- This Lenten Friday is at the Orange United Methodist Church (downtown)
- We have begun collecting items for our Adopt a Family for Easter
- Death Cafe March 28th at 4pm
- Upcoming Membership Service: if you have been considering becoming a member and would like more information, please reach out
- Discussion Circle is on the last Sunday after Church; this month we will look at John chapter 11 for the Curious and the Scholarly. These discussions are here to to inspire, teach, guide, and challenge us–all are welcome to join us (this is an exploration of sacred passages, poetry, and words to inspire us toward freshness, surprise, and wonder)
Visit our Calendar of Events to explore our upcoming dates and times
Our Sunday Reflection is recorded and can be found HERE (posts each Sunday late morning or early afternoon). Due to human error, there is no recording this week. These words are written to be spoken, and the needed edits for a better flow for personal reading did not happen this week. Please forgive me.
All are Welcome. If you are uncomfortable with the word God, please feel welcome to insert your own word for the divine or Mystery in your life (Universe/Grace/Spirit/Divine).
Good: Good is Lovely.
Good is to be present and enjoying (living in) what comes. It is Enough. There is a theology that all of Jesus’s work is telling us that there is always enough, of everything.
Good doesn’t encourage debate or comparison. It doesn’t call for judgement. It is enough.
Sometimes there are times to be stretched, but sometimes, it is exhausting to always feel like the bar is always just out of reach. And just when you reach it and grasp it, it’s not enough. It moves. We move it. Someone else moves it. We get the best grade, move up to an honors class. We get that promotion, seek the next promotion.
Good is no buts, no shoulds, no coulds.
Good is practicing noticing and basking in the good.
Good is to taste, to feel, to love this moment. Exactly as it is. To savor.
Good. Perfectly Good.
Good invites patience and tenderness. It invites a slowing down that has us watching the shoots come up and the soft ripples of moonlight on water. It invites us to do our good work, but not strive to fix all the world’s problems (an impossible task). We work together, watering the seeds that will grow in their own time.
Good asks us to slow down and trust. To be content in whatever is, because perfect and best are not what matters most. Perfectly Good. Good is enough.
God looked around and said: It is Good.
It is Good.
What are our Good Celebrations?
Fear: “That we may die with him.”
The disciples are always overthinking, worrying, trying to avoid all the dangers and pitfalls. They fear going back to where Lazarus is. Going back is dangerous. Thomas says it well (paraphrased), “Well, let’s go, we can die with him.” They know this is a bad idea and…
They are afraid. They are often afraid.
We are often afraid. We are afraid. Things are unstable. It all feel precarious. It feels dangerous. We are scared. And it’s ok to be afraid, but if we’re not careful, fear can hold us back from living and from doing what is needed and what is right. Fear limits us. Fear can limit what is possible.
Death is the ultimate thing we all fear. All of us. It’s universal. It’s the ultimate unknowable of our lives. We can believe and have faith, but it’s still…scary. We cannot know.
It’s why we come together in community with rituals, and songs, and words around death. We’ve lost this a bit and perhaps this is why our fears are even more present. Many of us don’t know what to do with death.
We try to ignore death. We pretend it won’t actually come to us or ours. We “battle” against it as if dying is some sort of failure. When it happens to our loved ones, we’re often left navigating it alone, unsure how to swim in the grief, and it’s even more scary than it needs to be.
There’s a saying that we cannot avoid pain, but we don’t have to suffer. This is where rituals, songs, words, and community can hold us through the pain. This is what bearing witness to one another supports.
Perhaps being with one another through the best, and worst, of times is our most sacred work. Perhaps allowing ourselves to be ministered to, loved, and supported through the best, and worst, of times is our most sacred work.
It’s perhaps what Jesus means when he says to the people around Lazarus…unbind him. Minister to him. He needs your hearts and hands. Lazarus has no choice but to be ministered to.
I have lots of “favorites”. One of them is that we are all ministers to one another.
Unbind him. Lazarus has been through death. He cannot navigate this alone. None of us can truly navigate death, or life, alone. Even though we try. Even when it seems like we have no choice.
Those of us who have been through engulfing pain and terrible fear and death, in all its forms, knows that we need community to help us through. We are meant to help one another through. We are here to guide, navigate, support, and tend to one another. If we’re unsure what matters most…it’s this. This just might be our most sacred work.
We can help unbind one another from the trappings of fear so that we can live our lives more fully and deeply. Unbind us from fear of death so that we might truly live. Unbind us from the trappings that keep us from being fully who we are meant to be in this world. Unbind us from the things that keep us from realizing our sacred work, and gift, is to be connected with one another.
We cannot avoid pain, but together we can unbind one another. Together we can soften the blow. We can make this journey a little bit more gentle with and for one another.
Echo: And this passage echoes what’s to come. This is this miracle that sets in motion Jesus’s journey to the cross. Those who cannot see or allow for another way will report this act and seal Jesus’s fate.
We’ll see the disciples once again in fear and trying to avoid the dangers and the pitfalls. We’ll see them betray, deny, and doubt to try to escape the pain, only to find that they suffer worse.
It will echo, once again, death and living.
This story echoes the fear of the Tomb. Death and dying. The pains that we cannot avoid as embodied beings.
It echoes the resurrection, an opening to new life and possibility.
It echoes a listening, finding God’s voice in the moments of fear and darkness.
It echoes the unbinding, together we can be free of that which holds us back from the fullness of life.
We’ll be at the tomb again.
We won’t be alone.
We will see, again, Mary at the entrance of the tomb.
Grieving. Listening. Ready to witness the unbinding. Ready to be a part of the new beginning.
Fall in Love:
Dark and scary and death times can be guides toward what matters most.
No one is left out or left behind on this journey. All of us. I am heartened that Jesus is always calling the unexpected. I imagine so so so many: who me? That can’t be. Not me. There’s got to be someone “better”. Rarely do we see a prophet leap in and say: pick me, pick me!
And it is Good.
We get the marginalized, young women, widows, the elderly, tax collectors, fishermen, the fallen, shepherds, the sick, the dying, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the beautifully disabled…
Perhaps it tells us something precious. PAUSE. We all matter. All of us. As gentle, tending, ordinary souls. Not our power. Not our battle arms. Not our strength. Not our wealth. The ordinary aspects of who we really are. It is good.
It is beautiful.
Maybe resurrection is to fall in love with the Good and the ordinary. To fall into a love that widens. A love that allows in. A love that opens all the doors and all the windows. A love that makes us feel like we all belong and we can all belong to one another.
It is more than just words. It is loving kindness in action through each and every one of us to each and every one.
Community Church of North Orange & Tully 