Run and not go weary . . .together

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Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

St. James’s, West Hartford, CT

5th Sunday after Epiphany, February 4, 2024

Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c

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. 

Our reading from Isaiah ends with the lines: “but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

They shall run and not be weary? Really? I want to say, Isaiah, are you paying attention? Have you read the news headlines? Have you seen our calendars? Do you know that we still have not figured out what it means to have lived through a pandemic? Can’t you see that we are exhausted? From work, from school, from the stress and strain of all that we are supposed to be doing. Also, it’s February. It’s cold outside and the days are still short. It’s hard to be energetic when we can’t get enough sunshine.

And then I pause. I take a deep breath. I think about what I know of the world in Isaiah’s time. The plagues. The persecutions. The stress and strain of everyday life where you had to walk to get your water and there was no such thing as food security for anyone. Oh. Maybe instead of arguing with Isaiah, I should listen more deeply, because if he can talk about running and not being weary then maybe he really does know something. 

So, how could we keep going and not burn out? What is it that allows us to be capable of more than we think we are? Well, our faith, for sure. And there’s more to it than that. 

A story my brother told me kept coming back to me this week. In high school, he did a number of NOLS wilderness trips in the summers. One of his leaders told a story of leading a group in the tundra of Alaska. The leader was out ahead of the group. He came up over the crest of a hill to discover that he was only yards away from a mother grizzly bear and her cubs. He froze. He stood absolutely stock still. The mother bear rose up on her hind legs and stared. He thought: Well, this is it. Not sure how I can get out of this one. Then she returned to all fours and quietly walked away with her cubs. The leader was stunned. How could that possibly be? And then he turned around and realized that the entire group of 20 people had come up behind him. With their arrival instead of being a lone person far smaller than the bear, he had become something enormous that frightened the bear. 

I have held onto the image of that story for years and years now. Whenever I have had to go into a difficult situation, I have thought about who I am bringing with me. My family, my friends, my mentors, those people in my life who incarnate God’s love for me, whose wisdom has always helped me be grounded - sure of who God is and who I am. 

And if we turn to the Gospel for today, we see that Jesus is not doing his ministry alone either. He is with his disciples. He does his healing ministry with others. He sends them out two by two to minister on his behalf. Jesus takes time for himself, of course, but he does not stay on his own. He knows that success only comes with shared power and authority - with shared ministry. 

Oh. That. Not doing it all alone. Not thinking we are on our own to face this challenge or that crisis. Hmm. Maybe that is what Isaiah meant? We won’t grow weary as long as we stay connected to God and to each other. 

So, my friends, just in case you have been or are ever tempted to go ahead on your own like that NOLS leader, may I remind you that there truly is safety in numbers.  You might think you are just fine out on your own. I might think that too. I often have - usually with poor results. So may I recommend that whatever challenges lie ahead, you do not face them alone. Look around. See? You are surrounded by people who care about you and would drop everything to help. That’s what it means to be community. That’s what it means to be Church. We hold the faith for each other. We incarnate God’s love for you. This community is here. Day after day. Week after week to remind us that we are never alone. And we are beloved of God. Amen. 

Hope as we run the race

 

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Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

St. Alban’s, Simsbury, CT 

Morning Prayer via Zoom

November 8, 2020

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

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. 

When I was in preschool my mom ran a marathon. It was a big deal. She had taken up running in adulthood and had done small races here and there. But nothing close to this length. She trained for months in advance. My dad, brother, and I went along to be there at the finish line, of course. It turned out that we were not the only ones who came to support my mom that day. 

One of her dear friends, Martha, who had never run more than a mile in her life, had a surprise in store. She planned to join my mom at Mile 25 and run the final mile with my mom. It was a beautiful gesture, and my mom was incredibly honored and surprised to see her. Particularly since it turned out Martha had miscalculated where to join my mom, and she met her at Mile 21. Not Mile 25. She had planned to run with my mom for a mile. She ended up running with my mom for five miles. They kept each other going and my mom met her goal of finishing in under four hours. 

