Let Us Pray
Dunn's Corners Community Church, Westerly, RI · July 27, 2025
I'll be honest: I'm not great at prayer. In this sermon I tell on myself, including the month my whole family had to re-teach five-year-old me the table grace, and I wonder out loud what prayer really does. Maybe it shapes us.

Sermon starts at 31:30. Video courtesy of Dunn's Corners Community Church.

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The Spirit Moves
Dunn's Corners Community Church, Westerly, RI · April 12, 2026 · John 20:19–31
“Bodies make things tangible, and real.” Six weeks into being Bennett’s dad, I preached about a resurrected Jesus you can touch, and about the day a sixth grader and thirty youth-groupers showed up to my ordination meeting with me.

In my home my husband and I do a fairly good job of splitting up the household tasks. If you are coming to our home for dinner and you want to eat well, come to our house on a night that Michael is cooking…if you need a quick, practical meal with no muss, no fuss, and very little seasoning…come when I’m cooking. If you want a job done with precision and deep thought, ask Michael to do it…if you want it done quickly and “good enough” is “good enough,” ask me to do it. If you want limbs cut down from a tree, that is his task (geared up with a chainsaw, safety equipment, and every cool piece of gear that humans can purchase at a yard supply store). I am in charge of carrying away the debris and burning it when it’s safely away from the house. I have to admit…I LOVE burning things…I know, this may make me sound like a pyromaniac…but I’ve found that I am hypnotized by a good fire. It could be a candle, it could be a bonfire, it could be a warm, cozy fire in a fireplace in a living room…I love watching any fire; I find the element of fire…beautiful. I think it’s partially how it consumes, and exists…but only for the briefest of moments. It’s clearly present but not really tangible. It’s physical, but not in the way other items in our world are. The ancient Greeks actually categorized it as its own element…they believed the world was made of earth, water, air, and fire. The fleeting physicality of fire is endlessly fascinating to me. I was thinking a lot about physicality when I read this text today, and maybe that, paired with the mention of spirit and its relationship to fire in scripture, made me ask a few questions. Jesus invites folk to “touch his wounds.” Thomas demands to see Jesus physically and touch his wounds before he will believe. Jesus, who was clearly dead a few hours earlier, is PHYSICALLY present in a locked room. We as Christians often think A LOT about things that can’t be seen…but what role does something like the physicality of Christ have to do with something that is so seemingly intangible as belief?

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Jesus enters a room and says “Peace be with you.” When I read this it’s a cue…these people were not doing well. You only say “peace be with you” if the other person REALLY needs it; you don’t just randomly offer peace to folk. It would be like a teacher standing in front of a classroom of silent, well-behaved children and saying “settle down, class”…you only say that if they need settling. In today’s text we have a group who had devoted their lives to work that was seemingly gone with the death of Christ…throughout his ministry they were told that he would return…but at this exact moment they weren’t so sure about that…and in walks Jesus. One of my favorite writers and pastors, Barbara Brown Taylor, once wrote, “Jesus came to visit his disciples, knowing that they would feel defeated and understanding the support they would need in order to move forward. [Jesus] did not need people to go to Jerusalem to die with him. He needed people to go back where they came from and live the kinds of lives that he had risked his own life to show them: lives of resisting the powers of death, of standing up for the little and the least, of turning cheeks and washing feet, of praying for enemies and loving the unlovable.” Jesus comes back to send them out into the world. This is great…in theory. They now have a mission; they now have work in front of them. But let’s be real… They are being sent out to love the unlovable, and to bear the unbearable, to stand up and fight systems that will, without a second thought, kill people who stand up…they are being sent out to do the work that just got him killed. I don’t know about you, but EVEN with a resurrected Jesus standing in front of me, I think the call to go out and do the stuff that just got him killed MAY scare me just enough to either only partially do it, or altogether bail. So what…allowed these people…and they were just people like you and me…to move from terror to embracing the ministry that Christ had laid before them?

