Formation from Afar

About this time a month ago, Virginia Theological Seminary had just wrapped up another Spring Visit Weekend. People discerning a call to ministry had met students, sat in on classes, ate with us in our refurbished refectory. 

It was also my birthday weekend, and I had gone off campus to find a hole-in-the-wall sushi bar in Springfield, VA. I was settling into the rhythm of the Spring semester with a new systematic theology class, poking and prodding at our faith in a Triune God. I was also taking a little time each day with the Gospel text for the First Sunday of Lent, Matthew 4:1-11, which would be the first of four scheduled sermons at my contextual ministry site. And I was getting together again with friends at our campus pub, eating the delicious Café Burger with or without an adult beverage. 

Many of us in the Middler Class had been going home to our dioceses for our candidacy interviews...the next step forward toward the day we hope to reach: our ordination to the transitional diaconate and then (God willing and the people consenting) the sacred order of priests. 

Life was busy, full, and what I call "seminary" normal.

But outside the relative safety of VTS campus life, I was aware of the news that there was a virus in China that had caused an entire region to go into quarantine. Bizarre, but not beyond Wuhan....oh, wait: now there are cases in Iran. Then South Korea. Then Italy. A cruise ship in Japan. And then Washington State?! 

Yeah, but it's only seeming to affect people over 60 or with chronic health problems. Geez, what are the symptoms? Will anyone tell us what the symptoms are of this virus?

An email. 

The proctors of the residence halls and apartments, all six of us, were asked to join a Zoom call with the Dean of Student Life. A case of this coronavirus, now named COVID-19, had affected members of our community through a church in Washington, DC. 

That was on March 8th. 

Then we learned that there was a person who had tested positive and had had close contact with members of the seminary choir. Soon, another case was confirmed. And the job of delivering three meals to the dorm residents asked to self-isolate went from five people to fourteen. Suddenly, classes were going to Zoom only. The Episcopal dioceses of DC and Virginia closed all their churches to public worship until March 28 (DC has since extended this to May 16). Questions were abounding, anxiety was rising, and the answers were largely only best guesses because nobody knew anything about this new virus. 

We still don't know a lot. And what we do know is that it is not a simple flu, at least not for anyone with any kind of immune weaknesses. 

I was scheduled to come home for spring break. I wondered, "Should I leave?" Friends told me emphatically, "Yes!" 

 I threw books in my bag that I needed for a couple of classes, but in my rush to pack, I missed my notebook. I made a strategic choice not to take my clunky laptop that stays in my room. I mean, worst case scenario, I might have to stay home an extra week, but will be back before the end of the month.

Now, it seems, I won't be back before May.

I struggled with the decision to stay put in Florida. VTS is my community, people who are swimming in a similar wild and wacky stream of discernment that I am. These are the people with whom I do the routine, "Coffee, Chapel, Class, Lunch" every day for weeks on end. 

I am a dorm proctor, meaning that I care for the lives of thirteen other adults and am the builiding super, making sure that maintenance requests go in and doing follow up to make sure repairs happen. I have friends I won't be seeing except via Zoom. I won't be interacting in quick casual conversations with faculty or staff as I go to get my mail. If there was ever time when I am feeling what it is to be "in the wilderness" this is it!

Which brings me back to the scene of my sermon on 1 Lent where Jesus is in a dialogue with the Tempter. My sermon focused on how Jesus was in a very vulnerable place. He had been out in the wilderness with nothing to eat or drink for forty days and forty nights and "afterwards he was famished." Instead of falling into the traps of the ego that the Tempter was putting before him, Jesus summons his strength from his source: the words of Scripture that point to faith and trust in God. When all else is failing him, Jesus turns to God to stave off the Satan who tempts him. In the end, Satan leaves, and "suddenly angels came and waited on him." 

This wilderness and temptation scene with Jesus feels like a formation experience for him. He's being tested and tried and he prevails against Satan's efforts to pull him away from God. On the contrary, the temptation moves him closer to his source. This will all become even more important as he goes forward with his ministry and mission of calling his community back to the basics of the Shema: Love God with all your heart, soul and strength while also loving neighbor as yourself. This time in the wilderness will prepare him for another famished moment as he hangs on a cross at Calvary with only the words of the psalmist to help him as he calls to God for strength in his agony.

Formation from afar will not be as dramatic as either of these moments when Jesus was alone and facing the forces of evil. But this is wilderness time for me. This is the test of faith and reliance upon God as the source for strength in this moment of great uncertainty. This is the time for drawing closer to God when I am feeling in the most remote place and being starved of community.

Perhaps there is much to be gained in this experience. 

  

Needling Nicodemus: Second Sunday in Lent

Another Sunday.  Another time apart from my church community due to illness.  I am on the mend.  But, in light of having had to miss a whole week of work (which, for the self-employed, is financially devasting) I thought it prudent to stay home,  and stay focused on rest and recupriation.  

