Sermon for a Rainy Day

I decided to just write the sermon I needed to hear this morning and avoid the disappointment of a religious experience. I aplogize to Neil Gaiman for being my text, without getting permission, but as my blog has such a tiny readership, I am sure he will forgive me. Or not. Whatever.

I just finished The Ocean at the End of the Lane, I think that is what it is called. In any case, it's the new Neil Gaiman book, and I keep falling asleep last night trying to read the last 10 pages. I'm so pleased that someone is still creating mythology in this world.


It quite allowed me to coalesce something that has been floating around in my head. Which is the desperation, often not in the slightest bit quiet, that permeates the Christian religion I encounter these days. It looks a little different, depending on where you encounter it, but it never ceases to extrude desperation all over the conversation.


In one place, it is the desperation to care for the poor. Great gaping maws of need, and I'm not talking about actual poor people, but those who support and care for them. So much energy, bustling, running, yelling with words and actions, the physical needs of the world. The environment, the rights of this or that group, the food insecurity, the lack of clothing, water, immunizations, and on and on. It reaches as loftily as the well off can imagine and as nitty gritty as the lowliest child dying in his mother's arms as I write this.


It's all the same cry. Give me peace. Jesus left peace here. It's all around us. It's inside every one of us. How does that verse go, Peace I bring you, God's own peace I leave you. Something like that. But we keep running around as though if we dump enough sand in the hole, it will be an adequate substitute for peace. Neither chicken little, nor Joel Ostrogoth have peace. They are not sharing it with you. They are throwing sand, hoping to obfuscate the the lack of peace, because neither know what it is.


It is not catastrophizing, as my therapy puts it, even if there is a catastrophe looming.


It is not material security, as though most material security isn't a crap shoot of luck and circumstance.


It isn't even “making peace” with a situation, a pretty form of giving up.


I certainly can't give you any of those things. I spent too much time in therapy and I'm actually pretty shallow and selfish with my money. And if anything, my gift to this world is to point out the lameness, and I am never content. I have no idea what that means, and even medication isn't giving it to me. We are not meant to be content in this world. But it doesn't mean we are to be chasing money or solving problems, either.


This is the peace of the Lord.


I SEE YOU.


I HEAR YOU.


There is not, really, a damn thing that I can do to change your circumstance, to make your life into something it is not, but I can see it, I can hear it. And to the very, very, very best of my ability, I can see and hear your life through your own filter and not my own.


Lessons from a book I finished this morning. We can never truly see ourselves, wisdom won't bring it, therapy won't bring it, Strength Finder 2.0 is a waste of money if that is what you are trying to do with it. We can see others, if we stop trying to use them as mirrors as we seek ourselves.


I see you.
There is peace, because we so much want to see ourselves, know ourselves, understand ourselves.


The peace Jesus brings, the peace of the Lord is being seen. Being known.


And anybody can do it. It's not some special thing you learn in school, nothing about the circumstances of your birth or upbringing. Anyone can stop looking for themselves and start actually looking at other people.


I see you.


And when I am actually seeing you, actually hearing you, no matter who you are or what your circumstances, I can only love you. Not do anything for you or with you or about you. I can only love you, because you are shockingly amazing.


Another lesson from the book this morning – Personhood isn't a pass/fail exam. It just is.



But in those moments when I stop looking for me and start connecting with you. Then I am peace, I am the peace that Jesus brought to this world. And without doing a single thing, I bring about the kingdom of God.