucified and, eventually, the joy of the risen Christ.

 

But before that, here, on a mountaintop, God’s glory is revealed in Christ.  Seeing this transformation, Peter, James, and John should have no doubt about who he is, and what he came to do.  And yet, they seem to have a hard time believing it.  I would, wouldn’t you?  Can you imagine their utter shock and DISbelief?  The text tells us they were terrified when they saw Christ change before their very eyes, from the man they knew into a glorious shining creature – no longer quite human –

heavenly to behold

terrifying to witness,

his robes dazzling white,

accompanied by Moses and Elijah – the law and the prophets, right there with him.

All three of them, shining brightly, radiant.

 

Scripture says that’s how it was with Moses, too, after forty days atop Mt Sinai, enveloped in a cloud of mystery, working out the details of the ten commandments with the one true God – he came down glowing.  Had to wear a veil to shield his face after so much time in the presence of God.  Radiance is one of the most common descriptors of what it’s like to see God – so bright, it’s like looking at the sun.

 

When have you seen someone and thought to describe them as radiant?  People on their wedding day are often glowing with excitement and love.  Expectant or new parents.  Babies can be radiant, and so can happy children.  An old woman’s smile.  A person teaching about something they care deeply and passionately about, just shines, don’t they?  Comes alive in a new way?  Seems like love leads to radiance.

 

One of my first times out with Dary, I remember standing with him, waiting for the T at Charles Street in Boston.  It was a bright spring day, on a raised platform, open air.  There was an older woman there, waiting also, who was blind.  For whatever reason, when the train came, she seemed hesitant to get on, and Dary went over and helped guide her onto the train.  It was a small thing, really.  But it stayed with me.  When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

 

The word transfiguration itself means a complete change in form or appearance – Jesus the man, transformed into a shining deity.  It’s not clear from the text how the change happens… if the Spirit brings this change upon Jesus, or if for some reason the disciples simple are able to see Christ’s true self for the first time. The message is clear: Christ is both human and holy, divine.  But I don’t know if the disciples are able to comprehend what that means… if having been shown his true identity, they believe their friend is indeed the human manifestation of God.  I wonder, once the vision goes away and the disciples head back down the mountain, what changes for them, having seen this.  Has anything really changed at all?

 

Moments of transcendence, of radiance, are fleeting.  When we experience them, how does it change us?

 

J Phillip Newell, a peripatetic prophet of the Iona Community, says that Christ came into the world to awaken our inner memory of God.  We’re all made in the image and likeness of God, we just have to be able to recognize it: to see other people as the bearers of God’s love and light.   And when we are able to see that, nothing really changes, but everything is different.

 

I always had a tough time accepting that story that my mother told, which I know she told from a place of love, wanting to protect me.  But I want to think the best of people, to give others the benefit of the doubt, to resist painting someone with too broad a brush and writing someone off completely.  If the resurrection teaches us anything, doesn’t it teach us that we are capable of change?  I believe people change all the time.  All the time, I hope we are getting better, wiser, more kind, more loving, more creative.  Resilient.  Maybe the transfiguration shows us that just as Christ changed outwardly, we disciples can be changed inwardly –when we see the world through his eyes, our hearts expand, helping us see all people worthy of love and belonging.

 

So, when someone shows you who they are, believe them – but also trust that God is still at work in them.  We all have the capacity to change.

 

My hope is that our eyes will be opened this week, to see the radiant beauty of Christ in the people and world around us, that our hearts will be opened to love him, our hands opened to serve him.  And that in so doing, we ourselves might be transformed.

 

 

 

 

 

[1] I learned in writing this that the fable can be either traced to or inspired a song written by activist Oscar Brown in 1963, and made famous by Al Wilson in 1968.  And, I was horrified to learn that the story was also oft used to drum up anti-immigrant sentiment by a former President on the campaign trail.

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
February 7, 2021

 

Serve, Rest, Repeat…
Mark 1:28-39

 

How is everyone doing?  There have been a flurry of articles lately pointing to the same truth: a lot of people are worn out.  In the Guardian, a journalist writes: “Pandemic burnout on the rise…”[1] and in HuffPost: “It’s not just you: A lot of us are hitting a pandemic wall right now.”[2] My favorite, in the New York Times, “Three American Mothers, on the brink,” part of a series called the Primal Scream, about parenting in the pandemic – the picture, a mom on a conference call in a makeshift office in her closet, while her three-year-old swings like a monkey from the clothing rack behind her…[3]

 

So how are you, really?  These articles all say we’ve been operating in a state of heightened stress for almost a year now, with excess cortisol and anxiety disrupting sleep, throwing us too easily into fight or flight mode, fogging our thinking and making us “emotionally zapped.”

 

We are at a pandemic breaking point, it seems – infections are falling, but they’re still higher than at any point prior to November.  We’ve either gotten sick ourselves, or known others who have.  Many of us have had friends or loved ones die.  460,000 dead in the US, more than 2.3 million worldwide.  Impossible to comprehend, really.  New, more contagious variants are spreading rapidly, calling for more caution than ever before.  The promise of the vaccine glimmers on the horizon, even as the snarled appointment system remains shrouded in mystery and supply is painfully limited.

 

The promise of Isaiah sounds pretty incredible, doesn’t it – you will mount up with wings like eagles, you’ll walk and not get weary, run and not faint?  Long-lasting fatigue and shortness of breath continue to plague many who’ve recovered from Covid – some of our number can say that’s true.

 

Some of you, I know, have gotten your first and even your second vaccination shots!  Thanks be to God, and to science!  You may be booking flights and making plans, or just feel a deep sense of relief, gratitude, and urgency for everybody else to get theirs, too.

 

You’ve seen by now, I’m sure, the expert being interviewed on a live BBC news program when his toddler bursts into the room – heard the reporter on NPR with her children in the background.  The line between work and home has blurred more than ever before, it’s part of pandemic life.  And this craziness, weariness, stress, and sadness, this pandemic is the lens through which I read the story about Peter’s mother-in-law, sick in bed with a fever.

 

And I’ve got to be honest with you, it riles me up!  I mean, this story really makes me angry.  Really, Jesus!  He heals this woman, literally, lifts her up out of bed and puts her on her feet and what does it says?  Immediately – it’s the gospel of Mark, so everything happens immediately – Immediately she begins to serve them.

 

This poor woman.  Sick in bed.  Head aching.  Body aching.  Shivering.  Then sweating like there is a fire in her bones.  Exhausted, delirious even.  What do you do when your fever breaks?  What do you do?  You sleep!  Finally, you can get some sleep!

 

But Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, she’s got a house full of fishermen and an itinerant preacher in her bedroom, lifting her up out of bed!  And her fever breaks, it leaves her at once.  But does she get to rest?  No, immediately she begins to serve them.

 

Now, I understand that their culture was different than ours.  Women had prescribed roles, and providing hospitality was a matter of honor for her family, there was not a choice for her.  But still.

 

Historical critical and feminist reads of the gospel have helped me see this story a bit differently. There are a few things I want to lift up.

