Finding a New Normal

Death and I know each other quite well.  We have met on many occasions in my short life and, in the past few years, we have finally come to an understanding.  At least I think we have.  I know that death is never an easy thing, regardless of the length and quality of a life lived.  Death knows that I am not afraid of him.  I don't like death, but I've interacted with death enough to know that it shouldn't be scary.

There's a tricky side to death, though, in that death changes a lot more lives than we think.  Death doesn't just come for the person who is dying, death also comes for their family and for their friends and issues a challenge - find a new normal and keep living, or be consumed by me.  

Finding a new normal isn't easy.  It means doing the difficult work of casting off the sackcloth and ashes and stepping out into the daylight having found a way of honoring grief that helps you keep going each day.  It means that, when the cycle of grief does come around again, we can greet it with the attention and honor it deserves, and then move on with our day or week or month or year (let's be honest, sometimes grief needs to be honored for more than a moment).  It also means carrying a spirit around with you that isn't physically present in this life, a spirit that can often cause us to wonder what would have been if that loved one had not died.  

I wondered, a couple weeks ago, what our life would be like if I hadn't miscarried...would we have chosen to find out the sex of the baby?  would we have finally selected names by now?  what would his/her nursery look like at this moment?  how would we be preparing Ellie to be a big sister?  

Part of the pain surrounding pregnancy loss is that parents can only wonder what could have been.  Our lives and the lives of the children we lost only intersected in this life for a little while, and often in a way that doesn't cause too much disruption in our day to day lives. But they intersected for long enough that hopes and dreams for that child and his/her life had already been formed.  And in death, hopes were dashed and dreams were crushed. Yet, we must still keep on living. Things went back to normal after our miscarriage.  But at the same time, they didn't.  Chris and I found ourselves trying to maneuver into a new normal in which we could honor our grief while continuing to navigate parenting in the midst of toddlerhood.  Like a dear friend said about the loss of his son "I have come to peace with his loss, and life goes on, but I wish he were here."   

As we walk through life,  it is full of new normals, be they a new job, a new life entering the family, a new house, a new routine after a job has been lost or a medical diagnosis has been made, and those new normals shape who we are.  Death is the most permanent of changes that causes a new normal to be necessary.  But we know that it is possible to find life in the midst of death.  That in the midst of death new normals that allow us to not just live, but thrive, are possible.  We know this because we have seen it happen.  Because we have lived it for ourselves.  As a Christian, I know it can be done because I have heard the promises of scripture.  I have heard the scriptural witness of the disciples trying to find a new normal after Christ's death only to find Christ living within that new normal.  I have heard the witness of the of the resurrection and have seen it for myself in little miracles and in big ones, and I believe that the promises of the resurrection are there for you and for me.  

The Ten Commandments, another chapter in God's playbook

Pentecost 17

October 5, 2014

Exodus 20:1-17

Pop Quiz friends!!

Let’s check your knowledge of the Ten Commandments.

1)      Who can name all Ten Commandments in order? (put your bulletins down)

2)      Bonus question – how many versions of the Ten Commandments are there?

a.       3 – Jewish (combines the covet commandments, 1^st commandment is “I am the lord your God who brought you out of the hand of Egypt. 2^nd commandment “you shall have no other gods, no graven images”)

                                                              i.      Roman Catholic and Lutheran and same

                                                            ii.      Reformed (combines covet commandments, 2^nd commandment is graven image)

Congratulations, you “passed” the test. 

Now, before we move on to speak a bit about the commandments, we need to do a bit of catching up on what has happened since the Israelites have arrived at Sinai.  After their arrival at Mount Sinai, God spoke to Moses from the cloud that encompassed the mountain and gave him instructions on what to tell the people before Moses went up the mountain to receive the commandments.  Moses is told that only he and his brother, Aaron, were to go up to the top of the mountain.  If anyone dared to follow him or eavesdrop on their conversation, things would end badly.  The other important thing that occurred when the people reached Mount Sinai is that God consecrated the people, making them a holy people.  God did this as part of entering into a covenant with the people.  But this covenant was not like the one that God had made with Abraham, which placed no conditions that would rely on Abraham’s faithfulness.  Instead, this covenant was dependent on the people listening to God’s voice and keeping up their end of the covenant.  In other words, whereas Abraham couldn’t mess things up, the Israelites could…or, looking at it from another angle, the covenant God entered into with Abraham was focused on the faithfulness of God.  This covenant is focused upon the faithfulness of the people.   