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In further thinking about today’s text I began to reflect on the work of Martin Luther. Martin Luther, the German monk who in the 1500s challenged the Catholic Church, believed people should connect with God through faith, not by relying on church officials. In 1517, he VERY openly began to criticize church practices. This criticism helped start the Protestant Reformation, which led to new Christian churches forming separate from the Catholic Church; that means you and I, who are Christian and not Catholic, owe our identity partially to Luther. The churches that began to grow in the teachings of Luther thought heavily about the Spirit. To Luther, the Spirit played a crucial role in breaking the barriers of sin and its bondage of the human will. For Luther, human beings are, in and of themselves, incapable of living up to what God desires. The Holy Spirit makes it possible for the disciples, and for all of us, to be who Jesus wants us to be. The Holy Spirit is what moves people like me from fear into living out the word of God.

My son was born on February 28th, 2026, at 6:36 p.m….if you are doing the math, that means he is 6 weeks and one day old. That means I haven’t slept fully in 6 weeks and one day. For the past 6 weeks and a day I can tell you every dirty diaper, how many milliliters of milk he’s consumed, and I’m beginning to understand which cries mean what. He’s pretty much the cutest thing that you’ve ever seen, and if you want, I’m VERY happy to share pictures during coffee hour…so yes, ask me. Now, I’m not just randomly bragging as any new dad would. I’m thinking about his tiny little body, and how it makes things real. My husband and I, early in our dating lives, spoke about the dream of having a child one day. These conversations, while an important and cherished memory, are not things I can cuddle and hold when I return home from a busy day at work. When we were married, we decided that we wanted to have a child through surrogacy…we created spreadsheets, and figured out how to save the money and how many jobs we both needed (at one point we were working 5 jobs between the 2 of us) to make the money to help make the conversations we had a reality. We met with agencies and worked, and saved, and pooled our resources. We interviewed surrogates. We bought supplies, and prepared the best we could for a new life…I’m telling you this not to let you know how much work it’s been…but to let you know that all of that work, all of those conversations, all of that preparation was, as a matter of fact, intangible. What is real, what is loved, what is challenging, what is life-giving is the wiggly little human that was born on February 28th, 2026, at 6:36 p.m. and goes by the name of Bennett. I can cherish the memories, but I can only truly love my real, tangible son. Even during a 3 a.m. diaper change where neither he nor I are in the mood to do it. Bodies make things tangible, and real.

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Today we are told that the disciples received the Spirit through the breath of the embodied and resurrected Jesus. Spirit in scripture is something that is often described as wind, as breath, and at times as fire. In the world of Scripture, fire was never just a thing—it was a way God made God’s self known. When people saw fire, they did not think of chemistry or heat; they recognized a presence that both drew them close and warned them to keep their distance. The same fire that burned in the bush without consuming it, that descended on Sinai, that filled the temple, spoke of a holiness that reveals and purifies, but also judges what cannot endure it. To encounter that fire was to stand at the edge of something real and living—something that could transform you, if you were willing to be changed. The disciples stood at the edge of something real. Jesus invites them to touch his very real body, his very real wounds, and gives them the Spirit to encourage them to move into very real lives of ministry. Just like Luther spoke of years ago, the Spirit allows people and the church to be something real, something tangible.

