Holy Cross Sermon

 It is my honor to be back here in this pulpit.  I wish Pastor Lauren a week of rest, renewal, and relaxation.  In some ways it seems like so long since I have been here and in other ways it feels like just yesterday.  I am sad that we are back to being virtual but I am glad we are staying safe and keeping each other safe.  I gotta tell you, these past few weeks have been bittersweet for sure.  My dad, who many of you met when he came to visit the last time I preached, moved from my childhood home in Virginia to a new house in Pennsylvania.  My brother started a new job.  My nephew started high school, my youngest niece started middle school.  It only took 3 days for her to text me to let me know she hates middle school already.  Of course yesterday we honored the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks that rocked our world.  In our weekly staff meetings, we are planning some super exciting things for the rest of the fall.  Things I can’t quite give details on yet but trust and believe you should be excited.  I’m excited.  This past week I celebrated 14 years of living in Northern Virginia.  I wish I could say the events that led me to Northern Virginia all went down as a neatly orchestrated process but it wasn’t.  Well, it wasn’t that way on my end at least.  After college I knew I wanted to go to seminary and I was trying to whittle the list down.  I knew whatever path I chose I would have to move.  I finally decided I would either move to North Carolina or Northern Virginia.  In the midst of my prayers for clarity, one of my friends from college jumped on her AOL instant messenger and wrote me this note: “hey, I got an internship in DC.  Wanna move with?”  And so I did.  At the time she lived near Virginia Beach and I was outside of Richmond so we shared a uhaul and drove our things to Arlington.  The apartment was in Shirlington, this cute little neighborhood with lots of “young professionals” and lots of stuff within walking distance.  But then reality set in.  The apartment was a disaster.  By the time we moved out, we had caught 14 mice.  Our neighbors didn’t like us and we had feces smeared on our door.  There was at least one attempted break in.  My roommate’s car was towed even though it shouldn’t have been but it still cost us $150 that we didn’t have.  We already couldn’t afford internet in the apartment and I found myself living off of peanut butter sandwiches and oranges.  My job turned out to be one in an extremely toxic environment and my roommate struggled to find work after her internship was over.  I am sure there were other terrible things that happened but I have done the best I can to block that time period out of my mind.  More than once we found ourselves to be a pile of tears, saying that moving here was a mistake.  And how we just wanted to go back home with our families where we could afford internet, where we got along with our neighbors, where we could afford to eat real food, and everything was familiar.

So when I read the first part of the Numbers passage, I can kind of relate to the Israelites.  Maybe you can too.  Maybe there is something you wanted so badly and when you got it, it wasn’t quite what you thought it would be.  Something that ended up being harder than you expected.  Something that seemed so God ordained but ended up being a trial.  In those moments, it is virtually impossible to not complain at least a little.  The people are so miserable that they look back on their life in slavery and remember it fondly.  Their complaints are that there is no food or water yet they are also complaining about the food they have.  Okay see I kind of get that too.  I never went hungry but I still have a hard time choking down peanut butter sandwiches.  For the Hebrews, it was the ultimate “hey, let’s get McDonald’s on our way home” and God being like “no, you have food at home” and the people saying “but I don’t want that food”.  And the food turning out to be a microwaved hot dog on sandwich bread.  Naturally the people yell at Moses and God.  And then God sends some poisonous serpents that bite people and kill them.  Wait, what?

The text doesn’t explicitly say the poisonous serpents were sent because of the complaining but it might be implied.  There seems to be some “post hoc ergo propter hoc” going on.  I think it is more likely that the people were searching for a cause of a serpent invasion.  But when the people repent, they say they sinned by speaking out against Moses and God.  If that’s enough to get one bitten by a serpent, have I got some bad news about some of the book of Psalms, some bad news for me, and probably some bad news for you.  Okay but you have to admit that if the serpents were sent as punishment, the punishment doesn’t really seem to fit the crime.  But then again God’s wisdom doesn’t quite seem to mesh with ours.  

