Hoku ala (left) and Stella enjoying an afternoon nap, September 2013.
It feels like God is present in cozy places, lovely locations, sweet forest glades of serenity and contentment. I have old photos of our dogs napping on the sumptuous couch, rolled into perfect, tidy cinnamon rolls, tails tucked, eyes fast shut. Surely God is there. I sometimes rest beautifully myself, snug under heavy blankets in a room that is just a little too cold, and I feel delicious sleep returning for an extra hour and a half of rest in the still, solemn hours around a winter sunrise. Surely God is there. We ask God for moments like these. We plead to God for healing, peace, comfort, support.
I am planning a staff retreat for mid-January, but it was originally going to be in Advent, and in my first notions about what we would do, I thought maybe we would talk about what we long for most deeply, Advent being (among other things) a season of longing. So I then asked myself, “What do you really long for?” And the answer came: I long for six straight weeks of normal, even boring, church life and personal life, everyone doing fine, everyone coming and going without event or trouble, everyone yawning a little more than usual, and basically nothing happening. A little bird hops by my office window. And then we enjoy six more weeks of the same thing, after that. Surely God would be there!
(God would be everywhere in that loveliness, but especially in the bird.)
It feels like God is absent in all the awful places, all the awful experiences that give rise to this longing for normalcy within me. God is present when two canine cinnamon rolls nap their afternoon away on a plush couch. But it feels like God is absent when those same dogs are in the Death Room at the vet clinic. You may know this room. It’s the only one in the place with softer lighting and no diagnostic equipment. It feels like God is absent when the veterinary technician brings your dog back into the room, and your dog is calm but not napping: he is drugged and looks deeply unhappy. He actually is just delirious and out of his mind with lovely drugs, but you can’t help projecting your own grief onto him. He is about to be euthanized. He looks sad. And God is there? Really? (Yes: God is in the veterinary technician.)
It feels like God is absent when my sleep is interrupted by who knows what, a bad dream, the wrong room temperature, the jalapeño I ate last night, a worry about something I can’t fix. It feels like God is absent when a beloved friend and member of Grace dies, or falls ill, or watches one whom they love suffer. It feels like God is absent when we continue to be separated and muted by this damn pandemic, and we feel we’ll run out of Greek letters before we run out of these pestilential virus variants. It feels like God is absent when the evils of white supremacy and patriarchy continue to course through our cultures, damaging every single one of us. It feels like God is absent when we open the main page of the New York Times and see a photo of the blighted landscape of northeast Brazil, Earth’s newest desert — the day before, Times reporters told us about the troubled people working in the cobalt mines of Congo — and we wonder how on earth (literally, how on earth) God could be present in a time when this planet seems to be enduring systemic trauma.
Yet it is here, just here, in all places but particularly here, here in this awful room in the vet clinic, here in this night of sleepless agitation, here in this community so troubled with grief, here in this divided and damaged nation and world: here walks and preaches John the Baptizer, telling us that God is here, and God is coming here more fully in the future. God has always appeared most powerfully, most viscerally, most awfully, most mercifully, in the wilderness places. The freed slaves barrel into the desert and immediately run out of food: but God is there, in fire and cloud, raining food down from the heavens. The prophet Elijah visits a widow and her son in a time of drought, and rather than starve to death in their sad little hut, the trio discovers that God is there, present in the bottomless store of flour and oil that gives them enough bread to eat. The exiles in Babylon mourn, even as they are allowed to return home, because the way home is hilly and dangerous, and their home in Jerusalem has (like them!) changed in their absence; but the prophet Isaiah assures them that God will meet them right there in that wilderness, and God will level the mountains and raise the valleys, making their return journey smooth.
God has always appeared most powerfully, most viscerally, most awfully, most mercifully, in the wilderness places.
What is your wilderness place?
For some, it is a place of disease and illness, maybe a physical one, or a mental one, or the illness of substance abuse, yours or your loved one’s. For some it is a diseased or dying relationship, or marriage. For some it is the dull despair of one setback after another, the drip-drip-drip of daily trauma. For some it is the pain of growing up, or growing old, or simply growing out of the spiritual clothing that used to fit, but now is too small and tight to offer warmth and protection in a winter of discontent. For some it is the loss of access to all feeling, a kind of numbness that blunts the tip of the sword, but doesn’t prevent the sword’s plunge. Perhaps you are staggering under the weight of grief, but you’re afraid even to mention it because everybody else is in grief too, so you tell yourself you can hang in there a while longer.
What is your wilderness place?
In August of 1997, I packed all of my possessions and moved west from Minneapolis to Tacoma, eager to start a new chapter of life. I shared a truck with a friend, and we stayed with his parents for a while when we arrived. At the end of our first evening in the Northwest, I felt sick. I was exhausted. My head was aching. I was heartsick too: I wanted to make this move, but it was scary, I felt lonely, and everything was strange and new. I asked if I could lay down on the bed for a while, and made my way to the guest room. My friend came in to check on me, but moments later his mother stepped in and dismissed him, saying, “I will take care of this.”
Her name was Alice, and she had spent her adult life as a mother and as the wife of a good Lutheran pastor. Alice sat at my bedside and slowly began massaging my shoulders. She instinctively knew that questions are stressful, so she asked me no questions. She just occasionally made small, soothing comments as she gave me a shoulder massage. “You surely are exhausted,” she said. “You’ve driven so far, and with all your things. You miss your family. You are anxious about what’s coming next, even if you’re also excited about it. You surely are exhausted.” She would pause here and there, allowing holy silence to assist her in her ministrations to me, in this act of anointing the sick, which honored my body and spirit as if she were a priest bearing consecrated healing oil to my sickbed.
I slept. I awakened the next morning and drank many cups of Alice’s searingly-strong coffee. I was restored.
This is God in the wilderness: the minister who comes to you with acts of healing and simple yet powerful companionship. The Grace member who hears that our sibling Carol has fallen ill, and immediately signs up to walk her dogs. The other Grace member who brings an orchid plant for my office, and helps me keep it alive, a sign of Easter resurrection right there on my work table. The leaders here who balance our books and secure our organizational health and tend our gardens and dream about our future. The good people here who hold our sick in prayer, and pray with grieving families, and prepare meals for hungry neighbors, and call to our attention the needs, concerns, and hopes of the whole world.
God is coming soon, most powerfully, most viscerally, most awfully, most mercifully, in the wilderness places. Do not overlook the many acts of kindness and generosity that you see happening in the wilderness: do not underestimate or dismiss them. They are acts of tremendous power. They are done with the help of God. They make the desert bloom, and the water break forth from the rock, and the oil to flow down Aaron’s beard and along his collar, as he and his brother Moses embrace in love.
This power, made manifest in the wilderness: this is our deepest longing in this seemingly endless, years-long season of Advent, on the face of this weary world. This is the One for whom we wait to come to us in fullness, even as he dwells here now in the broken bread, Jesus our Savior, who like God’s servant Alice walks into our sickroom, into this room, and says in the clear voice of a master healer:
“I will take care of this.”
***
Preached on the Second Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 5, 2021, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Baruch 5:1-9
Canticle 16 (Luke 1:68-79)
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6
Photo taken by the author, 2013.