 

It’s notable that the first real healing in Mark’s gospel is not a man, not a child, but a woman.  And even though we do not know her name, we know that in Biblical times, women were at the bottom of the social hierarchy – we were the property of men, and our job was to have children and serve the house.   Yet, here, in the oldest story of the life and ministry of Jesus – a woman is the first to be healed!  Not a homeowner, not a priest or a scribe.  A woman!  That’s not by accident.

 

It tells us that Jesus, the miracle worker, the one who teaches with authority, the preacher who called fishermen to follow him – he didn’t come to the politically powerful, the wealthy, the healthy, and the strong.  Jesus befriended the poor, and sought out those who were left behind and shut out: the sick, the mentally ill, prostitutes and tax collectors, women and children.

 

It is also significant that after she is healed, this woman, Peter’s mother-in-law, responds with service.  Remember, later in this gospel Jesus says: “I came not to be served but to serve.”  The word used here, diakonia, is the same word we derive the word deacon from.  So Peter’s mother-in-law was not just pouring tea!  She was the first true disciple, who understood the proper response to the coming of God’s kingdom – was to serve others with love.  She embodies the truth that each one of us has something to contribute.  And it’s human nature, isn’t it – to want to help others, especially if we ourselves have been helped.

 

I’ve served several downtown and urban churches, churches with strong outreach ministries, night shelters, and a lot of work with hungry folks and people experiencing homelessness.  Again and again, people who have received assistance come back and want to do what they can to help others.  Like Ashley – When I met her, Ashley was wearing an oversized tie-dyed T-shirt, pushing her toddler son in a big blue stroller.  A little disheveled, and worn out.  I learned she was staying at the YWCA down the street, a shelter for people escaping domestic violence.  The only reason she came to my church is because it was close, and there weren’t any stairs to navigate with her stroller, and we offered childcare during worship.  But she kept coming back.  And she worked hard.  And moved into an apartment on her own.  And when she could, she wanted to give back.  So for a time, she became the church’s shelter volunteer coordinator, recruiting church folk to cook dinner and stay overnight.  And often, she’d cook and serve and stay herself, dinner and dessert for 70+ people, with two kids under five.  Having done it with one child on my back and another beside me, I can safely say I have no idea how she managed.  She’s studying social work now, because she wants to help other women find their way to safety, to solid ground.  She wants to give back.

 

After Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, Mark tells us they brought everyone who was sick or possessed, and the whole city was crowded around the door.  Everybody came to be healed.  And Jesus healed many of them.  But then, and this is what I want to lift up, then – Jesus took time for himself, time apart, to rest, to pray, and be restored.

 

For those who have hit a pandemic wall, the idea of time apart might seem like an impossible luxury.  But it’s necessary.  You cannot fill someone else’s cup if your well is dry!  Finding space, to pray, to be quiet, to listen and rest – is how we keep going.  The life of faith to which we are called is a dialectic of work and rest, action and reflection, service and sabbath.  One enables, enriches, and informs the other.  Jesus himself shows us, in this story and others, he models this rhythm of work and rest.

 

You know, one of the things I miss most in pandemic life is singing – hearing the sanctuary fill with music, our voices layered on top of each other, joy resonating up through the rafters.  Singing in a choir taught me something about rest.  Really!  There is magic that happens when many voices join together in song – the total is greater than the sum of its parts.  If I need to take a breath, I take a breath – the note continues, because the rest of the choir is singing it.  We hold the note for each other.  And singing in the congregation a similar thing happens –  you know, there are some hymns I just can’t sing all the way through.  Here I Am Lord is one, and How Can I Keep from Singing is another – they remind me of places I’ve been and people I’ve loved and I just get overcome with emotion and the words won’t come.  But when that happens, you keep going.  The congregation keeps singing, even when I can’t. We hold each other up.

 

So how are you doing?

 

If you need rest, please, say so.  Make time to rest.

 

If you need help, please, ask for it.  Say something.  Reach out.  There is no reason to suffer alone.

 

We are almost almost through this thing.  We can hang in for a little while longer.  Hear the promise of the prophet Isaiah: We will mount up with wings like eagles – walk and not get weary, run and not faint.

 

May it be so!

[1] Marsh, Sarah, “Pandemic Burnout On the Rise As Latest Lockdowns Take Toll,” The Guardian, 2/5/21, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/05/pandemic-burnout-rise-uk-latest-covid-lockdowns-take-toll

[2] Ries, Julia, “It’s Not Just You: A Lot of Us Are Hitting A Pandemic Wall Right Now,” The Huffington Post, 2/5/21, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coronavirus-pandemic-wall-mental-health_l_601b3c9dc5b6c0af54d09ccb

[3] Bennett, Jessica, “Three American Mothers On the Brink,” New York Times, 2/4/21, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/04/parenting/covid-pandemic-mothers-primal-scream.html

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
January 31, 2021

 

Healing in an Age of Pandemic
Mark 1:21-28

 

Humans of New York is the project of a photographer named Brandon who set out to catalogue New York City’s residents.  He stops people on the street, takes their picture, and asks them a question. Then, he posts it on his social media.  He asks questions that evoke unexpected responses: “what was your proudest moment?”  Or, “who inspires you?”  The answers paint a moving picture of the immigrants, businessmen, models, and other bizarre and wonderful characters who make up New York City.  He’s done the same all over the world, documenting people in refugee camps and people in prisons, telling stories that need to be told.

 

About 5 years ago, Brandon photographed a kid named Vidal on the streets of Brooklyn.[1]  In the photo, Vidal wears a black puffy jacket and a hoodie with the hood pulled up.  He looks skeptically at the camera, lips sucked in, like there’s no way he’s gonna smile even though he wants to.  Brandon asks, “Who has influenced you the most?”

 

“My Principal, Ms. Lopez,” said Vidal.  “When we get in trouble, she doesn’t suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us. And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter.”

 

Vidal’s neighborhood is tough; at the time it had the highest crime rate in New York.  He lives in public housing and goes to the Mott Hall Bridges Academy there.  The Academy is a public Middle School that seeks excellence, inspiring its students to succeed even though the deck is stacked against them.  Moved by Vidal’s testimony about his principal, Brandon (the photographer) went to the school to meet her and learn more of her story.

 

Ms. Lopez sets high standards for students at her school.  She calls them scholars, not students.  The school’s color is purple, the color of royalty.  She tells her teachers “these kids need you…your classrooms may be the one place they feel safe and respected. If we give up, there is nobody else. There is a system out there that is waiting for our scholars to show up in shackles and jumpsuits if we choose to give up on them.”[2]

 

A great teacher or administrator can change your life.  I’ll bet many of you have had a Ms. Lopez in your life.  Someone who taught you that you matter.  Someone whose creativity sparked your imagination, or whose passion planted seeds of interest deep within you.  Someone who challenged you to rise above expectations.  Teachers offer a chance for transformation.

 

Jesus was a teacher who changed lives. The first time people hear him teach in the gospel of Mark, they are astounded! But then his teaching gets interrupted by a man with an unclean spirit.  Now, we don’t know what Mark means when he says “an unclean spirit” – the man may have had a mental illness of some kind, what the people of that time would have attributed to demonic possession.  Whatever it was, it meant that the man was not allowed in the temple – he was considered ritually unclean, the scribes taught that he was to be kept out.

