If you ever find yourself sitting with a scripture passage on suffering, do not at any point during your reflection on that scripture passage think that you are not in a place where you relate to the passage.
The Holy Spirit is always listening.
This past week has been filled with evening trips out to The Land working to prepare the property for the thirty-five Annual Conference participants who choose that as the destination for Friday afternoon’s Immersion Experience. Beginning last Sunday evening three or four of us would gather out at The Land to lay down rope marking the pathways that would make up the labyrinth we plan to one day use as a gathering place for spiritual reflection and agricultural practice.
Riding home with Ron Skarka on Monday night, I confessed that I had been praying that the City of Aurora would get back to us during Annual Conference with the news that they had approved our Contextual Site Plan Submittal. This was our third submission and while we didn’t think it was likely we would hear back from the City so quickly we did feel cautiously optimistic that we would receive a letter of approval even if it contained caveats and conditions.
Friday afternoon we set up the tents, tables, and chairs. Our team welcomed the Annual Conference guests which included a visit from Bishop Karen Oliveto. We fed them lunch and split them up into different work groups; one laying the circles of the labyrinth, one connecting the paths between the circles, and one painting prayer rocks that would laid along the roped off pathways.As I walked with the team laying out the circles I pulled out my phone to check for missed calls or urgent text messages and saw that an email had come in. My heart stopped and speed up all at once as I recognized the senders address being from the city of aurora. I held my breath, smiling, already praising God for answered prayers as I read the email requesting that we make just a few more revisions and submit once more.
I didn’t know why God would do this to me but I was very certain that I was not that desperate for a sermon illustration this morning.
I wanted to throw my hammer and start crying but having a tantrum like a two-year-old seemed like a poor tactic for someone trying to build energy and excitement around a new ministry so I do what we all do when the setting requires it and I swallowed my sadness.
Of course, the thing about swallowing sadness is that it doesn’t exactly go away. It waits for you. And so, that evening my husband was the sole attendee (slash hostage) to the release of all I had held in earlier that afternoon. It was at this party (slash hostage situation) that these verses from Romans became a gift which upon opening made a new sort of sense.
“And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us…”
Suffering. Defined as the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.
Like anything worth doing, The Land has often felt like walking in cement as it dries. And I have been afraid of suffering. Pain has been a signal to move on, to avoid, to ignore. Discomfort has been a signal of failure or incompetence. I have questioned just how hard it should be to plant God’s seeds in the deep soil of this earth. And I have looked at my watch, and stomped my feet, and shook my head, and waved my arms, and screamed to the sky, and slept on it, and worked through the night, and tried again at the rising of the silent sun.
Endurance. Defined as the power of enduring an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way.
I am confident I would have wandered off by now if not for those who have visited me and those who have decided that where I stand is the place in which they wish to stay. I have watched friends move to new churches, transfer to different conferences, transition into new careers all while I have stood waiting on this piece of property we call The Land. I have stood on The Land in one spot for years and welcomed more emotions in that place than there are names to describe.
Character. Defined as features that make up and distinguish an individual.
I have become, I am becoming, who I am to be because of the spot in which I stand. I have dug into the decay of an institution and held vigil for the delicate cracks creating space for new life. I have run into the walls of systems and built underground tunnels. I have been ignored, avoided, and discounted. I have been lifted and left behind. In this spot where I still stand, I have grown more sharp and reserved, patient and humble. I have softened my soul and toughened my skin. I have seen the sunset beyond the mountains and served bread out in a field and heard my voice rise steady and strong in room after room of curious strangers.
So, I wonder. I wonder where you stand this morning? I wonder who has come alongside you and later drifted off? Who has come alongside you and never left? I wonder why you stay where you stand? And where you hope this stand will take you? What you hope this waiting will welcome. Or if you wander? Alone or in pairs? In groups? Still searching for that place worth the waiting?
You can come stand with me. In the Path. Or on The Land. I’ll make you a place at the table. I’ll be your shade in the sun. You can stand with Don. In Kenya or on Committees. With Kate in VBS or Sunday School. You can stand in this place or in some other. For years, or days, or minutes. You can stand with sun-burnt skin, shaky knees, and sore souls. Wherever you stand for however long in whatever way Discipleship is birthed in standing in a world that demands us to wander.
I changed the words to the Scripture. That’s how it made sense. Not the whole passage. Just four words in the last verse, “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” It wasn’t the suffering of a long, frustrating City process that brought the scripture to life for me. It was the fear of what that long, frustrating City process said about me and the suffering that was caused by embracing a mortal truth in place of an eternal reality.
“But God proves his love for me that while I still was a failure Christ stood with me.”
Failure. The grossest, most repulsive thing I can think of being. You have one too. The name that sits just behind each decision you make, each conversation you have. The thing you have spent your whole life desperately trying not to be. It might be a comfortable discomfort but it’s there. It’s not about that name anyway, that label, it’s about what it represents, what peaks out from behind it, the threat that you are unworthy.But God stands with you while you are still …Fat, Old, Lazy, Scattered, Young, Loser, Poor, Ugly, Single, Boring, Stupid… Whatever label there is sitting in your shadow haunting you…
God stands with you while you are still… THAT… that unthinkable thing you have been believing you might be and hiding from, racing from. God sees it and shows up and stands right next to you. God shows up.
God stands with.
If we can just stand still.
Hope. Defined as to want something to happen or be true.
A longing to know where we stand in this place. Maybe in some moments, just the knowing that we have a place to stand. A safe space to rest.
To know that wherever we stand and for however long, that we will never stand alone.
To stand strong in the emotional hailstorm of all that we are not and to embrace the beloved child of God that we are as the storm passes on. This, this, is where hope leads. Not down a road or up a mountain or through a valley but right here, wherever you are, to stand still long enough to let God catch up and remind you who you are, Beloved Child of God. Amen.
