The preacher and the cockroach

I was reflecting on the task of preaching today and came across this little piece I wrote back in 2012. Although I'm happy to say this was the last time I ever shared the pulpit with a cockroach, I wish I also could tell you it was the last time I ever died during one of my sermons. 

Last Sunday, as I sat in the chancel, mentally preparing myself to preach, I looked down at the floor and saw a giant cockroach wedged up against the left side of the pulpit. It was lying on its back with its desperate little legs twitching in the air. That lovely image was still in my brain as I climbed into the pulpit and looked out at my congregation. There they were, waiting for a word from the Lord, and I was thinking about a near-dead cockroach.

 

I had an important message that day. It was all about denying ourselves, taking up a cross and following Jesus. Mind you, this is not something peripheral to the life of faith. For those of us who aspire to live Jesus lives, this is at the center. So why was I feeling like it was totally irrelevant to the lives of the people I was addressing? Most of them weren’t making eye-contact with me, and those who were didn’t seem to be blinking. Hello? Is anybody out there?

 

The more I talked, the more disconnected I felt. Was it that nobody likes to be reminded about how following Jesus isn’t always fun? Was it that I had preached on this so many times before that they must be tired of hearing it? Was my sermon too academic? Too humorless? Too devoid of honest-to-goodness, real- life examples? Should I have started working on it earlier in the week? Seriously, while I was talking, all of those thoughts were racing through my mind. I was second-guessing myself and a part of me was wondering if maybe it was time for me to consider taking up another line of work.

 

Certainly, I don’t preach for the praise. That would be bonkers. But it helps if I can sense some kind of connection with my listeners while I’m putting myself out there. It’s not easy for me to stand before a congregation and presume to know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I feel like such a fake and I wonder if they can all see right through me. Really, why should they listen to me? What do I know? Preaching feeds on all my insecurities. And every once in a while I have a Sunday like this, where I am praying for the proverbial trap door that will both make me disappear from view and put me out of my misery. With each word I spoke, I felt more and more like that cockroach, struggling to survive

 

I love preaching when I have a fire in my belly. On those Sundays, I can’t wait to step into the pulpit and watch the words fly from my mouth. I’m talking about something that burns within me, something I believe will transform the lives of my listeners. This is like an out-of–the body experience for me. Although I am a terribly self-conscious person, in that holy moment, all I care about is getting the message across as effectively as I can and there is not a self-conscious bone in my body. I have no doubt that there is a God-thing going on. There have been lots of Sundays like that for me. But this was not one of those Sundays.

 

Finally, I came to the end of the sermon. I left the congregation with a question, said “Amen” and sat-the-hell down, thinking that’s something I should have done about ten minutes ago. Thank God it’s over.

 

I looked down and saw no more movement from the cockroach. He died while I was preaching. Just like me. I died while I was preaching, too. Of course, the big difference between us is that I will live to preach again. Maybe that’s why Christian preachers get so worked up over the resurrection. We experience it on a regular basis.

 

And now, the rest of my life...

Like many other people, I pushed through the pandemic, hoping there might be life on the other side, while the cynical bias of my brain pulled on me to doubt it. I battled one wave of depression after another and struggled with extreme isolation that challenged even my introverted self. I taxed my capacity for compassion, unsure if I had it in me to care for other people while so preoccupied with caring for myself. I lived for moments of face time with my grandsons and cried when they disappeared with the simple push of a button. I smothered my skittish cat with more lovin’ than he could comfortably handle. I zoomed every day with a group of women who became my lifeline. I went on a quest for yeast, baked my own bread, and had to stop when it was so good that I ended up eating an entire loaf in one day. I grew my iconic pixie haircut into a shoulder length mess. I dieted and lost 20 pounds and then gained 25 of them back again. I reluctantly cancelled the reservations I had to spend a week at Jellystone Park with Nick and Justin. I learned to write, produce, direct and edit worship videos, which used up so much of my creative bandwidth that I had little space for anything else. I hung onto every word Dr. Fauci said and followed the rising and falling rates of infection, particularly in Baltimore County. I got all worked up over people who were cavalier about the coronavirus and spent way too much time venting to anyone willing to listen. I explored new depths of my racism with naked honesty. I helplessly watched from a distance as beloved members of my congregation died without presence of a pastor or community to help them through it. I bawled my way through election night just as I had four years earlier, but for much different reasons. I applied in vain for a Covid-19 vaccine and finally received one as a gracious gift.

