Choosing Grace and Mercy

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

April 28, 2021

Psalm 53; Col. 1:24-2:7; Luke 6:27-38

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

I think many of you know that when I was on chemotherapy as a teenager, I was granted a wish by the Make-A-Wish foundation. That wish involved traveling to NYC to see Broadway shows. Two shows in particular - The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables. I am not sure it is an accident that a teenager who was struggling with questions of meaning, life, mortality and how to have hope in the midst of struggle wanted to see these two shows. In fact their soundtracks had brought me comfort in the midst of many a difficult day. The tape of Les Miserables was what I brought with me every time I had to have an MRI. The sheer vigor and force of its music able to drown out the tapping of the machine. 

It wasn’t just the music that drew me in these shows. It was the story. One of the elements of the story of Les Miserables that has stayed with me is the interaction between Jean Valjean and the bishop. Just in case you are not familiar with it, here’s a brief synopsis. Valjean had escaped from prison and the bishop was kind enough to offer him food and lodging for the night. In the middle of the night, he steals the bishop’s silver and runs off. He is caught. He tells the police that the bishop gave it to him. They bring him back and confront the bishop with this story. The bishop says that he did give it to him, and makes Valjean promise that he will use the proceeds of the silver to become a better man. He does, and of course the rest of the story tells of all the fruits of that moment of grace and generosity. 

I couldn’t help but think of that story with our passage from Luke today. Turn the other cheek. Give your shirt also. Show mercy. To everyone - not just those you like or agree with today. Embody the self-giving love and generosity of Jesus. Choose grace and compassion over personal gain. After all, it isn’t really about us. 

Now, we are not likely to have an escaped convict in our houses try to steal whatever is most valuable to us, so we cannot draw a direct parallel to Valjean and the bishop. But we can see the principle in it. We can see the choice to choose hope and possibility over vengeance and self-righteousness. 

Of course it could be argued that the bishop is being too lenient and giving Valjean a free pass. He broke the law. He stole. He needs to be held accountable. That is all true. And I think it can be argued that the bishop is holding him accountable. There will not be a day in Valjean’s life when he does not remember that he is alive and free and has all that he has because of that bishop’s mercy. The bishop offered a second chance, an opportunity for redemption, an opportunity to be defined by what he could be rather than what he had done. 

There is an invitation here for us to do that same. To respond with grace and compassion. I do think it is worth noting here that I do not believe that either Jesus nor the bishop are inviting us to be complicit in oppression. We are not being asked to surrender our dignity or self-worth. We are being invited to turn the world’s power dynamics on their head by responding with grace rather than aggression. We are being invited to be, and to inspire others to be, our best selves.

This is hard work. It is holy work. I struggle with it. And I know I can best do it when I am connected to and grounded in my relationship with God. So, I hope that we will take this invitation to be more deeply connected and to choose grace and mercy first. Amen. 

Carrying (and Sharing) our Burdens

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Anselm of Canterbury, April 21, 2021

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

“‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” 

Anyone else breathing a little more deeply after hearing those lines from Matthew? I am weary. We are all carrying heavy burdens. Sometimes I think more than we even realize. I was reflecting a bit on this past year, and the image came to mind of walking with a heavy backpack. I certainly feel like I am. And in some ways I feel like I have only begun to realize what it is that I am carrying. So much grief over all that we have lost in the last year - lost lives, lost opportunities. The fear and anxiety of rising case numbers. Another mass shooting in a grocery store. What will the aftermath be of the guilty verdict in the Chauvin case? And the knowledge that no matter what happens in the days ahead we still have so much work ahead of us to undo the systemic realities of oppression in our nation and our society. 

And while we may share many of these burdens, we each have our own. Burdens particular to our circumstances, our family or community. Burdens we carry because of race, gender, sexual orientation, or another category society has placed upon us. Those burdens may weigh on us in different ways at different times. Even though I think Atticus and Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird were on to something, we cannot fully know what it is like to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. We cannot fully know each other’s burdens. 

But here’s what we can know. We ALL have them. We are ALL carrying them. No matter how peaceful someone may seem on the outside. No matter how “all figured out” or “put together” they may seem, the burdens are there. So there is our first invitation of the day, an invitation to compassion, for ourselves and for others. We don’t need to beat ourselves up about the burdens. We don’t need to get trapped in a cycle of comparison about who has more or whose are heavier. Let’s just stipulate that everyone’s got them, and we are all weary.

