Sunday,

Jim Henkelman of our congregation gave me an image that really helps me to understand our church. Years ago when he was a member of First Congregational UCC downtown on G Street, the new D.C. Metro system was being constructed. For a number of months deep in the ground below the church building they were blasting and digging. Rumbling and vibrations would regularly shake the building, like earthquake tremors. This had an impact on the daily life of the church. There wasn't much that anyone could do about what was happening down there. At the same time it couldn't be ignored. There was the noise, the surprise, and, I expect, the occasional cracks to be repaired. But life went on at the surface. It had to. Even as changes were taking place deep in the earth below.

Every church exists on these two levels. One, the everyday level of doing. This doing includes such important activities as the day to day operation of a community, the thinking and planning and acting that keep a church vibrant and alive. At this level CCC has been doing a lot over the last few years. Starting with the Jubilee Celebration of 1994, we moved from an appreciation of our past into planning for our future. The aspiration statements that grew out of our self-study process, the task forces whose reports we are studying, and decisions we will be making - all of these are really important for the work of our church - for we are called to do and to be God's people in the world on a daily basis. What are our feelings at this level? Speaking for myself, I feel excited, hopeful, proud, optimistic, and frankly energized. This process has not seemed to me to be tiring, even though a lot of people have been working hard. I think energy is being generated and released rather than consumed. These are the feelings at this surface level. And I think they are very real.

But that is one level. What about the feelings at the deeper, subterranean level? What is happening deep beneath the surface? For me, two events touch those deeper feelings. The first was Joey's sermon last spring in which she shared the news of the recurrence of her cancer. That was a profound moment for us. The depth of feelings of sorrow, grief, compassion, anger, helplessness - all of it was very, very real. The other event was the celebration of tenth anniversary of Joey's ministry with us. The outpouring of love, joy, and appreciation was equally profound. In both those events, joy and sorrow, grief and hope, appreciation and loss - all came together inseparably.

I believe that what is going on at the deeper level of our congregational life is intense feelings like this - especially sorrow, grief, anger, and fear. Those feelings cannot be ignored. They must be acknowledged, not just tucked away and kept out of sight. At the surface level, we have a lot to be joyous and happy and optimistic about. We've worked hard and accomplished much, and the future is exciting. Those feelings are legitimate and must be honored as well. The challenge is how do you pay attention to both. How do we live the daily lives, as individuals and as a congregation, that God calls us to live and at the same time allow ourselves to feel the grief that must be attended to in the face of sorrow? If we function at the surface level, ignoring the depths we risk becoming shallow, driven, superficial and exhausted. If we live only in the depths, we risk our lives grinding to a halt and losing ourselves. Is it possible to do both at once?

Here our biblical tradition is a great resource to us. Look at Psalm 77. It is about sorrow, grief, and loss. It is about facing honestly and courageously what you are experiencing. I believe that there is nothing that you can experience in the depths of pain that you will not find eloquently expressed there.

                   Psalm 77:

    1. I cry aloud to God,
         aloud to God, that he may
            hear me.
    2. In the day of my trouble I seek
            the Lord;
         in the night my hand is
             stretched out without
             wearying;
         my soul refuses to be.
            comforted.
    3. I think of God, and I moan;
         I meditate, and my spirit
            faints.

    4. You keep my eyelids from
            closing;
         I am so troubled that I cannot
            speak.
    5. I consider the days of old,
         and remember the years of
            long ago.
    6. I commune with my heart in
            the night;
         I meditate and search my
            spirit:
    7. "Will the Lord spurn forever,
         and never again be favorable?
    8. Has his steadfast love ceased
            forever?
         Are his promises at an end for
            all time?
    9. Has God forgotten to be
            gracious?
         Has he in anger shut up his
            compassion?
   10. And I say, "It is my grief
         that the right hand of the Most
            High has changed."

