Beyond Teddy Bears (Epiphany 7C)

Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.
Take delight in the Lord, and the LORD will give you the desires of your heart.

This morning I share with you some of my current personal musings; challenging complicated thoughts.  I offer no answers or prescriptions.

I begin with thoughts growing from a book I’ve been reading. The novel tells a present-day story of an anthropology professor whose wife has died.  He has decided to start a new life with his 5 yr old son in New York city.  As an anthropologist he becomes interested in the people of his barrio -a neighbourhood filled with Hispanic peoples. Around the corner from his house is a botanica, a little store the sells all kinds of religious trinkets, herbs, and items that are outside of his understanding.  Circumstances have him learning about Santeria (sant-er-ria); a version of Voodoo. He is amazed that in the hustle and bustle of the modern city of New York, amidst suit-wearing people, financial districts, university learning, hospitals practicing medical science, museums of history, there is a huge undercurrent of those dabbling in Santeria – the oldest religion on earth. He finds hundreds of these little botanica shops, with an eccentric shopkeeper in each, tucked into tiny nooks and frequented by people from all walks of life. He interacts with a variety of people who practice all sorts of what he would call superstitions; rituals put into daily living that came from Voodoo practices. What in God’s name – although as an anthropologist he doesn’t call on God- are people doing practicing rituals and using potions that are a reversion of human thought, understanding, achievement, and evolution?  Why are logical people succumbing to this alternative, as a way of coping with life?

The novel is really about the anthropologist journeying through grief. He wrestles with belief, like what happens after one dies; and he is in the midst of creating new traditions – dare he say rituals- to get him from one day to the next.  His son is grieving differently and has open conversations with his dead mom. The journey is one that walks through the valley of family dynamics, including a wider family of friends and neighbours. There is deep-seated tension that is released as the anthropologist opens up to hope, forgiveness, and trust.  His journey is one of forgiveness, mainly to himself as he blames himself for his wife’s death. In the journey he finds a generosity of compassion.

The story of Joseph and his brothers is one of deep-seated tension. If you recall, Joseph’s brothers conspired to kill him; in the end they decided to sell him to travellers, and take back to their father a bloody coat, suggesting that Joseph had been eaten by wild animals. Years later, the story continues in chapter 42-45 of Genesis, where the reader is invited on the journey of reconciliation between the brothers and Joseph. Readers watch as the characters take steps to hope, to forgive, and to trust.  The characters do not participate in rituals, seek potions, or turn to rote prayers, as their way of reconciling, rather, time is of importance, so the brothers are sent on a journey.

We enter the Joseph story, on the return of Joseph’s brothers to Egypt with their youngest brother in tow.  Previously they had come looking for favour, for food for their family during famine.  Pharaoh’s assistant, Joseph, imprisoned one of the brothers and sent the rest off to bring back the youngest brother Benjamin.  When the brothers return with Benjamin, a trick is played to test the brother’s loyalty in protecting Benjamin and not leaving him behind in Egypt alone – to see if they would abandon Benjamin as they had Joseph so many years before. The brothers prove loyal and go to great lengths to protect Benjamin; it is at this point that Joseph reveals who he is to his brothers. After receiving this mercy, and forgiveness at the hands of Joseph, once again the brothers are sent on a journey to go up to their father, to bring him and their families down to Egypt.

go up to my father’s house, come down to me

This is an interesting concept in Hebrew scripture- to go up means to journey towards what in future generations will be known as the promised land.  It is the land to which the people flee when escaping their future slavery in Egypt. Physically the land is not up, nor Egypt down, the intent of the phrase is to represent a spiritual journey undertaken in the actual movement (the pilgrimage) up. One goes up with an intention, a purpose; accepting the fact that through the journey one will grow, be renewed, and be forever changed.  There is hope in the journey, as one moves to a fulfillment of promises made.

For Joseph’s brothers there is hope in that a promise has been made to reunite the whole family in a land that has food and land on which to graze herds. For the brothers the journey is a practice of mercy, leading to reconciliation.  Joseph has wisely given the brothers and himself a gift – the gift of time. To let everything sink in. Forgiveness is a process that requires time, a changing of hearts and minds; letting go of hurts, being overwhelmed by those we no longer trust, wanting to love, letting go of the fear of being hurt again; grieving years lost, actions not taken, words not spoken…all this does not happen over night.  It takes a journey of time. And it took time, the walk or camel caravan ride would have taken Joseph’s brothers weeks, months; it is not like today where we can drive quickly from here to there or jump on a jumbo jet. 