That’s a bit of what I remember from the blur of my life over the past 14 months. And now, suddenly, none of it matters to me. What did I just live through? Was it me or someone else? When I look at the movie line-up on the Hallmark channel, I can’t understand how it came to happen that I’ve already watched all of these cheesy movies. I marvel at my clean, organized closets and wonder who the person was who snuck into my house and accomplished such a Herculean task. I vaguely remember that people were pissing me off a year ago, but I can’t recall who they were or what they did to piss me off.

I’ve turned the page and begun the next chapter. Back working in my office, I’m planning for Ascension’s first indoor worship service since March of 2020. I’m driving to my favorite restaurant, parking the car and actually going inside to eat. I’m making plans for a Jellystone vacation with my grandsons and their parents in July. 

I don’t want to waste another moment of my life fretting about all that I lived through over the past 14 months. My desperate angst has been transformed into giddy gratitude. All I can think about is the rest of my life. It’s been waiting for me. And now it’s here!

 

The Day After Today (Easter 2021)

“Jesus Christ is risen today! Na-na-na-na-na-na!” Yeah, I know, that’s not the way the song goes. The way we sing it on Easter morning is: “Jesus Christ is risen today! Alleluia!” But a good alternative to the word alleluia that captures the spirit of our Easter celebration would be: Na-na-na-na-na-na!

For we gather this day to taunt death. We stand up to the great fear that plagues us all, the fear of death. Much the way we might stand up to a schoolyard bully… with an older brother standing behind us, of course.

It feels great to be on the winning side against death. What a glorious day!

 But… what about tomorrow? The thread connecting Jesus’ resurrection and our lives often begins to unravel for us on Monday morning. It’s one thing to revel in the resurrection on Easter morning. And it’s quite another to return to life as usual the day after today. Everything that we worried about yesterday will still be with us tomorrow:

     ·      Strained relationships

·      the continuing global pandemic, the uncertainty of vaccines and variants, and those who still refuse to acknowledge that the coronavirus is real.

·      schools confounded with all the complications involved in safely reopening,

·      civil unrest all around the world,

·      the discomfort of a nation coming to terms with systemic racism that has marred our past and threatens our future, 

     A planet that will not survive the abuse humanity has unleashed upon it.

 It will all be with us tomorrow. Easter doesn’t change any of that.

When faced with the reality of our lives, the resurrection may even seem a bit unreal. After all, we have no way of verifying it. There were no reporters on hand. We don’t have many details about it, and what details we do have seem to vary, depending on who’s telling the story. We don’t know what the weather was like that morning. Was it stormy, was it calm? Was the sky clear? We don’t know why Jesus’ burial cloths were neatly folded and left in the tomb. We don’t know if he found some other clothes to wear or if he was naked when Mary saw him. Maybe he found some of the gardeners’ clothes lying around in a shed somewhere and he put those on. Maybe that’s why Mary mistook him for the gardener. But we have no idea what gardeners wore back then. Certainly, Jesus didn’t appear in a pair of bib overalls. Was it just his clothes, or was it his face that changed somehow? Of course, we don’t know what he looked like before the resurrection, either. There’s so much we don’t know, it’s really amazing that we would believe such a story at all.

And yet, despite that, we celebrate the resurrection today. Some of us celebrate because we believe to the core of our being that it happened. Others celebrate because we want to believe it. Perhaps the one thing we all have in common on this day is that we’re people who can’t bring ourselves to dismiss it altogether.

We’re like the author John Updike, who had a strong Lutheran upbringing, and confessed that although he knew all the scientific and historical reasons for doubting the resurrection, he couldn’t quite "make the leap into unbelief."

And yet, I don’t think it’s our struggle to believe something so unbelievable that keeps us from experiencing resurrection in all its fullness. It’s our inability to make the connection between the resurrection story and our life stories. When we celebrate on Easter Sunday we’re remembering the story of the empty tomb, something that happened in the past. But what power does resurrection have in our lives today?   

