Dr Greg Morgan
I can’t do the voice but keep remembering lines from Prince’s 1984 hit Let’s go crazy: 1
Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today
To get through this thing called life
Electric word life it means forever and that's a mighty long time…
Electric word: life. It feels a mighty long year already, these last six to seven months.
It’s tiring. Everything is about COVID-19. News updates, the daily cases, the longing to travel again, evolving advice, conflicting rumours and concerns.
I recently read ‘Your “Surge Capacity” is depleted – it’s why you feel awful’ 2 written by a science journalist. ‘Surge capacity’ refers to mental and physical adaptations we use to get through an upheaval. For example, a health service responding rapidly when disaster strikes. Different processes come into play, just for that time of emergency.
But the COVID-19 emergency goes on and on and on. We face ‘indefinite uncertainty.’ Cultures that value achievement do not cope well with ambiguous loss. Life feels shapeless and uncertain. Who knows the timeframe here? Science is tracking the pandemic for evidence and trends that we so want to hear as certainty.
- The article offers wisdom for getting through these times:
- Accept that life is different right now
- Expect less from ourselves and be realistic about our circumstances
- Recognise the different aspects of grief
- Experiment with ‘both-and’ thinking: ‘This is terrible and many people are sick AND this is also a time for our families to stay in touch as much as we can.’
- Look for activities that fulfil us – old and new hobbies, interests or skills; bake! sew!
- Focus on maintaining and strengthening important relationships
- Develop our resilience in small ways every day – build up a resilience bank account. Sleep, good eating, exercise, meditation, gratitude, saying no sometimes.
I’ve shuffled that list to reflect a faith perspective:
- Nothing stands still in life, never has – living involves change and ultimately death; poets always knew that – in past centuries they wrote about ‘mutability’
- Life is where we get to discover ourselves and understand what constrains and liberates us
- Grief is part of life; bottling it up hurts us
- Binary, black and white thinking has been too dominant in western culture and inflicts more hurt than we realise (that’s another sermon)
- We live in the now and we look ahead – we cannot control the pandemic, but we certainly learn new things: joy pops up in surprising places: in gardening, finishing a jigsaw, seeing the video of a grandchild
- The ultimate relationship is with the Divine; our unique self within the Allness of the cosmos. That is definitely another sermon
- Life is not lived in some future heaven over yonder; it is in the everyday now that we use our energy and replenish our resources.
It’s all good advice. Yet truthfully, we are tired. We thought we knew stuff. Does the gospel help us now?
Earlier in Matthew, Peter acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Jesus named Peter as the foundation of a new kind of community that would practise insight and discernment, ‘binding and loosing.’ But now Peter is afraid that Jesus will suffer.
Any risk has a cost. Sometimes there’s a cost to not doing something, too. Jesus is emphatic that he will not be distracted from his life’s purpose. Peter wants to rescue him. Jesus is determined he will not stumble.
Jesus didn’t claim to be an exception. He was a teacher, a way shower. He showed his disciples what he was about.
- ‘follow me,’ he says, and in John’s gospel -
- ‘For I have set you an example that you should also do as I have done to you’
- ‘Come and see.’
Joy Cowley writes, ‘Whoever we are or wherever we are, this always is his invitation to us - come and see.’ 3
Come and see that life is both fragile and resilient. We must take care of our physical and emotional selves, yes. Right now we protect others from infection by spatial distancing and face-coverings. That’s kindness. At the same time, it’s healthy to open our hearts, to know and love ourselves into action and to be more connected than ever. We can do that in little ways, in moments of stillness and prayer; in acts of friendship. By making a choice.
‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.’
Following Jesus means doing it. Stepping forward, one action at a time. We don’t have to be perfect; we just do what we can to stretch into possibility. To try something new. To prioritise relationships.
To count our blessings when we can see ourselves being even a little bit resilient.
And how shall we respect others in a world that is both abundant and unjust? That was a question for Jesus. It is a question for us.
The mystic theologian Meister Eckhart said: ‘God is the newest thing there is, the youngest thing there is. God is the beginning and if we are united to God, we become new again.’ God is always newness.
Your thoughts are what you are thinking. Your thoughts do not define you. Fear does not. The pandemic cannot define us. Even though the other day a friend wrote to me that she was organising a church event, COVID willing. We used to say God willing!
Please try to observe how you feel today. We start right there. Feeling unsettled is understandable. Notice it. Sit with it. Then, when we’re ready, we’ll reach forward into the discovery of ourselves and the newness we’re so ready for.
There’s a lovely prayer by Reverend William Sloane Coffin. 4 I pray it for you, friends:
May God give you the grace never to sell yourself short;
Grace to risk something big for something good; and
Grace to remember the world is now
too dangerous for anything but the truth and
too small for anything but love. Amen.
Electric word: life. Hear the invitation into that energy and vibration of deepening relationship with I AM WHO I AM. Into the potential wherein each of us is a unique gift. Into love itself.
I remind us that wherever we are, God is. And all is well. So it is.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXJhDltzYVQ
2. Tara Haelle: https://elemental.medium.com/your-surge-capacity-is-depleted-it-s-why-you-feel-awful-de285d542f4c
3. Come and See (Pleroma Christian Supplies, 2008)
4. http://gracebrunswick.org/blessings.html