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I was a middle school youth pastor while completing my ordination process. My middle school students knew that I just needed to meet with my ordination committee a few times, and then I would be ordained, and they were excited because I promised them they could come to the party. I had taken all the right classes, I had gotten the right internships, I hate filling out paperwork…but I had dotted every i and crossed every t. The months rolled by, and then a year…and my sweet students began to ask…what is happening…when will you get ordained? What they didn’t know was that I had been trying. But there were a few people on the committee on ordained ministry that weren’t comfortable ordaining, for the first time in that region of my denomination, an openly gay person. They kept on saying, “We need more time to pray on that.” I could read that code; they didn’t want me. Every 3 months I went for another meeting…and every 3 months they asked me embarrassing questions about my personal life that weren’t asked of my colleagues, who were somehow getting approved right and left. I stood at the edge of the ministry that I felt God was calling me to, and I couldn’t move. Then one night after youth group, a quiet sixth grader in my group asked to talk to me, and I invited him into my office. I assumed we would talk about something in his life that he wanted support with, maybe a parent or friend issue…standard youth group stuff. I will never forget that he took a breath and said, “Justin, I asked my mom why you aren’t ordained yet.” This was not the conversation that I planned to have with him. “Well, buddy, what did your mom say?” “She said that it’s because you’re gay, and I just think that it’s not fair.” I tried to smile a comforting smile and said, “Buddy, sometimes the church can be an unfair place…and we just have to work to make it fair.” We talked a bit more about fairness, and how Jesus calls us to make things right. He then looked at me and smiled. “What if I go with you to your next meeting…they can’t be unfair in front of a kid…what if Jesus is calling me to do that!” I smiled and told him that I didn’t need him to do that, and we talked a bit more and he left. The next day his mom called: “He’s all set to go with you to the next meeting; you’re not going to stop him…and to be honest, you’re not stopping me…if they turn you away, they will have to turn us away too.” With tears in my eyes, I accepted the gesture. I had another meeting with my ordination committee a few weeks later, and with me were that sixth grader, his parents, 30 kids from my youth group and their parents, and the rest of the staff of my church. He had made a few calls and led with love. They waited patiently in the lobby. They waited…the fire of the Holy Spirit moved…all because a little boy knew what God was calling him to.

Jesus enters a room, sees his terrified friends, and offers them the Spirit. It’s not tangible, you can’t see it…the Spirit…but you can see the ministry that it allowed them to have. What was unknowable and untouchable became people fed, and systems toppled, and lives changed through the true and honest work of the church. Today this same Spirit is that which calls us to do the next beautiful thing in this world. It’s what emboldens us to say “I love you” when it feels risky. It allows us to offer grace to people who may not deserve it. There is nothing intangible about the work of the Spirit. It’s loving arms and feet that are swift to serve. It’s gracious thoughts and words. It was made most clear and real in the life and body of Christ, and today, my dear church, we are called to be that body in our world. Lately I look around our world and I wonder, where did we go so wrong? When did we stop seeing one another’s humanity? How did things get so dark? Then I hear about the disciples, us, receiving the Spirit to go into the world and spread love. So, this morning, I wonder…in your life, what are you at the edge of, and what if you trusted the urging of the Spirit to enter a new way of being? Maybe that darkness wouldn’t be so dark.

 

 

This Is My Friend Thomas

2025 · John 20:19–31

Doubting Thomas has been introduced at parties with the same bad bio for 2,000 years. He deserves better. “Doubt isn’t the problem; Jesus meets Thomas in his questioning and welcomes him,” and maybe we meet the divine “not in spite of your brokenness, but through it.”

When I tell people that I grew up in a small town in rural Iowa, I have to backtrack a bit…I grew up OUTSIDE of the small town, on a farm in rural Iowa…I didn’t live in the city limits. The town of Emmetsburg, Iowa, is about 2,000 people strong, a tiny and lovely place. This past summer my husband and I traveled back to the farm where I grew up to celebrate my parents’ 50th anniversary. My siblings and I were throwing them a party, and we expected about 300 people. The announcement for the party was in the newspaper, as is common practice in that town for large parties…so roughly 15 percent of the town was going to show up. It was a fun night filled with music and dancing, and my poor, always very gracious husband had to meet and greet 300 people that were part of my childhood. The intros went something like “this is (insert name), they were (insert role in my childhood), they (insert thing that they did that sticks out).” Example: “This is my sixth grade biology teacher…who gave me my only detention (which I deserved).” Or “this is my mom’s friend who makes the world’s best pies.” It’s a pretty standard formula for introducing people. I began to think about those introduction bios when I was thinking about Thomas. For 2,000 years he’s been walking into parties introduced as Doubting Thomas. “This is Thomas. This is the guy that didn’t believe Jesus came back from the dead and has had 2,000 years of people judging him for it…poor guy.” I mean, yes, my biology teacher gave me a detention, but he also taught me, cared about me, and is a lovely man—I can fill in his bio to make him a well-rounded character when I discuss him. I’m sure Thomas is just as well-rounded as my biology teacher, but we don’t hear that in today’s text. Can Thomas ever live down the name “Doubting Thomas,” or is that how he is going to be introduced at parties for eternity?