Beyond Easter morning, we also invoke the risen Christ at funerals. Yet, if we limit resurrection to an idea that brings us consolation whenever we gather around a hole in the ground to lay a loved one to rest, the resurrection of Christ is no more than an insurance policy against death.

Here’s the Easter truth. The resurrection story isn’t just something that we return to at Easter or funerals. Our God is a God of resurrection. The same divine energy which first took Christ out of the grave, is not just to help us in the hour of death, but to bring us life, here and now.

I know that not many of you have been inside Ascension’s church building since the pandemic sent us all home. But for the few of us who have, it’s a surreal experience to be in this space. Every time I’ve come here over the past year, it’s felt a little like I’m one of the women coming to Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. Like the tomb, it’s empty. The Body of Christ that once filled this space is not here. In its place, I find folded grave-cloths. A notice on the bulletin board for Lenten Soup Suppers – from over a year ago. A welcome to Angie and Sophia, whose visit with us was cut short when they had to return home to Nicaragua early because of the pandemic. A hymn board for Lent. Handbell tables draped in purple for Lent. A bulletin board for Lenten music madness. All of it from over a year ago. Just as it was when we all went home.

The taste of Ann Reilly’s chocolate chip cookies. The altar guild moving swiftly between services to reset the table. The latecomers slipping silently into their pews. It seems so long ago. And yet, I know this time of dormancy isn’t going to last.

Life will return to this place. It’s more than an empty tomb. It will again become a place teaming with life. We wait patiently to become our future selves. It’s a stark reminder to us that no matter how dead our lives may become, death is fleeting. It’s no match for the life God promises us. Resurrection is coming.

You may wake up tomorrow morning with a resurrection hangover and wonder if anything we’ve done on this Resurrection Sunday makes a lick of difference in the world around you. No matter how desperate things may look, I hope you know where your life is headed. Our God is a God of resurrection. As his people, our stories are connected with his. We can’t tuck the resurrection story between the pages of a dusty old book and return to our little lives of quiet desperation. The world around us may be enveloped in the walls of a tomb from which there appears to be no escape. But as followers of the resurrected Christ, our time on this earth is always filled with hope. Every place among us where death has a stronghold, we stand on the side of the one who defeated the power of death.

Jesus Christ is risen today. Na-na-na-na-na-na! Be assured that Jesus Christ is risen the day after today as well. Alleluia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pastor Nancy Kraft

Ascension Lutheran Church, Towson, Maryland

Going with the flow

It was a weird afternoon. Some might say a day of synchronicity. Or a series of coincidences. Even divine guidance. I call it flow. I was caught up in the direction the flow was taking me, and I let it carry me. Here’s how it happened.

I ordered groceries from the Fresh Market and thought I had asked for four bananas. I live alone, and I’m lucky if I can manage to eat four bananas before they go bad. Five is definitely too many, which is why I have learned to stop at four. Well, apparently, I ordered four bunches of bananas!

What on earth was I going to do with all these already very ripe bananas? It tickled me and I started singing, “Yes, I have some bananas, I have some bananas today…” 

My singing was interrupted by a phone call. It was Julie, Ascension’s Director of Outreach. She was at ACTC, our local assistance ministry, delivering food from the weekly collection on our church parking lot. There was a problem, she told me. Donations have been so abundant that they’ve run out of space to store all the food. “Do you think we could temporarily use some of our space at Ascension for storage?” she asked.

“Sure!” I said. And immediately, it came to me. “Ask Linda if ACTC would like some bananas.”

Why, yes, they would.  And I was off to deliver the bananas.

In the process of all this, I made a purse call on my phone. Not too long after, my dear friend from Ohio, Donna, gave me a call. We hadn’t spoken since the summer and I’d been wanting to talk to her but never seemed to have the time. How did she know? Well, she was the person who received my purse call. Perfect! It was glorious to hear her voice and catch up. Thank you, purse.

After our conversation, I retrieved my daily mail from the porch and added a few more Christmas cards to the precious pile on my coffee table. But wait. One of the cards wasn’t for me. It was addressed to another house on my street. I thought about depositing it back into my box so the mail carrier could return it to the proper place. Then I remembered that I hadn’t taken my morning walk because I didn’t have the time before an early appointment. And suddenly, I was moving my feet on this brisk, sunny day.

