I tend to use the New Century version of the Bible, the sentence structure is more like the way we hear it in English than in the Greek. Or actually the Aramaic. Where the verse that says “Change your hearts and lives” might be more familiar to those of you who know these scriptures as Jesus saying, “Repent.” And I think traditionally, we often think of repent, as needing to express our contrition for sins that we've committed. But the word here is metanoia. It actually means a new way. And so what Jesus is saying is, let's find a new way.
New Year's resolutions, birthdays, or significant changes provide opportunities to reconsider one's life. I think everyone in this room lived through 9/11. And now COVID. Opportunities to reconsider, to reassess, to rethink our own lives, and our lives corporately, puts us squarely in liminal space, when the past is no longer and the future has not yet come.
Jeremy reminded us last week that living into that kind of uncertainty can be difficult. A wise anonymous person said, “We like change when we choose it. We don't like change when it's forced upon us.” I think the same is true for communities of faith, note your collective angst when Sal suggested what his plans were for 2024. And yet, into an uncertain future is where God is always calling us. Let's look for a minute, or 12, at our ancient spiritual history captured in the library of books we call the Bible. The story starts in chaos. There's nothing certain Tohu wa-bohu, it's the only place where those Hebrew words are in the whole Hebrew Scriptures. And yet God creates something good out of that chaos. And then there's Eve and Adam. They gain the capacity to know good from evil, and they're sent out into the world. They've got to make their way and figure it out. Sarah and Abraham are sent by God on a journey from their home, without a map, to a new place where God is calling them, and yet they don't know where it is. When, by Moses' actions, the Hebrew people are freed from slavery, they end up in the wilderness, a place of uncertainty, a place in-between. The past is gone. Although they want to go back to slavery the first time the going gets tough. And the future has not yet come. In fact, when they get to the promised land the first time, their fear is proof that they're not ready yet. And so they must uncover and develop a new identity, which is what happens in the wilderness. This is truly liminal space. And for those of you who have experienced a new job, graduation, a medical diagnosis or recovery, you know, these uncertainties. You know, these liminal spaces. When God's people do get to the promised land, they experience another crisis of sorts. Their past is a community that can get by to some extent on social mores. But their future is not certain. And they opt for a ruling structure called Judges who may make decisions and keep the peace. This works for a time, and then they see the power of kings and they decide that this is what they want. Another crisis where they might not survive, unless they coopt to the most powerful, like any political system, right? During the rule of kings who inevitably mess up, there arise prophets, who remind the people of God's dreams for the universe. This is where we hear the words of Isaiah and other prophets, promising flowers and blooming plants in the desert and waters springing up – something mostly unheard of. And then… silence. Four hundred years of silence, after which God sends Jesus, beloved child, to make clear the ways of love. Jesus’ invitation is to reconsider, to turn to another way. They had forgotten God's ways. Jesus provides the corrective, a configuration of beloved community and what it might look like. His ministry occurs between a past that they had forgotten and a future, which was not yet secure. This is where the early church lives. Trying to understand what Jesus’ model will mean for their future. The word liminal comes from the Latin for threshhold. It's a barrier, a place where one crosses over. We probably know it best as a literal threshold in a building. A doorway or a hallway from one room to another. But figuratively, it's also a crossing over from a past to a future. One way of thinking to another. I know in churches, it doesn't feel good, right? We like… Well, let's be real – in every area of life, we like security. But there's something about security in a church. When you come and you know. There's something to plan on. Les Robinson of the Center for Congregational Health points to an inter-denominational study called Project Test Pattern. It was a project examining the best time for a church to experience renewal. Over a 10-year study, it showed that the best time is when a church is between pastors. “The interim time,” he writes, “is a rich, fertile opportunity to experience significant growth, individually, and corporately.” But what do we do with that discomfort? It can be debilitating. The trick – my opinion – is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. So one of my tasks during this time will be to expose you to changes. Don't worry, they're not of life and death significance. But they might make you feel uncomfortable. After all, 10 years is a long time to be doing things pretty much the same. If we can sit with these changes for a moment, and really feel them, understand what causes our discomfort, perhaps we can see something new about ourselves, or about the possibilities as a faith community. The result, hopefully, is that you are more able to receive the gifts and strengths and skills of a new minister who may not do things the way Sal did. And my hope is to normalize, change, or maybe take one step closer to normalizing change. After all, if this is where God is always calling us to something new, if our task is to be regularly reassessing our path, and considering the way forward, then we should get comfortable with change, with uncertainty, and with liminal spaces. I was snooping around in Sal’s computer… (laughter)... He left it there! I mean he left the stuff on it. He wrote what I believe was an E-Pistle article, entitled “A change will do you good.” You won't remember it. It's from 10 years ago. He was speaking of himself and writing shortly after he joined you, quoting the Sheryl Crow song. And he reminded you, using a quote from author Elizabeth Lessor, “How strange that the nature of life is change, and yet the nature of human beings is to resist change.” He recalls a friend reminding him “A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there, does it?” And then finally, he quotes Neale Donald Walsch, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” So if you're feeling uncomfortable right now, know that the change taking place in your life is a beginning, not an ending. Valerie Kaur, you may know her as the author of See no Stranger. She's an Indian American Sikh Lawyer. She writes the story of her grandfather, Kehar Singh, coming to America from India in 1913. He's excited for the promises of a free society. So imagine his surprise when he gets off the boat and is arrested and jailed. He's wearing a turban. Henry Marshall, a white attorney, got a writ of habeas corpus against his unlawful imprisonment. Kaur’s grandfather remembers that kind action. When his Japanese and Chinese neighbors were interned during World War Two, he kept up their farms, so they would not be confiscated. Valerie became a civil rights lawyer and after 9/11, when Sikhs were over-represented in bigoted attacks, she stood with them and captured and wrote their stories. She wonders in a sermon preached in civil rights activist William Barber’s church, New Year's Eve, “If the darkness of that time, the liminal space that felt so convenient, confining, and had such an ending, may have been not the darkness of a tomb, but the darkness of a womb.” During this season of Easter, we're reminded of the truth of our faith, that there is life after death, that darkness and chaos are not the end of the story. We reflect on an empty tomb in the story of Jesus’ resurrection. We could imagine that tomb for Jesus being liminal space, the past was gone, the future had not yet come. So during this Easter season, I wonder what will come of this time of loss for you? As you journey through this liminal space, will you birth something new? Will you grow something gracious? Will you live into the hope that can come from loss? Perhaps this time of liminal space is, for you. not the darkness of a tomb, but the darkness of a womb. Amen? Amen. Rev. Jody Betten Words of Integration and Guidance Mark Lilla, white, political scientist, professor of humanities, and author, NYT, 5/22/2020 The pandemic has brought home just how great a responsibility we bear toward the future, and also how inadequate our knowledge is for making wise decisions and anticipating consequences. Perhaps that is why our prophets and augurs can’t keep up with the demand for foresight. At some level, people must be thinking that the more they learn about what is predetermined, the more control they will have. This is an illusion. Human beings want to feel that they are on a power walk into the future, when in fact we are always just tapping our canes on the pavement in the fog. A dose of humility would do us good in the present moment. It might also help reconcile us to the radical uncertainty in which we are always living. Let us retire our prophets and augurs. And let us stop asking health specialists and public officials for confident projections they are in no position to make — and stop being disappointed when the ones we force out of them turn out to be wrong. We worsen the situation by focusing our attention on litigating the past and demanding certainty about the future. We must accept what we are, in any case, condemned to do in life: tap and step, tap and step, tap and step …. |
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