Feb. 27, 2022

Luke 9:28-43

 

Here’s some fun news for you.  It’s from a 2021 Barna Research survey.  In just 12 months the number of clergy who are “seriously considering leaving full time ministry” has risen by 9%.  And, the number of mainline clergy who are thinking of leaving is 51%.[1]  That’s the majority of mainline clergy.  Though it is a small majority, it is actually accurate to say that most mainline clergy are actively thinking of leaving.

Now, this is not the lead-in to a personal announcement about my intentions.  So, if you were concerned, please don’t be.  And, if you got excited there for a moment I’m sorry to disappoint.

We’ve all heard about the “great resignation” that is happening all around the country.  There’s a broad disillusionment with the state of work, a reckoning with the value of time, a reconsidering of priorities, and a crisis of meaning that’s happening.  I’m not prepared to make sense of it all, but it seems to me that the participation of the clergy in this widespread trend is indicative of the fact that part of what is happening in the world around us – part of the drag we are feeling – is a spiritual drag.  Our spirits are weighed down.  Life is heavy upon us and we feel it in our hearts and souls and bodies and minds, and it is leaving us feeling somehow displaced.

Pastor Todd and I are preparing once again to do our St. Paddy’s Day Pastor’s Polar Plunge.  Please save the date!  It’s going to be Saturday, March 19 at 11am.  This year we’ve decided to do it in support of Mental health, which as I see it is wrapped up in spiritual health, and which has become a topic of conversation in one way or another for me almost every day.

In particular, we are raising funds for an organization called My Friend Abby, which focuses on suicide prevention and mental health wellness by offering grants to young people who are generating creative efforts to keep one another well.  Here’s what I said when the MFA people who are writing the press release asked me about our support: “The pandemic has had a massive mental health impact.  Beyond the very alarming rise in acute concerns, nearly everyone I know is suffering to one degree or another with Covid exhaustion.  The cumulation of losses, distancing, and disappointment over such a long stretch of time has left so many of us feeling lifeless, uninspired, and mired in a demoralizing uncertainty about what the future looks like.  Todd and I are plunging for mental health because we believe that our churches can be places of meaning and hope for people.  We want people to know that there are pastors who care and congregations that offer the kind of community, faith, and purpose that so many are missing.”

Now, that’s not just a plug for your financial participation and sponsorship, which I would appreciate; it’s also my sense of the truth.  I do believe the church can offer the world something it is missing right now, and I also believe that all of us, including the church, are subject to a demoralizing kind of uncertainty about the future, which is made all the more real now by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  It feels wrong to rush over the plight of Ukranian citizens, and I don’t mean to do that, but the whole world is wondering what it is going to mean beyond those borders as well.  Are NATO nations next?  Will we send combat forces?  Will sanctions turn into war?  Will cyber chaos rain down on us all?  Will our accounts be breached?  Will borders be closed?  Will our safety be in question?

No one needed these concerns on top of the weight we are already carrying, but there they are, part of the context in which we find ourselves, part of the spiritual space in which we worship and read our scriptures.  And reading Luke’s version of Christ’s Transfiguration, a story we experience every year just before Lent, what struck me this time around was all the contrasts.  First, it was the contrast between the divine epiphany on top of the mountain and the harsh human reality at the bottom of it.  But then it was also the moment of the epiphany itself.  Jesus is joined by Moses and Elijah – two great prophets of the past – and Luke tells us that they “appear in their glory.”  Whatever exactly that means it is part of the drama that brings Peter, James, and John to their knees in holy fear of the divine.  Yet, what Jesus, Moses, and Elijah discuss, Luke says, is Jesus’ departure – his death, which is about to take place in Jerusalem.  Christ’s glory and his execution at the hands of his own people are held together in this one moment.  And if you read what happens prior to our passage you see that this holding together of two extremes – two disparate realities – is a theme all along.  The disciples move from the invitation to follow Jesus into being actual participants in the ministry of Jesus – preaching the good news themselves, healing the sick, feeding the five thousand – and just when they come to the point of proclaiming him the Messiah they are told not to tell anyone and they are reminded that “the son of man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”  And on top of that, it is time for them to take up their crosses too.

Then comes the mountain top with its mix of crucifixion and glory, human need and divine revelation all wrapped up in one.  And, what it tells us is something that I think is helpful for us all to hear again.  It tells us that two things can be true at once.  It tells us that the world can be crumbling around us and yet God-infused at the same time; that our lives can be both fragile and sacred, that we can be both fearful and faithful, that one reality doesn’t negate or eclipse the other, that God somehow holds it all in a redemptive whole, and that therefore there is hope and joy to be held and owned even when much feels broken and unsettled.

In a new devotional that I would encourage you all to get called, “Good Enough,” Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie remind us that, “With all the misery at the hands of the Romans during first-century Palestine, Jesus attended a party.  He didn’t just attend… it was at this soiree where he performed his first miracle,” which you may remember was the turning of water into wine for the celebration.  They say, “Under the weight of our greed, our shame, our pain or that of the world, we can convince ourselves that joy is the enemy.  But it is sometimes the opposite.  Joy is the oxygen for doing hard things.”  When under the weight of grief or fear they suggest turning to the absurd and trying on joy.  Turn the music up and dance in your kitchen.  Take a road trip to the world’s largest disco ball.  Bake a cake for no reason other than it is Tuesday.  Then they conclude, “Some people will try to tell you to just ‘choose joy’ as if reframing your perspective will make things hurt less.  I wish I could tell you joy was a magic formula.  But, no matter how joyful you choose to act, joy does not erase the pain.  Some things cannot be canceled out.  But you are capable of a whole range of emotions that can coexist.  Joy and sorrow.  Grief and delight.  Laughter and despair.  Sometimes, the absurdity even keeps us afloat.”[2]

What Bowler and Richie give in this reflection is permission, and sometimes permission is the most powerful thing we can give.  We have permission to acknowledge the ways in which we are not currently okay and also to have joy.  We have permission to see the pain and uncertainty of the world and also to see the light of God’s love shining in the places where we find ourselves.  And, we even have permission to be the unfinished and imperfect human selves through whom, by the miracle of divine wisdom, others will get glimpses of God’s very glory.

[1] https://doubtersparish.com/2022/02/23/pandemic-pastors/#top

[2] Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, “Good Enough,” pages 11&12.