Blessed are Those Who Grieve

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” --Matthew 5:4 NRSV

I shared in Tuesday’s post about how the liturgical church calendar has All Saints Sunday as the first Sunday after Halloween (All Hallows Eve). It’s customary to read from the Gospel of Matthew’s Beatitudes, Matthew 5:1-12, which forms the introduction to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7). I won’t be preaching on the Beatitudes this Sunday, so I felt it was a good idea to share about them via these emails. 

Remember, the Beatitudes (the verses that begin “Blessed are . . . “) are not instructions to be poor in spirit, mourners, meek, persecuted, etc., but rather declarations of the way God sees the world. Jesus depicts God’s reality in a way which is contrary to how we understand how the world works. This seems especially true in the case of the second beatitude (“Blessed are those who mourn. . . “).

Often interpreters who understand the Beatitudes as instructions or as ideals to strive for see this beatitude only in  communal terms. In this kind of view, the mourning in question is  concern about the sinful or unrighteous state of the world. In other words, those who are a part of the Kingdom of Heaven grieve all the ways our world falls short of God’s intended purposes. I certainly don’t think this kind of mourning is bad, rather I think it is an appropriate perspective for people of faith to mourn the ways humanity despoils the earth, commits acts of violence upon one another, supports prejudice of every kind and allows a sizable chunk of humanity to live in squalor. Nonetheless, I do not think this is what Jesus had in mind with this beatitude, at least not exclusively.

I believe Jesus meant people are blessed by God who are mourning losses. It sounds absurd, so I get why interpreters have found ways to understand this mourning as something other than the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, the end of a dream or the dissolution of a marriage. How can one possibly be blessed when they are enduring the inevitable losses in life?

I think the answer comes when we understand “blessed” less as a tangible benefit of some kind and more as divine favor or concern. Attempts to point out the blessings that may or may not arise from grief can come across as cold or cruel, as if one is telling someone in pain to “look on the bright side” or remember “every cloud has a silver lining”. If blessings ever do come from times of grief, they come in the form of personal growth, an increase in compassion and empathy, or gratitude for the love received from others. These may come eventually, but they never fill the void left in one’s life.

For me, the words “Blessed are those who mourn . . . “are a comfort in and of themselves, because it means when I grieve that I am not forgotten or abandoned by God.  God cares for me. I am not being cursed or punished because of some sin or shortcoming but rather painful losses happen in life for reasons that remain a mystery, and God is present with us during those times. 

Indeed, the Gospels reveal Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus, wept over the fate of Jerusalem, and wept facing his impending death. The power of the Incarnation is that in Christ God experienced what it is to grieve. This is not a God who remains far off from us but a God who draws near to us and shares our pain. The loss we feel is felt by God too.

This blessedness or co-suffering of God with those who mourn is beautifully expressed in the hymn “Be Still My Soul.”

Be still my soul the Lord is on thy side

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain

Leave to thy God to order and provide

In every change He faithful will remain

Be still my soul thy best, thy heavenly friend

Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end

The hymn speaks to the second half of the beatitude “. . . for they shall be comforted.” There is no time table given for when this comfort will show up. In this life, comfort may come in the faithfulness of friends and family, a sense of God’s presence or simply the passage of time. Comfort in its fullness comes in the mysteries that await us after this life is over.

The future orientation of the second half of the beatitude (“. . . for they shall be comforted”) offers us the guarantee that the comfort will come even though we may feel our pain will never end. This promise is essential, because so much of what we grieve is the loss of an expected future that will not come to pass.  Former General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ John Thomas  speaks eloquently of this facet of grief:

We often think of grief as the loss of something or someone that has been important to us in the past. But the sharpest pain of grief comes, I believe, in the moments when we suddenly find ourselves confronting a vastly altered future . . . It is not so much the loss of a rich past as it is the prospect of a barren future that causes us our most profound grief.  

