All will be well. Really.

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

St. Alban's, Simsbury, CT

Psalm 23; Acts 9:36-43; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

Julian of Norwich, May 8, 2022

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. 

Good morning all. It is good to be back with you in person. Happy Easter. I am so grateful that Easter is a whole season. It is not just a day. We get to spend fifty days celebrating the truths at the center of our faith - that hope is real, new life is always possible, and love is stronger than anything, even death. 

In addition to being the fourth Sunday of Easter, it is also the feast day of Julian of Norwich. For me, that makes it a day when I get to visit with an old friend. Julian is one of the five thinkers about whom I wrote in my doctoral dissertation. So, she is indeed an old friend who just about lived with me for years!

Given how much I value her wisdom and insight, I could probably come up with reasons why her message was relevant any day of the year. And yet I think she has some particularly important messages for us as the people of faith in the midst of all that is going on in our lives and world right now. Here we are, more than two years into a global pandemic. The realities of war, poverty, natural disasters, gun violence, racism, and all the forms of oppression that keep us from realizing the kingdom of God here on earth, are ever present in our headlines and our communities. Not to mention whatever challenges we are all dealing with in our own families and relationships. It is enough to leave us feeling exhausted and even despondent at times. I would imagine all of us have had moments or even days where all the challenges of the present time feel overwhelming. This is why I am so grateful for the Easter season, for Psalm 23, and our readings today. Together with the life and writings of Julian of Norwich, they ground us in our faith and provide a sure foundation for our hope. They all affirm for us that we are never alone in the midst of challenges and that the love of God is stronger than everything else. What I love about our readings today and about the life and writings of Julian is that they offer a hope that is grounded in experience. They do not offer rose colored glasses or just blithely assure us all will be well. They acknowledge the reality of the valley of the shadow of death and remind us that God is leading us out of that valley. We can look ahead with hope. 

Just in case you don’t know much about the life or times of Julian, let me give you a brief synopsis. Her name “Julian” is taken from St. Julian's Church in Norwich where she lived as an anchorite for many years. An anchorite is someone who lives a solitary existence in a cell attached to a church. They have a window into the Church to watch mass being celebrated and a window through which they can serve as a counselor to the people of the world, but they do not generally leave their cell. She lived like that for decades! Don't I wish I could have called her up when we all went into lockdown in 2020 to learn how you live well in circumstances like that.

Julian was born in the late 1300s and died in the mid 1400s. She lived through the Black Death, a plague that came multiple times in the 14th century and took approximately 40% of the population. Hear that again - 40% of the population. She would be marveling at all the advances of modern medicine and how many people are surviving and recovering from the virus. Recent reports from the WHO put the mortality rate for COVID worldwide is about 18%. 

Julian is famous for her writings. It was a rare thing in the 1400s for a woman to be able to read and write, but Julian was definitely a scholar who knew her Scripture and the theology of her day well. She had a series of visions during an illness which she then spent many years reflecting on and writing about. Her writings are collected in a text known as Revelations of Divine Love.

If she is known in popular culture at all, she is known for her saying, “All will be well. All will be well. And all manner of things shall be well.” Taken out of context this can seem like a pollyanna statement that seems to completely disregard the realities of the present moment. But Julian was not oblivious to the realities of pain and suffering. She knew them well in her own life, and in the lives of the people who came to her for counsel and advice. 

Julian lived in a time where, as scholar Barbara Tuchman notes, “death was to be met any day, around any corner.” The fragility and sacredness of life was a truth she knew all too well. Suffering and hardship were an expected part of daily life. Her conviction that all will be well is a deeply meaningful one, precisely because it is a statement of deep faith and hope born out of a daily life where things rarely went well. It is a statement that believes there is more to life than what we can see in the present moment. It is a belief that tomorrow can and will be different than today. It is a belief that there is always the possibility of more, the possibility for new life, for transformation, even in the midst of our darkest moments. 

Julian lived and wrote a theology that is also beautifully articulated in the 23rd Psalm. It is the steadfast belief that no matter what shadows we may have encountered, no matter how we are struggling through the valleys of life, we can trust that we never walk alone and that the valley is not our destination. There will be rest and still waters. There will be a feast spread before us. Our cup indeed overflows. And it's important to note that neither the Psalm nor Julian would say that feast, that rest, are only found in the next life. Remember it says that God spreads out a table in the presence of our enemies. There is hope and much joy to be found even in the midst of whatever struggles we face. 