That point is really driven home in our text from 1 Corinthians.  As I like to remind everyone every time we read a letter from Paul, we are reading someone else’s mail.  This is a specific letter written to a specific audience for a specific reason.  And because of that, it is important to put the text in context.  This letter was written to address divisions in the church.  Apparently the church in Corinth was having problems understanding that they were following Christ and not Paul or Apollos or Cephas.  They neglected to understand that there is Christ and then there are things and people that point us to Christ.  It’s like standing outside and admiring the “hot donuts now” neon sign of the Krispy Kreme but never actually going in, getting a donut, and getting that delicious hot sugar crackle in your mouth.  Sure, that neon sign looks pretty but does nothing to actually satisfy the hunger.  

Let’s actually back up to verse 17 of our Corinthians passage to see that.  Paul says “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power”.  Paul is not Jesus.  Paul is the messenger who points to Jesus.  Just like in our Numbers passage.  The bronze serpent was not the healing.  God provided the healing and the serpent pointed to God.   

But what about the cross?  Our passage from Corinthians seems to start out straightforward but of course it is not.  We can’t get past 6 words in that passage without there being a controversy.  Our translation, the NRSV, says “the message of the cross” but the RSV calls it “the word of the cross”.  Message, word… similar but different.  This word, in Greek, is logos.  Professor Alexandra Brown out of Washington and Lee University notes that “For Jews, the logos was the law and Wisdom … For Greeks, the logos signified the reason behind the cosmic order and the advances of philosophy in understanding that order.” Brown concludes, “This ‘logos of the cross’ constitutes a contradiction in terms offensive both to the reasoned and to the religious mind.”  No wonder the Corinthians had problems with unity!  But this contradiction gets to the heart of Paul’s point.  

According to Paul, the message of the cross is “foolishness to those who are perishing” and “the power of God” to those of us who are being saved.  First of all, I love that phrase “to those of us who are being saved”.  Not “those of us who were saved” or “are saved”.  No, this phrase implies that this is an ongoing process.  But if being saved is an ongoing process then so must “perishing” be also.  Which means it’s never too late to turn around.  That certainly seems like a strange move on God’s part.

The point is that God’s wisdom is totally different from ours.  Verse 25 from 1 Corinthians chapter 1 says “for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength”.  But we see this over and over again in scripture.  “The first shall be last and the last shall be first” and pretty much the entirety of Mary’s song where the poor are given good things to eat and the rich are sent away empty.  That’s what God does.  God’s wisdom elevates the lowly and knocks those on top down a few notches.  God’s wisdom chose a virgin to bear a son.  God’s wisdom pays all vineyard workers the same, whether they worked 12 hours or 1 hour.  God’s wisdom often leaves us scratching our heads.  

Because I will tell you one thing for sure.  I don’t understand the wisdom of God that allowed Jesus to die on the cross.  Which, of course, brings us to our Gospel reading of the day.  Our text includes the most popular and most quoted verse of all time.  So fitting that this passage falls on the first Sunday of regular season football.  You know, since there’s always someone holding up the John 3:16 sign in the end zone.  Everyone knows this verse.  And because of that, it’s easy to tune out what this passage is really saying.  So let’s back up a bit.  

When the gospels are translated into English, if you take Matthew, Mark and Luke, forms of the word “believe” appear 31 times.  In the Gospel of John, it appears 84 times.  84.  This is significant.  The author is suggesting that belief is a key Christian concept.  But we already knew that.  That is why we recite the creeds weekly.  Because our creeds clearly communicate what we believe.  But we aren’t the ones who this passage and this book were written for.  They were written for those who don’t know.  The ones who see this as foolish.  