 

Jesus’ declaration that those who mourn “shall be comforted” is a promise that when we think our lives are over and believe we can’t go on without what or whom we have lost, God offers a future still. Our lives will never go back to what they were before our losses; our losses remain with us. But a new kind of life always lies before us, because our Divine friend walks with us into that future.

 

In 2020, we have known so many losses of all kinds: over 220,000 (at the time of this post) people in our country dead from COVID-19, loss of community, jobs and our best laid plans. The interpreters who  want to interpret this Beatitude as communal, mourning over the state of our world, are not all wrong. I just believe our mourning is not an either/or proposition. We mourn for the suffering in our world and we mourn for the losses in our individual lives. Whatever our suffering, whatever we mourn, Jesus promises us that the blessing of God's presence remains true. New life remains in our future and our God walks besides us on our way there.

 

Grace and Peace, Chase

 

What Happens When a Church Building Stops Housing a Congregation?

This week the New York Times ran an article entitled “New Spirits Rise in Old, Repurposed Churches.”  It described church buildings around the country that were sold by closed congregations and have been repurposed for new uses. Many times when a congregation closes another one buys it, but in a growing number of cases the church building becomes something else entirely. The articled offered these statistics:

It is unclear how many religious buildings are repurposed. Roughly 1 percent of the nation’s 350,000 congregations — or 3,500 — close each year . . . But not all find new uses and some buildings are filled by different congregations. 

These “different congregations” sometimes look very different from a house of worship. An Episcopal church in Denver founded in 1880 became a dance club called “The Church” (real original). In Troy, NY, a former Catholic church was bought by the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity. The frat brothers made an agreement with the town when they bought it that they would keep it alcohol-free, but if they’ve done so, then they would be the first college fraternity to do so, well ever. Second Presbyterian Church of Newark, NJ, became the headquarters of Audible, a digital audiobook and podcast provider. While in San Francisco, a Christian Science Church founded in 1923 is now home for an archive of everything ever posted on the internet.

I know a church is the people that make it up and not a building, but it just feels wrong to transform a building dedicated to worshipping God into a building used for such secular purposes. I guess I should keep in mind that in many cases a church might sell its building and use the proceeds for good causes. I’ve known churches that closed and sold their property which gave the money from the sale to start new churches. Also, just because a congregation sells its property doesn’t mean it died. In some of these cases, the neighborhood around the church building changed or its members began moving to other parts of their cities. So they sold their property and built a new building elsewhere. I also know of congregations who couldn’t afford to keep up a big expensive building, so they sold them and used the money to support ministry in a rented property like a storefront.

I first began taking notice of articles describing the fate of sold church buildings a few years ago. The first one I saw was an article in The Atlantic titled “America’s Epidemic of Empty Churches.” It detailed the decades-long decline in church membership and attendance, as well as demographic shifts in some expensive real estate markets. In places like Brooklyn, NY or around Washington, D.C., historic church buildings were being bought by developers and turned into hipster lofts and condos. Preservationists were aghast and so were many church folks.

My whole career as a minister I’ve been hearing about the decline of denominations and local congregations. There are so many reasons for this, such as generational change, lower commitment to institutions, disillusionment with organized religion and more. Predictions vary, but it is clear that sometime not too far off in the future as churches lose their older members--the most numerous and most committed in churches today--there is going to be a massive sell off of church buildings.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, as I’ve said, as a lifelong churchgoer it just feels wrong to me to no longer use a church building for spiritual purposes. On the other hand, the biggest source of conflict and the biggest obstacle to actually doing the ministry of Jesus Christ I’ve seen in the congregations I’ve served has been (you guessed it) the church buildings. Again and again, staff, ministries and more essential things have been sacrificed to maintain buildings too large for dwindling congregations to manage. It’s as if church folks felt like they were actually doing the work of the Gospel as long as they kept the roof from caving in. This idolatry of church buildings is pretty sad when one considers Jesus did just fine without his own building. So did the early church; Christianity survived for centuries before the first church buildings were built.