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It’s sometimes helpful to think about the first audience of these texts. Each gospel was written by a person in a really specific community, in a really specific time, struggling with really specific things. The community that first read the Gospel of John was experiencing a lot of tension and transformation. The text is generally dated around 90–110 CE. Scholars think that this community saw themselves as Jews, Jews who believed in Jesus. The problem was that they were put out of the synagogue for confessing Jesus as the Messiah. This was a big problem because the synagogue wasn’t just a religious space—it was the center of Jewish communal life. Being excluded meant social isolation, loss of support networks, and even economic hardship in some cases. They saw themselves as Jews, and now they were being told: You’re not really part of us anymore. That put them in a strange in-between place: not fully accepted by mainstream Judaism, and not yet fully part of a broader Christian church (which was still forming at the time).

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Can you see them in the role of the disciples in today’s story? A terrified group of people, having their security and safety pulled from them…hiding in a dark room, trying to figure out what to do next, because they too were too hurt and vulnerable to make a move. If we go even further, maybe we can see how easily they could identify with a God that was SO vulnerable that he could be pierced with a spear in his side and have holes in his hands. Knowing how easily they could see themselves reflected in the disciples, I wonder how they saw Thomas. Did they hear a man who questioned the presence of the risen Christ and see themselves in him…“I too question…”? Or did they see him as an insult: “I gave up everything for Jesus, and Thomas has the tenacity to ask questions?” I’m not sure how they felt or how they experienced Thomas, but I do know what it feels like to be scared, to feel like the world is falling apart, like the societal norms that you’ve trusted are gone…it’s a terrifying experience. One that has you reeling, clinging to anything you can.

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I’m Midwestern in many ways. When we moved to the East Coast from Chicago 8 years ago, I found myself realizing just how Midwestern I am. When I cook, I prefer a casserole, probably with cream of mushroom soup as a main ingredient. When I’m really tired or fired up, you can hear my northern accent pop out, especially if you listen for a long “OOOO” sound. I will never understand why people call it a lollipop and not a sucker. While all of these stereotypes apply to me, the Midwestern Iowa farm boy, shy and modest thing…I’ve never related to. I get pretty clear and wound up about how I’m right about a thing, and I don’t mind sharing my “rightness” with others—ask my family or any boss I’ve ever had…it’s not my most endearing quality. In reflection for today’s sermon I was reminded of seminary. I was straight out of undergrad, and I was very clear on how I thought about things and just how right I was. In my classes I kept on hearing about “human brokenness.” I’m an optimist, and I tend to see the world and people with rose-colored glasses. This translated into me frequently debating with classmates about how we as humans weren’t broken, we were blessed…no need to focus repeatedly on brokenness; who does that help? Why focus on what’s not good about us? I’m not broken, I’m whole…I’m loved, I’m created by God who loves me, I’m fully whole. I only wanted to think about positive things, no downers for Justin Zeigler…I hate to admit it, I wasn’t fully correct. Notice how I say fully correct; I was still KINDA right, I think.

Today’s text is fascinating to me for many reasons, but in one part…if you notice, Jesus, on his first visit, “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’” I found myself curious about the word sin. I discovered that the word translated as sin could also be read as “brokenness,” and forgive could be translated as “release”…those who are hiding, those who are terrified, those who feel powerless have been given a gift…they are released through the power of God’s love, and they are called to release others from a sense of brokenness. And here we are…in walks Thomas, and he, like a certain Midwestern pastor, is not going to be moved. He has doubts about what has been presented to him by his friends. Maybe Thomas was like me, refusing to believe that humans, Jesus included, are breakable. Maybe he didn’t like the idea that we could be broken in body and spirit, or maybe he wasn’t comfortable with the idea that Jesus could overcome this brokenness…for whatever reason, he doubts what he’s been told. Maybe Thomas does deserve to be introduced as Doubting Thomas at parties for eternity.

