Just Shine: February 2018

Choice and Courage

Taking up your cross can be taken to mean simply doing the hard thing because it is the right thing. Which thing? That thing that you need to do. It’s between you and God. It’s your choice to do it, and if you do choose, God will give you the courage to follow through.

I’ll tell you one hard thing I’m doing. I’m paying attention. I’m listening to news I’d rather tune out for my own peace of mind, though I am trying to avoid the gossip that passes for news. I’m learning about the Powers in our time and the people who are being crushed by them and I’m using all my spiritual tools to protect myself from the meanness and desperation around politics that early Christians would call demonic. I’m going to stay woke, as they say, and keep my gospel values, and I’m figuring out where and how I can take some small actions for reconciliation or for justice.

*****

Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

February 25, 2018

Choice and Courage

Mark 8:31-38 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

(My spoken version diverged from this considerably; check out https://www.facebook.com/groups/56642580963/ if you're curious.)

Jesus needs to talk to some marketing experts. This “take up your cross” thing is not going to go over well in recruiting followers. Ask the prosperity gospel preachers; they’ll tell you to just skip this passage altogether. The story sells better if you say only Jesus had a cross. Since he obviously overcame it, we can just jump on his bandwagon to ascend to heaven.

Mark clearly did not consult the marketing experts because he doesn’t hold back in this passage at all. “Get behind me, Satan,” says Jesus to Peter. Jesus wasn’t speaking to Peter at all. He was speaking to the temptation Peter gave him. Yes, according to Mark Jesus was really tempted, because Jesus was really human. The temptation went, “You don’t have to do this the hard way, Jesus. You can just be a law-bending rabbi, settle down in Galilee, a safe distance from Roman power and the corrupt Temple leaders in Jerusalem. You don’t need to make a stand before the Powers that Be.” But apparently he did. And according to Mark, so do we.

The cross is a pivotal symbol of our faith. As any pivotal symbol, it has been understood different ways. But the original meaning of the cross before Christianity was: an instrument of torture used by the Roman empire not only to kill criminals and enemies of the state, but to shame them utterly, deny them humanity; to make of them such horrors as to terrorize their family and community into submission. Only it didn’t work with Jesus and his followers.

Until the fourth century after Jesus’ death, the cross was not widely displayed by Christians. Only after crucifixion was banned in the Roman Empire did the symbol of the cross take hold. The cross was the means to an end, an obstacle that was overcome. So we don’t get to glorify or seek out suffering. (Actually for me that’s never been an issue.) But neither do we always get to take the easy way out, when we are called to love and serve as Jesus showed us.

The cross is strong medicine. Strong medicine, taken in the right amount, for the right purpose, can save. Taken at the wrong time, it can do great harm. So you won’t hear me preaching about the cross every week.

In Catholic grade school my teachers thought it fitting to bring us into the sanctuary each Lent to walk the stations of the cross. This is a long meditation on fourteen different detailed images of Jesus’ suffering and death, for the purpose of immersing oneself in the experience. The stations of the cross form the plotline of the movie “The Passion of the Christ,” rated “R.” Strong medicine. Possibly appropriate for some adults. Never appropriate for a child with a good imagination.

It is natural for us to recoil from suffering. It is healthy. Yet sometimes we can’t avoid suffering. We are also very capable of facing suffering when it is for a good purpose. My husband Scott and I were debating which is more painful, a kidney stone or natural childbirth. He had the kidney stone, and I had the natural childbirth. I’m pretty sure his was worse. Pain level aside, there is nothing redeeming about a kidney stone; it is just something to be endured. The pain of childbirth has an awesome purpose.

Most Christians are pretty sure Jesus endured the cross for a good purpose. We differ, however, on what that purpose was. New Testament writers differ on what that purpose was. Theologians have argued about this extensively. A variety of explanations have been given; you can track them down in Wikipedia under Atonement in Christianity.

Let me say a few words about the most common understanding of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. Substitutionary atonement has been the dominant explanation in the Western church for many centuries. Substitutionary: Jesus substituted himself for us, took our punishment to pay our debt to God, the great lawgiver in the sky who required the death penalty from all of us for our sins. Atonement- we are at one now, all good. Does this make sense to you? It makes Jesus sound so heroic and generous… and it paints a picture of God the punishing Father that I want nothing to do with. But then, God accepted the sacrifice and became loving and forgiving, so this works for some people. I think this is basically Paul’s view– and maybe understandable with the personal load of guilt that Paul had.