As congregations get smaller and have fewer resources, it is fair to ask whether or not it is good stewardship of God’s money to work so hard at maintaining buildings that stand empty most of the week. I wonder why we ever thought this was a good idea in the first place. In no other sector do buildings get so much attention but get used so infrequently.

In this week’s New York Times article, there were some church buildings which had been repurposed for uses that were at least closer to their original purposes. One had been made into a winery and another was made into a restaurant. Hey, Jesus spent a lot of time sitting around tables eating and drinking with people, so much so he was criticized for it. A church building in New Orleans that a congregation couldn’t afford to repair after hurricane Katrina became a recording studio used by local jazz musicians and even stars like Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton and Janelle Monae. I’ve certainly had plenty of spiritual moments listening to music and attending concerts, so this doesn’t seem so bad to me.

One church building, however, had been repurposed into something that seemed closer to its original use than the others. A Methodist church in South Charleston, WV has been transformed into Cafe Appalachia. A non-profit group runs the restaurant that serves comfort food and prides itself on being a part of its community. At the heart of Cafe Appalachia are the kitchen workers. They are part of a job training program for women recovering from opioid addiction. West Virginia has the highest rate in the country for opioid deaths and everyone knows someone affected by the crisis. Two quotes about Cafe Appalachia caught my eye:

“There’s sadness when a worshiping space changes, but this is a whole different kind of sanctuary,” said the Rev. Cindy Briggs-Biondi, the former pastor at St. Paul United Methodist Church.

“If Jesus were here now?” said Ronnie Skeens, a regular. “The way my faith works? He’d be back there cooking with them.”

I can’t help but think that if more churches looked and acted like Cafe Appalachia, then there would be a whole lot fewer church buildings on the market.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

Blessed are Those Who Don’t Have Much Faith

 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
--Matthew 5:3 NRSV

As I explained in yesterday’s post, according to the liturgical calendar the first Sunday after “All Hallow’s Eve” (Halloween) is All Saints Sunday. Since churches like the ones I serve don’t have capital “S” saints but rather use the word “saint” the way the Apostle Paul did, which is referring to all Christians as lower case “s” saints, I like to make All Saints Sunday a time to remember people on our faith journeys who have made a difference in our lives.

The traditional Gospel reading for All Saints Sunday is Matthew 5:1-12. This passage has come to be called the Beatitudes (see yesterday’s post for my explanation why). Each of these phrases begins with the words often translated as “Blessed are. . .“ These are not instructions to be poor in spirit, mourners, meek, persecuted, etc., but rather declarations of the way God sees the world. Jesus depicts God’s reality in a way which is contrary to how we understand how the world works.

Jesus says, “Contrary to how the church usually does things, those who are poor in spirit are actually blessed by God.” This doesn’t really make sense. Elsewhere Jesus urges his disciples to be full of faith. The Holy Spirit is sent to the first Christians and being full of it seems like a good thing. Yet, Jesus declares those who have little spirit already have the kingdom of heaven. Say what?

In my lifetime of being in various kind of churches and attending or officiating a whole lot of Christian funerals, I have often heard people praised as a person of faith. “He was a man of faith.” “She was a woman of faith.” Oftentimes, by this phrase they mean the person was a dedicated Christian or an involved church member. Sometimes I’ve heard the phrase used to imply the person was a superior sort of Christian, especially faithful, as if she or he possessed some degree of holiness or God’s blessing that is more than others. I have never heard anyone praised at their funeral as “poor in spirit.”

Jesus’ strange declaration that those who don’t seem to have much faith or spirit already possess the Kingdom of Heaven makes a little more sense when we consider what else Jesus has to say in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).  A little while after the Beatitudes, Jesus has this to say about giving alms (giving to others in need): 

“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others.”

He then has this to say about prayer:

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.”

He then says this about fasting:

“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.” 

Jesus seems particularly critical of those who make a show of their religion. Elsewhere he declares that God hears the prayer of a humble sinner over a self-righteous person. He says tax collectors, prostitutes and others singled out as committing worse sins than others are entering the Kingdom of Heaven ahead of the most important religious people.