So, I think oh good, thank you Jesus, we are going to get to rest. But then we keep reading in Matthew, and out comes my argumentative self. What? Jesus, you just promised rest, but now you are talking about yokes, and learning, and more burdens. Did you miss the part about how we are weary? And by weary, we mean bone tired, exhausted, sacred, anxious, worried, and all the rest of it. 

Then I pause. I breathe. I think. Would the Jesus I know really say, “Oh I see you are carrying a lot of burdens there. Here let me give you some more stuff to carry.” No. That doesn’t actually sound like Jesus. Could I imagine Jesus saying, “Oh, I see you are carrying a lot of burdens. How about we take that backpack off and look through them together and see what we can put down?” That I could imagine. 

So, my friends, there is our second invitation. An invitation to learning, an invitation to lay some burdens down or to ask for help carrying whatever it is that has to stay in the backpack. 

I hope that for many of us there has been a gift buried in all the challenges of the past year; it is the gift that comes with being confronted with the fragility of life. The gift of having our priorities clarified. The gift of being able to see and know with certainty what really matters in life. We can indeed lay some burdens down. We can let go of those things that no longer serve us. We can let go of those things that have been barriers to connection, barriers to a deeper relationship with God and with each other. If this year has shown us nothing else, it has shown us the primacy of community, of connection, of belonging. 

So, in this week, in this Easter season, I invite you to take some time in your prayers to unpack whatever it is you are carrying. To see if you might lay some of it down. And then to ask for help, from Jesus, from those who are beloved to you, to pick up whatever it is that you need to keep carrying. We may not be able to fully understand the particularities of each other’s burdens, but we can certainly bear them. We can carry them together. And I trust, my friends, that as we move forward together sharing the load and leaving some behind, we will no longer be quite so weary. We will be energized with hope and possibility for the future. Amen. 

Healing and Wholeness

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Damien and Marianne of Molokai

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

So, friends, you get me two days in a row, and we have another set of texts on healing. Well, the good news is, that is a topic about which I have no shortage of things to say. It is something I have spent a lot of time thinking about! 

Although we could focus on the people. Like yesterday, we have another set of examples of wonderful, selfless individuals in Damien and Marianne who were willing to risk their own lives to care for people in need. In their case it was a leper colony in 19th century Hawaii. We also get something else in today’s texts - both in Isaiah and our Gospel. We get stories of healing. And that is where I would like to focus.

If we just had our Gospel story where “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” we could have a very narrow definition of healing. We could think it is merely the absence or reversal of a disease. It certainly can be that. I hope we all have lots of stories of people who have full and complete recoveries - where it is as though they were never ill to begin with. And we all know, likely from personal, real life experience, that is not always how it goes. Disease is not always erased. Sometimes death still comes even when we have fervently wished for another outcome. Our lives do not always reflect that ideal world offered to us in the Gospel for today. 

And so, I think it is important to look at our other texts, and to think more broadly about our experiences. Our passage from Isaiah talks about healing. And healing does not only mean the absence of disease. Healing is about comfort. Healing is about being in right relationship with God and with each other. Healing is about wholeness. 

It took me a long time in my own journey to get to that understanding. For a long time I wanted healing, in my own life, in my own body to look like a complete restoration. I wanted someone to be able to replace the collarbone they surgically removed. I wanted a body that did not feel diminished. That was not physically possible. Collarbones move too much. They took too much out, and if they put a replacement in there there was a risk that my body would reject it. I really am better off with all my muscles sewn together even if that comes with its own set of challenges. 

So if that door of restoration was closed to me, if I could not go back to “before,” what might healing look like? For me, on a practical front, it has looked like building up the strength of my back and my shoulders to compensate. But more importantly, on a spiritual front, it has meant coming to an understanding of healing and wholeness that is much bigger than what my physical body can or cannot do. 

In many of the healing stories, Jesus tells the person who was healed, “Go. Your faith has made you well.” In many translations it is “Your faith has made you whole.” I like that better. Our faith makes us whole. It is not about what our bodies look like. It is about our faith. It is about our relationship with God and with each other. We are made whole when we are connected to God. When we are present to God, and we are open enough to allow God to be fully present with us. 

Wholeness then is about honoring and welcoming God’s presence in our hearts and lives. A fitting message for this Easter season where we hear again the stories of how the resurrected Christ (who still had his wounds) made himself known to the disciples. We can indeed be made whole, no matter the outcome of physical illness or trauma. That wholeness is a gift from God. We need only be open to receive it. Amen. 