I am moved by the phrase "My soul refuses to be comforted." Someone in grief is at war with themselves. We want to be in control when what we need is to let go. We want to feel better, when what we need is to allow ourselves to feel worse, indeed to allow ourselves to feel as bad as we must feel. We want the pain to go away and that very determination keeps us caught. But as the Psalm shows, what helps (if that can be said to be the right word), is when the sufferer gives up on feeling better, and "remembers God." To remember who God is in the midst of sorrow does open a door where there was no door before. But it is a door that leads in a different direction than we first thought. It leads in the direction, not of "getting over the loss" but in the direction of embracing, living with, and growing through the loss. Someone last week was talking with me about his relationship to some profound personal losses. And what became clear to me in what he was saying was that those losses, and the pain of those losses, would never be gone. But it was not that he was hung up on the losses. It was the incorporation of those losses and their pain into his heart, that allowed him to continue to experience the gift of joy and appreciation for who those people were and are.

It seems to me that it is that kind of process of spiritual reflection that we cannot ignore as a congregation. Because she is our minister and because she is the exemplary person she is, it is understandable that Joey becomes a symbol as well as an individual. A symbol of courage in the midst of personal suffering. I know she understands this to be both an opportunity and a strenuous challenge. And it is unavoidable.

But when I think of Joey's journey, Steve Gilbert's journey, Marla Schreck's journey, the journeys of so many others, I believe that they are showing us all a great deal. I began by suggesting that we, as a church, must always live on these two levels and not let them become disconnected. What these people are showing is that it is possible to live daily lives that are healing, helpful, productive, and even joyous - even as, at the same time, they live with the daily reality of physical and emotional suffering. Indeed the pain brings a quality of depth and the ring of authenticity to the simplest and most necessary of daily tasks. And the base of suffering extends to and includes others of us whose lives are being touched by pain: those experiencing the loss of loved ones, the care-givers for those who are ill, the man or woman who has lost a job, the single parent who struggles to manage it all. The mystical Christian image of pain is that it is an ocean upon which all our little boats are afloat.

Our Bible is filled with phrases whose self-contradictory natures have lost their cutting edge for us. Jesus in Matthew says "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God." Another, blunter translation puts it this way: "Happy are the sad." At one level that is, of course, a contradiction. But isn't this really what we are talking about? Let your sadness and your joy embrace and enrich one another. Some people have said that we are pretty tired at CCC right now. But I don't think that is it. Exhaustion comes when we are drained of the energy it takes to keep our hearts divided. Exhaustion comes when we use up energy keeping joy and sorrow in separate compartments. Exhaustion comes from trying to keep the two levels of our lives, the conscious and the unconscious, at odds. The courage and energy to live come when we get them connected.

What is it like to live wholistically? Just look at that Twenty-First Chapter of John's Gospel. I just love it. That whole scene with Jesus on the beach just shimmers with light. It radiates with a kind of dream-like brilliance for me. Jesus with the disciples but their not recognizing him. The miraculous catch of fish. God's wondrous provision for their needs. And Jesus' words to them - if you love me, you must love one another and serve others. That is what it means to be alive. "Feed my lambs... Tend my sheep... Feed my sheep." And all this is happening connected with the most profound sense of loss and grief. Yet in the embracing of their loss, the cross, they gained the everlasting presence of their God, the crown.

Years ago, a high school friend of mine told me that what sustained him the most during a time of profound personal loss and testing was the simple phrase he kept repeating to himself. That phrase was simply this: "Keep moving." At first I wanted him to say something spiritual and profound and religious. But the more I thought about it, I think what he said has a lot of truth in it. None of us grow because we want to. Our tendency is to find a place of happiness and plant ourselves there. But whether we like it or not, we are dragged kicking and screaming into the future. Life changes around us and changes within us, mostly unwanted changes, and as often as not, losses. It is in the midst of this reality that the phrase "Keep moving" makes sense to me. "Keep moving" means keep living, keep struggling, keep loving, keep hanging on, keep letting go, keep working, keep making decisions, keep making mistakes, keep hurting, keep healing, keep moving. And keep moving means, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. For God is with you. AMEN.