Ok, so there’s that.

What about these commandments in and of themselves.  Surely I could preach a fire and brimstone sermon about the importance of the Ten Commandments and how our world is heading down a path in which the commandments are more and more forgotten.  Certainly it would fit in with what we see in the news and on television.  Murders happening each day, more and more parts of the world entering into the war against Isis, tales of adultery in our newspapers and throughout daytime soaps and prime time dramas, contests teaching folks to cheat each other out of something that someone else has (which is the true definition of covet…to desire something so bad, you are willing to go any lengths to get it), and very few instances in our television landscape of folks going to church on Sunday morning. And, as we near ever closer to election day, we see God being used over and over as a political ploy to get the public on your side.  As if saying “God bless America” enough times will ensure that that senate seat is yours.  But I think, as much as it is appropriate to our times, on some level that would be missing the point. 

It is true that God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments as a way of helping them to live well with one another, which was probably becoming increasingly difficult as they wandered the desert.  It’s like on the first day of football practice when the players sit down with the coach for the first times, some rookies and some veterans and the coach says, ok, if we are going to be successful this season, these are the ground rules.  And like with the ground rules put in place for a football team, these Ten Commandments aren’t just rules, they also help to form an identity.  The identity of the Michigan football team is different than the identity of the Michigan State football team, and not because of win-loss records for the season…but because Brady Hoke and Mark Dantonio do things differently...their ground rules are different, their play books are different.

And so we have, with the giving of the Ten Commandments, the continuation of God’s play book…only this time, we are seeing not what God is promising to provide for the Israelites, what they can expect from God, but rather what God expects in return.  And God set the bar pretty high.  I can almost guarantee that before the day is out, just about all of us will have broken at least one commandment. Maybe you have already broken one this morning.  Maybe you will break one watching the Lions or Tigers games this afternoon. 

But I will argue that the easiest one to break is the one that, in theory, is the easiest to keep.  And that is the first commandment.  You shall have no other Gods. 

“But pastor, that is why we are here” we say.  “But Jen, that is why you serve the church,” I said to myself last night.  And that is true. We are in church this morning to worship God.  To live into the identity we have been given as God’s children. But do our hearts cling firmly to this identity or do we let other things get in the way? Here is what Martin Luther had to say in the Large Catechism, a volume written to help clergy instruct their congregations. 

“Many a one thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when he has money and possessions; he trusts in them and boasts of them with such firmness and assurance as to care for no one. Lo, such a man also has a god, Mammon by name, i.e., money and possessions, on which he sets all his heart, and which is also the most common idol on earth. He who has money and possessions feels secure, and is joyful and undismayed as though he were sitting in the midst of Paradise. On the other hand, he who has none doubts and is despondent, as though he knew of no God. For very few are to be found who are of good cheer, and who neither mourn nor complain if they have not Mammon. This [care and desire for money] sticks and clings to our nature, even to the grave.

So, too, whoever trusts and boasts that he possesses great skill, prudence, power, favor friendship, and honor has also a god, but not this true and only God. This appears again when you notice how presumptuous, secure, and proud people are because of such possessions, and how despondent when they no longer exist or are withdrawn. Therefore I repeat that the chief explanation of this point is that to have a god is to have something in which the heart entirely trusts”

It is so easy to fall into a way of living in which other gods have taken ahold of our attention…gods that are easier to please because they require so much less of us.  But the thing is, if we can keep this one commandment, the rest all fall into place.  When we put all of our trust and confidence in God, when we place God firmly in our hearts, when we put God above everything else, our lives are changed in such a way that is visible to our neighbors because when our lives are changed by God’s love, we reflect that love to the world.  It doesn’t matter how much money we have, what car we drive, what clothes we wear, but that we live lives that show radical love to our neighbor while not being afraid to take the time to make sure that we stay healthy in order to keep on loving.  So as we go out into the world this week, go knowing that to keep the first commandment means this – to hold God firmly in our hearts, to trust that he will provide for all of our needs, even if that means some of our prayers receive a no response, and to live into the reality that God’s love is life changing.