One people, different paths: celebrating life in community

Helen and I usually touch base about the preaching schedule well in advance. I have yet to receive a Saturday night telephone call from her with music and clinking glasses in the background, and Helen shouting over the noise to ask if pretty please would I mind giving the sermon the next day. If she was going to do so, though, last night would have been the night, as I hope she was out celebrating her birthday as she ought.

As I was given fair notice, however, I really should be coming to you this morning with all my Is dotted and my Ts crossed, but I can’t say that they are. In preparing for this sermon, it feels like I have been doing more dreaming than thinking, and I hope you’ll be willing to come alongside me as I meander.

I looked up the lectionary passages a few weeks ago, beginning with our first reading from Isaiah. It is thought to be written in the post-exile period, after many Jews had returned from Babylon and started to imagine and plan for the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem. About halfway through the short reading, however, my mind got stuck on the prophet’s use of married life as a metaphor for the hoped-for rebuilding and flourishing of Zion. Isaiah says that God will rejoice over Zion as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride.

Such imagery is common in scriptures, and you will remember, too, how often pregnancy and child-bearing are held up as examples of God’s grace. From Sarah in Genesis through to Mary’s cousin Elizabeth in the gospels, we hear a number of stories of infertility turned to fecundity as a sign of God’s blessing and promise.

And this got me wondering about how those passages may land for people who, by choice or by circumstance, have remain unpartnered or who haven’t borne young. Or anyone, really, whose life, faithful and fulfilling as it may be, is generally not held up in our scriptures as something to aspire to. Perhaps it may sometimes feel heart-wrenching if you are a person who would have loved marriage or children. If nothing else, perhaps one can feel a bit "othered" if your life path is not the one spotlighted as the scriptural or societal "ideal."

The Bible uses other metaphors for divine blessing, of course; the vanquishing of enemy armies or the ownership of vast tracts of lush pastureland come to mind. Perhaps the modern-day equivalent of this is whether your party gets voted into power or whether you manage to get a foothold in a terrible housing and rental market.

Whether we are talking about marriage or money, property or professional promotions, I started thinking about what it can feel like to be in the midst of Christian community when one isn’t always feeling particularly blessed. If you’re in a dark place or have hit a rough patch in your life, does coming to church make you feel better - or might it make you feel worse? Do our people and prayers reach out to you, or do you leave the service feeling like you haven’t been seen at all?  Or perhaps your state of mind leads you to seek isolation; do you find yourself wanting to escape out the side door rather than face the chatter at Coffee Hour?

On the flip side, times of joy can also create some distance. We may become so caught up in a wonderful new relationship or hobby or position at work that for a time at least we can become self-focused to the point of neglecting our friends or church life. Or we might become a bit overly careful around those friends, not wanting to talk about our good fortune if we know that others are bearing heavy burdens. This well-meaning concern can cause us to pull back a little, too.

Looking back at the Isaiah passage, I was reminded that the prophet is not talking about the flourishing of any one person, but of a people. His dream is for Zion, the people of God, to experience God’s delight and blessing. And I realize, yet again, that it is by tying our own wellbeing to the wellbeing of the community around us that we find fulfilment and meaning. It is only in rejoicing with our neighbour when they rejoice, and sorrowing with them when they have cause to grieve, that our individual lives can take on added dimension and richness.

But heck - sometimes that is easier said than done. Human beings are wired to be collaborative, yes - but we are also wired to be competitive. When we learn our neighbour down the block won the lottery, is our first impulse to enthusiasm on their behalf, or envy on ours? Depending on how we’re feeling in the moment, it might be 50/50 as to which hand goes up.

The world tries to sell us the notion that we constantly need to be more or do more or have more - more than we had yesterday, and more than the guy next to us. I was in a change room at a clothing store the other day and the woman in the stall next to me was chatting to the sales clerk about an upcoming cruise with an old school friend. "I told my husband that I have to look just as good as her," she said to the clerk. And, with no hint of humour, she added: "Or better."

What a burden to carry! What a grumbling feeling to pack along in her suitcase when embarking on what should be a great gigglefest of a cruise with an old friend! But if we’re honest, I bet most of us will acknowledge feeling a little envious or competitive at times, sometimes even with our nearest and dearest. The fact is, unless we truly come to terms with the fact that we can’t have, or be, everything we might want, we are destined to spend a portion of our lives feeling unhappy or short-changed.

But: the kingdom of God does not look like each one of us having multiple vehicles, recreational properties, unlimited holiday travel or other material markers of monetary success. We know the natural environment will not sustain that. The Kingdom of God does not look like all of us having children, when there are people with temperaments or vocations that are better suited to the single life. The Kingdom of God does not look like everyone meeting a particular physical ideal, because we know that humanity’s resilience comes from genetic diversity.

