Nothing Can Separate Us

Nothing Can Separate Us

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”—Romans 8:38-39.

Trinity Cathedral Pierce Chapel

I talk to many people who do not believe they deserve God’s love. I remember visiting with a very alert, highly educated woman in her 90s, still involved in her successful business, who wanted to start going back to church—but only after she got her life together and felt she was a better person. I told her the famous line, “The church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.” But she never returned.

I talk to many people recovering from addiction who feel so much shame for the life they have led. They do not see how God and others can forgive them. So many have been taught to fear a judgmental God looking over their shoulder to catch them in sin.

I want to tell them there is another way, a belief in resurrection, an Easter that can be redeemed after a Good Friday life or experience. I remind them of Jesus’ disciples who abandoned and denied him if I can. He did not return to them in that upper room on Easter evening and say, “Shame on you.” Instead, he said, “Peace be with you.… When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.” (John 20:21-23).

We discuss the difference between shame, “I am a bad person,” and guilt, “I did a wrong thing.” We also talk about addiction not being a moral failing, but a disease. Finally, we talk about seeing any sign of God’s love alive and well, working in their life. We pray that the Holy Spirit will lead both of us to recognize this presence alive in each other, so we will both see and be led by the Christ in each other.

Sometimes, I tell my story of  God’s presence in my life through many difficulties, to see if they recognize similarities between my story and theirs.

 Lastly, I may share the above mantra from Romans that I still use as I became aware of my harm to others and myself and now seek forgiveness.

Sometimes, I share this image from Trinity Cathedral’s Pierce Chapel of Jesus, the Light of the World, constantly seeking us to love us.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

Peace of God

Peace of God

“Jesus doesn’t offer peace of mind. Instead, he offers the peace of reconciliation.”—Diane Roth, “Living the Word,” Christian Century, March 14, 2018, p. 23.

This response by Diane Roth to Lectionary Readings for the Second Sunday in Easter from John 20:19-31 is another wake-up call for us to reconcile with those we are struggling with. Jesus calls us to love that neighbor who is so different, and love our relatives who look at our political scene through a different pair of glasses. This also involves seeing Christ in the most unlovable person we work with, loving those whose belief systems are precisely opposite ours. I could go on for several more pages of examples.

A verse that haunts me often said at the offertory is Matthew 5:23-24, “So when you offer your gift at the altar, if you remember your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first, be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

Family systems models tell us that we must make every effort to get back into a relationship with any family members from whom we are estranged.

The heart of 12-step recovery is looking at our resentments for others, seeing our part, causing the estrangement from others, making amends, and seeing how we are alike instead of seeing our differences.

These teachings remind us that when we cannot love our neighbor, it is hard to love God, for the God of our understanding also lives in our neighbor, as does God live in us. 

This is an essential message for us to share with spiritual friends. We may not be trained as the person to help our friends reconcile with those with whom they are having difficulty, but we are called to share our experience that reconciliation with our neighbor is a straight pathway to the peace of God.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation are at the heart of our pathways to our relationship with others and our God.

across the divide

Joanna   joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

John Updike: Short Easter

John Updike: Short Easter
“The fact that the day is Easter means something to him—something he can neither name nor get out of his mind.” —John Updike, “Short Easter” in The Afterlife and Other Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and The Penguin Group, 1994). Originally published in The New Yorker (3/19/1989).

John Updike wrote one of my favorite short stories about resurrection in The Afterlife and Other Short Stories called “Short Easter,” about a year when Daylight Saving Time begins on Easter Sunday. I first read the story in Volume 2 of Listening for God, a series of short stories selected by Paula Carlson and Peter Hawkins—Carlson then from the Department of English and Hawkins, a professor of Religion and Literature, both at Yale University. The four-part series includes a DVD about the author of each contemporary short story, which can work well in a book group study using literature as an icon to hear and see God.

In “Short Easter,” this high holy day for Christians becomes one hour shorter when the clocks are jumped forward and an hour of sleep is lost. “Church bells rang in the dark.” Updike goes through the day of a well-to-do man named Fogel, who keeps wanting to attend church services on Easter Day, but puts it off until—at the end of the day, he has never gone.

At the story’s end, Fogel wakes up from an afternoon nap “amid that unnatural ache of resurrection, the weight of coming again to life,” and realizes that “although everything in his world is in place, there is something immensely missing.”

This is the moment of clarity that God continuously reveals to us. I regularly need to remind myself and my spiritual friends to be open to that moment, which is often as fearful for us as for Fogel. It is like the fear of the women at the empty tomb on Easter Day. It is resurrection. It always speaks to something more powerful than we can understand. We become aware of some love we cannot understand.

We have put something else in our “God hole,” and whatever it is—prestige, money, marriage, work, family, fame, beauty—it will never fill the emptiness inside us where only the God of love is large enough to live. This is the God who desperately loves us and relentlessly calls us to be part of his and our resurrection in this life and the life to come.

I would love to hear more of your resurrection stories this Easter Season. You can email them to me or put them on Facebook or the website where this blog is posted. joannaseibert.com

women at the empty tomb