A balm for all wounds

I had a few spare minutes before driving to work this morning, so I picked up the book that I was too tired to finish last night: Etty Hillisum:  An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork.  Etty Hillisum was a Jewish young woman, an avid reader, a tutor in Russian, who lived in the Netherlands.  The book is her diary and collection of letters of her last year in Amsterdam and her time in a Westerbork labor camp, ending with a postcard thrown from the "transport" train to Poland.  Records show she died in Auschwitz on November 30, 1943.

I marveled at her written words which revealed how, over the last two years of her life, she grew in her spiritual faith.  Starting from someone who didn't know how to pray, she read the bible, both Hebrew and  Christian scriptures, and had a powerful sense of the joy of life and of the presence of God, even in the most inhuman and tragic circumstances.   Trusting in God's love, she was motivated by a deep compassion for all people, refusing to harbor bitterness or hatred in herself, even in the ugliness of war.

Ultimately, we have one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace and to reflect it towards others.  And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubles world.

 She was brutally honest about her failures in life; her clear confessions and self-awareness were a good Lenten companion.  But along with acknowledging the wrong within herself, she was also radically contemplative at her core, aware of God's indwelling in the quiet center of her life at all times.  Here is a quote from when she was still living in Amsterdam but surrounded by the anxiety of people whose freedoms were being taken away:

 Despite the many people, the many questions, the varied studies, one must always carry a great silence within one, a silence into which one can always withdraw, even in the midst of all hustle and bustle and in the midst of the most animated conversations.

She felt called to extend compassion to others, even volunteering at one point to go to Westerbork so that she could be with her suffering people and offer some measure of care and compassion.   The last words in her diary are:

We would be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.

It is Maundy Thursday as I write this.  Jesus said, "A new commandment I give you, to love one another as I have loved you."  We remember again how Jesus washed his disciples' feet and gave his life in a horrible death for the world.  He is a profound outpouring of God's love. He is God's embodied love.

I am also carrying around the mental picture of one Jewish woman who in the last years of her life enfleshed the heart of Jesus' commandment to us.  Tonight, after sharing holy communion and as the psalm is being sung, I will gratefully think of Christ's self-giving love, a balm for all our wounds.    While the altar is stripped and silence falls upon the gathering, I will also think of Etty Hillisum, daughter of God, committed to selfless acts of love, confident in God's care, tossing her last postcard from the moving box car.    

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

You know how some people have additions to their person that they can’t leave home without?  My son once had a red baseball cap for a couple for a couple of years that he wore almost constantly.  A couple of guys in our congregation simply can’t worship May through September unless they are wearing their Hawaiian shirts. Moses had his walking stick.

I guess he took it up when he started herding sheep and goats for his father-in-law Jethro.  A walking stick comes in handy when fighting off snakes or mountain lions.  It helps keep one’s balance walking down dry slopes with loose rocks.  He wouldn't have left home without it.

But when God gave Moses his new assignment at the burning bush, telling Moses to free the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt,  you could say Moses’s walking stick took on new meaning.  God told the reluctant  Moses to throw the stick on the ground; it turned into a snake.  God told Moses to pick up the snake; it turned back into his walking stick.  Strange, huh?

Down in Egypt, Moses held his staff over the Nile River;  it turned to blood, the first plague.  God told Moses to hit the ground with his walking stick, the plagues of gnats and later locusts arose.  God told Moses to hold his walking stick up to the sky;  a plague of thunder, hail and lightening devastated the Egyptian countryside.  When Egyptian armies trapped the people against the Red Sea, God told Moses to hold his walking stick over the water, and the sea parted for the people to escape.  When the people in the wilderness ran out of water, God told Moses to strike a rock with his stick; the rock split and water started flowing out so they wouldn’t die of dehydration.

One could get the idea that God, Moses, and that walking stick made an invincible partnership. Until the reading found in Exodus 17:8-13.  Suddenly the walking stick/Moses/God combination was not working smoothly.

A desert Bedouin tribe, distant feuding cousins of the Hebrews, had seen Moses and the people walking through the wilderness, a wilderness where there was limited water and limited grass.  The tribe started ambushing and killing small groups on the edge of camp.  Joshua reported the crisis to Moses.  Moses told him to fight back in the morning.  Now remember, these Hebrews were newly freed slaves, brick-makers unused to this wilderness territory, who had not had any military training.  Odds were stacked against them, and Moses knew they needed God’s help.  So while Joshua led the counter-assault, Moses climbed up a hill with his walking stick and did what he always did, held up his staff, invoking God’s help.

But for the first time, results were not instantaneous.  The fight was long and bloody and his arms got weary.  So Moses rested the stick on the ground and gave his cramped arm muscles a chance to relax.  Then he glanced downhill and realized in horror that the desert tribe was recouping and winning the battle over the Israelites.  So immediately Moses raised his staff again, and Joshua’s men started to rally...until Moses could stand it no longer and had to lower his arms again. This happened over and over.  Why was it taking so long?  Why wasn't praying with the walking stick working?