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My professional ministry has been, let’s say, eclectic. I’ve worked for churches, I’ve worked for nonprofits, I’ve worked for municipalities. I’ve done a bit of everything, and I kind of like it that way. When I was in my late 20s I decided to spend a year volunteering…my parents, who loved and supported my undergrad and then seminary decisions, were less than impressed with their youngest son deciding he would run off to save the world. I signed up with a national volunteer corps and was assigned to work in Albuquerque, New Mexico, doing HIV and AIDS prevention work. I was to do outreach with folk who were engaged in high-risk behavior, making their money in less than legal ways. I loved my work. I loved helping people access resources and get the care that they needed, I loved meeting unique and fascinating people…it was exactly what I wanted to be doing at that time…even though I was making absolutely no money in this job. Every few months we had a group of doctors that ran a clinic for us and saw our clients for free. My job was to go around town, find people who may be at risk of becoming HIV positive, and convince them to come with me to this clinic…do you know how hard that is? “Hey you…get in my white unmarked passenger van. You won’t make ANY money tonight ’cause you’ll be at the clinic…but it’s good for you.” So I rode with my coworker, who knew the community well and now worked in HIV prevention. She would convince her friends to jump in, and she gave me a tip that I’ll never forget: “They’ll do anything if you buy them a chili dog.” Really? That’s it? So one night I drove around with chili dogs and my coworker, and in a matter of hours we had a van full of people laughing and singing and heading to the clinic. I was so proud. I DID IT. My phone rang as I drove, and I saw it was my sister calling. I knew I shouldn’t, but my sister rarely calls, so I picked up the phone. She is a nurse in my hometown and explained that my dad had come into the hospital earlier that day during her shift…he’d had a heart attack. I pulled the van to the side of the road…the women hushed. “I don’t think he’s going to make it, Justin. You need to get here if you can.” I was financially broke; I could barely afford rent. I couldn’t get on a plane to Iowa. I was alone, in the desert, stranded on the side of the road with strangers and chili dogs. I spoke with my sister, we prayed, and she promised to call me if she knew more. I hung up the phone and got out of the car to catch my breath and my thoughts. I began to sob. I missed my family, I missed my friends, I was alone, and I didn’t have anyone to turn to and navigate this dark moment. In my tears I slowly realized I wasn’t alone… The women had gotten out of the car and were hugging me. One said, “My dad had a heart attack last year; he’s OK now.” “Doctors can do crazy things now, you’ll see.” “You’ll be OK.” We stood at the side of the road, I sobbed, and the women who I came to help—women who are so often treated like objects, like their lives and dreams don’t matter—held me in my brokenness. In that chili-dog-scented embrace I met human brokenness, my own…and in that brokenness, I touched the side of Christ; I knew the Holy One. My father is alive and well, and I will never eat a chili dog again without gratitude for how God met me that night.

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It’s when Thomas is allowed to touch the brokenness of Christ’s body that he knows the truth…and it’s Thomas’ doubt that allowed him to do this. Doubt isn’t the problem; Jesus meets Thomas in his questioning and welcomes him. This is not a story telling us not to doubt or question. This is a story about how beautiful our humanity is, even when it’s broken. It’s when we can connect with one another in truth and humility and vulnerability that God is known…and our purely human selves are blessed. That blessing allows us to move forward out of the dark rooms we find ourselves in. So maybe, just maybe…if you find yourself in a place where the world seems to have fallen apart, or your brokenness is all you can feel—if you’re brave, like Thomas, and seek another human—it’s possible to experience the divine not in spite of your brokenness, but through it. This is my friend Thomas. He was brave enough to question, to experience his brokenness, to touch another in their brokenness…he knows divine love. And so may we all.

3. Chaotic Love

2022 · Luke 12:49–56

“Jesus, why can’t you be a little bit more like my babysitter?” A perfect childhood babysitter, a front porch with a dear friend, and my very first funeral (“excuse me, where’s her head?”) helped me hear a hard text: grace doesn’t leave us where it found us.

