The Way of Disorientation
(Free Version)- Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost- Exodus 3:1-15; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28
Find this week’s readings here. As always, you can read our more extensive notes on these readings (4-5 page and 11-15 page options) here.
One of the great challenges in times of disorientation in our lives is facing the temptation to avoid the disorientation, avoid the pain altogether. We numb our pain with substances or activities that make us feel better temporarily but don’t actually do anything to help us. We often refuse to feel our feelings, or we blame ourselves or others and we get stuck.
One of the leading scholars in the field of grief is David Kessler. He says, for the person who is stuck in grief, you have to start with your feelings. You have to feel your feelings. One illustration of this is found in the nature of buffalos. When a storm comes, buffalos don’t run away. They run into the storm. Why? They instinctively know that the quickest way through the storm is through it. When you try to avoid, run from, or stuff pain, it doesn’t get dealt with. As you feel those feelings, the intensity and frequency will change. Things will shift.1
Our Old Testament reading is the story of God speaking to Moses through a burning bush (Exodus 3:1-15). We remember that Moses has run from something: seeing his people oppressed, his own guilt, shame, and fear from the murder he committed. Some in our congregations may feel like Moses at the beginning of the reading. We feel disoriented, numb, spending our time just trying to get through the next day of our equivalent of shepherding. We are afraid, insecure, hurt, struggling with issues of identity: where do I fit? Who am I in the broader world? The problems of our household seeming overwhelming, let alone the problems of the world!
Today my prayer is that we would know the God who is present. He cares about you and he cares about the oppression of the world. He is who He is, and he is whatever is needed in a given situation. You can’t fill in the blanks which would define Him because he’s bigger than definition. Yet, because of his love for his people, he hears our cry. He will give each of us everything that we need.
Our epistle reading (Romans 12:9-21) focuses on the call to love in very specific situations: when we’ve been legitimately harmed, oppressed, or harassed. We all struggle with division and discord in our families, our workplaces, our churches, our neighborhoods, and our broader world. We are living in anger, struggling to live at peace with those we disagree with or those who have hurt us. Many of the people we encounter each day are like little tinderboxes, ready to explore at the smallest spark.
It is amazing how God works in the midst of pain, in our weakness. It is often said that “Helping is healing.” God often allows our care for the needs others to be a part of our healing process. It gives us perspective, allowing us to see the world differently. This is true in how God called Moses and in what Paul says.
It is important to remember who we are. We are not beholden to a political tribe or any other partisan outfit. We are the people of God! “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
In our gospel reading (Matthew 16:21-28), Jesus tells his disciples that he will undergo suffering. Peter reacts strongly, refusing to allow even for the possibility. We all, like Peter, want Jesus to live up to our expectations. We want the victory and believe that suffering should be a reality for ourselves or for the ones we love. We want to shortcut suffering and sacrifice. And yet, Christ’s suffering is at the heart of gospel. So, we do not need to be afraid of suffering, of weakness, of loss. Because saving and finding are in the losing. It is only in losing our lives (our expectations, our plans, our other identities) that we truly find them.
Poet and farmer Wendell Berry writes,
The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
that the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
descending in the dark? 2
David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, (New York: Scribner, 2019).
Wendell Berry, “The Man Born to Farming” The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 1998).