Mediant*
“Just reach out if you need anything!”
That phrase gets a lot of mileage in our lives. Maybe too much mileage… It’s the standard line that we offer to friends, and that they offer us in return. But how often do you actually take someone up on that offer? I know I rarely do. Even when I know I need it… even when I know the offer’s sincere… I hate actually asking for help.
“I’m running on empty.”
How many of us have heard or said something like these words in just the last few weeks? The past two years have taken so much from us—from each and every one of us. They’ve taken our health, our loved ones, our lives, our hope. The pandemic has sapped away so much of our energy—our will to live. It’s drained away so much of our joy. And now, as yet another variant of the virus rages around us, we’re seeing the tiny glimpses of “normal” that we’d caught slip away before our eyes. And it’s crushing.
It’s understandable that we would feel desolate, worn down, forsaken. This is hard. It’s so, so hard. The heartbreak from canceling plans and refusing hugs. The sadness from covering our lips that long to smile and sing. The exhaustion from trying to nurture our children in the midst of this storm. The frustration from struggling to keep patients alive. It’s okay to feel like you’ve got nothing left to give to feel like you’re running on empty. Because our emptiness is not the end. The story doesn’t end when our wells run dry.
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” — 1 Cor. 6:19-20
I don’t know if this will resonate with many of you, but this passage from Paul was a constant refrain in my childhood. The cheerleaders of Evangelical Protestant “purity culture” loved these verses as a way to discourage any activity they found even mildly objectionable.
Sacrifice is a troubling concept for many of us. And understandably so. Most of us aren’t used to the blood and guts involved in preparing the meat we eat. So animal sacrifice seems jarringly foreign—even primitive. And when we look at the violence of human sacrifice, our discomfort turns into (justifiable) disgust. How could Abraham even consider killing his son? How could God ask that of him? And today on Good Friday—where is the sense in Jesus’ bloody, gruesome sacrifice? How is that “good”? What kind of God demands a human life in order to forgive sins?
If that’s what this sacrifice stuff is about, then we want no part in it!
And that makes sense. It really does.
“For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you…” Every time I hear those words, a shiver runs down my spine. These four short verses that we just heard from Paul were what my childhood church used as a sort of eucharistic prayer on Communion Sundays. Paul’s account of the Last Supper—the first Eucharist—always evoked a sense of groundedness for me. I was fascinated as a kid with history and heritage and the idea of passing stories down through generations. And at some level, I knew intuitively that the Eucharist was part of a big story—bigger than any family history we rehearsed at home or national myth we learned in school. I wanted to share in this story more intimately; so as an 8 year old I looked forward with eager anticipation to my Easter baptism, when I would get to take Communion for the first time.
On November 6, 1746, in a little town in Delaware, a remarkable baby boy was born and named Absalom. Born into slavery and separated from his family as a child, Absalom resolved early on not to let his masters control his fate. Even as a kid, Absalom saved his pennies to buy a Bible and a primer and learned to read. As an adult, he worked hard, saving money and fundraising, so he could free his wife from slavery. By the time he was 38, he’d managed to purchase his own freedom too.
My Indian grandmother is the one who taught me to love the Psalms. Every morning Ammachi would spend an hour, sitting in her chair by the bay window, just reading the Bible. Her English was excellent, but she always read it aloud—in a soft voice, barely audible above the sound of the chirping birds. It’s her voice I hear in my head as I read the psalms, especially today’s.