What this means is that the celebrity pastors and sycophantic religious leaders offering cover for corrupt political leaders and the TV preachers asking for money are not the blessed ones. In fact, according to God’s point of view, the most visible Christians in society are further away from the Kingdom of Heaven than the people they condemn. If we take Jesus seriously, then when we make our spirituality a contest, we have already missed the point.

People who use religion to acquire power, money, celebrity and fame “have received their reward” and it is not being a part of what God is up to in this world or the next.

People who use their faith to feel superior over others, condemn others, judge others and exclude others “have received their reward” and it is not the Kingdom of Heaven.

But people who struggle with their faith and even question whether God exists, don’t understand why there is so much suffering in the world, own their own faults, mistakes and the pain they have caused others, and demonstrate humility, grace and love to others whoever they are—these kind of people, “the poor in spirit,” have a different kind of reward.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

Beatitudes for the Pandemic

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
--Matthew 5:1-3 NRSV

All Saints Sunday is one of my favorite Sundays of the year. Some churches preach on the saints (churches that are Catholic, Episcopal and some other Protestant churches), but other churches combine it with All Soul’s Day, a day to remember all those who have died. I tend to do the latter, because in “low church” congregations like the ones I serve we don’t usually elevate some Christians above others. I believe it’s a great time to recognize all the “lower case” saints who have influenced our faith journeys.

It’s also a good time to reflect upon the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Matthew 5:1-12, often called the Beatitudes. Since I won’t be preaching on them Sunday, I’ll write about them this week.

Why are they called the Beatitudes? The Latin translation of these verses from the Greek each began with the Latin word “beati” meaning “happy” or “blessed.’ (The original Greek word “makario” meant basically the same thing.)  Over time, first in Latin and later in English, the term “beatitude” came to mean a state of being happy or blessed. Some confusion comes up in modern English, because the only word we usually hear based on the root “beati” is “beatify’ or “beatification” which is a step on the road to sainthood in the Catholic church, so those of us who aren’t Catholic don’t naturally connect “beatitude” and ‘blessed”.

Another problem for English speaking Christians is the confusion with our modern use of the word ‘attitude” meaning (according to Google) “a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person's behavior”.  Confusing “beatitude” with “attitude” risks interpreting these verses as ‘attitudes’ Jesus wants us to have. In other words, Jesus says to us “Be poor in spirit, mourning, persecuted, etc.” in order to receive God’s blessings. Indeed, many books have been written with just that interpretation.  At best this is only part of what these verses mean, at worst this way of understanding the Beatitudes entirely misses Jesus’ point.

I believe the best way to interpret these verses is not as an instruction manual from Jesus, but as declarations from Jesus about how the world really works, all appearances to the contrary. A group of clergy called SALT Project does a nice job of describing this way of understandingthe Beatitudes:

Jesus paints an utterly counterintuitive picture of blessedness: looking around the world, then and now, and it’s easy to conclude that the “blessed” are the rich, happy, strong, satisfied, ruthless, deceptive, aggressive, safe, and well-liked — and yet here’s Jesus, saying that despite appearances, the truly “blessed” are actually the poor, mourning, gentle, hungry, merciful, pure in heart, peacemaking, persecuted, and reviled.

When we usually make use of the word ‘blessed” we mean it in material terms, as in I am blessed to have the basic necessities of life (or maybe I’m blessed because I own a bunch of stuff and have a big bank account). Perhaps, we may use the word “blessed’ to describe less tangible things such as the blessings of family, friends and the like. Yet, I believe Jesus is using the term “blessed’ to literally mean divine favor and not about something we possess or earn. Read this way, the Beatitudes become words of consolation and encouragement for those who need it most.

Even if the world does not value you like it does celebrities, the one percent, the rich and the powerful, God values you, cares for you, loves you and knows you.  

Especially if your circumstances make you wonder if God cares for you at all or if God even exists, know God loves you, cares for you, loves you and knows you.