Practicing the ministry of presence together

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Commemoration of Zenaida, Philonella & Hermione

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Today we remember three women physicians known for treating everyone who came to them regardless of their ability to pay. It is indeed a time for giving thanks to all those in the medical profession who have worked so tirelessly to care for so many people in the last year. They have given their expertise and brilliance. They have given their care and generosity. In some cases they have given their lives to help others. What a beautiful example of the power of love. That self giving love of Jesus has been evident in so many ways and places over the last year. 

Indeed let us honor physicians and all healthcare workers, as our reading from Sirach does. Let us praise their skills and wisdom. Their God given talents to care for those who are ill. Indeed in the midst of illness we should pray, and we should seek medical treatment. We need both. Prayer is always a good idea. So is doing everything we can to take care of our physical bodies. 

Of course, it would be selling them short to say that the gifts of a physician are merely in applying the principles of science. There is more to it than that. It is not just about making the right diagnosis or having the right medicine. There is an art to healing. An art that requires wisdom and understanding. 

I think most of you know by now that I have a long and complicated medical history. Born twelve weeks prematurely, a cancer patient at 13, and then two high risk pregnancies that blessedly resulted in wonderful healthy children brought into this world by c-sections. I have also worked as a hospital chaplain. I have spent a lot of time receiving and observing medical care. It is just that, “care.”

It is care of the whole person. In fact, I learned a lot from doctors and medical professionals about the ministry of presence. About how much it matters how we show up. This is the kind of thing that applies to all of us in our professional and our personal lives. Are we able to be present when someone needs us? And I mean fully present. Looking people in the eye. Listening. Really listening. Open to learning. Open to hearing another point of view. Are we communicating with our body language, with our eyes, with our facial expressions, that the person we are with matters? Can we be the person today who affirms for them the truth that they are a beloved child of God?

Doing that, being that present takes work. Especially this year. We are all tired. Or maybe weary is a better word. It is easy to feel overwhelmed. We all need the space to grieve. Especially now. Things are beginning to feel hopeful and open again, so little by little our bodies are lightening up on their tight grip on everything. I think many of us have been in survival mode for the past year. We have been focused on just getting through it all. We have been coping. We have just been figuring out how to get to tomorrow. It is only now, and in the weeks and months ahead that we can begin to really grieve, to feel the magnitude of what this year has meant. To feel and begin to understand how we and the world have been irrevocably changed by what has happened. It is a time to be gentle with ourselves. To have compassion for ourselves and each other. 

And so it may seem like an impossible task that we are being asked today. To work at being more present. But here’s the thing. I think it might actually be the key to no longer feeling weary and anxious. Because being present has rewards that far outweigh the challenges. Being present enables us to build connections with each other. It reminds us that we are not alone. Remember it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile. Remember that smiles (even behind a mask) are the good kind of contagious. When you see someone else smile, when you have helped make someone else smile, how can that not bring joy to our hearts? 

No doubt there are days when we feel empty and depleted. That’s okay. This has been a hard time. And we don’t have to stay that way. None of us has to do this alone. We are all in this together. If we can be more present to each other, we will build each other up. Together we can have what we need to move forward into the glorious future God has in store for us. Amen. 

The both and of Easter

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Easter Monday, April 5, 2021

Psalm 16:8-11:Acts 2:14, 22b-32; Matthew 28:9-15 

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Alleluia. Christ is risen. Happy Easter, friends. There is joy today. Joy in this season. Joy in all that we have to celebrate. Spring. Warmer weather. Sunshine. More and more people getting vaccinated. But I also think it is important to honor the fact that the resurrected Christ still had his wounds. The resurrection did not erase the crucifixion. It transformed it. Easter reminds us that death and suffering do not have the last word. But Easter does not ignore the realities of suffering or pretend they are not there. 

So even on this day, and even in the midst of all the causes for rejoicing, I want to give us collective permission to hold our grief alongside our joy. The grief is real. I bet that most of us did not get to have the Easter celebrations we long for. Hopefully there was meaningful worship and beautiful music. Hopefully there was chocolate and a delicious meal. But no doubt there are people we wanted to hug and could not. People with whom we wanted to sit and linger over the last bit of desert. Even in the midst of celebrations, even in the midst of hearts that are full of gratitude for the transformational truth that love is stronger than death, even in the midst of that we grieve. We grieve for what we are missing in our own immediate lives and neighborhoods. We grieve for our nation, for the realities of systemic racism and injustice that continue to plague us. We grieve for our world and the tragic loss of life from this pandemic and so many other preventable causes. The grief is personal, and it is global. 