 

One of Mark’s favorite strategies is intercalation: interrupting one story, (say, Jesus teaching in the temple) with another (Jesus confronting an unclean spirit), then continuing the first story.  Put together, the two stories help interpret each other.  What does an exorcism show us about Christ teaching in the temple?

 

We don’t really know what Jesus was teaching that day.  We do know that so far in the gospel, he’s said that the time has come, and the reign of God has arrived.  By casting out the unclean spirit and healing the man, Jesus shows what the reign of God means: God has power over all the evil that would seek to possess us.  And God will cast it out.

 

The religious law said the man wasn’t worthy enough to worship; he was outside of the mercy and blessing of God.  By expelling the unclean spirit, Jesus makes the man worthy of temple worship again.  The scribes said – that man is unclean, he is not welcome here.  But Jesus shows us that in the Kingdom of God, those boundaries are banished – all will be welcomed, healed, made whole.  No one will be shut out.

 

Some of my best teachers believed in experiential education – we learn by doing.  That’s the power of a field trip, service-learning, internships, residencies.  My first ordained call was a pastoral residency program, three years of service in a big old church in downtown Atlanta, actively reflecting on the practices of ministry while doing the work.  Practical experience shaped my ministry differently, more powerfully, than time in a seminary classroom did.

 

Jesus teaches by doing, too.  He doesn’t just talk about the arrival of God’s reign.  He shows us what God’s reign means for us, for our broken institutions, and for the powers of evil and death.  By expelling the evil spirit, Christ proves he has power, too.  Holy healing power.  Boundary breaking power.  God’s power.  When the people in the temple see this, they are amazed, but they’re also afraid: afraid, because it means that the world as it is, is not how it always will be.  God is at work, transforming, healing, casting out evil, making things new.

 

Something the unclean spirit says to Jesus has stayed with me this week.  It’s the question, “what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

 

What have you to do with us?

 

This question gets to the heart of the Christian life.  Remember the greatest commandment –  love God with all of your heart, mind, and strength.  And love your neighbor as yourself.

 

What has Jesus, a teacher, to do with an unclean man?  Nothing, if the scribes have anything to say about it.  The world is filled with boundaries that keep people apart.  That keep the unclean out of the temple. That value some lives more than others.

 

What does Jesus have to do with a demonized, marginalized man?

Or, for that matter, what does an ostracized, mentally ill man have to do with us?

What do we have to do with those who are outcast, or oppressed, with the person who doesn’t feel welcome in our worship?

What do we have to do with the Vidals of Baltimore, and the schools where they study?

What have they to do with us?

What have you to do with us? the man asks Jesus.  The answer is everything!

 

By the power of God, Jesus makes a broken man whole again.  Christ teaches us grace and reconciliation by enacting it, casting out the evil spirit, repudiating the evil teaching that kept the man out of the temple, welcoming him back into the fold.

 

What would it look like for us to teach like that?  Not just to say we believe in a God of justice, but to pray that God might empower us to mend and to heal the broken and the hurting, to seek reconciliation for all who have been forgotten or ostracized.   To cast out every evil spirit that would otherwise seek to possess us.

 

It is a strange time for us to say that God is a God who heals – after so many hundreds of thousands of people around the globe have died in the pandemic.  But right here in Baltimore, through the advocacy of faithful people in BUILD, more than 3,000 people in East and West Baltimore have had access to Covid tests through community based testing sites that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.  After feeling pressure from community advocates, the city has committed to fully fund programs to feed hungry people, at least 20,000 households of them.  And that is the healing Spirit of God at work.

 

After Brandon (the photographer) met Vidal and Ms. Lopez and shared their stories on his blog, he realized his readers wanted to do something to support the school.  People were sending bouquets of purple flowers to Ms. Lopez and calling offering to mentor scholars.  So Brandon and the principal started a campaign to support the school’s mission.  The campaign’s first goal was to send all sixth graders on a trip to Harvard, to expand their horizons and show students that they belong wherever they want to be.  They raised enough money in two days to make the trip a permanent part of the curriculum.  So they expanded their vision, and said that they wanted to start a program so the scholars will have a safe place to learn and grow during the summer.  And they raised enough money to support a decade of summer programs.  What they raised above that, they’ve put into the Vidal Scholarship Fund, to enable academy scholars to go to college.  Over a 1.2 million dollars have been raised for the Academy, because people were moved by Vidal’s testimony about his principal, Ms. Lopez.

 

Look, it shouldn’t have to be this way.  A kid shouldn’t have to go viral on social media to draw attention to inequity in education.  Every school deserves the resources to provide excellent education.

 

What does Vidal have to do with us?  Everything.  And I pray that no boundary that the world puts between us – not boundaries of time or space, race or culture, wealth or power – will keep us from believing that.  From living it.  From teaching it.  Jesus drew on the power and authority available to him to heal the sick, to banish the demonic forces that afflicted the unclean man, to break the boundaries that kept him down and out.  The principal, Ms. Lopez draws on the power and authority available to her as a principal to uplift her scholars, to overcome the demonic forces and unjust structures that hold kids in poverty.

 

What would it look like if we drew on the power and authority available to us to ensure that the kids at our partner school, Walter P. Carter Elementary-Middle, have mentors to support them, decent housing in which to live, healthy food to eat – a chance to flourish.  What demonic forces would we need to banish to make that happen?  We’re working on it, advocating for the blueprint, supporting family engagement nights, showing up as a community partner.  I can’t wait to see what God has in store…

 

Jesus begins his ministry by breaking down boundaries.  He came to show us another way.  A way of healing and reconciliation.  A way that values all people, not just some.  A way that says that I shouldn’t flourish if you are struggling.  I shouldn’t be included if you are excluded.  Because our lives are bound up together.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

[1] Staunton, Brandon, photographed and quoted Vidal Chastanet and Dr. Nadia Lopez for his blog “Humans of New York,” in 2015, https://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/108621363306/whos-influenced-you-the-most-in-your-life-my.

[2] https://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/108838763416/a-couple-days-back-i-posted-the-portrait-of-a

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church
Baltimore, MD
January 24, 2021

Hearing the Call
Mark 1:14-20

I wonder if the sun was bright that day, glinting off the water, gulls bobbing on the waves in the distance.  Can you see him squinting at the horizon, the corners of his eyes crinkled as the wind blew the hair back from his forehead?  Simon didn’t know what he was looking for, off in the distance – this was an ordinary day, like any other.  But something kept drawing his eye, first out to open water, then back to the shore, back to the path to town where they’d carry their catch later on, the path to the house he’d been born in, the hearth where he’d learned to mend nets at his father’s knee, the path that led to everyone and everything he’d ever known.