Taking up your cross and following Jesus makes no sense if the point of the cross is substitutionary atonement. Jesus already did the work; put that cross down! So let’s try a view that may resonate better with you: moral influence atonement. Kind of a lame name. Jesus went to the cross to show us the lengths to which his love, God’s love, would go to get through to us; to death and beyond. We can trust that he truly accepts us. And in relationship with him we can stop being selfish and love generously too. To the extent that liberal Christians deal with the cross at all, it has usually been with this understanding.

To some people, this understanding of the cross seems wimpy. And if you keep the whole experience at arm’s length, I suppose it is. But if you seek to draw close to such a radical love, in my experience, it is transformative. Let us call this drawing close participatory atonement. When we follow Jesus we are invited, in our own small way, to sacrifice ourselves, so that we can be transformed. To lose our life, so that we can find it

I suppose the stations of the cross were participatory in a way. Well, they backfired on me pretty spectacularly. A reminder not to force any interpretation of the cross onto someone else.

In Mark’s view, Jesus didn’t get a cross because Rome made a mistake, or was tricked by God or Jewish leaders into executing an innocent man. For Mark, the cross is Jesus going before us to face the worst that the Powers of empire and warped values and death-dealing injustice can dish out. Jesus became powerless and helpless, the lowest of the low, and was crushed to death, and yet his life, his Spirit, could not be crushed, and he lived on in and with his followers, and lives on still.

Those of us who are in positions of comfort and power get invited to follow Jesus into places we don’t want to go. Matthew got a little more systematic about it; in his Gospel, Jesus says, whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me. If we refuse to let go of comfort and status for those who have none, how could we enter an upside-down Kingdom?

Wow, this is hard. Participating in Jesus’ work of the cross is incompatible with capitalism and nationalism and war or political feuding. It is incompatible with NIMBY and gated communities. People who embrace the cross fully are the saints and revolutionaries, people so courageous we want to be inspired by them, but maybe not too much; it would be too hard. No wonder substitutionary atonement won the theological debates in the church of the Roman Empire, and is still winning many places today. Substitutionary atonement is a transaction between the individual and God. It allows systematic injustice go unchallenged.

So, how will we take up our crosses? One thing I want to make very clear: your cross is the cross you are given by God, that you accept of your own choice, and not the one any human being forces on you. How convenient if someone in power goes about assigning powerless people their oppression with the church’s blessings. One of the ways this strong medicine has been warped is by church authorities telling victims of domestic violence: well, this is just your cross to bear. Slave owners and the religion of slave owners used to tell slaves that their bondage was their cross to bear. Bosses have told laborers that unsafe or degrading working conditions were their cross to bear. Nobody gets to tell you what is and what isn’t your cross. That’s between you and God.

This church did a hard thing, the right thing, by becoming open and affirming; publicly proclaiming gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender and queer people, among others, are welcome here. You do a hard thing, the right thing, when you make your hall into a homeless shelter each summer and treat the people in it with respect and care.

The first time I helped out in a homeless shelter was in a church basement in Minneapolis in 1992. I was very excited to be walking the talk of my newly recommitted Christian faith. I was also petty scared that as one of two overnight volunteers in that large shelter I would be getting four hours off duty to sleep. I wasn’t in the least scared about being a young woman and the only volunteer staff in a room full of forty people. My cross looks different from your cross.

Before I arrived, I was tutored by my friend Ardys. Ardys liked to cooked piles of roast chicken for the guests, and she said, “You have to go sit with them and talk with them and hear their stories.” So I had a long talk with Ed. Ed had open-heart surgery not long before, and between not being able to work and not being able to pay his medical bills, that surgery made him homeless. See how the Powers hide their dirty work? Surgery didn’t make him homeless. Having no sick time or medical coverage made him homeless.

I noticed that the crew that was cooking that night didn’t sit with the guests; they ate in the kitchen. Actually eating with homeless people was out of their comfort zone, I suppose. Their loss. At lights out, a guest who was bent out of shape at getting his TV show interrupted grumbled at me, “You people don’t care about us, you’re just here for the money.”

“Excuse me sir,’ I said. “I am a volunteer.” Hearing me, his jaw dropped. He apologized. “Really? You’re doing that for us, for free?” He looked like I had just given him a surprise birthday party.

