The great thing about arthritis is I cannot
hide it. I cannot cover it up. It’s right in my face all the time, and in
the face of everyone I meet. I cannot help but walk and stand funny and not
very long at a time. I carry a cane for stairs and for hills. I need a lot
of little daily helps and starts, which I slowly learn to ask for and to
accept more or less graciously. I pay strict attention wherever I step,
wherever I sit. I worry about relying too much on medicines and not enough
on exercises. It feels like a constant temptation to define myself by who I
am not and by what I cannot do any more. I get a lot of advice, all of it
well-meaning, most of it good.
I still think what was most helpful to me
was a trip to the Mayo Clinic some 20 years ago. I was able to meet with a
group of other persons there for the same reason. In the course of talking
together, as perhaps with any self-help or recovery group, we found our own
ways to realize we had to honor this part of ourselves that gives us such a
hard time. We could not deny it, repress it, combat it, overcome it. We
could not regard it only with anger, resentment, guilt, or self-pity. We
had to give an appreciable place in our everyday lives to this arthritis,
this disease, this dis-ease, this illness, this condition of limitation over
which we could have no final control. It’s just that simple. It’s just
that profound.
Healing has to begin with awareness of the
right of every part to exist -- in the body, the mind, the spirit, and the
relationship. Paul gives us the image of the church as the body of Christ
and of disciples as members of the body, each with our own part to be and to
play. The same Paul learns to live, restlessly, with what he calls a
permanent thorn in his own flesh. We do not know exactly what it was. We
just know it is a constant source of disturbance, if not dysfunction, to
him, and we can think of a lot of those, too! Not only in our own bodies,
but also in this body we share as the church. We are body parts. Each of
us has a place. Each of us is a gift of some kind. Each of us has the
right to be seen and be heard to the extent of making some contribution to
the well-being of the whole.
We are invited to go through this Lent in
awareness of the body parts and the spirit gifts Paul describes in both
Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. We are also invited to see ourselves as the
spirit congregations addressed by John in the first three chapters of
Revelation. There are seven distinct, in ways incompatible, congregations.
Yet each is given by the same Spirit. All seven, if not more, may exist in
any one church at any given time in our journey to be healed and whole. The
good news can also be hard news at times: We do not all have to look alike,
be alike, think alike, feel alike, talk alike, act alike. For we are each
made in the image and likeness of God. Each one of us is a word of God made
flesh, incarnate, embodied, a part of the earth, the desert, the dust. Each
one of us is created. The created in me acknowledges and respects the
created in you. Each one of us is a rock with rough hard edges, a twig with
broken fallen places, -- within is, between us, among us, around us. We are
all in this together!
Adam and Eve find themselves at the end of
this story all alone in this world yet together. They try to deny, betray,
abandon one another, even as Peter and all the disciples do Jesus at the end
of the Lenten story. God will not let them or us.
Arthritis clearly is one of the pains of my
life, one of the serpents in my garden. Each of us names our own pains and
serpents, though help is always available in the process. Brothers and
sisters in the body of Christ, knowing ourselves to be so related and so
connected, are, or can be, as good a place to start as any. We see
ourselves reflected in one another. Healing starts with painful awareness
of who we are. The serpent is that trickster, tempter, instigator,
agitator, organizer (sounds like a pastor to me!) who raises the questions
with us we cannot see or not dare to raise with ourselves. What could be
more natural, more incarnate, for us as creatures made in the image and
likeness of a Creator, than to explore and discover how much and in how many
ways we creatures are like the Creator? The serpent reveals to us that we
are more like God than we know!
Jesus goes through the very same thing in
the wilderness. He is led there by the Spirit who just before leads him to
baptism. Our lives are Lenten-like rhythms: baptism and temptation, water
and wilderness, hardness and healing. Jesus, too, finds himself in a place
of stones that are meant to be stones, not bread! If we let the stones be
stones in our lives, the bread will take care of itself. Angels bearing us
up do not necessarily keep us from dashing our feet against stones. Stones
are a part of the journey. They have a life of their own, especially in
Nevada! The spiritual life, Jesus knows, can be hard and rough. It is not
escapist, it is not elitist, it is not exclusivist or exceptionalist. It
does not keep “bad things,” hard things, from happening to us. It does not
excuse us from being incarnate, embodied, part of the larger body, related
to all parts of life.
Like the garden, the wilderness is a place
we go to be sent back into the world.
In all things, as Jesus responds to the
devil, the serpent, the trickster and tempter, the end is to let God be
God! To let God be the gift and portion of daily life! The creator and
provider for all of our needs. Lent is about endurance, faithfulness to the
end. Do we hear the word “end” in “endurance?” The world, including the
church, is so much divided today between those who hold hope for this world
and those who do not. So many of us act today as if the world can just
self-destruct for all we care. Between those who see the “end” of things as
judgment, disaster, and condemnation, and those who the “end” as invitation,
opportunity, new beginning in hope for the world, precisely as it is created
to be. Being more like God than we know, as we learn it from Jesus, is not
about denying how powerful we are and can be, but about learning, accepting,
the right, the creative and life-giving use of power, that may not look or
act anything like the destructive and death-dealing power we have so taken
for granted.
Healing begins with God’s promise, not that
we will be spared from all suffering, not that we will be cured from all
illness, not that we will be freed all death and dying, but that God will be
with us to the end. We are created to be with God, no matter what. As our
Youth Group teaches us to say to one another, “God loves you, and there’s
nothing you can do about it!” Even as radically created and limited as we
are, we still can be a whole lot more like God than we know. We can still
live life as mystery and not try to turn it all into morality, as if ours
were the only and right way to live it. We can still discern and discover,
explore and experiment with, more and more truth about us. Even created and
limited, there is so much more complexity within us and diversity among us.
And so much of the mystery, the discovery, the complexity and the diversity
happen at the points where spirit meets flesh, body meets soul, --
spirituality and sexuality, both in the fullest, richest, most God-given
senses, interconnect and interact. Truly, the choice about hope for this
world, in the end, is whether we are incarnate, made flesh, embodied for
love or for war. War may be winning but love is on the move!
Surely, on this eve of St. Valentine’s Day,
the call to healing is the call to love. Please join me in Wendy Wright’s
“Litany of the Heart” –
“Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer “So
loving / So humble / So gentle / So compassionate / So faithful / So
wise / So patient / So steadfast / So tender / So spacious
“Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer “God’s
joy / God’s shalom / Harp of the Trinity / Wingbeat of the Spirit /
Breath of God / Five-petaled rose
“Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer “Womb
of justice / Birthplace of peace / Our dearest hope / Longing of our
lives
“Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer
“Freely flowing fountain / Spring of grace / Freshet of forgiveness /
Merciful river / Mystical dew
“Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer
“Warmth of our hearts / Transforming fire / Cosmic furnace / Enflamer of
hearts
“Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer “Heart
of evolution / Beginning and ending / Center of all
“Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer
“Garden of virtues / Mystical dew / Table and food
“Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer “Our
refuge / Our shelter / Our comfort / Our rest / Our welcoming breast
“Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer
“Wounded by love / Pierced by our cruelty / Broken by our hardness /
Mystic winepress / Poured out as gift
“Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer “Have
mercy, gracious heart, / Give us gratefulness / Teach us tenderness /
Let us learn to love
“Hear our prayer.” Amen.
Rev. John Auer