And that is where the Joseph story needles me. We get this idea that immediacy matters. We don’t take a journey that takes time.  We like immediacy, where emails are answered as soon as we send them, where we can order all our desires with a click of a few buttons, where a journey doesn’t require long hours with too much time for thinking and pondering. We don’t have to unplug. We can avoid wrestling with matters of hoping, forgiving, and trusting.

This leads me back to the novel I am reading about the anthropologist.  In the modernity and immediacy of New York society, people were returning to ancient religion, rituals, and superstitions. In the loss of journeys- of going up- people no longer had the healing gift of time, people started looking for practices to be quickly done through their daily routines to offer hope in the promise of a greater connectedness that they no longer felt.

This sense of immediacy and need for ritual was seen this past week here in Halifax at the death of the seven Syrian children in a house fire.   There was an immediacy of response, an immediacy to expressing and shedding grief, an immediacy to moving on. One-off ritual acts were done, in good faith, in love for neighbour; but, done once-for-all, immediately; the act of giving money to a GoFund me page or setting out a teddy bear, as a sign of sharing grief.  Despite the goodwill, for how many was this it? Grief is done, satiated. I wonder for how many were these rituals part of a continued upward journey through grief to a land of promise? I am hoping that because we as a church community continually practice journeying through the church year, traveling with Jesus from birth, to death, to life- that such actions are not one-offs, but that the journey of grief will continue over time.

This past week seven Syrian children died by accident and there was an immediacy of response; on Jan 15^th, eight Syrian children die, at the hands of a human-made crisis, in a refugee camp due to a lack of medical care and freezing temperatures. By the end of January, the World Health Organization reported 29 deaths of Syrian children and newborns, most from hypothermia… and there was no immediacy of response.

In days a million dollars has been raised to assuage the grief of the loss of seven young lives;

 Imagine if the same amount of resources were gathered and invested in the infrastructure of Za’hari, or Kakuma, or whatever refugee camp one wishes to name. How many lives would be saved, grief abated?  How many displaced people would welcome going up to a refuge camp that really was promised land, that was not only land, but one flowing with milk and honey?

Earlier, from the Gospel of Luke, we heard Jesus teaching the people who were sitting on an open field, a plain. In this environment they were vulnerable to the wind, the sun, insects, thirst, hunger.  It was a place that dismantled their defense mechanisms – they accepted this lack of control and were open to what Jesus had to say. In this harsh environment, Jesus teaches them: he speaks of generous mercy and generous compassion.

It is not a kindly speech, it is very challenging. Jesus gets in their face:

Even sinners love those who love them.  Jesus confronts followers by pointedly stating that in their lives there is to be more than human ethic at play; there is a difference between a disciple’s behaviour and that of those around them.  It is about more than GoFund Me and putting teddy bears on our porches. Even sinners… do this.

Jesus confronts his followers and tells them that journeys through life are about time taken to

Love your enemies, do good, be compassionate.

I wonder how that translates to the 22 suicides, of youth aged 10-16 years, in a six month period in 2017 on the Nishnawbe Aski Nation- yes the nation is in what we call Canada.  Where were their teddy bears, their GoFund Me page? There family houses are still without potable water, electricity, and there remains a lack of mental health resources in the community.

In God’s name, why did we not grieve these 22 lives? Could we not, should we not, be on a journey up to reconciliation.

According to the Director of Data and Research at UNICEF, if things remain as they are now, 56 million children under the age of 5 (half of them newborns) will die in the next decade. Will we grieve for them – lives cut short to early?  As disciples these numbers can change: Love your enemies, do good, be compassionate.

The number to die can dramatically be reduced with the simple solutions of medicines, clean water, electricity and vaccines.  

An alternative ritual: Remembering seven children, with a gift of seven vaccines, saving seven others.

In my musings, I come to a place where I am thankful for being in a faith journey, with a community of other people also on faith journeys. I appreciate the story of Joseph and his brothers and the importance of rituals that build relationships through hope, forgiveness, and trust, over time. In a busy world full of modernisms and people looking for immediacy of ritual and actions, I value the gift of a long view, of hope in a promise yet to be fulfilled. I also come to a place where I am challenged to wrestle with how to grieve, how to love my enemy, how to do good, how to be compassionate --- with all people and all in crisis, particularly those that are ongoing and right in my face.

Today I pray that I, that you, take home a desire to live -as generously as Jesus insists that his followers be:  

 forgive generously, grieve generously, love generously, offer mercy generously.

Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.
Take delight in the Lord, and the LORD will give you the desires of your heart.