East Coasting (Lent 1)

 

‘East Coasting’ --- I have titled the sermon after this poem, written by George Elliot Clarke, which was shared earlier in the service. ‘East Coasting’ is my reflection for the first week of Lent. Let me explain.

For me, the season of Lent focuses on the idea of journey, and the time it takes to make or commit to a journey. In my heart and understanding, journey is rooted and connected to land. – in this case the East Coast. 

For those of you who live on the East Coast you do not need me to explain that East Coast living has its own unique spirit, culture, and personality.  And it is not just the people, it is the land too. There is something about living close to the coast and the mighty ocean that affects everything – the smell in the air, the song of the birds, the taste of salt. I knew a colleague who sensitive to the places where they lived – feeling the spirit of place. They described the East Coast as a place where life goes on in bright colours (seen in our houses and folk art), in engaging gigs and sea-shanties, in community mindedness, but all of this joy comes from a sadness -griefs- held in the land and the hearts of the people. It doesn’t take long – journeying here to understand:

The ocean is life-giving, teeming with fish and resources, work, prosperity, leisure, moderate temperatures; and the ocean is life-taking, storms at sea, lost boats, drownings, hurricanes, corrosive salt.

The land bears witness, our lives bear witness, and live the tensions of the dualities of life. People living in this land become attuned to the seasons and the nature of the land: the rise and fall of tides, the in and out of waves, and the beauty and destruction held in their power.

Living the dualities of life – the tensions of life- are our speciality because the land continually binds us into this space.  The season of Lent is a conversation focusing on tension and polarity, and how it is we navigate along the journey, keeping in mind God’s covenant and our relationship with God, creation, and others. We wrestle with sin and forgiveness, doubt and faith, unrighteousness and compassion, bondage and freedom, death and resurrection.

 

Bringing an ‘East Coasting’ sense of living to the scripture text we see the natural connection to the land – a wave – where Jesus comes in to the Jordan river for baptism and then is washed out, driven into the wilderness. Coming from the desert Jesus crashes in to Galilee and then slips away, the kingdom of God comes near – not quite wetting toes and hearts, and retreats, to return again – almost grasped to roll away yet again. Jesus’ ministry is a coming and going, waves of teaching and understanding, retreating to pray in a quiet place, waves of miracles, retreating to private conversations with the disciples, waves of wrestling conversation with religious leaders, retreating to homes of friends for a meal.

 

Canadian poet laureate and playwright, George Elliot Clarke, was born onto, into, the land of the Black Loyalist community of Windsor Plains, NS. In the words of his poem you hear the rhythm of the ocean, the rhythm of the coastland in the activities people are about; in music, in preaching, in worship, in farming/work, and in interaction in the landscape. I shared this poem with you this morning because the spirit of the land -and the people affected by the land- is in his poetry. His journey though life and his expression of that journey in his poetry was also whelmed by another spirit – the spirit of the holy.

Journey in the land, by the sea – affected his interpretation and journey through the land of scripture and reflecting on it. Clarke’s mother Geraldine once commented on his Bible.  She described it as old, ragged and torn, without a cover, completely bent out of shape with all sorts of papers stuffed in it here and there. It was “more worn than a minister’s Bible.”

Honestly my Bible is not that worn – not from lack of use, but careful use. I keep it ‘clean’ so it is easier to read when reading from it in public. But, if you look closely, there are pages that are bent, some that wrinkled having been rained on at church camp, others that have small tears, and a myriad of spots along the edges that are oil from my fingerprints through the years of journeying through the pages.

The Season of Lent returns us to scripture to journey through the covenants that God made with creation and God’s people. The Word, like water, continually laps at our feet (our hearts) drawing us to journey through scripture and journey through life in conversation with each other: to wrestle with the tensions we find therein.  

 

In David Du Chemin’s book, “Beauty of Anarchy,” (pg155) he describes to readers that there are only two ways of how to live in the present. Both make me think of the ocean –“East Coasting,” because each way has a strong pull for human beings to be the opposite; for us the opposite of what through covenant God calls us to be.  As waves come in, waves go out there is a connection in the polarity – inseparable;  an acceptance of this tension of how we know we ought to live and our failed attempts to live in the present.

According to Du Chemin: to live in the present - to be grounded, rooted, and landed- is to live first in forgiveness, and second in faith. Imagine both – forgiveness and faith- as rogue waves; the kind that crash ashore at Peggy’s Cove, surprising the unprepared, coming unseen with power, knock-you-down kind of force, an overwhelming deluge of cleansing water – destructive and full of life. This is the tension in which we live and where the scripture asks us to wrestle:

In the wave of forgiveness there is freedom, until we are tempted and pulled back into guilt and anger, bondage.

In the wave of faith there is freedom, until we are tempted and pulled into the surf of the opposite, fear.

Through the season of Lent we journey through expanding our practice of faith living. Summarizing Du Chemin’s thought expanding faith living is having: an openness to possibility and the faith that one (or the community) can handle whatever comes, that journeying through circumstances will make us stronger together; and while not everything happens for a reason, we can find or make meaning out of it (even tragedy) for our own lives; and in the end, to practice a faith that pain does not harm us, but journeying through pain – our own and accompanying those in pain- we return a new person (even triumphant); washed ashore to continue the cycle of gracefully living the tensions of life.

 

Perhaps it is living in a time of pandemic, experiencing waves of emotion, spirit: being okay and not okay all at the same time, feeling safe and unsafe, connected and unconnected, focused and unfocused... a journey of oceans and deserts; facing life and death, bondage and freedom --- and in the midst of all of it faith that God is present in the now--- whether flood or desert --- God is moving in the waves, journeying in, with, and around us. 

Journeying through pandemic, and beginning the Lenten journey through the biblical story of covenant and journeying with Jesus’ to the cross, has readjusted my thinking and is pulling on my heart to consider life in a new way; to consider myself on a journey – as a sojourner- where I no longer have a ‘bucket list,’ -those things I will do someday whether its travel or different hobby or an experience I would like; but rather live from an attitude and approach where life (my life, your life) every day life IS the bucket list.

 

This week I am inviting you to connect, reconnect with the land on and in which we live and move and have our being. I am inviting you to practice ‘East Coasting.’  Where God who moves over the waters, whose spirit is present, through the land calling us to live the tensions of life, continually calling us to forgiveness and faith.

East coasting is coming for baptism, then being drawn back in by the world, crawling in for forgiveness, rippling away, washing up to offer praise and soak in hope, to go disperse these to the community, to  push up on shore exhausted, filled to return back to the tumbling of surf .... forever action, resurrection-death, discovery-loss, receiving-giving, freedom-bondage, faith-fear...

in the tension of Lent be washed again and again in the tide bringing new life, and be whelmed by God’s presence amidst your East-coasting; so that your journey – your receding leaves behind forgiveness and faith.

Amen.