From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
– Matthew 16:21
Beloved of God,
I don’t know about you, but our household is approaching September and the resumption of Fall schedules with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. In a normal year we’d be shopping for back to school clothes and classroom supplies. Not this year. In a normal year there’d be excitement about reconnecting in person with friends, and swapping stories about summer adventures. Not this year. In a normal year we’d be anticipating school bus schedules, marching band performances at football games, ultimate frisbee tournaments, music concerts, fall festivals and auctions. Not this year. September feels decidedly different. The same is true for the life we share as Peace Lutheran community. We’re being forced to adapt normal rhythms to new realities, hoping that—at the end of the day—it won’t simply feel inferior. The excitement and anticipation we experienced one year ago as we counted down the weeks to our 75th Anniversary Celebration seems like a lifetime ago. I can’t tell you how often I have offered prayers of thanksgiving that this milestone landed in the fall of 2019 and not in 2020!
Each fall, it’s been our custom here to mark special emphases on a half dozen Sundays—from Rally Sunday to St. Francis’s Feast Day, to Offering of Letters Sunday, Reformation, All Saints, and Christ the King. What will things look like this year, with in-person worship not be an option for the foreseeable future? As I write, our worship planning team is in the thick of addressing this question. One thing’s for certain—though our worship life this Fall may not resemble what we’re used to experiencing, our faithful Lord will continue to show up—and unleash creative gifts, via the Spirit, among us.
In recent weeks, Fr. Richard Rohr has focused his daily meditations on what he calls “the universal pattern” that connects and solidifies our relationships with everything around us. This pattern, he says, begins with ORDER, moves into DISORDER, and finally to REORDER.[1] The laws, rules, and traditions we inherit help to establish the sense of safety and identity which is the rightful first focus on our life journey, but these cannot deliver the deeper meaning we long for. “Sooner or later some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter our lives that we simply cannot deal with using our present skill set, our acquired knowledge, or our…will power. We must stumble and be brought to our knees by reality…we will and must ‘lose’ something.” This is, Rohr writes, “the necessary pattern.” Only by being forced out of the driver’s seat can we set our feet onto the further and larger journey.
In many ways, this is what’s happening to our lives right now—individually and collectively—as the pandemic, our nation’s racist foundations, a contentious election year, and nature’s warning alarms push us further and further into DISORDER. There is no work-around for this process; no shortcuts that can get us from ORDER to REORDER without going through DISORDER. The only way forward for Jesus was through—through disorder, through suffering, through rejection, through death. Only then was the stage set for resurrection—the ultimate expression of what the final stage—REORDER—is about. Having been down that road, Jesus is perfectly positioned to be our guide as we put one foot in front of the other through these uncertain times.
Being bound to him in baptism means we can count on the chaos of DISORDER intruding into our story, as it did his. But we can also trust that DISORDER is not the final place where this unfolding story is meant to rest. The courage we gain from having him as our companion enables us not to flee the DISORDER, but to call it out, to name it, to see it clearly; and then to commit ourselves to respond with compassion and justice—holding both together as Jesus himself did.
With you on the Way, Pastor Erik
[1] You can find Richard Rohr’s daily reflections on this topic here: https://cac.org/order-disorder-reorder-part-two-weekly-summary-2020-08-22/
What does this mean?