Give Me a Minute

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Hey, welcome everybody. I'm going to start out as honestly as I can, which I think we all do every week. This has been a hard week and this is actually a hard message to preach. Not a hard message, just a hard, um, it's hard to find the right words 'cause it feels like after this past week, um, and the results of the election, there aren't any great words. Certainly we know there's no words that are going to fix some of our fears, but here's the good news. We are together. 

We happen to be in a three week series that we named prior to the election, “Grief, Gratitude, and Wonder: Tending to the Spirit in the Midst of Change.” And we decided that we're going to do that because we knew that there'd be some election results, but we also knew that this community likely will be moving this spring. That's transition. We know that this season is a season of grief and loss for a lot of people in this community and in our table family. A lot of people that are mourning the loss of a loved one. There are people that are navigating broken relationships, people with new diagnoses, someone in the community who just entered hospice. There's a lot going on in our community. 

So tonight grief seems to be just the right topic for us. I imagine for all of you, we shared some similar feelings. Um, I went to bed that night and I think my parting words on election night to my husband were, were, “I can't” and I didn't finish the sentence and I went to bed. I can't. And what I couldn't do was I couldn't get my head around what happened, like what happened to the slim margin, what happened to my fellow citizens, what happened to people who cared about the ways of Jesus taking care of the poor and the immigrants, the sick. I just, I was so deeply disappointed in my fellow citizens and I just did not know what to do it with it. 

The following evening we had a gathering at my house. Men at the table were meeting and they had some time that they spent talking about the election. We gathered with some candlelight and some poems and prayers and conversation and we all shared a lot of the same descriptive words. We were stunned, deeply sad, scared, frightened for what's ahead, the uncertainty not knowing, shocked that the election was as close as it was and that a majority of Americans voted for a leader who exemplified and ran on the worst of who we are as human beings. Fear, anger, bigotry, lies, immorality. 

And it felt unthinkable. I kept saying, that's not who we are. And then the next morning it was clear, oh, this is who we are. This is who we are. It felt like the beginning of a very dark night. And I think I'm thinking like many of you, of all the people, that this will directly impact and effect in far bigger ways than likely me. And that breaks my heart. 

And I've heard, had a lot of conversations with people in this community, with family members, with friends who are so afraid this has been devastating for them and what's ahead for them in their life. Obviously there's a lot for us to learn and do and we've gotta find a way forward. But it's been hard. My daughter Annie is an OB/GYN. She's in her fourth year and we talked to her first thing the next morning and she said that she spent the night crying for two reasons. She has a five-year-old daughter. And the thought of her daughter growing up with leadership that denigrated women was just devastating. And the other thing she cried about was, um, the risk to women's health. And she and her colleagues, this is a reality of their, it's already been a reality. They've already had people driving in from other states because their life was at risk. So for her, she wept because of the possibilities ahead. 

This is personal, you guys, this matters. And if it doesn't matter to you, then it matters to someone you love. It matters to a neighbor that you might not know. But it is personal. We spoke to our son Sam the next day. And many of you, 'cause he's grown up here, know our grandson. So, and our oldest, he's seven years old and you'll often see him running around. He probably is tonight in a dress. He loves dresses. And you know what Soren said, do his mom and dad the next morning, “Does this mean Donald Trump will make some bad rules?” And they asked him, “well, what do you mean by bad rules buddy?” “That boys can't wear dresses.” Just think about that. At seven years old, somehow that message has infiltrated his heart and his mind. 

It's personal, but I continued to feel like I can't even, and here's the other thing. For a lot of us, we have to grapple with the idea that we have friends and families that are members that are happy about this. They are celebrating this, they're thrilled about the outcome. And for us, for me, I don't get it, one of the hardest things that happened for me last week, which was a surprising because you'd think it would be, although it certainly was hard, some of the horrible things that were on social media about “women's bodies and we own 'em now.” And “Guess what? I'm happy to say that Project 2025 was real,” all that icky, icky stuff. 

But what surprised me was on Friday morning, I was at–I go to Lifetime a couple times a week and I have been taking this cardio class for a year off and on. And I really liked the teacher a lot. She's a couple years younger than me, way more fit than me. And she, um, but she's really good. She's so good. And uh, during the class, I actually had my daughter, Annie with me and during the class she was playing sort of special music and she commented about this is could be a hard week for people. And we really got the sense that maybe we're on the same page. 

I even said, “Annie, hey, I think I'm going to go up and ask her, would she ever, could I hire her to do like an event for Women at The Table where we would gather together and sort of cathartic, we could exercise together and do it to music?” And and Annie said, “oh yeah, I got that sense from her too.” 