Finally, Aaron (Moses’ brother) and Hur, realized what was happening.  They ran to Moses, got him to sit down on a rock, and together stood on either side of Moses, each holding up one of his arms which were in turn supporting the famous walking stick.  They stood as partners with Moses in prayer until Joshua’s men finally defeated the desert tribe.

I don’t believe for a minute that God needed a raised walking stick to be cajoled  into answering prayer.  Nor do I believe any of us would  think that God would turn God's back on the people when Moses arms were hurting too much to keep holding them up.  So what’s going on?

What I really think was happening was that God was helping Moses be a better leader.  It’s becoming apparent in the story that Moses felt like he carried the burden of the people alone, and he was getting weary.  He was the one that prayed for the people.  He was the one God talked to.  He was the one people complained to, and it was more than his arms that were getting tired.  (Read Exodus chapter 18 and see what happened next).

So high on this hilltop, God was teaching Moses that he couldn't pray alone.  He needed to sit down on a rock and let others pray with him.  Not until Aaron and Hur shared the burden of prayer did things begin to change.

Have you ever found it hard to share with others a special burden that is on your heart? We don’t like to be vulnerable, do we?  If we share this struggle or that problem, what will people think of us?  If we talk about how we are having a hard time, won't they question our capability or our spirituality?  How can we share our deep concerns and struggles with one another?

But sometimes burdens are too heavy to bear by ourselves and we need partners in prayer and support and presence.  Of course, God hears us no matter where we are or who is with or not with us.  And yet, there is something crucial about a faith community.  Jesus used to take a couple of disciples with him during the times he was especially burdened.  And he is the one who said wherever two or three are gathered in his name, there he will be in the midst of them.

There have been times, when I have avoided sharing with others a deep concern; I tried to carry the weight of prayer by myself.  God hears my prayers, I said.  But, while God is always faithful, I have slowly and stubbornly learned that it often takes sharing and praying with others before God’s answer becomes evident.  We need to let a few trusted Christians know how they can be praying for us.  This is not only true of individuals.  We as congregations need to be praying, not just for ourselves, but for one another in these challenging times.  Yes, it takes the Body of Christ to be in prayer together for us to be able to see and hear and point to how God is working.  One person, one congregation, and not even Moses can carry the burden alone.

Where I come from

I have been participating in a Lenten retreat with Jan Richardson.  This week the theme involves thinking about stories, including our personal stories.  This is a piece of my story, much is left out, based on my growing up years.  Of course, it is also based on a few threads of the story that I happen to be thinking about today.  What from my childhood is woven into me now, I wonder?  What have I let go on the way? If you were to tell your story, or a piece of your story, about yourself and about your relationship to God, what would it be...today?  

I am from mountains---where winding roads on Sunday afternoon rides would throw us unbuckled (no seatbelts then), giggling kids against each other.  Where our burning muscles could climb us  to the top of the world.  Where cold spring water tumbled over rocks and numbed dangling feet.  Where we tunneled paths through rhododendron thickets on Mountain Lake.

I am from a home on a hill---where its ever-changing shadows on the green lawn created even more shifting shapes for our play “houses”.  Where milk and cookies and conversation at the kitchen table were the after-school special.   Where we roller-skated on the carport to the rhythm of our singing under the mountain’s amused eye.  Where I planted myself on the piano bench in the afternoon while others practiced cheers or field hockey.  Where I turned pages of music until I found one too hard for me and tried it anyway, and imagined what it could sound like one day.

I am from books---where the county bookmobile made summer stops in front of my house, the neighborhood exploring its depths and I emerging with several treasures. Where my bed had a bookcase to hold them and my father made one for my wall.  Where I tried on different personalities and work and loves and adventures.  Where I grew bigger on the inside.

I was bible-belted with stories and revivals---where I once played the do-not-dance version, but another time the short-skirt-electric-guitar version.  I am from mostly hearing God talk to me in between lines of my open bible while curled on my bed.  Or when I would creep to my raised window and feel the night breeze that stirred the neighbor’s hemlock tree, hear the cricket ostinato, see stars blinking and something in the depths of me would leap and stretch.

I do not know where the preaching pastor belatedly came from.  Because where I am from, I did not want to talk much in large groups.  That talk certainly did not come from the mountains where I would rather sit on a rock and be quiet.

But I am from Bob and Beverly, who have loved the Lord and have loved each other for 65 married years next week.  Who sang to me almost every night of my childhood that “one of these days you’re gonna rise up singing, then you’ll spread your wings and take to the sky....”  Who were puzzled when I left home walking into unconservative, take-to-the-sky ways.  Who could not follow, but loved me just the same.  That’s where I’m from.