Scripture: Luke 17: 20-26
A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more… Come to us, Holy and Mystical One. Come to us in our exhaustion. Come to us in our grief. Come to us in this time, in this place. Amen.
Throughout the pandemic lockdown, and when George Floyd was murdered… and Duante Wright…. And Amir Locke… and as Ashley’s mother was dying…. And as I’ve sat with my mom in the hospital and TCU…. Throughout all of it, Maggie and I walk every morning. It’s pretty much the same route: out our front door and toward Minnehaha Creek. When we get to the Creek, we go over a small bridge and then walk along the Creek until it gets to Lake Hiawatha where we turn and walk toward Lake Nokomis. When we get to Lake Nokomis, we turn and walk along the lake until we get to 50th Street where we turn up and stop at Nokomis Beach Café. After pretty much the same thing every morning, we walk home through the neighborhood.
There is something about the ritual of this… the liturgy of the same place… that blesses me. Whether it is 25 below zero or 90 degrees, we walk. Whether it is raining or snowing or a picture-perfect day, we walk. And each day, whatever the world has presented us with gets breathed out and we step into a different rhythm, a different energy. And for the hour or so, we notice how God is seeking to hold, to sustain, to delight and to amaze. Like, just a few weeks ago, when it seemed as if the whole world turned green between our walks one day and the next.
There’s something about our walking liturgy that reminds me that on a cellular level, I am connected with all in God’s creation and all is imbued with God’s spirit. This week, on the day I heard about the massacre in Uvalde, it was the aroma of lilacs that stopped me in my tracks and made me close my eyes and breathe in.
[pause]
For the last few weeks, we’ve been reading portions of John’s gospel that are all included in what is known as Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. You might recall that Jesus is with the disciples, gathered for their last shared meal and he’s teaching them for the last time. The whole Farewell Discourse is four chapters long and this morning’s text that Susan read is at the very end of his goodbye teaching and it’s structured as a prayer.
In the New Revised Standard Version translation, the heading for the very next section is The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus. So, this text we read was Jesus’ fervent prayer to support the disciples in getting through the deep suffering, pain and grief that was about to come.
And I find it moving that, in the face of all the horrors the Roman Empire was perpetrating, Jesus prays that the disciples have a deep, mystical sense of their connection to him and to God.
…that they may all be one, as you, Abba/Em, are in me and I in you; I pray that they may be one in us… that they may be one, as we are one- I in them, you in me…
We have lived through a deeply difficult last few years… the last over-two years of the pandemic and over a million deaths in the United States. So much cruelty of the Trump Administration… the death of George Floyd and Daunte Wright and Amir Locke (and Jamar Clark and Philando Castile before them)… Elizabeth’s death and Elly’s death and Linda’s. And then there’s Buffalo, NY… and this week, Uvalde, TX…
Today, we are going to spend some time in a ritual of Re-membering those who’ve died. We’re going to lament the ways that Empire still seeks to crush… We’re going to hold one another in ritual and liturgy.
And as we do so, I invite us to re-member that death is never the end. That violence is never the final answer. That systems that seek to separate us are lies. Instead, our ritual helps us re-member, too, that Abba/Em is woven throughout creation, was poured out in Jesus and walked the earth. And Abba/Em is in the aroma of lilac bushes and gentle rainfall… and in the greening earth and flowing waters. And Abba/Em is in each of us and all of us—those of us gathered here and those who have gone before us.
We are going to take some time now to re-member those who have died, and to name those places for which we cry out, with Rachel, in lament.
If you are here in the worship space and would like to come up and place a picture on the communion table or an artifact and light a candle, please do so and name who or what it is that you are praying for.
If you are online, I invite you to unmute yourself and speak, and I will light a candle for you.
After each name is called, I invite us to respond, “We remember you.”
If it is a prayer of lament, I will say, “God in your mercy” and you are invited to say, “hear our prayer.”
At the end:
May our re-membering, our lament, our crying out to you, Oh, God, remind us of your prayer for us:
…that they may all be one, as you, Abba/Em, are in me and I in you; I pray that they may be one in us… that they may be one, as we are one- I in them, you in me…
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