Jesus’ words about who is blessed comes at the front of his Sermon on the Mount. Before he gets around to the instruction list, Jesus has already declared who is blessed. So, we need not waste time and energy on trying to earn or keep God’s blessing. God’s blessing of the poor in spirit, the mourner, the gentle, the hungry and thirsty, merciful, pure in heart, and persecuted already exists! It is the way God’s reality works, a preset condition and we do not have the power to lose this divine favor if we are among those on this list!

The minister and author Nadia Bolz-Weber describes it this way:

Maybe the sermon on the mount is all about Jesus’ seemingly lavish blessing of the world around him especially that which society doesn’t seem to have much time for, people in pain, people who work for peace instead of profit, people who exercise mercy instead of vengeance. So maybe Jesus is actually just blessing people, especially the people who never seem to receive blessings otherwise. I mean, come on, doesn’t that just sound like something Jesus would do? Extravagantly throwing around blessings as though they grew on trees?”

Bolz-Weber and other authors have taken their turns of writing their own Beatitudes declaring who is blessed by God, especially people our society doesn’t value, so I thought I’d write a few of my own during this time of pandemic.

Blessed are the quarantined for they shall experience the presence of God.

Blessed are the lonely for they shall have a Divine friend.

Blessed are the caregivers for they shall be cared for.

Blessed are the anxious for they shall know peace.

Blessed are the overworked for they shall find rest.

Blessed are the unemployed for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are those who protest, organize and vote to provide care for the uninsured, the underpaid and the cash strapped for great shall be their reward.

Whom would you write a Beatitude for in this anxious and turbulent time?

Grace and Peace,
Chase

Shouldn’t Earning a Living Involve Actually Living?

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. --John 10:10 NRSV

Maybe it’s because I’m passed the middle in middle age and have begun the second half of my life, but whether it's because of my age or something else, I’ve been thinking about “work” lately. I’ve worked in a variety of places and done a variety of work, and I’ve been thinking about what parts of my work have meant the most to me.

For many (most?) of humanity, work is a matter of survival and procuring the necessities of shelter, food, medical care, raising children, etc. For those of us who live in the middle class and above, work is more than just survival; it’s also about purpose and identity. If one is privileged enough to have a choice in where one works, then why one works becomes a significant question.

In our culture, just think about the words we use to describe our employment:

• Earn a living/make a living--I assume this originated when most people needed to earn enough to survive, but if survival is not the only need, how one lives matters as much as that one lives.

• Profession--One’s field of work is called the same word we use to mean a statement of belief, something central to one’s identity.

• Vocation--It literally means calling, but is every job a calling? Can one’s calling be something other than a job? Can one’s job be a way of financially supporting one’s calling?

The words we use to talk about our jobs raise questions; such as, when we think about what we “do for a living” are we really talking about living?

Frederick Buechner expresses the question of “life” verses “doing something for a living” this way:

Jobs are what  people do for a living, many of them for eight hours a day, five days a week, minus vacations, for most of their lives. It is tragic to think how few of them have their hearts in it. They work mainly for the purpose of making money enough to enjoy their moments of not working

If one must spend around 40-plus years of their life working at least five out of the seven days of the week for around fifty weeks a year--a huge chunk of their one and only life, shouldn’t that work be about really living instead of working for the weekend or the next vacation?

The great writer and interviewer Studs Terkel once wrote in his amazing book of interviews titled Working:

“Working is a lot more than economics. It's about a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread, for recognition as well as cash; in short, for a sort of life, rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

Living instead of dying? I think I’ve heard something about that before.

Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” In context in the tenth chapter of John, Jesus describes himself as the gate to a sheep pen. Anyone that doesn’t enter the pen by the gate is a thief who comes only to destroy. In other words, the abundant life Jesus offers comes through him, or more precisely with God, the giver of life. Christians have spiritualized these words to make them only about getting to heaven or about believing proper doctrine, but especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus is talking about the sort of life one lives here and now. This abundant life is not about being right, as opposed to others who don’t share your beliefs, but about connection with God and being the one and only you, the one created in God’s image, the only you there ever will be.