The Greek word for “belief” is “pistis” or “pisteo”.  “Pisteo” is fully grounded in relationship. To “believe” is not simply a mental exercise, but “an all-embracing relationship, an attitude of love and trust in God.”  The connection between God and humanity is central to the notion of “pisteo.” The growing relationship between Jesus and the community, the signs and wonders which permeate the Gospel of John.  In all of our scriptures, God is not hands off.  This relationship is two ways.

God doesn’t remove the bad thing, God makes a way for the bad thing to be more bearable.  That’s kind of a non-specific, aggregate concept but look at Daniel in the lion’s den.  God didn’t remove Daniel or the lions, God intervened so that Daniel stayed safe.  Shadrack, Mishack, and Abednego.  God didn’t remove them from the fiery furnace.  God went into the furnace with them.  In all of these situations, our triune God interceded but still worked within the confines of relationship.  God coming in, action hero style, to save the day then swoop back up to heaven would be the antithesis of “relationship”.  Makes for good entertainment but does nothing to grow our relationship with God and with other Christians.  Because God doesn’t swoop in.  God is here and present with us just like God was present in Jesus on the cross, just like God was present during the serpent invasion, and just like God was present at the beginning of time.

Our gospel passage is actually the thing that links the Hebrew Bible text to the Gospel text.  Verse 14 of John says “and just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up”.  I don’t think this link is a coincidence either.  Because in both of these passages, God makes a way when a way seems impossible.  Whether or not you think God sent the serpents to teach the Israelites a lesson, God provided a way for people to not perish.  God could have removed the serpents.  But God chose to, instead, make a way to save those who were perishing.  And then we have the cross.  God could have had Jesus remove himself from the cross, punched all the “bad guys” to prove God’s power with an army of angels and then ridden off into the sunset on a white horse.  But instead, God made a way.  God made a way for us to not perish but to have eternal life.

The healing didn’t come from the serpent on a pole.  The serpent pole pointed to God.  Eternal life doesn’t come from the cross itself.  Eternal life came because of the cross.  The cross points us to God.  The serpent pole and the cross point to the faithfulness of God.  Because of this, I can look back on my time in that horrible apartment and know God was watching over me.  You can look back at experiences in your own life and know God was with you.  Those times when God seemed silent and distant, God was there.  Those times that seemed bleak and desolate, God was there.  Those times when it seemed like there was no way, God was already there, making a way.  Because there is nothing on this earth that we can experience that God has not already experienced.  THAT is the message that the cross points us to.  It’s the message that God loves us so much that God humbled Godself and took the form of a human.  God suffered and died and rose again.  And that is truly the best news of all time.  Amen.

A Year of Grief

 March 7 marked the 1 year anniversary of my mom's death.  I knew for a while I wanted to write about it but I was unsure what to write.  And then the days started piling up.  And here it is, almost April, and I don't think I am any closer to knowing what to write.  

I was fortunate enough to take Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off from work in order to be fully present with my dad and brother.  I can't say the day was marked by anything super special but I was able to go to church with my dad and *gasp* take communion for the first time in over a year.  I made dinner, London broil and veggies.  To be honest, most of the weekend my pervasive thought was about whether she knew her time was up.  Did she know when I talked to her that afternoon that it was our last conversation?  

It seems silly but maybe she did know.  She told me Christmas of 2018 that she thought it was going to be her last Christmas.  She told me she didn't know why she thought it but she said something was telling her that this was going to be it.  I slightly held my breath until Christmas of 2019 and when she was still around, I breathed a sigh of relief.  So maybe for 3 months she was living on borrowed time.  But maybe she did know.  

My other intrusive thought is wondering what she thought about as she died.  Because no one will ever be able to present evidence to the contrary, I choose to believe that she was dead by the time she hit the floor.  I imagine she thought about my dad, my brother, me, and probably the animals.  I do wonder if she had any other thoughts.  Did she think about regrets?  Did she think about her life?  Did she think about any deep, dark secrets?  Did she maybe have no thoughts at all and just blacked out and never regained consciousness?  Maybe she didn't know.  I understand that these thoughts are not productive because they can literally never be answered.  All they do is roll around my head like cinder blocks, crushing other thoughts and demanding my attention.  