She did a few weeks ago found she knew that I was a pastor just a few weeks prior to this. And I walked up to her and I said, “Um, hey, um, do you ever do this outside of Lifetime? Would you ever gather with a group of people?” And I said, “I’m a pastor and the community I pastor was pretty devastated by the results of the election.” I was super surprised because she said “That's how we felt in 2020.” Oh boy. 

I was like, okay, where do I go now? But what I did do was say, I I really was like, oh my gosh, did I step in it here? But we were able to have a conversation and she was telling me, you know, “It's not like I like Trump, but I just, you know, we want this party 'cause they're for peace and we want to feel safe.” 

And in my head I'm going, oh my gosh, we are not getting the same information. Like I don't feel that way at all. And of course I had to go into my, well, I'm just trying to practice the ways that Jesus and Jesus is forth, the poor and the immigrant. And I'm saying my whole, whole thing. And we went back and forth a little bit and it, it wasn't heated, but she did say at the end, maybe I wouldn't be the right person for this. And I said, yeah, you probably wouldn't be. But here was my parting words. I said, Terri, I am going to trust that you love Jesus. I hope you trust that I love Jesus too. 

And I came home and I said to Steve, oh, I know the right thing to do would be to ask her for a cup of coffee and have a really good conversation. But I dunno if I have the energy to do it right now. 

But for some reason that stuck with me all day, all night. I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I think it was because we probably had more in common than we didn't. And the fact that we differed on that just kind of blew me away. But I'll tell you what, the very hardest thing of the week for me was, is for the people whose response was God's got this, it will pass. Let's stay positive. I, for me, that was one of the hardest things to accept. 

I was on a group text that literally the first thing on Wednesday morning said, I feel like we should focus on what's good right now and send an article on a baby hippo that was just born at the London Zoo. I was pissed. Like I was so mad you guys. I was like, what? I mean this like, there are people hurting. This is devastating for people. I don't want to look at the picture of the hippo at the zoo. 

So You, you're seeing the real me. But here's what I have to say. When people want to just move right past it, want to say it's okay, we're good. I want to say, okay, just give me a minute, give me a minute, give us a minute to grieve. 'cause that's what we're doing friends. And whether it's 'cause we're grieving the loss of a wife and mother that died a year ago, you're grieving the loss of a young son that died ten years ago. Or you're grieving the loss of your partner that you're putting into hospice right now. Whether you're grieving the loss of the results and all the potential fallout from this election. 

We are grieving, we have lost something. And as a community we are called to stand in that together. One of the things we say in grief work all the time is you can't go over it. You can't go under it. You've gotta go right through it because it's the work of grief that gets us to this place where God can make things new and do things that we could never do on our own. And I think expressing our sorrow and our pain and our fear and our frustration and our feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, when we place all those things before God, especially after an election like this, that only helps us move forward, that's the first step in moving forward into whatever is next for us. 

All of us I imagine have had a question sort of like this, what is going on in this country? What is going on in this world? What's going to happen next? Where is God in all this? What do we do with all this? And while I think it's our human nature to want to jump to those questions, we want to fix this. There are no good answers or explanations that could take away our grief and our sorrow and our fear in this moment. Give us a minute. 

And even if I stood up here and I gave you some answer, hey this is the why I'm guessing that it really wouldn't take away your pain and suffering, that it wouldn't take away your fears because the suffering's too real, the pain's too deep and the tears are too many. We don't need answers and explanations right now. What we need is a way forward. 

From the book of Jeremiah, that prophet Jeremiah and the Hebrew text. Rachel offers us a a way forward in this season of loss and suffering and grief. And it is the way of tears, it's the way of lamentation and weeping. And it's a refuse to be comforted. Just for a moment, Jeremiah 31:15: “A voice is her, is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more.”

Now Jeremiah set Rachel's lamentation and bitter weeping in the context of her children being taken, um, being sent in exile, a separation of mother and child, a death. Rachel knows what it means to be heartbreaking, broken. I think we hear her voice in our lives in our world today. Her tears protest the circumstances of her life, the grief, the suffering of other people. Just like our tears. They come from this deep place of love and compassion, sorrow, loss, justice. Aren't we all feeling those things right now? Her tearful protest. It doesn't answer the question and it doesn't answer the question of human, of evil, of human suffering. But what it does do is it helps her maintain some kind of sanity in this very broken world. In a world that doesn't make sense. 

So my question for you is what tears do you weep today? For yourself, for another, for our country? What is your lamentation you are weeping about? I think sometimes our tears are the most authentic thing that we have to offer God. It is the real us. That's what we got, friends. That's who we are. 