I know a school secretary, a position that can be rather thankless, who cares deeply about the kids who enter the school office every day. She knows which kids don’t have enough food to eat. She knows which kids are homeless. She knows which kids have a rough home life. All these kids struggle in school. She watches over them all and is a rare adult in their lives who is invested in each of them.

I know a manager of housekeeping at a hospital. In the hierarchy of hospital management, housekeeping is not "sexy" like nurses, doctors or executives. Most of the workers are immigrants and many speak English as a second or third language. Yet the work they do in the hospital is essential--as we see during this pandemic. Their manager views his job not only as keeping the hospital sanitary but also as being an advocate for the employees he supervises. They are often invisible to the rest of the hospital staff but no less worthy of having a good boss.

I know a Human Resources Director who daily works through conflicts between employees. She views company policies as a way to protect the rights and dignity of all employees, not just the ones at the top. She sees her job as teaching people how to act, speak and communicate in ways that create respect and shared solutions to inevitable problems. For her, human resources isn’t about bureaucracy or filling out forms but rather improving the lives of the people with whom she works.

In each of these cases, the job is about more than punching a clock, earning money and surviving until the weekend. There is something more happening, something less tangible and more spiritual, something less temporal and more eternal. These examples illustrate people using their gifts given to them by God and living out of the image of God inside of them. They are offering their authentic selves to a world drowning in the inauthentic and superficial. They are earning a living while also living.

If you are starting out on your career, what is it that is holy about your chosen field? How do you make a difference in other people’s lives? 

If you are in mid-life, what about your employment journey thus far has been the most meaningful, let the answers to that question guide your next steps along the way. 

If you are retired, what did you learn from your years of working that can be shared with your kids, grandkids and younger people searching for living and not just earning a living? What was meaningful about the work you did that you can do now as a volunteer or mentor?

We only get one life, and if we are going to spend a big chunk of it working, shouldn’t earning a living involve really living?

Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples

When Less is More

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
--Proverbs 3:5 NIV

Not too long ago, we upgraded the internet at my house. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and all four of us were at home all the time using the internet, our bandwidth couldn’t handle the demands of four people streaming videos, video games, podcasts, social media and checking email. As it turned out, we were using “old technology” and the wireless router providing Wi-Fi was several years old and therefore ancient by current standards. Also, our provider had new plans which gave us faster speeds for a cheaper price. It turns out they are happy to just keep on billing you at a higher rate for slower speeds until you bother to check into it yourself. Since the upgrade, nobody is complaining about slow download speeds at my house, but I’m sure this pause in outrage will be only temporary. Our society is addicted to getting what we want as fast as possible.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to watch most any movie I want at the push of a few buttons and I get frustrated whenever the dreaded buffering symbol shows up. Whether it’s an hourglass, an arrow moving in a circle, a spiral or whatever, I grit my teeth at all of them. But I do take a perverse joy (just as my parents did before me and their parents did before them going back to the beginning of time) telling my teenagers about the days of going to an actual store to rent videos on videocassette, having a phone with an extremely long cord so I could talk on the phone in another room away from my parents and how amazing it was to connect to America Online via a modem which sounded like a truck carrying telephones crashed into another truck carrying staticky old black and white TV sets. Things keep getting exponentially faster but we are never satisfied for long.

I find myself at this particular moment in time especially impatient. When will the pandemic be over so things can go back to normal/ When will the election come so that the bombardment of political ads will end? When will our society do what needs to be done to eliminate racism, injustice towards immigrants, climate change, poverty and so many other social ills? When will things change for the better? I feel nothing but impatient right now.

Our spiritual lives seem like an odd mixture of patience and impatience. On the one hand there are times when putting something off any longer can hurt ourselves or others. We put off changing our diets or exercise that  our bodies and minds need to be healthy. We delay vacations and times of rest and become less productive due to fatigue. We make excuses not to change policies and even laws that are unjust as people with less power suffer. On the other hand, there is much that is not in our control and we cannot change. We waste energy on anger and fear instead of finding peace and joy in the present moment. We love efficiency so much that we lose touch with the joy found in creating something of quality with care and intention.

