Scripture can be found here…
I probably should have given up Twitter for Lent.
It’s an interesting website, and I find that it’s a good spot for breaking news—often reported, which is to say, tweeted, by the individuals who are making the news. But it’s not a great place in times of turmoil and anxiety. It tends to take anxiety and multiplies it exponentially.
But every so often you find real beauty there. I couldn’t sleep the other night, so I was scrolling through, on my phone. And there, in the wee hours of the morning, a (young) journalist named Dana Schwartz shared this:
Sometimes I get sad wondering if art will ever affect me as much as it did when I was younger. Will I ever be more excited for a book than I was at a midnight release of “Harry Potter” at 12? Can anything move me as deeply as “Spring Awakening” did when I was 14?
People were quick to reassure her—a typical response was, “Yes. I’m 58, and I promise, your days of wonder are not over.” Then, people started sharing their powerful experiences of music, of art, of books and plays, and sunsets and ocean views. Before I knew it, I was immersed in “beauty, and nature, and literature are marvelous” Twitter, instead of “My candidate’s better than your candidate” Twitter.
It was lovely.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
These three little verses in the Sermon on the Mount come just after the passage we read on Ash Wednesday—the portion of the sermon about the spiritual practices: prayer, and giving, and fasting. Jesus was probably summing up that portion of the sermon before moving on. Those practices of faith amount to small but regular deposits into the bank account of the heart. What’s the content of those deposits, though? What do the steady practices of prayer, and giving, and even a little judicious self-denial, actually buy us?
When Jesus teaches us to pray, just a few verses earlier, he models an activity that, first, recognizes that God is God, and second, also takes note that we, most definitely, are not. We are dependent upon God—for life, and for our ongoing nurture and welfare. The prayer, effectively, places everything in God’s hands, beginning and ending with God’s glory, but also traversing the human condition.
By prayer, we get to know God, and we get to know ourselves.
But we also are reminded that there’s more to the world than God and us, alone. WE pray that prayer in the first person plural—we don’t say “my Father,” but “our Father.” God’s world is populated with about 8 billion other souls, whom God happens to love every bit as much as God loves us. Prayer reminds us of this; and the other practices—generosity and self-denial—they remind us as well.
If it is true that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, then Jesus teaches us that our treasure consists of knowing and loving God, and knowing and loving ourselves, and knowing and loving one another. Each of these is intricately connected with the others: loving God means loving those whom God has created and loves; loving God’s people means gratitude to God for creating them; loving God even means loving ourselves, as God’s precious children. These are what make up our treasure. These are fundamentally inseparable from one another.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
There are times when this is hard. When we are so filled with anguish or shame it’s hard to love ourselves. When we are so filled with anger or annoyance it’s hard to love one another. When we feel so isolated or frightened, it’s even hard to love God.
What then?
Twitter is filled with lots of talk about the coronavirus that is on all our minds, which, today, the World Health Organization decided, has risen to the level of a pandemic. One wise voice on all this is a woman named Shannon Dingle. Shannon’s website offers a self-description: she’s “a disabled activist, freelance writer, sex trafficking survivor, & recovering perfectionist.” She is the mother of six children, two by birth and four by adoption. And she is, very recently, a widow: last summer her husband Lee was killed in a freak accident while swimming in the ocean with their children.
Shannon had this to say—well, tweet—about the fear and anxiety that the present situation offers. Her specific context was her decision not to go to church this past Sunday.
Old me would have gone to church today, figuring the odds are still probably more in our favor than not and trusting God to protect us. (A few of us are high risk for serious complications if we got the coronavirus, and it’s in our county.)
...but then Lee died from an accident against all odds, and God didn’t protect us from Lee’s death. So my trust in odds or that God will spare our family from another major life-changing or -ending tragedy doesn’t hold anymore.
I believe God. I believe God loves me & our family. I believe God grieves with us. I used to think I understood God. Now I don’t. And? I think maybe that’s the point. If faith is evidence of things unseen, then understanding isn’t required. I believe God is full of mysteries.
As I sat next to his bed as my husband was dying and as I walked the hospital halls before they could formally declare brain death, my brain echoed
inhale (neither life nor death)
exhale (nor anything in all creation)
inhale (can separate us from)
exhale (the love of God)
I didn’t force the words. I didn’t intentionally call them to mind. But as my husband died, my truncated version of Romans 8:38-39 followed the rhythm of my breath, my steps, the machines keeping him alive, the beeping whenever meds ran out. That mattered more than protection.
Nothing in my life has linked God to safety. I’ve rarely been safe. But love is a magic stronger than safety. I want both. I always will. But being loved will always be more beautiful (albeit more vulnerable too) than being safe could ever offer.
(Shannon’s language gets a little salty in this next part, so I’ll adapt it for a worship space:)
(Don’t get me wrong, though. I muttered “[to heck with] whoever chose this song” when my church’s worship team sang that one that repeats God is good. I won’t sing a [darn] thing about my only desire being God’s glory because most days I’d prefer having Lee back more than anything God has. But God’s love makes space for that. God’s love makes the beautiful community at [my congregation] Southeast Raleigh Table one in which I can lean on the faith of others when mine is fragile. God’s love sits beside us while we grieve and refuse to sing. God’s love is, & nothing can separate us.)
God’s love is. This is what Shannon says. God’s love is. That is not in question for her. But her life has taught her that she cannot equate her confidence in God’s love with ideas like, God stops rogue waves, or God will protect my children from viruses.
(That does not mean we don’t pray the way Jesus taught us. We do.)
Even in the midst of the most searing losses—losses we find utterly unacceptable—the love of God is. Even in the midst of real and devastating trials, God is, the love of God is.
Neither life nor death, nor anything in all creation, can separate us from the love of God.
This is the treasure. This is where our heart is. We are not necessarily safe—though there are steps we can take to be safer. But we are loved.
Now, with me:
inhale (neither life nor death)
exhale (nor anything in all creation)
inhale (can separate us from)
exhale (the love of God).
God’s love is.
Thanks be to God. Amen.