 

Simon and his brother Andrew worked hard, up long before dawn to get fish to market by morning.  It was backbreaking work: straining at the oars, doing battle with the currents and waves.  Heaving the nets into the water, and hauling them up again with calloused hands, wet and dripping. Water soaking his tunic and sandals over and over, as soon as they dried, wet again.  And the smell… he was used to it, mostly, it had been part of his life since before he could remember – the stink of the mudflats, the stink of the fish, the particular smell of the sea.

 

It was friendly work, he didn’t mind it.  The crew on his father’s boat was like family.  The women in the market were shy, smiling when they bought his tilapia, the sardines to preserve in oil.  He was lucky, really, to work alongside guys he could trust with his life, who had indeed saved his life more than once through stormy nights at sea – his brother, and their friends and fellow fishermen James and John, the sons of Zebedee.  The ones he could wait with in silence as they watched the net fall into the water, and laugh with as they pulled it up again, even when it was empty of fish.    No, he didn’t mind the work but something was missing.  Some part of him felt as empty as the nets he cast into the sea.

 

When he saw the man walking along the shore, he didn’t think much of it at first.

 

But then, he couldn’t look away.

 

As he watched the man walk on the shore, Simon began to feel as if … as if he’d come to tell them something.  To show them something.  Simon Peter was curious.  Who was he?  What did he want with them?

 

It looked like that teacher, the one who kept on talking about good news – who was saying the time had come, a new kingdom had arrived, one that might topple Roman rule, a kingdom of God.

 

Mark’s gospel is spare, a rapid re-telling of Christ’s life and ministry.  We don’t get much detail, just the bare facts.  John was arrested, and that pushed Christ into the spotlight – compelling him to start his ministry and declare the good news!  To say the time had come, God’s reign was here.

 

Maybe John’s arrest and beheading pushed Jesus over the edge, maybe that was the last straw.

Maybe Jesus’s anger and frustration with the world as it is gave him the courage to denounce Rome, to claim allegiance to a kingdom invisible to the naked eye yet real all the same.

Maybe it was just the time God intended.  Time for the world to change.  Whatever the reason, Christ set out and began to build a movement by calling people to repent, to believe the good news, and to follow him.

 

And, people did.  Just like Nathanael and Philip last week, Simon and Andrew, James and John are compelled to follow Jesus.  It’s surprising that they agreed to go with Jesus, because they haven’t seen him do anything yet.  No one’s been healed, no water turned to wine, no loaves and fishes multiplied.  There’s no persuasive speech, no chance for his charisma to shine. they don’t even know where he’s going or why.  He just calls to them and they follow – to learn to fish for people.

 

Have you ever wondered what that means, to fish for people?  I’ve often heard it as a call to evangelize – to catch disciples for Jesus.  But Ched Meyers, in his brilliant political analysis of the gospel of Mark, suggests that the invitation to fish for people evoked similar fishing imagery used in the Hebrew scriptures.  Meyers observes that Galilee’s fishing industry was growing around the time Jesus would’ve been preaching, but the fishermen didn’t see any of the profits.  They were at the bottom of a towering economic hierarchy.  Exploited.  Frustrated.  Just scraping by while others profited from their hard work.  So by calling the fishermen to fish for people, Jesus alludes to the Jewish prophets who used fishing imagery to decry the exploitation of poor workers by the powers that be.  Jesus is calling the fishermen to join a revolution.  One that they’ve wanted for a long time.  That might explain why they’re so quick to respond to his call.

 

Now, they must have known the risk they were taking.  There was the macro-risk – they surely knew about John’s arrest, and would have known how dangerous it could be to challenge Rome or the religious authorities.  And the economic risk of leaving their source of income, their livelihood behind.

 

But there was also the micro-risk: the personal risk we all face when we dare to try something new – to take a new job, to leave friends and family, everything they’ve ever known behind and strike out in a new place.  The risk of failure, the risk of change.  But these guys don’t hesitate!  Christ calls, they follow!

 

We talk a lot about call in church world.  Your calling can mean your work, your vocation.  Or, it might be a particular task at a specific time.  A calling could be just part of who you are, like some are called to be a foster parent, or to create art, or to feed hungry people.  Or a calling could consume your life.  But who calls us?  And how can we hear it?

 

I was struck this week by a conversation between the brilliant young poet Amanda Gorman and CNN’s Anderson Cooper following her stunning recitation at the inauguration on Wednesday, because Gorman talked about call.  She said, there is a mantra she tells herself before she begins to write, and before she recites her poetry in public.  She tells herself:

 

“I am the daughter of Black writers. We are descended from freedom fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.”[1]

 

Gorman hears the call of her ancestors, and it gives her courage – courage to write her truth, to speak truth to power.  Her calling empowered her to cast a vision of restoration, redemption and repair for a bruised and battered nation.  To be light for a world in desperate need of it.  If that’s not a sacred calling, I don’t know what is!

 

Maybe Simon and Andrew, James and John had been waiting for a long time for someone to call them.  Maybe those long, weary nights on the water had made them long for something different, something more.  Maybe all that time spent fishing, meditating by the water, out in the quiet of nature, opened their ears to hear the call when it came.  Maybe they were frustrated by the world as it was, and wanted to make it into what it could be.  For whatever reason, they were ready – when they heard the call of Christ, they were ready to go, to leave backbreaking work for work could be heartbreaking, but would feed their souls better than fish ever would.  Maybe the call gave them courage to step out in faith and trade calloused hands for calloused feet, following the good news into the world.

 

I believe Christ calls each one of us to follow him.  Sometimes it sounds like an inner yearning for meaning, questions that compel us to learn more, then to do more.  Sometimes it sounds like Jonah’s call to the people of Ninevah, a call to repent and to change.  Sometimes it sounds like his call to Simon and Andrew, James and John – come, follow, do this work that needs doing!  Like the call Amanda Gorman hears, we’re called to trust the wisdom within each one of us, the wisdom of our ancestors.  This call gives us courage to do hard things.  It’s a call that inspires faith – not faith as an ascription of belief, but faith in God and faith in ourselves, faith as something embodied.  Faith that leads us to go where we are needed.  To take God’s good news into the world.

 

I hope this week, we’ll try to find space to be quiet and listen to where God is calling us.

 

Maybe there is someone who is sick, for whom a phone call or a text could be a healing balm.

Maybe someone you know is hurting or in pain, who needs to hear words of kindness, or would appreciate a note of encouragement.

Maybe there is a person with whom you are in conflict, who needs to experience grace.

Maybe there is an organization or neighborhood where a few hours of our time could make a real impact.

Maybe there is an opportunity to serve right here in our church, a way for you to offer your gifts to further our mission and ministry.

Maybe there is an issue that is dear to your heart, that needs the advocacy only you can offer.

 

Maybe there is someone whose body is threatened, whose beliefs are denigrated, whose rights are denied, who needs you – who needs us – to stand with them.

Maybe there is a person who doesn’t know, who hasn’t heard the good news that they are blessed and beloved, that they are a child of God.  Could you be the one to tell them?  Could we?

I pray that we will find space to listen and trust the wisdom within, to hear the voice that is calling us, leading us on the journey.  May it be so.