I think with all milestones we think about what has happened in the past year.  Not just death anniversaries but birthdays, holidays, etc make us think of all that has happened in the year prior.  Since her death coincides with the beginning of the pandemic, there is much to think about.  I wonder what she would have thought of the mask mandates, the vaccine, the election, the events of January 6, the feral cats in my back yard, the houses being built in the neighborhood, my decision to not go back to school, the fact that I bought a pair of ripped jeans, the fact that I've been rocking a lot of leopard print lately, the fact that my wedding dress is shoved in a closet collecting dust, the fact that I have decided to permanently break up with the Methodist church, the fact that my nephew is almost as tall as me, the fact that my dad is now feeding a feral cat in his back yard, the fact that my place of employment has been broken into 4 times in the past 18 months and the fact that it has been over a year since I have stepped foot in my other job, the fact that I have been on antidepressants for over a year.

But the thing is, I don't really care about her opinion of those things.  To be honest, I kinda already know how she feels about those things.  What hurts is that I don't get to experience these things with her.  I don't get to get into arguments about my clothes with her anymore.  I don't get to talk about politics with her.  I don't get to hear her begging me to get married before she dies.  I don't get to make fun of her for being short.  I don't get to hear her deep sighs when I say something outrageous.  I don't get to send her photos of the dogs I meet at work.  That is what hurts.

One of my worst fears is forgetting her voice.  I don't know why I even think for a minute that I will forget, especially when I can still hear all 4 of my grandparents voices in my head.  I cried the day I realized I still had 2 of her voicemails on my phone.  I have photographs and memories (and hopefully soon a tattoo with her ashes in it).  I already know she'd be mortified by that.  But as I said before and will probably say again, "welp, you shouldn't have died on me, mom".  

I have no doubt that she is still around.  I see her in every cardinal.  I see her in those photographs.  I see her every time there is a prank pulled.  I see her in my creative lesson plans.  I see her every time I look in the mirror.  And I know she had a hand in me running into her best friend at dinner.

I was hoping this would be more eloquent but it's stream of consciousness.  Guess that's just where I am right now.  Thanks for hanging in there with me.  Thank you for the love you have given me this past year.  This year has been tough on everyone.  And for every person that reached out in big ways and small, I appreciate you.  There is no way I will ever be able to repay the kindness shown.  I just ask you to be kind to all, you never know when you are standing next to someone trying very hard not to fall apart.  

What No One Told Me

 Today is October 13, 2020.  It has been 7 months and 6 days since my momma died.  There are 19 days until All Saints Day, 24 days until my birthday, and 27 days until her first birthday in heaven.  From there, it's a sprint to Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Suffice it to say I will not be okay for a while.  

Mostly things are how I thought they would be.  I see something random and really wish I could pick up the phone and tell her about it.  Or Chris does something like tell me I am right and that he should listen to me more.  Telling my dad just doesn't have the same satisfaction.  I knew I would miss venting to her on my bad days.  Even though she thought she was bad at giving advice, she was actually quite good at it.  But what no one prepared me for was how much I want to call her on my good days.  

Life is weird right now.  If I hear the phrase "unprecedented times" one more time, I am going to scream.  And yet, that's where we are.  Life is not normal.  For me, nothing has been the same since March 7, 2020.  It is now a day that is stuck in my memory.  Mom was sick.  Had a bad cough.  Chris and I had gone to eat at one of our favorite spots in a mall.  He wanted to go to a guitar store and I didn't so I headed towards the metro and called my mom.  I was crossing the street (which was also a highway entry ramp) and I had a walk light.  A red SUV came out of nowhere and had to slam on her brakes to avoid hitting me.  I relayed this to my mom.  Soon after, we hung up and she said "maybe I'll talk to you later on tonight".  And that was the last thing she ever said to me.