That bit about rest and care for our bodies is key. Reading the writing of Cole Arthur Riley has helped me to better understand the connection between rest and salvation. She notes that in Scripture the two are often connected, as they are in our Psalm or in that familiar prayer, "in returning and rest we shall be saved." Riley writes, "What a peculiar answer to the valley of the shadow of death. You might expect God's response to be to have people rise, to empower them to fight. But God's answer is unapologetic care for the body. The deepest yet most neglected of needs." (This Here Flesh, 147). And she goes on to say, "Yet when we invite people into spirituality, too often rest is reduced to an inner posture someone should adopt while exhausting their body. And she cautions us, "If the 'salvation' you have been promised requires you to do and say more, you can be rightly suspicious of it." (148)

I don't think we necessarily need to go to the extreme of becoming an anchorite like Julian. We don't need to spend our lives separated from the world. No doubt, though, we could all use a little more rest. I don't necessarily mean sleep, although that certainly counts. We need the rest that restores our souls. The rest that grounds us in the truth of God's presence and reminds us that all will be well, even if it isn't today. 

So in this Easter season, when the days are lengthening and creation is bursting forth with beauty, when we are surrounded by messages that say we need to do more and have more, we can pause and renew those practices that restore our souls. Maybe it's time outside, maybe it's conversation with a friend, maybe it is opting to sit down and savor a cup of coffee or a meal instead of eating standing up in our kitchen or while we drive. Maybe it's a new book or an art project. Maybe it's just taking a few minutes each day to be, to reflect with gratitude on the gifts of our surroundings and our companions on the way. Whatever it is for you, I hope you will find ways to rest and restore your soul in the weeks ahead.

And may those moments of rest ground you in Julian's conviction that All shall be well. No matter what today or this week or next week bring, we can hold fast to that beautiful truth. All shall be well. Amen.

Wisdom from Julian of Norwich

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Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer, via Zoom
Julian of Norwich, May 8, 2020


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.

Ah, it is the feast day of Julian of Norwich. For me, it feels like a day when I get to visit with an old friend. Julian is one of the five thinkers about whom I wrote in my doctoral dissertation. So, she is indeed an old friend who just about lived with me for years!

Given how much I value her wisdom and insight, I could probably come up with reasons why her message was relevant any day of the year. And yet she has some particularly important messages for us as the Church living through a pandemic in 2020. Just in case you don’t know much about the life or times of Julian, let me give you a brief synopsis.

Her name “Julian” is taken from St. Julian's Church in Norwich where she lived as an anchorite for many years. An anchorite is someone who lives a solitary existence in a cell attached to a church. They have a window into the Church to watch mass being celebrated and a window through which they can serve as a counselor to the people of the world, but they do not generally leave their cell. She lived like that for decades! I bet she could offer some practical wisdom to those of us who are struggling with being stuck at home for weeks.

Julian was born in the late 1300s and died in the mid 1400s. She lived through the Black Death, a plague that came multiple times in the 14th century and took approximately 40% of the population. Hear that again - 40% of the population. She would be marveling at all the advances of modern medicine and how many people are surviving and recovering from the virus. Currently the mortality rate for COVID-19 worldwide is about 7%.

Julian is famous for her writings. It was a rare thing in the 1400s for a woman to be able to read and write, but Julian was definitely a scholar who knew her Scripture and the theology of her day well. She had a series of visions during an illness which she then spent many years reflecting on and writing about. Her writings are collected in a text known as Revelations of Divine Love.

If she is known in popular culture at all, she is known for her saying, “All will be well. All will be well. And all manner of things shall be well.” Taken out of context this can seem like a pollyanna statement that seems to completely disregard the realities of the present moment. But Julian was not oblivious to the realities of pain and suffering. She knew them well in her own life, and in the lives of the people who came to her for counsel and advice.

Julian lived in a time where “death was to be met any day, around any corner.” The fragility and sacredness of life was a truth she knew all too well. Suffering and hardship were an expected part of daily life. Her conviction that all will be well is a deeply meaningful one, precisely because it is a statement of deep faith and hope born out of a daily life where things rarely went "well.” It is a statement that believes there is more to life than what we can see in the present moment. It is a belief that tomorrow can and will be different than today. It is a belief that there is always the possibility of more, the possibility for new life, for transformation, even in the midst of our darkest moments.

So I hope you hear Julian’s conviction and affirmation that “All will be well” in a new way today. It is not a platitude meant to paper over the trauma of the present moment. It is a deeply faithful statement that expresses the conviction that God is with us, that God’s transforming love is at work in the midst of whatever challenges and hardship we might be facing. All may not be well yet. It may not be well today or even seem well tomorrow or next week. And yet, we can join with Julian in affirming that “All will be well” in God’s time. Amen.

Julian of Norwich

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Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Chapel of our Lord, Episcopal Church Center

Feast of Julian of Norwich, May 8, 2019

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.

It was a gift of the Holy Spirit that I have the privilege of preaching today, the feast day for Julian of Norwich. She is one of my favorite theologians. She is one of the five thinkers with whom I engaged for my doctoral dissertation, so I literally have spent years of my life with Julian and her writings. 