 

 

 

[1] Gorman, Amanda, interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN “Overjoyed: Hear from the poet who stole the show at the inauguration,” 1/20/21, https://youtu.be/qHhut5nhI8g

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
January 17, 2021

 

To Be Seen and Known…
John 1:43-51, Psalm 139

 

The pictures are alarming.  They have bruises across the bridge of their noses and the skin of their cheeks is red, and irritated.  Their eyes are tired, with deep shadows underneath; exhaustion is written all over their faces.  These are the photos of nurses and doctors who care for Covid patients in the peaks of this pandemic.  Their testimonies are difficult to hear: they tell horror stories of swift declines, sons and daughters telling their parents goodbye over a plastic wrapped iPad.  These frontline workers wear PPE, masks and shields and double gloves and gowns for full shifts, with no time to stop and eat, no time to stop to rest.  The need is just so great.

Journalists have tried to tell the story.  NYTimes reporter Sherri Fink spent 24 hours in a Brooklyn hospital ICU in early April, showing us the epicenter of the first wave in New York City. This American Life tracked the audio journals of nurses in New York, trying to gain a window into the stress and struggles of health care providers on the front lines, to show the hidden reality of what this illness can do not only to those who get sick, but also to those who care for them.  And thousands upon thousands of nurses, doctors, patients, and surviving family members have taken to social media to offer their own testimonies about the terrifying ravages of Covid-19 on the human body.  Stay home, save lives they say.  Wear a mask.  If you could only see what I see, you would.

Experiencing something first-hand changes us.  It reduces our ability to doubt or deny another’s truth.  First-hand experience expands our understanding, builds empathy and compassion.  Often, it inspires us, compels us to make a change.  Think of a time when your mind was changed or heart expanded by experiencing a new reality first-hand.  There is power in proximity, in coming close to a different reality than the one we know in everyday life.

This is one reason why the work of journalists is so crucial – first-person testimony and eyewitness accounts pull back the veil, helping others see and understand what happened in the chaos of the Capitol a week and a half ago, or the hidden impact of death-dealing policies in immigrant detention centers, supermax prisons, in nursing homes, schools, and living rooms.

Human rights lawyer, author, modern day prophet Bryan Stevenson often talks about this, the power of proximity.  He wrote about it in Just Mercy, and he says it again and again when he’s talking to CEO’s or students or whoever will listen: there is power in proximity.  If we are willing to get close to people who are suffering, we will find the power to change the world.  Because when we draw near and listen, take time to hear another’s story and tend their wounds, we are able to see them more clearly… we are able to see ourselves in them.  Something awakens within us.  Something that compels us to make change.

A relationship with someone in prison changes how we see the prison-industrial complex.  A trip to disappearing swampland in South Louisiana changes how we understand the devastating impact of climate change.  Teaching in a public school opens your eyes to the struggles of kids living in poverty.  Staying in a shelter, sharing meals with people experiencing homelessness makes it much harder to pass by others in need on the street.  Life in the borderlands changes how a person sees the impact of the border wall, of evil policies like family separation.  Proximity changes us.

Philosopher Martin Buber calls this the I/Thou relationship.  Buber believes we only exist in relationship- either with others – which he calls the I/Thou- or with inanimate objects – the I/It.  When we are in relationship with others, the I/thou, we become more complete.  You make me more fully myself, and I make you more fully you.  There is something that we share that makes us more human when we are together.

It makes sense, then, that faith grows in relationship with others.  When Philip encounters Jesus and is invitated to follow, his faith is sparked and grows.  And Philip is so excited, so compelled by what and who he has found he tells another friend about it.  What does the old song say?  It only takes a spark to get a fire going…

But I think we can all identify with Nathanael, can’t we?  He’s a skeptic.  Can’t fool him.  It’s going to take more than Philip’s testimony to convince him that Jesus is someone worth knowing.  After all, Nazareth was just a little town, fewer than 500 people lived there.  It didn’t figure in any of the messianic predictions made by Old Testament prophets.  It wasn’t a thriving city like Jerusalem or Rome, Nazareth was a backwoods place.  That’s why Nathanael says, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  It’s like saying, as some have said, can anyone good come that country?  Can anyone good from a place like Baltimore? What good can come from a place like that?

 

Philip says.  “Come and see.”

 

Come and see.

 

Philip invites Nathanael to experience what Christ is like, so he can judge for himself if his doubts are well-founded.  Philip invites him, confident that meeting Jesus will change everything.  Throughout the gospels, people are changed by their encounters with Jesus.  Zacchaeus, Nicodemus, the woman at the well. They want to run and tell the world what happened to them.  Jesus must have had a magnetic personality, an unstoppable charisma.  But not only that.  Being in relationship changes all of us.  Because when we come into relationship with someone, especially someone we’ve seen as “other,” it’s a lot harder to keep them as an “it.” The de-humanized becomes human.  They become a thou- someone who reflects the holy image back to us, someone with hopes and fears and dreams – someone who makes us remember our common humanity, who makes us more human!  A no-good nobody from Nazareth becomes Jesus, the Son of God, the King of Israel.

 

It is remarkable to me that Nathanael doesn’t see Christ do anything.  No one is healed, no bread is broken, no water turned to wine.  Nathanael only meets him in the road and realizes that Jesus knows him.  And that’s enough.  Being known and seen for who he is convinces Nathanael that Jesus is the son of God.  And so Nathanael professes his faith, and joins Jesus on the road.

 

In the gospel of John, Jesus says he is the way, the truth, and the life.  One-way early Christians talked about their newfound faith was to say that they were “on the way.”  Discipleship involves a journey.  A movement into relationship with others, into a neighborhood, into the city, into the world with an open heart, and hands ready to heal and to serve.  It’s a journey that changes us.  Scripture tells us that wherever Christ went, the sick and suffering sought him out for healing.  To tell their stories.  To be seen and heard.  And he listened.  Felt their pain and offered healing.  Fed and taught them.  Walked beside them.  Shared good news, offered the saving grace and love of God.  As indeed, he does for us.

 

In his letter from the Birmingham City Jail, Dr. King responded to the charge of being an outside agitator by saying, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

 

We cannot truly be free while our siblings suffer.  If the spread of this pandemic has taught us anything, it is how interconnected we truly are –our very breath connects us, and proximity comes with risk.  But – we are called to take that risk!  Rules for physical distancing notwithstanding, we are called to follow Christ, both to the margins and to the centers of power, and into deeper relationship with one another and with God.

 

In my article for the Voice of Faith this month, I shared that my theme for this year would be Connection.  Consider this year, consider our church an experiment in proximity, one I’m inviting all of you to join.  Let’s become proximate to one another, and to our neighbors.  Because by drawing near to one another, we learn of hurts often kept hidden.  We build trust, and learn from each other.  We discover and further affirm all we have common – similar joys, similar worries and struggles.  We find new ways to support each other, to tend one another’s wounds even as we work for healing in the broader world.  There is hope to be found in proximity; we learn we are not alone.  When we have the courage to draw near, we just might encounter Christ in one another.  So let’s get going!