When I reached my destination, I slid the card into an empty mailbox. Then I knocked on the door and stepped away from the house. In no time, a woman came to the door. She looked irritated, which frankly is the way I usually look when a strange person comes knocking on my door. Especially during COVID.  

I quickly assured her that I wasn’t there for nefarious reasons. “You had some mail delivered to my house by mistake. It’s in your mailbox.”

The woman reached into the box, looked at the envelope, and her face lit up.  “Oh, thank you so much. This is the one I’ve been waiting for!”

As I headed back home, I noticed that a full moon had already taken its place in the late afternoon sky. It was smiling at me. And I was smiling back.

Stealing our story

Four years ago, we were in the midst of a nasty presidential election. (I was still living in North Carolina back then.) One of our ELCA colleges, Lenoir Rhyne University, allowed candidates to speak at their campus. I was among those who were outraged when I learned Donald Trump was coming. But then, from the perspective of the university, which encouraged the free exchange of ideas, I got it (sort of).

Still, that didn’t diminish my concern that somehow his presence on the campus of a Lutheran university would be associated with Lutherans in general. My problem was his hate-filled rhetoric that went against everything Jesus. There were other Christians who supported Trump and, for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why. I thought that if they were just reminded of the teachings of Jesus, the contradiction would become apparent. So, I was all about doubling down on Jesus.

I wasn’t the only Lutheran who felt this way. There were enough of us in our synod and neighboring synods, in our nearby seminary and others, including our synod bishop, that we decided to do what we could to bring our understanding of Jesus to this Trump rally in Hickory, NC. We couldn’t let this happen without presenting an alternative message.

A couple hundred clergy and lay folks gathered at the campus chapel that morning as the crowd lined up outside the auditorium to hear Donald Trump speak. Thousands of people snaked around the sidewalks waiting patiently to get in. As it happened, a lot more tickets were given out than the auditorium could accommodate, and the featured attraction was late arriving, so they waited for hours. We held up signs with faith-filled messages of peace, love and justice and sang hymns without ceasing; we sang until we were hoarse. All the while, we prayed our message would cut through to the hearts of those who were listening.

Protesters were on the scene who had a variety of reasons for being there. I wouldn't have called the group I was with protesters. We were going more for a presence than a protest, but honestly, we were as passionate in our concerns about Donald Trump as anybody. Our concern was about his message. My sense of the Lutheran group was that we didn't see our role as political, but more as defenders of the faith. Naively, it never occurred to us that he might actually be elected President, or we might have been thinking in other ways. 

The media also showed up for the event with cameras taking it all in. I didn’t pay much attention to them until after the doors for the rally were closed. Then the shut-out Trump supporters and protesters were left standing face to face. The two groups were headed toward one another, shouting and shaking their fists (among other things). Suddenly, they were only a few yards apart and about to collide. When we saw what was happening, a group of clergy (wearing collars) swiftly linked arms and formed a line blocking the two groups from one another. We spontaneously started singing “Jesus Loves You” and that was the end of the confrontation. It was amazing.

Here’s what I remember the most about that scene. When it looked like there was going to be mass violence, the cameras came swooping in. As soon as our clergy group intervened, they put their cameras down and walked away. There was no story there for them. (Or it was not the story they wanted to tell.)

That moment has been indelibly etched in my brain. For the TV cameras, there was no story in a group of Lutherans singing hymns to an angry crowd. There was no story in a group of collared clergy forming a barrier to violence. There was no story in the love of Jesus standing face to face with hatred. No story there.

At that moment I witnessed how the Jesus story is being stolen from the world I’m living in. It is stolen when the media decides that the narrative of hatred sells, and the narrative of love doesn’t. It is stolen when Christians twist the message of Jesus to fit their own hate-filled agenda. It is stolen whenever anyone rationalizes choosing hatred over love.