When I was a kid, my favorite babysitter was a family friend…and she was that magical babysitter that every family dreams of. Her parents would drop her off at our house in time for my mom and dad to go on their date, or wherever they were going for the night. She would walk in with her bag full of games, and books, and movies. She knew how to put the exact right amount of salt and butter on the popcorn to watch a movie she rented, which was somehow always the perfect movie. She knew when to move on from playing a board game, to a craft, to something else. She anticipated my every need and found a way to make sure it happened. In short, my babysitter was perfect. When I read today’s text, I find myself thinking, “Jesus, why can’t you be a little bit more like my babysitter?” While she was a bringer of peace, and joy, and all good things, Jesus here seems to be ranting about how he will bring division and pain. Let’s remember a short few months ago, at Christmas, when we were reading that Jesus was coming and he was going to be the “Prince of Peace.” This talk of family divisions doesn’t sound so Prince of Peace to me. So what happened to the babysitter-like Jesus that is here for us, to comfort us, and who is this guy? Maybe we all just need a babysitter like mine?

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I’m always shocked how this works: the texts that I’m least comfortable with always seem to be the texts that I need to wrestle with when it’s my turn to preach on a Sunday morning. In our text today, Jesus is talking with his inner circle and crowds in general. It’s to his closest followers, the disciples, that he brings up the idea of division and how the most basic units of society will be split. Families are, sociologically speaking, that which holds the fabric of everything together. The UN states, “The family is a basic and essential building block of societies, families have a crucial role in social development. They bear the primary responsibility for the education and socialization of children as well as instilling values of citizenship and belonging in the society.” And think about families in the time that Jesus was talking; they were key to the identity of a person. Nobody could say, “I identify as a Kansas City Chiefs fan,” or “I’m not really much of a Starbucks guy, I’m all about Dunkin’ Donuts.” People were most closely identified with and defined by who their families were. It’s how most people found their place in the world, their role, their work, everything. It’s why we hear so many genealogies in scripture, “this person was the father of that person,” etc. The stuff that I always skipped over when I was doing Bible studies as a kid. So Jesus is saying, “The stuff I’m telling you about, the life I want you to lead, is going to rip apart everything that is stabilizing in your world.” Yeah, for Jesus’ words being gospel, it’s not particularly good news when all I’m craving these days is a bit of stability.

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When Jesus said that he didn’t come to bring peace, I began to reflect on my own life. I was thinking about peace, and moments that I’ve experienced peace. And I thought about one of my nearest and dearest friends, who I met when I lived in Kansas City. We met in a moment of both of our lives, our mid-20s, when we thought we were very adult…but needed one another to think through how to be very adult. Life felt chaotic at times: navigating dating (and very often dating people who were very bad choices for us), being a young professional, and trying to leave behind adolescence…and sometimes not really knowing how to do that. My friend had a house with a porch, and very often I wouldn’t call or text…but just show up at her house, and for hours we sat on the porch. We talked about everything and nothing and giggled about terrible first dates, rough breakups, what our dreams for the future were, and how to navigate career challenges. It was in these moments, in the chaos of life, that I felt what the Bible calls shalom, “peace.” I’ve gotten older, and I’m realizing just how chaotic things feel…simply because we are human, no matter what stage of life we find ourselves in. Today my friend and I chat on the phone, but we have to schedule; no more just showing up. Our giggles about first dates and crushes have moved to talk about marriage; we talk about our challenges in becoming parents and how to build families, we talk about challenges in our not-so-young careers, and we dream about what’s to come next. In the midst of chaos, I find shalom with my friend. Maybe you have that person too, or maybe it’s a place, or a prayer, or a time…but a moment where, even though things are rough and confusing…it’s OK. My friendship, my family, is my shalom. That which makes me believe that the promises of God are true, that in the end all will be well. This is why I’m hurt and confused by Jesus’ words…why would he want to take this away? Why would he want to destroy it? Why is he coming to take away peace?