 

Jesus promised Philip and Nathanael that they would see greater things than in their first encounter.  And they did: by following him on the way, they saw loaves and fishes multiplied, sight restored, diseases healed, the unclean included, the broken made whole, tables turned, sins forgiven, death defeated, new life given to all – to you, and to me, to each one of us who is brave enough to go and look and be in relationship with the one who says, “come and see…”.

 

May it be so!

 

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church,
Baltimore, MD
January 10, 2021

Water and Spirit
Mark 1:4-11

 

The first time I can remember

thinking about baptism,

I mean, really thinking about it –

I was sitting in Anderson Auditorium in Montreat, North Carolina.

I was maybe eight years old

tagging along to a conference for high schoolers

because my parents were youth advisors,

and I didn’t have much of a choice.

The memory is a little hazy, because I was so young,

but I think we were sitting on the right hand side of the aud, about halfway back.

The room was full,

and to my young eyes, it was like we were in the middle of a vast sea of people.

Worship was like magic, electric

when it happened with so many people in such a huge space.

There were two worship leaders, a man and a woman,

wearing brightly colored dashikis

And they were preaching about baptism.

I don’t remember the message really,

but I do remember what they did:

Carrying huge bowls of water

they walked up and down the long aisles,

they dipped palm branches into the bowls and waved them over the pews,

flinging water near and far, splashing our hair and faces and those old wooden pews, while crying out:

Remember your baptism!  Remember!  Remember your baptism!

 

The next day we had a free afternoon,

And went on an adventure at sliding rock,

A big slab of granite that formed

A natural waterslide in the middle of the Davidson River.

 

It’s no wonder, looking back on that day, as we slipped and slid down the rock

into the freezing pool of river water,

we shrieked, “Remember your baptism!”

as laughing, we splashed beneath the waves

and rose again,

sputtering, gasping for breath,

squeezing the icy drops from our hair,

flinging the water from our fingertips.

Remember your baptism!

 

I don’t, of course – remember my baptism, that is.  Like many Presbyterians, I was baptized as a baby, with my parents making promises to raise me in the faith, the congregation pledging to support me, promises sealed by a sprinkle of water that grafted me into the body of Christ present at 900 Jordan Street in Shreveport, Louisiana.

 

The water on my forehead dried a long time ago; yours probably did, too.  I’ve heard a recording of it, though, standing in my mother’s kitchen, words warbly on an old cassette tape.  John Rogers, my pastor when I was a child, tells me words I’ve now said to countless others, “for you Jesus Christ came into the world, he did battle in the world, he suffered.  For you he went through the agony of Gethsemane and the darkness of Calvary.  For you he cried it is fulfilled, for you he triumphed over death.  And the though you little child do not yet understand anything about this, thus is the promise of the apostle foretold: we love God, because God first loved us.”

 

Baptism begins the life of faith, a life lived in response to the love, grace, and goodness of God.  In baptism, we are saved, named and claimed by God not because we are good, but because God is good.  When I preach baptismal texts, I usually talk about the incredible grace of being named a child of God.  Blessed and beloved.  Precious and worthy of belonging.  And we are – you are.  It’s amazing.  It’s good news.

 

But as you might guess, the events of this past Wednesday are weighing heavily on my heart this morning, and they change how I read and respond to this text.  The white nationalist insurrection and violent invasion of the US Capitol building were horrifying, but they should not surprise us.  The coals of that fire have been smoldering in this country for a long time, and the president and his colleagues have delighted in stoking it.

 

I keep turning over images from that day in my mind:

a gallows on the Capitol lawn,

confederate battle flags and guns carried by white men in animal skins and tactical gear,

their ability to infiltrate and desecrate the seat of our government, disrupting democracy, with fewer than forty people arrested in a day of destruction, death, and mayhem.  Contrast that with the more than 350 arrested this summer during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in DC.

The mob in a frenzy, protesting the results of a free and fair election in part because of the growing enfranchisement, the voice and the vote of black and brown people.

 

Maybe the events of last Wednesday have left you sick or numb, overwhelmed or hopeless, furious and outraged, and questioning what we’re doing here if they can get away with that there.  Maybe you need to hear today that you are a child of God, created in God’s image, blessed and beloved.  Precious and worthy of belonging.  So hear this: remember your baptism, and know that you are loved.

 

But what’s been on my mind this week is a promise we make as part of our baptismal vows.  The Book of Common Worship puts it like this: Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world?

 

John appears in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin – repentance lays the groundwork for Jesus’s ministry to begin.

 

For us too, baptism is just the beginning of the ongoing work faith: turning from the ways of sin, renouncing evil and its power in the world, taking up Christ’s ministry of healing, feeding, love, and justice.  It’s why we confess our sin each week as part of worship: we name our common brokenness, and ask for the Spirit to enter in – the baptismal waters washing us with grace, and renewing us for the work of love and justice week after week– we turn and return, back to God, away from the ways of the world, saying no to the power of empire and yes to the power of God over and over.

 

We can’t know what the day was like when Jesus met John by the Jordan.  I imagine it was hot, the sun beating down on the crowds that gathered to hear the baptizer preach, so hot that people were eager to splash down into the water when it was their turn. Can you see Jesus making his way through the crowd – politely, carefully walking down to the water’s edge?  Picture him stooping down to unlace his sandals and take them off, setting them neatly side by side in the sand before stepping into the water.

 

Plenty of ink has been spilled by scholars trying to explain why Jesus needed to be baptized.  He was without sin, after all, so why did he go to the river that day?

 

We can’t know for sure why he went.

 

If to repent means to turn around, maybe he was just reorienting himself, turning toward a new phase of public ministry.  Maybe he was washing away his own self-doubt.  Maybe he was reluctant to enter the fray of conflict with Rome and the Jewish leaders, and felt he needed to seek forgiveness.  Maybe he came because he knew how hard it is to be a faithful human in the world.  How hard it is to come up against the powers and principalities, to stand against the power of Empire, to confront the power of hate.

 

What we do know is that Jesus is there with the people:

with all the others who were going to be baptized by John.

He came to stand with sinners, to step into the same muddy waters as the rest of us.

And to show us how to swim.

 

Scripture tells us it happened like this: after he wades out to John.  After he is plunged down beneath the green water.  After he rises, gasping for breath, dripping, back into the sunlight.  Before he makes his way back to the shore, the skies are opened.  The heavens are torn apart, Mark says, and the Spirit descends like a dove upon Jesus.

 

He hears a voice… you are my son, the beloved.  With you I am well pleased.

 

Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch gospel says it like this: you’re my son.  I’m proud of you.

 

Words every child longs to hear.

 

According to the gospel, the spirit came into him, and God was let loose in the world.  Bringing forth his new life, new ministry.  Empowering him to work wonders and challenge power and initiate God’s reign in the world.  That same Spirit which remains with us, empowering and enabling us today.

 

There’s an old folk song called Healing River that I learned about a year ago.  It’s a song Pete Seeger sang in Meridian, Mississippi in 1964 while giving concerts as part of the “Freedom Workshops.”  These were classes to educate people about voter-registration requirements, part of the larger movement to win the vote for African Americans at that time.  He was in the middle of a concert when he learned of three civil rights workers who had been killed and had to share that news from the stage. Healing River is the song he sang.  We’ll sing it together at the end of worship.

