Impending Bloom?

Reality. Grief. Hope.

Photo by Dharmesh K on Unsplash

“The Garden of Impending Bloom” Those words were scrawled on a little hand-painted sign I saw last summer. It was tacked on a wire fence surrounding a bit of desolate, apparently toxically compromised land by a parking lot. . . A tawdry scene. Its message won’t leave me alone. Maybe it will come to you too, sometime when you are facing apparent doom. The End?
Catherine Keller

We hang in the balance
Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now.
Mary Gauthier, Mercy Now

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
Emily Dickinson

Opening Meditation

Breathe deeply.
Find stillness and know yourself in the loving gaze of God. Always.

1^st Reading

Luke 21.5-19

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said,

‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’

They asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’

And he said, ‘Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and, “The time is near!” Do not go after them.

‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’

Then he said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom;

there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

‘But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.

This will give you an opportunity to testify.

So make up your minds not to prepare your defence in advance;

for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.

You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death.

You will be hated by all because of my name.

But not a hair of your head will perish.

By your endurance you will gain your souls.

REFLECTION

The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has written a book titled Reality. Grief. Hope.

That’s a sermon in three words.

He believed that it was the task of the prophet in any age to provoke people in denial to face reality, to do the work of honest grief, and to find true hope.

Get real.
Get sad.
Get hopeful.
They go together.

Reality. Grief. Hope.
Orientation. Disorientation. Reorientation.

That’s the journey we all must make if we are to both find and offer the world something genuinely new.

Reality.

Our society lives in a bubble that looks increasingly insane. Insanity, it has been said, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Sound familiar? We maintain the illusion that control is the answer rather than the problem. I do it all the time.

But. Nation rising against nation. Famine, disease, natural disasters. We are called to get real about the havoc wreaked by rampant consumerism, mindless technology, and unchecked dogmatism. These cannot be solved on their own terms. Daily we are complicit in some or all of these. We are overwhelmed and tired. And still, we must face reality if we are to move through it in any sort of meaningful way.

We need to admit how regularly we worship the stones of the temple instead of becoming living temples of the Spirit.

Grief.

As we accept the reality of the mess we are in, we must inevitably grieve. For fear of the pain, many stay in the illusions. Or, admitting the reality, slump into despair.

In his book Prophetic Imagination, B writes this:

I have come to think that there is no more succinct summary of prophetic ministry than the statement of Jesus: Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh. (Luke 6.21) or, more familiarly, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. (Matt 5.4).

Grief stands between an old reality and the possibility of a new one. Grief admits the losses and opens the heart.

Hope.

We don’t find new vision immediately. But grief brought to prayer, brought to a greater reality, generates hope. It’s not a hope for business as usual but a hope that sees, even as the temple falls, and maybe only as the temple falls, the Love that rises up on the third day.

Those of faith must articulate these new possibilities born of the memory of our collective story of God’s presence - revealed again and again in places of brokenness, failure, and crisis. We need to find words and imagination for a this world. Not hope for but hope in.

Hope for attaches itself to solutions - solutions which often deny that the ship of modernity is sinking and instead simply rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic of our broken vessel.

Hope in believes in a reality as deep as the ocean itself. It sees the treasures lying on the ocean floor and dives to retrieve them.

Prophetic hope insists that no crisis can defeat God’s capacity to generate new possibility.

Prophetic hope sings the tune without yet knowing all the words.

Prophetic hope believes that even as we sense impending doom - even as we do the hard work of getting real and getting sad - we might, mysteriously, find ourselves getting hopeful. We might sense - impossibly! - an impending bloom.

Blooming doesn’t dry the tears. It grows because of them.

Ponder. Practice. Pray

Not a new theme here, but one that needs revisiting often.
What reality do you grieve most deeply?
What helps you best to connect and live in hope?

Ponder and pray with all this.

Widening the Circle

As you move out of your personal reflection, take another moment to extend a prayer of grief and hope for the people and places on your heart today.

The Lord’s Prayer
Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and testing, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and for ever. Amen.

Jim Cotter

Second Reading

Talking to Grief
Denise Levertov

Ah, grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don’t know you’ve been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

from Poems 1972-1982. © New Directions, 2001

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Blessing

And so…

May we find courage to face bravely the reality of a world in serious crisis.

May we find honesty to grieve deeply the losses and the pain.

May we find imagination to hope fully in the eternally generative love of God.

And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with us all evermore.
Amen.

Music:

You can find this on YouTube, for those who do not have Spotify. I found it by chance but it moved me to grief and prayer as I let the people and places on my heart mingle with the words of the song. The words are below.

My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor
Fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over
It won’t be long and he won’t be around
I love my father, and he could use some mercy now

My brother could use a little mercy now
He’s a stranger to freedom
He’s shackled to his fears and doubts
The pain that he lives in is
Almost more than living will allow
I love my brother, and he could use some mercy now

My Church and my Country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit
That’s going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful
Who follow ‘em down
I love my Church and Country and they could use some mercy now

Every living thing could use a little mercy now
Only the hand of grace can end the race
Towards another mushroom cloud
People in power, well
They’ll do anything to keep their crown
I love life, and life itself could use some mercy now

Yea, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it
But we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance
Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now