That was the first time I learned a lesson about carrying crosses that I’ve relearned many times since. You can’t carry someone else’s cross. But when they know that you are beside them, and you care, their cross can feel a whole lot lighter.

Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. Losing the life we think we should have according to our plans, to participate in something bigger than us. Living for a purpose, God’s purpose. Participating in the upside-down Kingdom where nobody is rejected. Living courageously. Living faithfully.

Our sanctuary cross is empty, because Jesus didn’t stay on it. And we don’t have to either. Nor should any human being. With Jesus’ help, we can choose to carry our cross with courage, and we can also join Jesus at the very large and joyful and abundant celebration that is the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Touching Wonder

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers…

“This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun…

“If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…” Thomas Merton, March 18, 1958

**************

Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

February 18, 2018

Touching Wonder

Mark 9:2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

“If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…” Thomas Merton, March 18, 1958.[1]

How should we label experiences like this when they happen in our time? How can we put them into our modern categories of thought?

Transcendent. Mystical. Spiritual. Divine.

Metaphysical. Metaphorical. Psychological. Delusional.

One thing is clear. Most old-line Protestant churches have gone to great lengths to avoid dealing with “those kinds of experiences,” and we are paying a price for it.

Another story.

Once upon a time, on a radiant hilltop, a man had an experience of wonder. An experience he labeled divine. So he built a shrine, and in that shrine he did his best to put words to that experience. Words could not do it justice, but others gathered just to experience a little of that reflected glory, to be inspired and enlivened. After many years, though, the man grew old and frail, and he had to pass on the telling of wonder to others.

Those others were kind and generous, and had in fact been running the shrine for years already. But they only knew reflected glory. They were not very inspiring. They had a familiar ritual around the telling of the story of wonder. Some participants felt comfort from the ritual. Some were comforted by the thought that the divine had been sighted at that very shrine at some time in the past. But to some the ritual began to feel dry. Attendance fell. The shrine-keepers got grumpy, and started making rules about attendance and shrine upkeep, rules which were never needed before. And you can imagine how well that went over.

Meanwhile, a former participant from the shrine was wandering, and hoping to renew the sense of wonder that didn’t seem to be at the shrine anymore. To her great surprise, at a very ordinary-looking bend in the river, she had a radiant, life-changing experience. It was clearly an experience to be shared. So she invited a few friends to come each week and sit at the riverbank while she told her story of wonder. And eventually they built a shrine. Also, there was a great tree on the plain…but that’s another shrine.

God is still speaking. I love that slogan of the United Church of Christ. It says that there is no whole and final truth when it comes to our understanding of the sacred. More will be revealed. We can continue to touch wonder today, whether that experience happens in our logical left brain, through some transformative idea, or in our creative, relational, mysterious right brain, through some visionary or creative experience. And I don’t get to tell you that your experience is wrong, or that you are wrong for not having the right kind of experience. You all have some experiences of touching wonder, affirming meaning and value, even if you prefer not even to categorize that experience as spiritual.

These experiences can be hard to put into words. Maybe that’s why so many of us treasure the words of Michael’s prayers. But these experiences are not really hard to have, if you make space for them. What works for one person may not work for another. I hope worship works for you in this way, at least now and then.

One ancient Christian practice that invites the sacred is guided meditation in the tradition of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. So let’s do it. Let’s do a guided meditation together. If at any time you do not want to do this, just open your eyes. Different things work for different people.

Please close your eyes now. Get settled and comfortable in your seat. Take a deep slow breath, and release it. Now in your mind’s eye, get ready to witness the scene of our bible reading in your imagination. I will read the scripture, and you put yourself into the scene. Look for details. Let your imagination play the scene like a movie. Let your senses engage. What do you see, hear, feel, smell?

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.

And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.

And there appeared to them Elijah, the greatest prophet, with Moses the lawgiver, who were talking with Jesus.

Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three shrines, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

Then a deep fog enshrouded them them, and from the fog there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

If you are still in the scene, your time is nearly over. Perhaps you want to say one last thing, or listen to one last thing, or get a hug.

Now come back to the here and now.

Wiggle your fingers and toes, and when you’re ready, open your eyes.

Now take a minute or two to reflect, and if you like, jot some notes.