We need to honor that grief. We need to acknowledge it. To feel it. Trust me, this WASP with lots of Puritan ancestry has tried the whole “keep  a  stiff upper lip, I can just keep going and pretend it’s not there” thing. It never turns out well. We need to grieve. And we are in good company. Think of the emotions and actions identified in the Gospels on Easter morning. Mary Magdalene weeping. The disciples running home. The women being afraid, as they are at the end of Mark, and in today’s Gospel in Matthew. There is not a lot of rejoicing in our Easter Gospels. What we see is the grief and the fear of the women and the disciples. 

Not a big surprise really, if you think about it. Nothing is going the way they thought it would. Their beloved leader and teacher is dead. Brutally executed as a criminal. They go to do one final gesture of love and care for him, and his body is gone. Talk about adding insult to injury. They are deprived of the ritual caring of the body that would have brought them some sense of solace and comfort. They start home and are completely surprised to meet Jesus on the way. Over and over again in the past few days their hopes have been dashed and their expectations have been overturned. No wonder they are afraid when they meet Jesus. But here’s the thing. The line just before our Gospel passage today is: “So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” The women have just been told by the angel that Jesus is not there because he has been raised from the dead. They leave with fear AND great joy. There it is. The both and of Easter. It is okay. We get to hold it all. We get to feel both the great joy of the resurrection and the fear and grief of it. The realization that we do not know what the future holds, only that it will not and cannot look like the past. 

As we grieve what is lost, what has ended, what is missing, let’s hold on deeply to hope, to the conviction that while we might not be able to hold on to him, Jesus is present with us still. Let’s hold on to the hope, to the conviction that we are being invited into a future that is indeed different, and it just might be more wonderful, if we can trust in the power of God’s love. 

As C.S. Lewis ends his Chronicles of Narnia, “ . . . the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only  been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Beauty and possibility await today and always, if our hearts are open. Amen. 

Making Love manifest

 Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2021

Psalm 116:1,10-17;1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17,31b-35

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

It is Maundy Thursday. I want nothing more than to be gathered in the same place as you all. To honor the holiness of this day by washing each other’s hands or feet and by breaking bread together. Oh how we do not realize how much the tangible aspects of our faith matter until we cannot share them with each other. We are embodied. We worship a God who was incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Our bodies matter. Touch matters. To feel the water on our skin matters. To taste the bread matters. To sip the wine matters. All of it matters. 

There is lament on this day. Lament for what is not possible. Lament because this is Holy Week. Lament for a week and a world that have reminded us of the horrors we human beings can inflict upon each other. The tragedy of gun violence. The trial of the officer who killed George Floyd. We have been reminded of the realities of loss and oppression all too well this week. But that is not all we remember today. 

It is Maundy Thursday. Maundy from the Latin for “Mandate” - for the new commandment that we have been given. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’” At its foundation, at its heart, that is what today is about. 

The pouring of the water. The gentle touch of a towel. The feel of the bread in our hand. The sharing of the cup. All of those are expressions of love. They are merely tangible manifestations that point us to that far deeper and more profound truth. Ah. There it is. The reminder I found myself searching for in the midst of all the lament and loss of this week, of this season. As much as I wish to be gathered in person. As much as I wish to share the water, the bread, and the wine. Those things, those tangible realities are not the point. Love is the point. That beautiful truth. That profound reality - that we are beloved of God. So beloved that God would give anything, give everything, to show us the depth of that love. That love is not contingent on anything. It does not require us to do something. It does not require water or bread or wine to show up. The love of God is present with us, always - wherever we are. 

Now I do not want to discount the tangible manifestations of God’s love. Just because we cannot have the ones we are used to, the ones we expect, the ones we long for, does not mean we are without signs of God’s love. It does not mean we cannot make God’s love manifest for each other. 

Indeed my friends, you have been doing just that, making the love of God manifest here in this chapel space for over a year. You make it manifest with your smiles, with your words, your presence. With your trust, your tears, your grace. And I know that this time is a mere glimpse into the rest of your lives, and it consoles my spirit to know that you are making that love known in the world throughout your day, wherever you are. 

We have a new commandment. A foundational commandment. Love one another. Make God’s love manifest in the world. Let the depth of this day, of this week, of this season, of this reminder of just how profoundly we are loved by God - a love that is an outpouring, a self-giving, a love that is not earned. A love that is not contingent on anything. Let this love fill your hearts, so that you may continue to go about your lives making it manifest for all the world to see. The world needs that love. Today and always. Amen.