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Jesus turns to the crowd and says, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” What I think Jesus is saying here is, “You’re not dumb. You know how to look at the world around you and figure out what’s going on…so don’t play stupid.” In the time that Jesus is speaking, these people were ruled under the empire, Caesar. I think that this is a statement that you know right from wrong…don’t follow Caesar simply because you can or because it’s simple…trust what you see and hear. You know what God is calling you to, and it’s not to follow the emperor. It’s Jesus trying to radically empower folk. But I still don’t quite get what he’s going for when he tells people that they will be divided. Is this really the kingdom that Jesus wants us to build?

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When I was in my first call as a minister, I worked in a large church, the one I had interned at, actually. There was a day when the matriarch of the church had passed away. There were expected to be about 1,000 people in attendance at her funeral…so all hands, even my inexperienced ones, were on deck. In the hubbub to plan the funeral, the senior minister realized that he had double-booked himself and was supposed to be doing another, much smaller graveside service that day as well. The family had said that they just wanted a minister to say a short prayer, nothing much…so as I was welcoming guests to the huge funeral, he pulled me aside and asked me to officiate the small service. I, being the people-pleasing new staff, said, “Of course I can do that.” I shared that this was my first time doing a funeral, and I asked him what I should “do.” It’s easy, he said, just make sure you stand at the head of the casket to show the deceased respect. OK, I was armed with blind confidence and a desire to people-please, and I had a few hours to figure out how to make good on the promise of doing a funeral when I’d never done one! I called friends who had done funerals; they shared their outlines and ideas of what to say for prayers. I pulled together a very nice, quick service, what the family wanted and needed. I showed up at the cemetery, met with the family briefly, told them who I was, and did my very best pretending I knew what I was doing. I was pulling this OFF! I then went to begin the service, I looked at the casket for the first time…and realized it was a rectangle…and closed…and the headstone wasn’t up yet. All I knew was that I was supposed to stand at the head of the casket, but in my panic I wasn’t 1000% sure which end that was. I quietly leaned over to the staff of the funeral home and whispered, “Excuse me, where’s her head?” He looked at me like I was INSANE and said, “It’s in the casket.” His colleague smiled, knowing what I was asking, and pointed me to the right place to stand. I needed grace in that moment. I needed some support, some love, someone to understand that I was clueless and was doing my best. With the silliness of my ignorance, and the grace of the man who helped me, I grew and evolved to be more comfortable. I now am far more confident in my abilities to lead these moments in ministry. Anne Lamott is a Christian writer and thinker. She once wrote, “I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” Sometimes we meet grace and it helps us evolve and move forward.

 

When I read the scripture, not only was I confused, but a little mad at Jesus. I wanted Jesus to bring me a feeling of shalom. I wanted that feeling of sitting on the porch with my friend, I wanted that feeling of my babysitter making everything right. I dug into the translation and I discovered something. When Jesus says that he hasn’t come to bring you peace, the word in Greek isn’t the word meaning wholeness or shalom…it’s eirene, from the verb eiro, to join or bind together that which has been separated. It literally pictures the binding or joining together again of that which had been separated or divided, and thus setting at one again. So what Jesus is saying is, I haven’t come so you can feel like you have it all together. He’s saying, I haven’t come to make things neat and tidy. In fact, my gospel, my word, is confusing, possibly for a while even splitting…and when I thought about it, this is what God does.

Like Anne Lamott said, grace doesn’t leave us in the same place…we are called to grow, to change, to evolve. If we are living in Christ, we are changing and growing, and sometimes that feels messy. And that doesn’t always feel good. Jesus isn’t my childhood babysitter; in fact, life isn’t about taking it easy and being taken care of. Real life is chaotic. There are chances to grow, there are lessons to learn, there is sometimes separation, and hurt…but there, in the message of Christ, at the core, is love. So Jesus is saying that his love is chaotic…you may feel unbound, divided, not clear. This is where I would add: we need places like the porch and friends like mine to sit with us and love us as we feel divided and confused, so we can continue to move forward. So let’s go, follow this chaotic love, share grace with one another along the way, and who knows where we will be when we follow it with our whole hearts…just maybe a more just world for all of us.