Gramasylum and a Funeral

I was honored that a reading club group at church chose to read my book and invited me to be their guest for their monthly discussion. The same day I ended up caring for my granddaughter so I arranged for her to be in the nursery at church while I met with the book club. As I carried her to the room she touched the necklace hanging around my neck and said, "Cece, will you tell me about this?" "This" was my cross necklace. What could I say?! What an amazing opportunity. My four year old granddaughter was asking me to tell her about the Good News of the gospel! I responded, "Lo, I would love to tell you about what this cross means!" But I was pretty close to being late for my morning book club invitation so I dropped her off at the nursery and told her that I would tell her when I got back.

I do not think LoLo knows that I am a pastor or what a pastor does. And she did not know that just a few weeks ago I had introduced  a sermon about the Good News using pictures of crosses--Madonna with a big cross necklace, a convicted murderer in prison tattooed with and wearing a cross, an arch entrance made up of hundreds of wooden crosses, and my own picture wearing this same cross she was now asking about. What was the meaning of all these cross displays? Who knows?! But now my wearing a cross provided me the opportunity to tell LoLo the story of Jesus' amazing love for her. I could hardly wait.

When I picked her up at the nursery she had not forgotten and was all ears. As best I could, in four year old vocabulary (hers, by the way, is pretty incredible!) I explained to her that Jesus came to the world to tell us how much he loved us. I told her that Jesus told everyone and especially people that no one else loved. It was very hard for me to tell her that religious people (like me!) did not like it that Jesus was loving these kind of people and that they disagreed with what he told people about God. Jesus was telling people that God had sent him and that if they believed in him they would never die and that even if they did die, they would live again.  It was really hard for me to tell her that religious people actually punished Jesus like a criminal. Criminals were hung on crosses to die. They hung Jesus on a cross to die. And he did. But he did not stay dead. He came alive again! And then he continued to love people and tell them that because he had died and lived again, the same would happen to them if they trusted him and believed him. I told her that I wear a cross to remind me of how much Jesus loves us. It all sounds a little crazy when you really think about it.

I told LoLo that this meant that some day she would get to meet my father, her great grandfather, the person I wrote the book about. I told her that even if Cece (that's what she calls me) dies  that she will get to see me again because I believe and trust Jesus. I told her that death is hard and makes us very sad, but that Jesus said not to be afraid, because he will take care of us when we die and one day we will all be together again. LoLo said, "I trust and believe Jesus." I said, " I hope you do, Lo. And I hope you will learn more about Jesus and how to trust him as you get older."

Wow! What a holy, crazy sacred, moment. A student of Christianity for decades and an ordained pastor for twenty years  and I was challenged by this request. I had read lots of books about Jesus to LoLo before. I have sung "Jesus Love Me" to her hundreds of times. But now she was asking. She was initiating the conversation. She was wanting to understand what the cross means.

Later that day I officiated at a memorial service. I had prepared a brief message based on I Thessalonians 4 where Paul explains that Christians do not grieve as others do without hope. He says that because Jesus died and rose again, we have hope and are supposed to encourage each other with this Good News. I knew I had a very mixed audience at this service and did not know many of them at all. All of a sudden I  realized that LoLo's question and the answer I gave her was exactly what Paul was teaching in this passage. My four year old granddaughter became a fresh example of the message I wanted to give this family and these friends of this man who suffered and died way too soon. The meaning of the cross is the only sure and hopeful word for people facing death and loss. And explaining this to even a four year old, maybe especially to a four year old, can bring great clarity to the truth. I told those gathered for the memorial that surely my granddaughter did not fully understand the things I told her, but then, neither do any of us! But there are all sorts of things (like electricity) that I use and live by and depend on that I do not understand fully or at all. It does not make them false, or any less dependable. Such is the meaning of the cross. Crazy!

I wear my cross necklace often. I will wear it with more sense of purpose from now on. Being a grandmother and being a pastor are not all that different at the core. Being crazy in love with my grandchildren reminds me a lot of just how crazy God's love is for us. Gramasylum is a great place for a pastor to live.

A Scrappy Beginning to Holy Week

On the first day of Holy Week my email inbox was full of letters of concern. For the last ten months I have been working with another church in our presbytery that finds themselves in a time of conflict. The trouble has been brewing for a couple of years, maybe more. But it is now coming to a head. The leadership is working to bring into the open what has been festering under the surface for some time. They have invited members with “concerns” to put them in writing and then attend a special meeting to talk about these concerns. In our fallen condition we often avoid conflict at any cost. Time and again we fail to understand that conflict is normal and expected wherever at least two people live together, in whatever manner. When it is avoided for longer periods, it only grows. Then bringing it to the forefront always feels like things are getting worse. They are, but only visibly. But once visible—in the open air—the conflict can be better seen, understood, and potentially resolved. That is what this group of church leaders is working toward and hoping for.

Monday morning, the first day of Holy Week, I was reading all of these letters of concern that had filled my inbox. I must confess my first thought was, What a way to begin Holy Week! Then it hit me. This is the way Jesus began Holy Week. Tensions that had been hidden and building for years were mounting, and those who were against Jesus were getting bolder in their opposition. I am not suggesting that the writer’s of these letters of concerns are “crucifiers,” nor am I suggesting the pastor involved is Jesus. I am just reminded that we are broken and sinful folks, and Jesus came for this very reason. Jesus came because we are a scrappy lot! Holy Week was not an antiseptic, spiritual Kum Ba Yah! It was a scrappy, contentious, confused caravan of folks encountering God incarnate. Some recognized him and followed, some got caught up in all the miracles and wanted to believe but were confused, others were outright hostile, and a whole bunch of folks were just to busy to notice God had visited. Sounds all too familiar!

We would all love to jump right to the Hallelujah Chorus and sing the praises of the risen Christ and glory in our being adopted as heirs. But we must first wander through the streets and alleys of broken relationships, disobedient and distracted lives, and self-absorbed hostility. We must come crawling—scrappy, contentious, and confused—to the cross. And when we look up, we see God incarnate suffering there for us—the weight of the sins of the whole world on his shoulders. Our sins and the sins of those we are in conflict with are all together laid on Christ. We cannot get around it. We must confess our scrappiness—our sin—and then, only then, can we see our way through to Easter morning and the resurrection and glory of the risen Lord. Thank God that beginning Holy Week scrappy is exactly the right path to the resurrection.