 

In his memoir, Pete Seeger said, “The right to vote is the crucial thing.  Better schools, jobs, and housing will flow from this.  And, if we believe this is one country, the United States, then we must be concerned with a part of it which has for so long lagged behind the rest of the country.  How long will it take?”[1]

 

How long will it take?  I don’t know.  But I believe we are in a moment when the spirit of God is loose and at work in the world.  Because it was out of chaos that the world was created.  Out of the darkness of the womb that new life is born.  Out of the waters of baptism that each one of us is called forth to the work of love and justice.  So in the week ahead, try to remember your baptism.  As you wash your hands.  When you have a drink of water.  Remember your baptism, and trust that the Spirit is with us.  We are not alone.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

 

[1] Seeger, Pete, “Folksinger’s Field Report, August 5, 1964” in The Incompleat Folk Singer, quoted by Ken Bigger, on Sing Out! Blog, https://singout.org/2012/06/13/folksingers-field-report-august-5-1964/

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
December 24, 2020

Christmas Meditation

 

On this night, we join with Christians across the country and around the world to celebrate Christmas, remembering that God came into the world as the Christ child.  In years past, I’ve enjoyed imagining what’s happening with the Pope in the basilica in Rome, and at St. Martin of the Fields in London, at night shelters and chapels all over the world.  But that’s hard to do this year.  This year, our rituals have been upended, our worship pushed online.  Most family gatherings are small or aren’t happening at all.  And for the first time since it was built in 195X, this sanctuary is not filled with sparkle and song and your beautiful voices on this holy night.  Instead, it’s pretty quiet.

 

But I imagine that first Christmas was pretty quiet, too.  At least, until the baby came, and the angels appeared in the night and sent the shepherds to seek the child in the manger.

 

And we are here, joyful, defiant.  Trusting that Christmas will come, indeed, that Christ will come, no matter how quiet it is, and whether we feel ready or not.    In our living rooms, in our empty church, Christmas will come.  In the beeping woosh of the ICU it will come, in the weary fluorescent buzz of a jail cell it will come.  In homes sparse of furniture, empty of gifts and full of worry, it will come.  To our neighbors on the street and those safe at home.  To the night shift, to the shelter, Christmas will come.  It always does.  Unclenching fists.  Opening hearts.  Sparking hope.  Shedding light where it is needed.

 

And God knows we need some light, need some hope this year.  Because this year – this year.  It’s been a year of sickness and struggle.  A year where we learned again what it meant to be afraid, where we lay awake with worry.  A year of separation from family and friends and faith community.  A year of ups and downs, a year of grief.  A year that has laid bare the inequity and injustice that plague us.  A year of finding our way through the dark.

 

It’s hard to walk confidently in the dark.  You never know, you can’t tell what things are lurking, waiting for you to knock your shin, stub your toe, or cause you to stumble.  We often feel less safe in the dark, on a lonely street or a shadowy parking lot.  My friend Enio Lopez knew this.

 

Enio was the lightbulb king of Shawmut Street.  At least, that’s what we called him.

 

He owned a white duplex on Shawmut Street in Chelsea, where he lived with his wife and teenaged kids.  He’s Guatemalan-American, medium height, with a salt and pepper mustache.  He often wore white K-Swiss tennis shoes, and a pressed button-down shirt.  He was a leader in the neighborhood, the kind of guy who just seemed to know everybody.

 

Chelsea is an inner-urban suburb of Boston, a densely populated, poor immigrant community where I worked as an organizer for an affordable housing nonprofit after seminary.  Shawmut was a long, narrow cross street that ran the length of the neighborhood, a street lined on either side with duplexes like Enio’s or triple-deckers, with a few single-family homes.   Enio loved his neighborhood, but it wasn’t perfect – there were a lot of people packed in, living too close together, which brought some challenges.  Drug deals, crime, car break-ins, and trash were common problems.  There was enough turnover that neighbors didn’t know each other.  I don’t feel safe, he told me.

 

So we knocked on some doors and invited his neighbors to dinner.  Seems a long time ago, and unthinkable now. But we did.  They came and ate, and decided to walk the neighborhood at night together.  They realized the streetlight on their block was out, so they started to call public works and talked to their city councilor about it. In the meantime, their street was too dark, and no one was turning on their porch lights.  So Enio and I wrote to a local store to ask them to donate some light bulbs and they did – boxes and boxes full, more than we could ever use.  And so, bulb by bulb, porch by porch, house by house, we lit up Shawmut Street.

 

Enio was amazing.  He was never without a lightbulb to offer, inviting you to join his campaign. “It’s energy-efficient!” he’d say.  “Turn it on when it gets dark, and leave it on all night.  Help make your street safe.”  It won’t surprise you to learn that Enio serves on Chelsea city council himself, now, the first Latino to represent his district.  That street light did, eventually get fixed.  And I think we managed to give away all those lightbulbs, which have now probably long since burned out.  But for a time, walking down Shawmut Street at night, porch after porch had a welcoming glow.  Bright lights shone out in the dark, bringing a sense of safety, but not just that.  Connectedness, camaraderie.  A sense of home.

 

The gospel of John begins not with Mary or Joseph, not with angels and shepherds, and not with a babe in a manger.  Instead, the gospel of John begins like this: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.  He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 

 

This year has been murky, dark, and difficult, but thanks be to God, there have been lights shining to help us find our way.  Giving us hope.  I’m sure you can name a few.  Neighbors teamed up to deliver groceries to the elderly, food pantries changed how they operate to keep folx not just fed but also well.  When flour and yeast were hard to come by, our old neighbor brought us bread, bless his heart.  The concept of Mutual Aid grabbed headlines – the radical idea of people helping people, what we church folk have been doing for years!  The courage of doctors and nurses, janitors and bus drivers and other essential workers inspired us.  And, recently, picture after picture of friends and colleagues, doctors, nurses, social workers and chaplains with their sleeves rolled up, receiving their vaccines – brings me to tears, and gives me hope that the beginning of the end is here.

 

Tonight, as we worship together but apart from one another, we bear witness to the good news that ours is a God who seeks us out.  Who took on flesh to live with us.  Who emptied themself of divinity to become a helpless baby, to walk among the neglected and forgotten, to bring every lost sheep back into the fold.  Who sent angels to sing to those who had been shut out and left behind, to give the outcast and the poor the good news of salvation.  Who still reaches out to us, despite our doubts, despite our frailty and failings, the wrong we have done and the good we have left undone – still seeks us out in unlikely places and people, in familiar rituals and in those surprising moments when the ordinary shimmers with sacramental light – when bread is broken, water poured, hands clasped, and love shines forth.

 

Proclaimed first on a dark hillside overlooking Bethlehem, the news of God’s redeeming love has reached around the world and through the centuries, and so like the shepherds we all come, each in our own way, to pay him homage. And we find our way, following the lights that shine out: acts of kindness, camaraderie, justice and love.  Porch by porch.  House by house.  We follow the light, all the way home.