I was ashamed to admit it for a while but now that I am on the other side of it, I have no problems saying that nothing felt right and for a while I wondered if the red SUV had killed me and I was the one dead.  Maybe I was living in a simulation.  

With all of the crap that has gone on in the rest of the year, this would have been a really crappy simulation.  But only sort of.  Because in the midst of these "unprecedented times", I have become really really happy.  Major shoutout to Zoloft... but also my professional life seems to be going exceedingly well.  I have landed at a church and in a denomination that loves me, recognizes my gifts, affirms me, and wrapped their loving arms around me when she died.  My pharmacy job is everything I have ever wanted too.  Today my boss sent me home 2 hours early because she thinks I am working too much and too hard.  I get to wear whatever I want AND there are dogs.  I love my coworkers at both jobs.  Like legit.  Like I hang out with them when we aren't at work.  Chris and I are still going strong.  We get on each other's nerves but I swear every day he makes me laugh out loud.  We went on a mini vacation and stumbled across an antique car show with one of the largest number of rednecks I have seen in a LONG time.  Our garden did well... ish.  Got a bunch of tomatoes and 1 squash.  So it ain't much but we learned a lot and had fun doing it.  One of my best friends is pregnant with twins after struggling with fertility.  A dear, dear friend who deserves all the happiness in the world is dating a guy who treats her so well.  Another friend adopted the cutest cat.  These certainly are unprecedented times but they are also joyous times.  And that is what I wish I could pick up the phone and tell my mom.  I wish I could tell her that for right now, things seem to be good.  The struggling to get where I am was worth it.  The days and days of me calling her, telling her I wanted to give up are gone.  She bore my burdens and sorrows as only a mom can do and her doing so was not for nothing.  The times I sobbed to her because I needed money are gone.  I am stable.  I am happy.  I just wish mom could have lived long enough to see it. 

This is what I wasn't prepared for.  This is what no one told me.  I just want her to know it worked out.  But I can't.  More than telling her about my bad days, I wish I could tell her about my good days.  Lord knows she and I waited long enough for this moment to come around.  And yes, I believe she is now a part of the "cloud of witnesses" and can see it but nothing beats a mom hug and being able to tell her in person.  

If I Were A Rich Girl

This is probably not heading where you think it is.  I wrote my mother’s obituary and it appeared in the Richmond Times Dispatch and the Mechanicsville Local.  When I talked to the paper they asked me if I wanted them to send a copy of their pricing guidelines and I said no, that it didn’t matter.  I basically knew what I wanted to write.  I wasn’t going to go crazy overboard but I also wasn’t going to skimp.  That simple obituary cost me $478.  I don’t regret it, not for one moment.  I have some feelings about obituaries being classified as “ads” but I digress... I understand why they make it cost prohibitive.  Otherwise we would have novels for obituaries. But how do you summarize someone’s life in just a few, short lines?  So here are some of the stories and details I would have put in her obituary if I were a rich girl.

My mom was a dancer.  She took a lot of dance classes when she was young.  My grandmother worked in a car dealership and my grandpa was a coal miner.  My grandma sewed a lot of the dance costumes to save on the cost of dance classes for my mom.  School was never really her thing.  According to my dad, she just didn’t feel like doing the work.  (I may or may not have been worried he got me and my mom confused in that moment but...) She moved to (possibly) New York (dad can’t exactly remember and I am not sure I ever knew) to be a flight attendant.  She didn’t make it through flight attendant school, she said it wasn’t for her.  She left there to be a typist for the CIA.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my momma worked for the CIA.  She worked for them during the race riots in DC.  She told me she remembers bomb sniffing dogs having to inspect the buses before anyone was allowed to get on one.  She remembered watching some of the city burn from her building.  Which, oddly enough, brings me to how my parents met.

