This pastoral letter is taken from this weeks' James Journal, for St. James Episcopal Church.
“We who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” 1 Cor. 10:17
Dear Friends,
When I was a kid, I loved to pretend. My brother and I made the playground next door into an obstacle course of lava. We took turns being Indiana Jones - hat, whip, and all - leaping from swing to swing as we narrowly averted our fiery end.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve discovered I don’t like pretending as much. When Rebekah and I experienced the first of two devastating miscarriages back some years ago, I realized I couldn’t pretend I was okay. More than that, I didn't want to. My first day back in the office, I gathered my staff in the office and named that I would need to ask their permission and grace to bring my tears to work in days ahead.
The understanding of my staff that day was balm to my heart, made all the more remarkable because it was for pain they did not feel. I prayed that asking their grace would also make space for them to bring their own whole selves into the space we shared each day. After all, we each carry, in our lives, unique collections of wonder, sorrows, and joys.
Just now, we are two days out of a national election that has left some of us much relieved and others of us deeply grieved. Both feelings speak to anxieties and fears we have carried about the kind of future we will share. Given the circumstances, it would be tempting to pretend that the moment is not as tender as it is. To talk about the weather.
But I want to encourage you who have been made members of the Body of Christ: our differences, which are many - and so often a source of a diversity of blessing - do not define the limits of our love for one another. Neither is direct experience of another’s pain pre-requisite for holding holy space with them. In other words, in the communion of God’s holy ones, there is room for your whole self: your own unique collection of wonder, joys, and sorrows.
A favorite hymn sings that, “the Love that made us makes us one.” These days, and truly all our days, give us an opportunity to practice with each other a oneness and love that doesn’t make sense apart from Jesus. I thank God for the company of the saints at St. James who constitute a school of holy friendship and healing ground for the possibilities of God. Consider, especially just now, that “it is revolutionary to maintain a soft heart, to practice kindness, to take what concrete actions that you can to ease the suffering of others.”
None of us knows, in one’s life, all that love will finally ask of them. But we do know love’s Source. Walk with the Lord and each other. If, along the way, you need a listening ear over coffee, give me a shout. And may the harmonies we learn in him to sing be a blessing in this world.
In the love of Jesus,
Jonathan
