Readings: Proper 18, Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
“THEN THE WORD of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.”
That’s for sure: being Christian or otherwise loving God means that we suddenly find us living into change, that God has changed the plan on us, because we’re his clay. What we’re learning in our lives as religious folks, and in our lives as a nation, a people, is that the one thing coming is change. No matter what happens today, tomorrow or the mid-terms, we won’t see times like these or a country like this again. Some people really hate change a lot. I have a friend who gets upset by it — things that wouldn’t even faze me — so much. That’s true for both my friend and my Hubbie, regardless of the size of the change. I don’t mind too much; they hate it.
Political upheaval is everywhere, with most people thinking that Trump may not have been our best choice as president and others still thinking that he’s doing a pretty good job. But this is the real problem: both sides view each other with suspicion, even hatred sometimes. Hard to say who hates more: those who think Trump’s doing great and a Congress that supports his good work and those who think both are disasters, and you can throw in the Supreme Court as well. The truth is always in the middle — folks who know that Trump and the Congress and the Supreme Court are doing and those who throw up their hands in the air and maybe ever fear for the very survival of our country.
Same things happen on the personal level as well: We die, get laid off, get sick, find new vocations, find new paths and phases in life. These lectionary readings are great for these kind of interruptions in our lives. I’m in the midst of such a time myself. After five years of finally becoming an ordained deacon and lots of prayer and discussion with folks in my life, I have chosen “to be released and removed from the ordained Ministry of The Episcopal Church and from the obligations attendant thereto” and become a good old lay person again. If you’d asked me right after my ordination back in Louisiana if that was a good idea, I’d have said “no WAY, I fought for this too long.” And I did, 50 years all told.
But one day a while back, I woke up and said, “wait, wait, these vows and this identity both fit and don’t fit.”
On the one hand, I was definitely, and in a real sense, though not legally, diaconal. I think like a deacon, my heart is like a deacon’s heart, but those vows of obedience just didn’t fit anymore. And there was another community in which I fit much better than I did the communities in which I had found myself before. It’s also going back to my roots and I wonder if my mother and father’s death have had something to do with that decision. (Once a Lutheran, always a Lutheran, I guess.) I know I owe lots to my parents, and maybe my father’s recent death has triggered some feelings I haven’t worked out yet.
And the other problems with change is that we don’t know how it might affect others. My friend who hates change? He’s not going to attend church for a while till he sorts through his feelings about this and about my decision. He took it more personally than I did.
Also, however, I have to now sort through how I fit into my new community. I love them much and know they love me and I know folks who loved me in my past communities. There’s loss there too. As I told the Hubbie, moving from one community is in some ways moving from one tool to another. This meets one need in that first place, and now that bit meets another need in the second place. I’ll just have to trust God that it all plays out.
But this much I know: all change can be difficult, but we have to remember that God asks us to “come now and see the works of God, / how wonderful he is in his doing toward all people,” And why is this? Because we should always remember that “… you, O God, have proved us; / you have tried us just as silver is tried.”
And so God challenges us to give thanks. The Gospel lesson associated in these readings is the story of 10 lepers who came to Jesus, looking for healing, and received it. But then nine got so excited they ran away rejoicing, forgetting about Jesus. Only one, a foreigner, came back to thank Jesus. And Jesus, seeing this, told him: “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” That’s the end of that bit, and I have always wondered if the other nine who were made clean suddenly found themselves diseased again. I hope not. I’m sure we all forget that God makes us well and loves us and forgives us.
So too with the burden of change. It can hit really hard. But God will still be there with us to tell us of God’s love: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; / those who act accordingly have a good understanding; his praise endures for ever.”
It sure does. Know that, as we face changes in our lives, God will always be us.
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. Previously a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, Dr. Keith Dorwick is a lay person finding his new way in his walk with God.