My dad was working at a drug store in Northern Virginia.  It also had a 100 seat cafeteria.  My mom was a frequent customer there though she had not seen my dad.  She was in her secret floor when she looked out and noticed the air conditioner on the roof of the drug store was on fire.  She called down to the store and my dad answered.  My mom always told me she thought he sounded cute but my dad recently relayed the opposite, that he thought she sounded nice.  Maybe it was both.  But he told my mom to introduce herself the next time she was in there and he would buy her lunch.  So I guess that was their first “date”?  But soon after, my dad took her over into Georgetown for a proper first date.  He went into work the next day and told his employees that he was gonna marry her.  It is unclear to me what happened in the months between that date and when they got married.  Both of my parents are extremely tight lipped about the engagement story.  I can only assume it was something sexual and gross that I don’t want to know about.  This fact (that my parents won’t tell how it went down) was brought out at the meeting with the pastor to plan mom’s service.  My brother had no idea.  But anyway, one other thing that was brought up at the planning of the service was the fact that my parents always had good communication. When they were dating, my parents would sit on the balcony of my dad’s apartment and just talk for hours.  Often my mom would look at her watch and say “oh crap it’s 2am!”

In any event, my parents were married in Arlington Temple UMC in Arlington on April 14, 1973.  They lived in Seminary Towers Apartments.  My dad’s former boss kept trying to get him to move to Richmond but because of my mom’s job, he declined.  One day my mom came home from work and calmly said to my dad that they had 2 choices.  Move to Richmond or move to Turkey.  Mom had been with the agency 5 years and they said it was time to move her.  Of course she declined and they moved to Richmond.  They lived in a townhouse on the West End because they weren’t sure they would like the town.  They decided to settle in Mechanicsville.  The doctors told my mom she wouldn’t have kids so they bought a tiny house on Fullview Ave in downtown Mechanicsville.  It had all the space they needed and it allowed them to pursue their love of going to the beach often.  They paid $29,000 for that house and were told they were “crazy” for spending that much on a house in Mechanicsville.  At some point, my dad became a paramedic with East Hanover Volunteer Rescue Squad and my mom became a dispatcher.

My brother was born in 1980 and then I was born in 1984.  It became clear that the little house on Fullview wasn’t going to work any more.  They decided to build a house which is the house mom died in.  They had requested a bay window in the front but the builder didn’t think my parents would get the financing so the builder went with what the other couple interested in buying the house wanted: two windows in the living room and not a bay window.  Once my brother and I were born, my mom took odd jobs around town but never held anything really steady.  She devoted her life to us and dad.  I have a lot of fond memories of my mom picking us up from the bus stop and taking us to McDonalds or we’d come home and there would be a scavenger hunt waiting for us.  Mom was really creative and she had a lot of talents that she kept hidden.  Some of my fondest memories of her were when she took me and Cory to Kings Dominion.  She had an adventurous spirit, she rode the scary rides with me.  One fateful day in particular, she convinced me to ride Diamond Falls with her.  She had no idea (or so she said) that the drop at the end was so steep.  I was so scared and she just rolled with laughter (and apologized).  She also chaperoned my chorus trip to Disney.

Speaking of choir, she was a huge music fan.  She played saxophone in the marching band and even appeared in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade when she was in high school.  We definitely didn’t agree on most music.  She loved Big Band and Van Halen.  There really wasn’t anything in between.  She also loved NASCAR for reasons unknown to me.  She also loved animals.  She never met a dog she didn’t like.  She was always taking care of stray animals too.

In the coming weeks and months I am sure more and more memories will come flooding back.  And I will do my best to write them all.  It’s cathartic and I want to remember it all.  Thanks to the Coronavirus I have plenty of time to write and reflect.  But for now, that is chapter 1 of my momma.

Cry and the Whole World Cries With You

I know that’s not the saying, it’s supposed to be “laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone”.  But there is something interesting about grief when the entire world shuts down.  Tongue in cheek, my mom *would* die right in the midst of a global pandemic.  That way everyone has to stop and mourn her.  I’ve been thinking about this for the past few days.  Part of me is glad that life is different right now and the other part of me is scared shitless.