Lately, I’ve been watching my son post videos of the peaceful protests he has been participating in. I know those protests are happening all over the country, but we don’t see them on the news. The only protests we see are the ones that show violence. And people come to believe that’s the story. Although these violent incidents represent a tiny fraction of what is happening, you wouldn’t know that from watching TV and social media. There is a story that people aren’t seeing because that story is being stolen from us.

Of all the outrage I'm feeling right now... and believe me, I've been dealing with a lot of outrage mingled with grief these days... my greatest outrage is the way the story we're handed isn't the story that matters. 

That leaves it to people who have a story worth telling, a story people need to hear, to do all we can to present the story that’s being stolen from us. For me, as an American, it’s a story of peace, persistence and patriotism. For me, as a Christian, it remains the story of Jesus, which is the only way through this shit-show we’re living in.

 

All I Got

I haven’t written a blog post in a long time. I feel like something has died within me and it’s difficult to express myself these days. Sure, I can still preach, but that’s not the same thing as revealing the contents of my noodle. It has been nothing but mush for months now. I can’t tell you if I’m exhausted or depressed or angry or scared or what. Mostly, I’m just trying to cope. I’m feeling crushed from the weight of the silent menace that is lurking in the air that we breathe, the senseless killing of black and brown people and the systemic racism that continues to support it, all the people I care about who are caught in the mess of our schools right now, the impending election and threats from our president to invalidate it, the deep political divide between me and people I love. My faith is mightily being tested, and I’m trying my hardest to cling to threads of hope right now.  

I keep thinking about things I want to say, but when I look around, it feels like others are saying those things better than I could right now. Meaning, they are finding words that elude me. I know this isn’t much of a blog post, but some have been wondering why they haven’t heard from my noodle in a while, and that’s all I got.

The luxury of choices

Like most pastors, I’m preoccupied with the possibilities of in-person worship these days. Many of my colleagues are already leading these gatherings, most of them outdoors. With the continued low numbers of positivity in Baltimore County, I’m hopeful that Ascension will offer an opportunity for folks to worship together live and in-person very soon.

While I’ve stressed over the whens and hows of gathering for worship, I’ve come to realize how inconsequential this is compared to the decisions facing so many other people right now. Our congregation can decide whether we will worship together in person. Individuals within the congregation can choose to participate or not. It’s an optional activity and those who are uncomfortable, or at risk, can still worship with us online from home, which will remain our primary weekly worship gathering. But what about the people who don’t have the luxury of making such choices?

My son, Ben, waits on tables in Pittsburgh. When all the restaurants shut down, he went home. Then they reopened before they were ready because... I’m not sure why, but lots of other places were doing the same. Ben returned to work because he didn’t have a choice. Not if he wanted to eat and sleep with a roof over his head.

He told me about that first day back when he waited on an older woman who announced how happy she was to see him working again. He felt like he was being sacrificed. Now, you need to know that Ben is an activist who is thriving in these days of protesting. He would sacrifice his life for the sake of justice, no question. But so someone out for a good time can have a pulled pork sandwich? Not so much.

After a few weeks, the bartender at Ben’s restaurant came down with COVID-19. So, they closed. Every person who worked in the restaurant had been exposed. Ben had to wait over a week to be tested; now he awaits results. And he waits to see if the restaurant will reopen. If they do, he feels forced to return. He's trapped, and he resents it.  

Ben’s experience opened my eyes to all the people around me who don’t have the choices I have about the risks I’m willing to take right now. There are so many other people like him, many of them in low paying jobs, who are trapped. If they want to live, they’re forced into employment that puts them at risk... And I go about my business, barely noticing these people, yet benefiting from their sacrifice.

These days, schools are figuring out how to reopen in the fall. I think about my daughter, who teaches in NYC, and my grandson who will enter first grade. Not to mention the rest of the family, which includes a toddler destined to return to daycare and my son-in-law, who will one day return to the restaurant where he works. Since mid-March, I have slept at night, knowing they are safe. And now that’s about to change.

There are no easy solutions to the school dilemma. Difficult choices must be made. But how many teachers and staff will be in the position of having a choice? How many will be trapped in a situation fraught with risks?

I can’t get past the fact that now we’re talking about children. Of all people, children don’t have the opportunity to choose. They trust adults to make the best decisions for them, to keep them safe. I pray that we are worthy of their trust.