And so I am left to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the Scriptures at home again.  Perhaps there is really something in this for me as I strive to be reconciled to God.  To be separated from community, and the communion of the Eucharist, and why this is important to me, and how can I carry on without receiving the sacrament on Sundays.  I once thought that perhaps a Lenten discipline for me would be to stay away from church on Sundays during Lent.  Now, I'm getting that experience, although not because I so choose, but because I don't want to inflict my sniffling, hacking self on other people.  Separated from my church community, yes.  Separated from God, no.   Hmmmm....

OK, so let's have some fun together and follow the pathways of my brain as I looked at the sum of today's lectionary.  First, let's frame things with the Collect of the Day:

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I'm going to take this collect and race ahead into today's Gospel lesson, which was John 3:1-17.  This chapter is where Jesus receives a visitor in the night, Nicodemus, who has come to talk with this intriguing new rabbi.  Nicodemus, a Pharisee, has to go to Jesus at night; otherwise, somebody might see him covorting with this one who isn't like other teachers, and is just a little bit too radical for some people's tastes.  While some knock Nicodemus for his going to Jesus "at night," I resonate with this strategy.  It isn't too unlike me in so many ways.  Coming out to myself as a lesbian, especially in mid-Missouri which was Assembly of God and non-denominational evangelical Christian country, required me to approach that identity in an undercover way as well.  I didn't exactly waltz into the campus gay student union group with a big ol' "Heeeyyyy!"  Quite the contrary: I used a class reporting assignment to attend an off-campus Women's Music Fest.  And that's where I found "my people" and my identity.  In a similar vein,  coming out as lesbian who is Christian in a community that really has no use for the church has also been something that I initially had to do "at night." Not literally, but figuratively.  My circles are not ones that welcome the notion that there is a force called God that is all around us.  When belief in God isn't being mocked as believing in "an invisible sky wizard" then it's dismissed because it can't be proven using math and science.  Slowly, cautiously, I have been making myself known as one of those who do believe in God and have reached this belief through Jesus Christ.  It has come at the cost of some friendships and that saddens me.  Others have remained engaged, even if they are a bit leary of this "belief thing" that I have.  All of this to say, I appreciate Nicodemus' cautious approach to meeting with Jesus.  So, let's get back to that.

According to John's Gospel, Nicodemus starts the conversation this way:

"Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God."  Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." 

Uh-oh.  You can almost see Nicodemus looking at Jesus with a cocked head and furrowed brow as he puzzles to make sense of what he just heard.

Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" 

Before we laugh at Nicodemus for saying this, or get too caught up in the whole notion of what it means to be "born again," consider that this man is a Pharisee; hence learned in the law and all the laws that have maintained the people of Israel, and he is working from that place.  I read his response to Jesus as being one that is attempting to make sense of what was said to him in light of his own experience and understanding.  But that's the thing: Jesus is taking Nicodemus to a "new frontier" and a place where this Pharisee has never gone before because he has been looking to the law all this time.

Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, "You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."  Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

Ow!  This portion of the conversation, for me, is like sitting with a spiritual director.  The directee, Nicodemus, can't wrap his mind around this analogy of what is required, the ascent of the spirit to the Spirit, to enter the kingdom of God, and so he naively says, "How can these things be?"  And Jesus, the SD, fires back, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?"  Talk about a knock down!

You, Nicodemus, have forgotten what was in our First Lesson of the day, which was from Genesis in which God tells Abram, "I will make you a great nation and I will bless you, and make your name great so that you will be a blessing." (Genesis 12:2).  Abram didn't play 20 questions with God over this idea, even though God was telling him to strike out into the unknown.  He went, and he took Lot with him.  His trust was in God... much as the psalmist says in Psalm 121 when he asks and answers this question: I lift my up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come? My help comes from The Lord, the maker of heaven and earth (vv 1-2).  Nicodemus has become so ingrained in the letter of the Law, and the literal understanding of the Law, that he has lost the intention of the Law, which requires faith and trust in God, not words and interpretations of God.  

But before we again get so high and mighty about Nicodemus, maybe we should think about how this same scenario might play out today.  Is it not possible that Jesus could look at any one of us, and when our cloudy vision of the kingdom leads us to narrowly drawn conclusions about God, our Savior might challenge us with a "Are you a believer, and yet you do not understand these things?"  Can we really believe in the all-powerful, unconditional Love of God, and really believe that God's grace and love is limited only to those who think and believe just like us?  Aren't we more comfortable with our pocket-sized God and our own personal relationship with Jesus instead of realizing that we cannot possess or hold the Almighty as our very own?  Indeed, we sometimes might need to be body slammed in the same way the very learned Nicodemus was schooled by Jesus.

Which brings me back around to the collect of the day.  Because we all in our own ways and at different times in our lives and walk with God are apt to go astray, and allow absolutes and literal intrepretations get in the way of us actually living into the Spirit.  And that fog of our own certitude is often what keeps us from seeing the kingdom of God.  What better time than Lent to let go of our own certainity and return to the trust and faith in God.