I am fortunate to have experienced relatively low levels of grief in my life.  Everyone has died in order and my grandparents died in their 80s.  But one thing I know about grief is how freaking hard it is when people are just walking around, living their lives when for you, time is standing still.  Laughter is piercing because you are falling apart inside and everyone else is living like they have no cares in the world.  You want to scream at everyone that they need to be more sensitive to you and your grief but you also know how insane that sounds.

But for now, the world is feeling what I am feeling.  Grief, uncertainty, anxiety.  There is no more “normal”.  As time goes on we will adjust to the new normal.  And truth to tell, I am not sure whether I find comfort or discomfort in all of this.

The Things I Said to My Dead Mother

I hope to God that this is the most morbid post I ever make.  8 days ago my mother dropped dead of a probably massive heart attack.  My brother was with his daughter at the father daughter dance and my dad had run to the store to pick up dinner and came home and found her on the floor.  The paramedics worked on her for 30 minutes and never got her pulse back.  I was at home with Chris when my dad called.  Time stood still.  I don’t enjoy reliving the trauma of that night but I want to preserve these memories.  I never in a million years thought that I would be burying my mom when I was 35.  She had me at 38.  She didn’t even live long enough for me to get to the age she was when I was born.  I had just talked to her a few hours before.  She had a cold but other than that she was normal.  In some ways I take comfort in that. As hard as it is, I am reminding myself that I didn’t have to see her deteriorate any more than she had.  I never had an experience where she didn’t know who I was.  I never had to make tough medical choices for her.  I didn’t have to worry about bankrupting myself or any other family members by having to have around the clock care for her.  But with that said, this really, really, really sucks.  The corona virus is spreading, things are uncertain, and all I want to do is talk to my mom.

One of the things that hurt the most is that I didn’t get to say goodbye.  We met with the funeral home on Monday.  The guy had a confederate flag lapel pin and a Hampden Sydney College coffee mug.  I thought to myself that I could not possibly hate this man more than I currently did.  I will think you kindly to refrain from telling me how you feel about the confederate flag, that is not the point of my post.  He offered to write my mom’s obituary and I quick, fast, and in a hurry said I would.  Even without the pin and the mug, I still would have a lot of feelings about someone who had never met my mom writing her obituary.  He asked if any of us wanted to be present when she was cremated.  I stayed quiet because I was worried that would be my only chance to see her.  But as it turns out, we had to “identify the body”.  We all broke down when we saw her.  My dad and my brother didn’t want to stay.  They wanted to remember her as she was.  And I certainly don’t fault them for that.  I pulled up and chair and sat by her.  Of course she didn’t look exactly like my mom, she was bloated and discolored but she was still my mom.  Sitting with her was one of the hardest things I have ever done but I am so glad I did it.  Again, that is not a slight to my dad or brother.  It is just that for me it brought some closure and for me, it was the right thing to do.  As best I can remember, I am going to write the things I said to her.