And in those times, in our prayers, when we come to God like that, I think it's a place where we connect deeply, where the presence of God can be felt. It gives God a chance to hold us up, to connect with us. It's where God's life and our life intersect. And maybe that's why just, maybe that's why God hears the voice of Rachel. 

And maybe that's why God says to Rachel, there is hope for your future. I think we need to stand with Rachel for a moment. In this minute we need to stand with Rachel. Refuse for a second to be comforted because Rachel won't accept false comfort. Easy answers, explanations. Because there aren't any easy, any satisfactory explanations. And yet in every dark night, that's one of the things we, we seek first. We want an answer, we want an explanation. But there isn't one. You have to walk through that grief. 

And what if we try to embrace that tears are actually the nourishment that we need in these days of loss and sorrow. What if we've actually been given the bread of tears to feed upon and tears to drink in full? That seems to be the way of Rachel. And maybe it might be the way of faith amidst faithfulness, faithlessness the way of hope in the midst of despair, despair, and the way of prayer when we just can't muster up the words. 

And let me clarify that the way of tears is not an answer to what's happening in the world. That's not what I'm saying. But it is simply a way forward. The brutal honesty, the deep compassion, the profound grief that are in our tears. 'Cause the way of hope is a tearful path. Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus. Lazarus, he wept over Jerusalem. And these tears are a way of preparing for God to make all things new. 

In just a second, we're going to just play some music. We're going to pause. I think we all need to pause. Sometimes at the end of every pew, there's some note cards and there's some pens. You guys can take one and pass 'em down. Make sure everyone gets a pen. And during the music I'm going to ask y'all to just write down what tears do you weep today for yourself, for another, for this country? What is your lamentation about? I'm going to come back up here to finish my sermon. 

But then during communion, I'm going to ask you to walk up. I'll be standing here next to the servers and you can place in the basket at the end of the service, I'll pray over those tears. Our tears. 

Could You make be beautiful things? Ho Chaos Things? Yes. God makes beautiful things outta dust. God has the ability to make all things new and it is the only response to darkness and your and the losses of our lives. It's what we see Jesus teaching throughout the gospels. And it all started with in the beginning, in the beginning when darkness covered the face of the deep. And God said, let there be light making things new. That's our hope and prayer in what feels very dark right now. I don't know when it'll happen. I don't know how it'll come about. I don't know what it'll look like. But I know this, you and I have a role and new creation. We are God's co-creators in bringing the good news and making this a place of truth and justice and love for all. And as painful as this dark moment is, and as much as I'd like to avoid it and escape it, what I know is I can't run away from it. And neither can you. We are wounded, we are broken hearted, but we are not our wounded and broken heart. We are more than the circumstances that surround us right now. The darkness will not define us. The despair will not overcome us. And we will keep on. We'll keep on. 

Give me a minute. Take a minute if that's what you need. Let your grief give rise to compassion and any of that righteous anger that you might have give rise to change the world. Our country, our neighbors, they'll be watching. And I don't think they're going to care about what we're saying and I don't think they're going to care so much about what we're doing. But they want to know if we're actually light in the darkness, they want to be reminded that the darkness, as real as it is, 'cause it is real, we will not overcome the light. And Here's what we have in this moment. After we've taken a minute or two, we might have to go back and do that here and there in the journey. But in this moment, we have a chance to be the church. I actually think we're going to need to be the church in bigger ways than ever before. And that's an opportunity. That's part of our mission. And that's what I love about this community is that when, when times get tough, like we rally, we come together to be the church in a way that does bring good news, we have each other. We will grieve. But then we're going to pivot. We're going to pivot to the opportunity and be the church

 From Walter Brueggeman. Here's after we've taken a minute. So it is with us like the ancient prophets. We are dispatched back to the good work and trusted to us. It is the work of peacemaking. It is the work of justice. Doing it is good work, but it requires our resolve to stay in it. Even in the face of the forces to the contrary that are sure to prevail for a season. We are in it for the long haul, from everlasting to everlasting. We do not ease off. If it's hard, We are back at it after the election. We'll wait a minute then we'll go with that. 

And I'm going to leave you with these words from Isaiah 43. Here's what we rest in friends: “But now, GOD’s Message, the God who made you in the first place, Jacob, the One who got you started, Israel: “Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you. I’ve called your name. You’re mine. When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you. When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down. When you’re between a rock and a hard place, it won’t be a dead end— Because I am GOD, your personal God, The Holy of Israel, your Savior. I paid a huge price for you: all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in! That’s how much you mean to me! That’s how much I love you! I’d sell off the whole world to get you back, trade the creation just for you.

 We don't have to be afraid, friends, because God promises He's with us.