There are lots of reasons why Julian is remarkable. She was a 14th century woman who survived into old age. No small feat given the number of times the plague passed through Norwich in her lifetime. She was a 14th century woman who could read AND write. Amazing. She was blessed with visions and felt compelled to share those visions with everyday Christians. She devoted much of her adult life to reflection on the visions. And those reflections survived in two texts that were handed down through the centuries, through wars and persecution. Through the Reformation. There is no shortage of amazing, even miraculous things about the reality of Julian’s life and her writings. [For an excellent examination of the history of Julian and her manuscript see here.]

But for me, what makes her particularly notable and influential in my own life, is what is in her writings. In a word, there is hope. Julian is probably one of the better known spiritual writers of the Middle Ages. But often she is known just for a single sentence: “All shall be well.” This is, indeed, a good and accurate summary of her theology. If she is going to be known for one sentence that is the right sentence. And yet to often it is quoted all by itself, and if you don’t know the rest of Julian’s life story or much about her writings it can seem like a spiritual trope or some kind of Pollyanna statement that fails to account of the realities of sin and suffering in our lives and in the world. [For a great book on Julian that really unpacks this quote see here.]

Julian was no Pollyana. She took very seriously the reality of sin and suffering in the world. One of the things I value greatly about Julian, and why she was important in my own research, is that she is someone who writes theologically about the reality of suffering from profound personal experiences. When she was thirty years old she suffered a life-threatening illness (perhaps the plague) and everyone (including Julian herself) was sure she was going to die. In the midst of that illness she had a series of visions that taught her about Christ’s suffering and who God is. She spent the remaining decades of her life reflecting and expounding upon those visions. And what I would like to do today is to share three of those insights with you. I hope these insights will show you that Julian’s statement that all will be well is, in fact, a statement of deep faith and hope that can be a gift for our own faith journeys as well. 

Julian’s first insight is one of perspective. She has a vision of the world as a hazelnut, a tiny nut held in the palm of a hand. Talk about a wide perspective. Long before anyone had been to outer space and realized that earth was our “fragile island home” (Eucharistic Prayer C), Julian could see that God’s perspective was so very different than our own. She was able to acknowledge that there is far more to the reality of life than the immediacy of our experience. Quite a vision for someone who spent the majority of her life living in a single room and likely never left the town in which she was born. 

This perspective is not just about astrophysics or our place in time and space, Julian invites us to have a wider perspective on our own lives and the realities of the human experience as well. This is perspective in regards to sin. Julian says that sin is necessary. And by sin she really means all that is wrong with the world not just short list of cardinal sins. This is not to say that God causes evil. Julian is really just being matter of fact. She has witnessed the ravages of war and disease with her own eyes. She personally knows the fragility of human life. Sin is a just a part of life. Julian does not dwell on the why. She accepts the reality of it, and then tries to see it with a wide perspective. 

When she looks at sin from a wider perspective it is not an all consuming reality. This is because one of Julian’s most profound insights is about the breadth of God’s mercy and love. At a time when the Church was so often focused on the wrath and judgment of God, Julian is notable for her message of hope and love. Over and over again in her visions, she sees God as loving and merciful. She likens Jesus to a mother hen who broods over her chicks. God is full of compassion and mercy. Even in the face of the evil humanity can do to each other and the terrible tragedies that can befall us, we are loved by God. God is ever seeking us, desiring to be with us, and desiring to bring us to bliss. 

We can get frustrated with Julian. Just as we can get frustrated with God. We can rail and kick and scream and put all our energy and frustration into asking “why?” Why is there evil? Why is there suffering? Why do terrible things happen? But Julian would caution us that to do so will not serve us. She knows. She too asked “Why.” And she came to understand that is not something we will know or understand this side of heaven. She invites us instead to focus on what is true and sure in the here and now. 

What can we be sure of? We can be sure of who God is. We can be sure that we are beloved of God. We can be sure that God desires to bring us to bliss. God desires for us, as Jesus said, to have life, abundant life. And what Julian’s life experience taught her was that we actually experience the reality of bliss, the true abundance, more fully because we also know the terrible pain of suffering. That does not mean suffering is in and of itself good or that it needs to be sought out. It just means that if we are paying attention, if we are open to God’s presence at work in the world and our own lives, we will find joy and comfort, even in the face of profound suffering, just as Julian did. 

I do believe that with Julian we can proclaim that “All shall be well.” It may not be “well” yet, but as our reading from Hebrews reminds us, God is faithful and so we have hope. We have hope, because the truth at the heart of the Christian story is that God is always at work, bringing light into the darkness and bring new life out of death. So yes, indeed, there is a truth that we can hold on to no matter what comes our way: “All shall be well.” AMEN.