In our Lenten journey toward Easter over these next six weeks, I invite you to take time and make space to touch wonder, in whatever way might work for you. If you’d like to try Ignatian-style exercises, there is a handout in the church entry just left of the doors that you can take. And you may touch wonder in nature, prayer, music, special people, reading and conversation, meditations of different kinds, art and dance, and much more.

May the still-speaking God embrace you and guide you and inspire you on your journey in Lent. Amen.

[1] From Confessions of a Guilty Bystander

Healing Relationships

In the gospels it is clear that Jesus expects his followers to do some healing too. That would be us. It can be a very human reaction to turn away from other peoples’ suffering. Especially when we can’t fix it, or we fear the attempt will demand of us more than we’re up for. And when we turn away, we leave a suffering person even more miserable. But with God’s leading, we do not have to fix anything. We just share the love and power we’ve been given. Loving relationships are healing to mind and spirit, and a healed mind and spirit can set the stage for bodily healing. That love is contagious, and its Source is infinite.

Art: a quilt from the 2017 Sacred Threads exhibit.

****

Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

February 4, 2018

Rev. Dr. Terry LePage

Healing Relationships

Mark 1:29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

32 That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. 33 And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34 And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37 When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 38 He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” 39 And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

40 A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” 41 Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43 After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44 saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” 45 But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

We are back in the Gospel of Mark, after Jesus has called a few ordinary people to follow him. Now buckle up, because a lot happens in these few verses.

The new recruits were all going to go to Peter’s house to relax, have a meal… but Peter’s mother-in-law is sick in bed. I love it that Peter had a mother-in-law, but that’s another story. And Jesus heals her. This woman is now well enough to take her rightful place as the host of the party. Jesus heals. Which, we should note, is the same in the original Greek as saying, “Jesus saves.”

How infuriating it would have been to Mom to be stuck in bed, listening to these young men clashing around her kitchen trying to make their own dinner, and not being able to see for herself the wild preacher who has captured Peter’s imagination. In her encounter with Jesus, Mom was not only saved from her fever, but restored to her rightful relationship to her son-in-law, and with this wacky group of friends he brought home to dinner.

So Jesus healed, and people found out about it. By sundown, the whole town was lined up at the door with their sick family members. And we see a touch of Jesus’ humanity in Mark’s gospel that the later gospels don’t bother showing: physical healing was a wonderful gift, but Jesus got overwhelmed sometimes by the level of need he faced. He really was human.

And Jesus, being human as Mark so clearly shows us…at this point, Jesus runs away and hides. What the scripture says is, In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. Jesus needed a break. He needed to regroup and pray and figure out how to deal with his newfound popularity. And these eager new followers can’t bear to be parted from him, so they hunt him down. So much for a break. Back into the fray. At the end of the reading, they all go hide together.

In the worldview of Mark, events are always happening on two levels. There is ordinary reality that everyone witnesses with their own senses; and intertwined with it, there is a non-ordinary reality. This reality is not visible to the naked eye, but it’s clearly perceived by Jesus, and revealed to us readers, at least in part, by Mark. Mark understands this unseen reality to be as powerful and real as the physical world, if somewhat mysterious. It is the stage on which the Kingdom of God is growing, like a seed sprouting, not yet seen above ground. This hidden reality is where unclean spirits are unmasked and sent packing from the innocent people they are oppressing. It is where those same spirits clearly recognize Jesus as their adversary, and know him as “the Holy One of God.” (Mark 1:23)

Jesus keeps saying, “Shh… don’t tell people what I’m up to.” Jesus doesn’t want to call attention to his mission, so that the Roman occupiers or the religious watchdogs don’t come down on him before he’s even had a chance to spread his message.

What is hidden from ordinary reality is already unfolding in non-ordinary reality. The demons already know and fear him. Meanwhile, back in ordinary reality, tethered to a human body, Jesus hits his physical limits repeatedly, and has to hide because he cannot keep up with the requests for healing that he receives.

Mark and the demons tell us: Jesus is the Holy One of God. His mission is to proclaim, and to launch, the upside-down Kingdom of God, where human value no longer depends on status, or wealth, or good fortune, or political power. He is taking non-ordinary reality, that system of beliefs and values that orders peoples’ lives, and turning it on its head. The Roman overlords and their Jewish collaborators are to Mark physical manifestation of the Powers of the Domination system, but the system of imperial conquest, oppression and debt and religious legalism are the spiritual counterparts of those physical Powers that are binding the people. And Jesus saves. Jesus heals. When those Powers perceive the threat that Jesus is to their domination, they will seek to crush him. That will happen, but Jesus will decide the time and place, and make it work to his purpose. This drama was playing out behind the scenes, but Mark has let us in on the secret.