I don’t know about you all, but I feel like Martha this week. The map is mixed up and the finish line is much further away than I thought it was. It is not just that it took (or in some races is still taking) a long time to count votes and decide races. I realized this week that I naively thought we were more united as a country. I thought our map would be different. 

No matter how we may individually be feeling about the results of the recent election. No matter how you do the analysis. No matter how you do the math. The conclusion is clear; our country is strongly divided about the best path forward. In the face of this division, I find myself grieving, because the pain and the fear are so evident. Because I have not done enough. We have not done enough. 

I grieve because the road ahead is longer and more challenging than what I was wishing for in my optimism and my privilege. I grieve because I naively thought it would be easier than this. I thought somehow we could more quickly realize God’s kingdom. That our good intentions were enough to set us up to become the Beloved Community that Martin Luther King, Jr. preached about. 

Like most things in life, it turns out that the situation is more complicated. And it turns out that change cannot just be something we hope happens out there. It has to be in here too. In fact it has to start here, in our own hearts and minds, in our houses and our communities. 

It is easy to put the blame or responsibility out there. To hear the story of my mom’s friend and say, “Well, too bad she didn’t plan better. I would have double checked the map and not made that mistake.” It is easy to look at our Gospel lesson about the foolish bridesmaids and say, “How silly were they? Don’t they know that they should have planned ahead?” Really. Just a little planning and everyone would have had lamps for the night. It is so simple. 

Or so it seems. So we might wish. But the work of healing, of reconciliation, of caring for those in need, of being agents of transformation in the world, the work of building up God’s kingdom is not simple or easy.

I would imagine I am not the only one who is grieving this week, and while there may be some differences in what we are grieving, I think it would be fair to say that we are all grieving because the state of the world is not as we would like it to be. We would like the pandemic to end. We grieve for those who have died, for those who are suffering now. We grieve for those who have lost jobs and who are on the brink of (or already experiencing) homelessness. We grieve for those who do not have enough to eat. We grieve for the ways that systemic racism has divided us and caused long lasting harm. We grieve for the fact that the bodies of so many on the margins, of those who do not share my heritage, my class, my privilege, those bodies, have been sacrificed. We grieve that we do not seem to be able to talk in a civil and compassionate way across difference. The list goes on. The chasms seem so enormous. 

But then I turn to our text from Thessalonians that reminds us not to grieve as though we have no hope. Ah yes. I needed that reminder. Actually, I think there are two important facts for us here in this text. First, that it is okay to grieve. When loss happens, whether that is the loss of a person, a relationship, or just a dream that did not come to fruition, we need to grieve. We need to acknowledge the depth of our pain, the ache we feel. Something is missing. We cannot ignore or gloss over that fact. It is okay. Our grief is a sign of who and what matters to us. We do not grieve over something unimportant and superfluous. We grieve over the loss of that which gives our life meaning. 

Second, our text from Thessalonians reminds us that we have hope. Indeed we do. We have a beautiful hope, a hope founded in faith. A hope that is not contingent on news headlines or on our own actions. A hope that stands at the heart of our tradition. A belief that God is always at work in the world. Even in the midst of our deepest, darkest moments of fear and sadness. God is at work bringing about new life, new possibility. It is the story at the heart of our Scriptures, at the heart of our faith. God’s healing, transforming, reconciling love is stronger than anything in this world, even death. 

Sometimes the hope can be hard to see, hard to find, and it is there. Always. May you glimpse it in the midst of daily life. In the warmth of the sunshine, even as the weather turns cooler. In the splendor of creation. In reading or hearing something that offers you a new insight or a new perspective. In a conversation with a dear friend. In smiles. In laughter. In the tenacity and joy of children. In all the ways that we are adapting and staying connected even in the midst of all the current challenges. 

Oh, my friends, there is much to grieve these days. Be gentle with yourselves in this time. Be gentle with each other. Ground yourself in faith. We have hope. A deep and real hope. A hope that speaks of the depth and breadth of God’s love. A love that we can make manifest, a kingdom we can help build, through our words and our actions each and every day. AMEN.