In the second reading, Paul tells the Corinthians that varieties of gifts are shared amongst people; while some may be good healers or speakers, others will have the gift of languages and others be particularly wise. He writes "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." Or, as someone else once said: "God made us all different so we would need each other." In other words, successful societies aren’t built by one superhero, but by ordinary mortals each offering up whatever they may have to make life better for everyone.

In the gospel reading, everyone plays a different but vital role in turning the water into wine. It wouldn’t have happened if Mary hadn’t prodded Jesus to do it. It wouldn’t have happened if the servants hadn’t been willing to obey Jesus’s odd instructions. It wouldn’t have happened if Jesus hadn’t finally lifted his gaze from his own spiritual journey to the immediate, tangible needs of the people around him. Sometimes it takes a village to make a miracle.

I recently picked up the book The Amen Effect by Rabbi Sharon Brous, the founder of what has been characterized as a "trailblazing" Jewish community in Los Angeles. It has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, and she has learned that a key to its vitality has been the congregation’s commitment to show up for each other in times of celebration and of sorrow.

She recounts the story of a man caught in the midst of a terrible divorce who was in attendance at a wedding ceremony, and her worry that it might be distressing for him. But then she witnessed the weight falling off his shoulders as he flung himself into joyful dances honouring the new couple, happy for their love despite his own fractured relationship. At other times, she saw congregants refusing to shy away from another’s pain, but walking beside those who were grieving great losses, even when it meant revisiting tragedies that had taken place in their own lives.

Rabbi Sharon describes the Jewish practice of saying the Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, after someone dies:

The Jewish tradition requires a minyan, a group of ten, for someone to even recite this mourner’s prayer. Isn’t that an unfair burden to place on a mourner? In the midst of your grief, now you have to wake up early, leave work meetings, and fight traffic to join nine other people some of whom you may not even know, in prayer? Can’t I just grieve along in my home? people often ask. No, says the tradition, you can’t, because no one should walk alone through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Your couch can’t say "Amen" to your broken heart. Your fireplace can’t hold your silence, can’t hand you a tissue, and can’t bear witness as you struggle and search for and sometimes find comfort in your grief.

Our communities, and the people in them, do not always get it right. Sometimes we put a foot wrong, or say something that hurts instead of heals, or we can’t see past our own lives to listen carefully to someone else’s. There are times we need to ask for forgiveness, and times we need to give it. But as Rabbi Sharon points out, in the creation story God repeatedly looks at what has come into being, and calls it good - the day, the night, the plants, the oceans, the animals - all of it is I. There is only one thing that God names as not good, and that is the human creature standing alone on the sixth day. She writes:

And in the complex narrative arc that unfolds over the next many generations — through fratricide and deception, enslavement and war— there is only one other thing in all the Five Books of Moses that is explicitly rendered not good. As the Israelites journey across the desert, Moses is rebuked by his father-in-law, Yitro [Jethro], for taking too much of the burden of leadership upon himself. "It’s not good, what you’re doing," Yitro says. "You can’t do this alone!" (Exodus 18:17-18). This is astonishing: the only thing the Torah identifies as fundamentally not good is aloneness. Twice.

Whenever I feel the pangs of envy or incompleteness in my own life, it is in community that I find relief. There is nothing that takes the wind out of the sails of resentment or wistfulness like naming your sadness and sharing it with someone else. Giving voice to feelings of loss can rob them of much of their power, or help us find new means of fulfilling our hopes.

Here’s just a low-key example: when I am busy and can just barely cover my domestic and professional commitments, I can feel envious of new projects or opportunities that other folks are able to embark upon. What always makes me feel better, though, is to (a) confess to those people that I am wildly jealous, and (b) to tell them, with all sincerity, how happy I am for the great job I know they will do. A simple exchange like that can snap me out of a blue moment a lot more effectively than sitting alone trying to reason myself out of a funk. And, sometimes, I even end up with an unexpected opportunity to play some small part in the project that so intrigued me.

This, then, is where my meanderings have taken me over the past weeks, as I have daydreamed about a world in which the people of God seek fruitfulness, not as individuals intent on their own achievements, but as a community committed to sharing its joys and its challenges. We can compete, or collaborate. We can pick holes in each other, or we can find wholeness in each other. Which do you think reflects the world God wants for us?

I invite us all in the week ahead to consider the various communities of which we are part - workplaces, family and friend groups, this parish of St. Clement’s. Where are you showing up faithfully, warts and all? Where, or with whom, might you be holding yourself at a remove or maintaining a false front that doesn’t allow you to share any feelings of sadness or loss? Are you better at showing up for others in times of joy, or times of sorrow? And might you push yourself a little to become better at both?

In the days to come, please join me in praying for all of us here in the St. Clement’s family, that we may feel this is a place to which we can bring our whole selves, our joys and our fears, our gifts and our needs. Above all, let us pray that in seeking to know each other more deeply, we may know Christ more surely, and remember that God wants none of us, ever, to feel that they are standing alone. Amen.

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Photo by Kamaji Ogino: https://www.pexels.com/photo/strong-black-man-helping-friend-to-climb-up-5064937/