When we recognize this non-ordinary reality in Mark’s stories, we see that more is going on in his healings than the mending of physical bodies. Healing is also rescue, salvation: restoring peoples’ freedom and power this spiritual level of reality. Mark often describes this as driving out demons, which sounds improbable and disturbing to our modern ears.

But what if we rename the demons of illness as the kinds of thinking that promote suffering? Despair. Isolation and loneliness. Shame at being different. Guilt at not being able to keep one’s obligations at work and at home. Believing you’re a failure. Loss of identity. Guilt at the expense and bother of your care. Fear of the future. Weariness at the struggle to do what is simple for the able-bodied and well. Guilt in imagining that if you had just done something differently, you wouldn’t be ill. Have you had enough yet? That’s oppressive. All that suffering, before you even get to the physical. And it can spin like a vortex, dragging you down.

I want to take Mark seriously when he tells us Jesus is an awesome healer. I do believe that miraculous physical recoveries can sometimes happen, though seldom on our schedule. And Jesus has the power to free people from the spiritual oppression that binds them, from that downward spiral of harmful thinking that begets ever more suffering. He has the power to restore people in mind and spirit, and restore them to right relationship with their family and community whatever their physical condition. This in turn creates the best environment for whatever physical healing is possible. And that’s before you even get to things like physiological entrainment and the placebo effect, which are very real and very useful factors in healing touch.

Among the countless healings Jesus did in this brief time that elapsed in our reading, that leper’s healing in verse 41 is told because it became so publicized. Leprosy, or whatever dreaded skin disease it was, required the sick man to be outcast, unable to live with his family, to touch or be touched by anyone but another leper. So this man’s healing is a huge restoration of relationship: after he has the proper approval, this man can reclaim his place in his family and community.

Watch how this works. Everybody thought you should not touch this person, because you would catch the illness that he had. Illness is contagious. Jesus turned that around. The man caught the healing that Jesus had. The Holy Spirit is contagious. This doesn’t work with the flu. But it does work with the Gospel. God’s love and power are contagious. Loving kindness is contagious. Hope is contagious.

In the early centuries of the church, the call for Christians to heal was taken seriously. They did so by the laying on of hands, prayer, anointing with oil (which is a reminder that we are children of God), and inviting repentance and transformation. They also healed by building hospitals and by caring for sick people who did not have families or resources. Some Christians even tended plague victims, because their love of God and humanity freed them from fear for their own lives.

We can follow Jesus in a ministry of healing, and we don’t have to go to extremes. We can pray with compassion, and trust that whatever happens in ordinary reality, non-ordinary reality is shifted by prayer. We can even lay on hands with some simple training, and this makes our love concrete by physiological entrainment.

More conventionally, we can nurture healing relationships by visiting and calling and sending notes to those who are suffering, especially if their condition prevents them from getting out and doing the usual relationship things. We can advocate for affordable healthcare for all, as something all God’s children need, and deserve. And some of you have medicine as your vocation; we can advocate to preserve your jobs from being squeezed by profit-making bosses into their own kind of suffering.

When I lived in Virginia for the last two years, I volunteered with hospice. Ironically, despite being for the dying, hospice really is physically healing. Studies have shown that people who accept hospice as soon as they’re eligible live on average a couple of months longer than people who opt out of hospice. But that is not the point. The purpose if hospice is to give people comfort and choice and dignity near the end of life.

I visited people in hospice care and their families, sometimes in the role of a minister and sometimes with Reiki healing touch. The medical staff worked hard to keep these people comfortable. And I did whatever I thought might help for them and their loved ones. Sang a song, prayed a prayer, held a hand. I think what I was really doing was sharing with them what God gives me: a Presence that does not fear death or suffering, that honors the sacredness of life, so that they could relax into God’s love.

In Jesus’ upside-down Kingdom, God’s love is contagious, and it conquers fear. God’s healing power is contagious, and it drives out oppression. Whatever our physical situation, we can claim these things. They never run out, and as we share them, they even multiply. This is not ordinary reality. This is God’s reality, made known to us through Jesus. May you experience that healing relationship. Amen.

Pages

Choice and Courage

Touching Wonder

Healing Relationships