Patience is one of the so-called Christian virtues, but it is not valued much today. In my own mind, I confuse patience with passivity. My nature is always to press forward intending to use the human agency given to me by God to its fullest. Of course, my way of plowing ahead regardless of the consequences is often due to the anxiety that comes when I slow down enough to acknowledge it.

The spiritual writer Henri Nouwen draws a distinction between patience and passivity. He writes:

Patience is not waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else.

The scientist and writer on stress reduction Jon Kabat-Zinn describes patience this way:

Patience is an ever-present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and what you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly, is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or some thing for it. This doesn’t mean you can’t hurry when you have to. It is possible even to hurry patiently, mindfully, moving fast because you have chosen to.

It seems so many writers, teachers and thinkers which speak of mindfulness these days are merely repeating the same message of spiritual teachers from long ago: whether one is moving fast or slow, be conscious of where you are, who you are and why you are doing what you are doing. This consciousness is at the heart of what we Christians call faith.

Faith isn’t really a set of beliefs but a way of existing in the world, a way of trusting God. The preacher and teacher Barbara Brown Taylor described this change in her own spiritual journey:

I…arrived at an understanding of faith that had far more to do with trust than with certainty. I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to sustain the world although I could not say for sure how that happened. I trusted God to hold me and those I loved, in life and in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so.

This kind of faith, the trust kind, the kind we rely on when we either cannot act or don’t know what to do is difficult. It requires courage. Benedictine writer David Steindl-Rast puts it this way:

To have faith does not primarily mean believing something, but rather believing in someone. Faith is trust. It takes courage to trust. The opposite of faith is not disbelief, but distrust, fear. Fear makes us cling to anything within reach. Fear clings even to beliefs… Faith is the courage to respond gratefully to every given situation, out of trust in the Giver.

These anxious times cause us to hit the refresh buttons on our browsers, look at every news alert on our phones and obsessively watch cable news, but none of these actions offers us peace. Pointless activity is not the same as purposeful living. Patience generated by trust in God reveals to us when it is best to do something and when it is best to do little. The paradox of accomplishing more by doing less seems unsatisfying when we are afraid and angry, but out of such paradoxes God reveals to us peace and purpose.

May God grant you the peace of mind to discern when to do more and when to do less.

Grace and Peace,

Rev. Chase Peeples

Not Even Hell Can Keep God Away From You

 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. --Psalm 139:8 NRSV

At times I’ve had the honor of teaching undergraduate classes on the Bible (not bad for somebody who dropped out of a New Testament Ph.D. program). I always begin the course by attempting to demonstrate that the Bible is not one book written by a single author but rather a collection of 66 writings (more depending on the denomination one is a part of) written by different authors, in different languages and in different centuries. On some things, such as idolatry or caring for poor people, the Bible is for the most part consistent, but on many more things there is a diversity or at least a development of thought by the various authors. The afterlife is one of the latter.

In my undergraduate courses, I give them an overview of appearances of the word “Hell” in the Bible. It’s pretty brief, because “Hell” doesn’t appear in the Bible. Oh, it certainly appears in English translations of the Hebrew and Greek, but the words we read as “Hell” really mean something different than we realize. 

• In the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament), the afterlife is called “Sheol” or sometimes “the pit,” where people go after death to exist in a shade-like manner. Everyone goes there, both good and bad. 

• It’s not until the book of Daniel, probably written in the 2nd century B.C.E. that the idea of a positive afterlife for especially righteous people is depicted. 

• It’s only in the Greek-influenced writing Wisdom of Solomon from the 1st century B.C.E. that the previously Greek concept of the soul appears. (Wisdom of Solomon appears in what Protestants call the Apocrypha and exclude from their Bibles but Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches include in theirs.)