Hi Mommy.  You look so peaceful there.  Your hair looks good so I know you’d be excited by that.  I’m sorry for the way I’m dressed.  I can hear you now “is that really what you’re wearing?!” Ariel came and helped me pack and I didn’t think to pack anything that wasn’t lounge clothes or a dress.  And if you had such a strong opinion on my clothes, you shouldn’t have died on me.  Fuck.  Sorry for my language. But you Really have no one else to blame for that other than you.  I wasn’t ready for you to go and I know you probably are sitting there saying “huh. Tell me about it”.  It doesn’t feel real.  It just looks like you are sleeping and will wake up at any moment.  I am not sure how I am supposed to go on.  I am not sure how to carry on without you.  I’m not ready to be motherless.  I don’t know what I am supposed to do with all the love I have for you.  Where do I put it?  Who do I call multiple times a day?  Who do I send photos of roadside potatoes to?  I told Andie.  She’s beside herself.  We all are.  Chris drove me down.  He’s a good guy, momma.  I definitely lucked out there.  I know you did the best you could.  You were a good mom.  And now that I work every day and come home, I totally understand why you got mad when we didn’t take the chicken out of the freezer or clean while you were gone.  I know your main concern is daddy.  I promise to take care of him.  I know you worry about him and truth to tell, I do too.  But I will take care of him and make sure he’s ok.  He’s got a good support system.  And I do too.  We are going to go on without you but I don’t want to.  I never imagined the when we talked on Saturday and I was almost hit by that car that that would be our last conversation.  There’s so much I wanted to know about you and now I will never get that chance.  I know you always thought less of yourself because you didn’t go to college but I will tell you the truth, you are one of the smartest people I ever met.  And I mean that.  Shit momma. Why did you have to go now?  I am really not ready for this.  I could sit here all day and talk to you but I guess I should probably get going.  Save me a seat in heaven and when I get there, we will judge people’s outfits.  I love you mommy.

Sabbath as Privilege

This past week, the Reverend Howard-John Wesley of Alfred Street Baptist Church made a bold confession from the pulpit: that he was tired and felt distant from God.  He even noted that most people think that working in a church means you are good with God.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  And as a result, after Christmas he will be taking a sabbatical until Easter.  A lot of clergy and church folks shared his message on Facebook, me being one of them.  I, and scores of other pastors, applauded Wesley’s honesty and vulnerability.  Too often clergy are supposed to have that stiff upper lip and pretend that everything is ok.  That is one of the reasons that only 1 in 10 pastors stay in the business long enough to retire from it.  The clergy depression rate is astounding.  I fully support Wesley and appreciate his bringing this to light.

One of my clergy friends posted this article and another clergy friend wondered if this was a unique problem to clergy or whether other professions have the same problem.  I know this is also the case with the pharmacy industry.  I could go on and on about what is happening in that industry but that’s not the point.  The point is that my friend’s point got me thinking: sabbath is a privilege.

We agree that the idea of sabbath is a good one.  God even mandated it in the 10 commandments.  But let’s be real.  Revered Wesley is taking a sabbatical because he can afford to.  I am not arguing whether he deserves it, because 11 straight years of pastoring a church that welcomes roughly 4,500 people a week is unfathomable to me, he definitely deserves it.  I am arguing that he is only doing so because he can afford it.  And not just him.  I know several senior pastors who have done the same.  And they all do it because they can afford it.  Large churches can afford to pay the pastor their regular salary and pay those who will be filling in.  Many churches cannot afford this.  And this is going to be an important conversation as more and more churches are unable to pay pastors and pastors move to being bi-vocational.  Speaking from the experience of being a part time church worker, many churches are not prepared to deal with this.

At the last church I worked for, I was asked to go on a mission trip.  I was salaried to work 25 hours a week.  I inquired to my boss how this was going to work.  Do I get overtime?  What do I do about my lost wages at my other job?  Because that too was a part time job and no work = no pay.  Funny how not too long after that, I was invited to no longer work there.  And I never did get a clear answer on how much time I get off.  But they aren’t atypical.  Many churches don’t have clear policies for part time employees. But even with crystal clear policies, church support staff are often overlooked when it comes to vacations and sabbaticals.  I know at least one person will argue that folks get vacations.  But a vacation is not a sabbath or sabbatical.  When you have family, especially little kids, vacations are spent going to theme parks, visiting relatives, seeing things.  It is not a dedicated week to renewal, finding inner peace, or professional development.

This is not a complaint against any church I worked for or currently work for.  This is a plea for church leaders to take in account that they are not the only tired ones.  And to acknowledge that sabbath and sabbatical are privilege.  Once we acknowledge this, we can have honest conversations about changing this.  Because we all deserve a real and true break.