 

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
December 6, 2020

 

Prepare the Way
Mark 1:1-8

Mark’s gospel starts abruptly, which is fitting because almost everything else in the gospel happens that way, too.  Mark’s Jesus moves with fierce urgency, jumping from one thing to the next immediately, with little description and no delay.  The whole gospel resounds with a call to wake up, pay attention, so we don’t miss it.  Mark moves so quickly, in fact, that he skips over sweet baby Jesus completely and starts with John, a sweaty toothed madman out in the desert, baptizing people and hollering about the one who is coming – a man not just holier than thou, holier than all of us.  And we’d better get ready, John says.  Get right with God so we can be ready to meet him.

 

John is painted as an incarnation of the prophet Elijah, with a hairshirt on his back and honey dripping from his chin.  John looks back to the prophets of old and then looks ahead, points to the horizon and says soon.  Repent for the day of the Lord is coming soon.  Listen for a word from God:

 

(read)

 

One of the strengths of the Roman empire – one factor that led to its dominance across Europe, and North Africa, and the Mediterranean – were its roads.  The first paved road in history was the Appian Way!  Roman highway infrastructure facilitated the movement of its military, as well as goods and people across long distances. Roads enabled the empire to grow, and in whatever new land Rome conquered, new roads were built.  You’ve heard the saying, all roads lead to Rome – right?

 

Countless books, from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to NK Jemison’s Broken Earth Trilogy, portray roads as necessary but dangerous places.  The easiest way to get from point A to point B, but a way that exposes travellers to potential threats.  Roads can be risky.

 

Building a road in the ancient world was not an easy feat.  And anyone who’s worked construction could probably tell you – building a road today is no walk in the park either.  You have to work with topography, clear the way, haul out rocks, haul in gravel, mix cement, pour asphalt, tamp it down.  Even though many Roman roads were still in heavy use even into the middle ages, they’re difficult to maintain without the appropriate equipment and resources.

 

Travel around Guatemala is facilitated by an excellent highway system, built and maintained by a government that needed to move its military into rural and remote mountain villages to terrorize the countryside during thirty years of civil war.  Maintenance crews, though, are often equipped with nothing more than shovels, dirt, and gravel to fill in potholes.  Driving on some roads can be a jarring, jolting, bone-rattling experience.  But they get you where you need to go.

 

The most rural village I’ve ever visited didn’t have a road leading to it.  They built one, so the group I was with could get there.  A narrow track winding for miles through a palm oil plantation, then the thick jungle of a biological reserve where the settlement was.  Men with machetes and shovels hacked at the earth and cut back dense vegetation for weeks to prepare the way for our arrival.  And even as we drove, a few walked ahead in tall black rubber boots, cutting vines and moving branches that had grown over or fallen on the path. Building a road, making a way is back breaking work.  It leaves you with blisters and body aches, calloused hands and grit under your nails.

 

Mark begins by calling people to prepare the way, because God is coming.  Quoting Isaiah, Mark shows us John as the voice calling out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord! The valleys will be lifted up, the mountains made low, and rough places made a plain.

 

That kind of road building, way-making seems impossible, but those words in Isaiah begin what’s called the book of consolation – words of comfort for people who have suffered too much for too long.  And even though Mark’s beginning is a bit jarring, John’s wild-eyed preaching offers us grace: the healing waters of baptism to help with our preparation.

 

Before a surgeon goes into surgery, she scrubs in, washing hands and nails and wrists in an intense ritual.  Nurses and doctors wash their hands with each new patient, and our Muslim brothers and sisters wash their feet and hands at least five times a day, before prayer, to become ritually clean.  Handwashing has taken on new meaning for us this year in the midst of a pandemic, as just twenty seconds scrubbing with soap and water will obliterate the virus.  I know I’m not the only one now hyper aware of germs on the things that I touch, mentally measuring the distance between myself and others, wondering about aerosols and the efficacy of fabric filtration.  Thank God for water, as a means to stay healthy.

 

It’s easy to see how the sacrament of baptism came to be – ritual washing to signify a new beginning, new life.  Cool, refreshing splashes of water carrying the blessing of the Spirit.  Not until I had children, though, did I fully appreciate how grubby people could get!  Washing off grime, wiping your face, washing hands is absolutely necessary in order to look presentable before welcoming an honored guest.

 

So it makes sense, then, that to help people prepare for the coming of the Lord, John baptizes them – a ritual washing to symbolize their repentance.  That is, the inner work of turning away from that which does harm, shown outwardly with water, washing away whatever marked us as unfit or unworthy, unclean or unprepared.  Transforming us into new people, ready to welcome the one who is coming.

 

This preparation is the work of Advent.  With John, we are called to look back to the calls and the promises of the prophets, and look ahead to the time of fulfillment.  We’re called to do the work both within and outside of ourselves to get ready.  Because even though it feels like the world is falling to pieces around us, God is coming.  And that is good news!

 

My girls have a box of books that only comes out at Christmastime.  One of my favorites is a little board book called, who is coming to our house?  Animals in a barn are getting ready for someone to arrive, dusting beams and opening the door.  Each animal does what they can – the spider spins new webs, the hen lays an egg, the duck lines the manger with eider.  But the reason why I like the book is the cat, who says – but it is dark.  And the rat, who says, they will never come.  Because more often than I’d like to admit, in the midst of this terrible year, despite the joy of this season, I find myself with the cat and the rat: beset by doubt, overwhelmed by worry, sad about the state of the world.  I can hear John crying out in the wilderness, but I want to shut out his voice.  I’m not sure if it will make much difference to prepare this year.  Because the night is so long.  Our social fabric is torn apart at the seams, our hearts are broken.  We are depressed at the prospect of another holiday without our families, another service on Zoom.  How many more will be put out onto the street?  How many more will die?  Some days, the grief feels like too much to bear.  How dare we say Christ is coming, how dare we say his coming changed anything at all.

 

In the midst of this, it helps me to remember that Mark was writing to people who were under siege, who were surviving the greatest trauma they’d ever known: violent uprising against their Roman oppressors, when food was scarce, the temple soon to be destroyed, the people scattered to the four winds.  Into that turmoil and trauma, into that doubt and fear and worry and suffering and sadness, Mark says, John says, Isaiah says – take comfort, people.

peace is coming.

To every troubled heart and weary soul.

Peace is coming, to every ICU where exhausted nurses tend to the dying, where people struggle to breathe without their loved ones by their side.

To every home where someone is choosing between groceries and rent.

To every place where violence and terror reign – everywhere people are afraid of what the coming day will bring.

Peace to those who wait in the dark.

Peace to all who long for freedom.

Peace to every home and every heart.

Peace which surpasses all our understanding.

 

Peace is coming with calloused hands and grit under their nails, with a machete and a shovel and tall black rubber boots, building a road through the thickest jungle, making a way where we thought there was no way.

So whatever our worry, whatever our doubt, we must get ready.

Wash our hands, reclaim our baptisms, cleanse our hearts, be renewed and restored by grace.  Because Christ is coming, to make all things new.  And that is very good news, indeed.

 

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.