• By the time of Jesus, as we see in the Gospels, Jews were still debating whether or not there was a resurrection of the dead at the end of time. Jesus and Paul sided with the Pharisees who believed all of the dead would be resurrected for a final judgment. Until that time, your dead loved ones apparently remain dead and not in heaven immediately like we speak of so often today.

• At the resurrection of the dead and final judgment, what happens to those deemed unworthy to enter heaven or paradise? Well, it varies. Jesus speaks in vague terms about “darkness,” “gnashing of teeth,” and “Gehenna” the spot outside Jerusalem where people burned their trash. A couple of times Jesus uses the term “Hades” the Greek term for the underworld or abode of the dead. 

• Even Jesus is inconsistent about the afterlife, In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells one of the men crucified along with him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Apparently that guy gets to skip the whole resurrection of the dead thing at the end of time all together.

• In other New Testament writings, instead of “Hell” we get “Hades” (Revelation) or “Tartarus” (2 Peter) that’s the section of the Greek afterlife where bad souls are punished.

• To complicate things further, a verse in 1 Peter says, “the Gospel was preached to those who are dead” and a verse in Ephesians says, “[Christ] descended into the lower parts of the earth.” These verses along with later Christian tradition were interpreted to mean between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection Christ descended into Hell or Hades or wherever to stage a cosmic breakout freeing all the souls who died before Jesus showed up. This is stated in the Apostle’s Creed with the line “He descended into Hell. . .”

• It gets really weird when in 1 Corinthians Paul mentions baptism of the dead. Nobody knows what that means.

Throughout Christian history, various theologians, thinkers and ordinary believers have questioned whether a soul really remained in Hell forever or if there was another option like purgatory. More recent theologians (and a few ancient ones)  have questioned whether the idea of everlasting torment as a consequence of what one did in a single mortal life, no matter how bad that life was, is consistent with a God who is both just and merciful. Others have gone so far as to reject the doctrine of Hell altogether.

Despite the impression given in most churches, TV preachers and popular culture, there is a diversity of belief among scripture and tradition when it comes to the afterlife.

If there is a Hell (of which I have my doubts) I like the way Frederick Buechner writes about it:

Since the damned are said to suffer as dismally in the next world as they do in this one, they must still have enough life left in them to suffer with , . . Dante saw written over the gates of Hell the words "Abandon all hope ye who enter here," but he must have seen wrong. If there is suffering life in Hell, there must also be hope in Hell, because where there is life there is the Lord and giver of life, and where there is suffering he is there too because the suffering of the ones he loves is also his suffering. 

 

"He descended into Hell," the Creed says, and " If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there," the Psalmist (139:8). It seems there is no depth to which he will not sink.

Many Christians will err on the side of God’s holiness, righteousness or God’s justice in their belief in Hell--they all seem to be certain they aren’t going there, but I tend to believe those appeals sound much more like self-righteousness, pretentious holiness and a human desire for revenge rather than justice. If I am going to err, I’m going to err on the side of God’s love, mercy and grace. If the Incarnation of God in Christ means anything, it means there is no depth that God won’t sink to in order to reach the ones God loves, even death on a cross and maybe even a trip to Hell, Hades or whatever.

I don’t spend too much time trying to make sense of Hell, even though I know most Christians do. I’m much more interested in the truth that there is no “hell” in this life where God is not present with us. No matter how much we screw up, no matter how much we suffer or hurt, whether we can perceive it or not, there is no escape from God. God is always with us offering us love, mercy and grace.

That is good news indeed during these days of pandemic, social upheaval and political uncertainty. Psalm 139 says if we ascend to heaven, descend into the pit of Sheol or go anywhere in between, we will still find God there waiting for us. 

God is there in the isolated deathbeds of COVID patients, 

God is there in the quarantined retirement home, 

God is there with overwhelmed parents and kids at home during the pandemic, 

God is there with essential workers on the job, 

God is with you wherever you are.

Not even Hell is powerful enough to prevent God from being with you.

Grace and Peace,
Chase