Breaking the Bread of a Thousand Mercies

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Savior of the world Jesus the Christ. Amen.

On Thursday, the world grew a little bit heavier as we said goodbye to one of our community’s beloved members, Kari Schultz. Kari was known by many in our congregation, and her courageous fight with brain cancer over these last three years is a model of strength and endurance that is extraordinarily rare. Her resilience, her grace, and her grit is a testament to the spirit that she embodied: one that loved others extravagantly even in the midst of her own worry, one that valued family and connection, one that always lived in the very present moment. Kari’s proudest role was mother, and she cared for and loved her young daughters Alexa and Ada so very well. Her energy, spirit, and determination that she brought to every relationship, every person she encountered, will be sorely and deeply missed. Now, it is our responsibility to keep Kari’s name alive among us – remembering her, and living how she would live – as it is our responsibility when any of our beloved family members or friends die. Thank you to the many of you who journeyed with Kari over the last few years – whether through praying, through visits, through homemade meals, or simply by being a friend or a listening ear. Our witness together in grief is a commitment to sojourning together and to helping one another realize their belovedness in this life. Thank you for your prayers and thank you for your continued support of the Schultz and Dokken families in the midst of this. The funeral on Thursday was the beginning of a process of grief that will, in certain ways, last a lifetime. For me, I have been questioning many things – I wonder the “why” of why Kari was taken from us so young. I, along with all of you, mourn the loss of what could have been for Alexa and Ada and Adam, and for their larger families. I wonder where God is in the midst of such deep and profound grief, while trying to trust that God is big enough to show up in our lives and maybe one day, one day perhaps far from now, welcome us to consider what hope might look like. I wonder – where is justice – where is compassion – in this part of life that we are walking through?

In today Gospel lesson, Jesus is talking with his disciples about their life of faith – about their need to pray always, and that it was important for them to never lose heart in the sight of a world that oftentimes seemed so unfair and backwards – where the wealthy laughed at the poor, the sick languished in the streets, and the widows were left without many protections. He tells them a story, a parable, about what God’s justice looks like. The premise is that there is an unjust judge, who neither feared God nor respected anyone he encountered. The judge sounds as though he is careless, obtuse, and only looking out for his own interests. To this particular judge comes a widow, and she is asking for justice against an opponent. We must remember the reality of being a widow in the time that the Gospel of Luke was written: unless you were married, or had parents and elders who were still living, women of the day held no power: they could not own land, they could not participate in the larger life of their communities, and were largely destined to lives of motherhood and service to their families. They were the property of their husbands in many respects. The widow comes to the judge because she knows her position and is fearful of the exploitation that would most certainly, if it had not already, befall her. Her life, as precarious as it already was due to the loss of her husband, would only become more so if she was exploited for economic or social gain at the hands of those who wielded more power. She takes matters into her own hands, going again and again to the judge to ask for justice – that people not exploit her and threaten her already fragile autonomy. She is, in plain speak, a “squeaky wheel”, determined to get what she desires from the judge who appears so callous. Eventually, she gets what she has set out for: but it is not because the judge is moved by compassion, but because he wants her to stop bothering him. Jesus uses this to compare God’s sense of justice to the protection thus granted to the widow. I would argue that this could be a case for reading the Bible in this way: “See how the unjust judge granted the widow justice – so how much more so can God, who loves and cares for us in our time of need, grant us justice?”

Beyond justice, I would also encourage us to read this scripture in light of how God interacts with humanity: God loves all of God’s creation, but time and again there is a preferential treatment towards those who are enduring the more difficult seasons of life: whether it is manifested as powerlessness, loss, grief, pain, sickness, or separation. As the judge granted the widow justice against her oppressors, so will God give us signs and promises that will help us make our way now without Kari. Those signs, I believe, look an awful lot like every single one of us here today. Our bodies, our presence, our voices, and our relationships in times of grief, pain, and sadness are signs of God’s protection and concern made real and concrete among us. God, even as we ask questions of why, even as we shed tears, even as we wonder at life’s fragility, is also among us in the promise of one another, and when we are in mutual, fruitful relationship we see another way. We see God’s way: that true, authentic, and eternal life will confront and defeat the sting of death; that the lowly will be lifted up, and that grief will one day be an opportunity to envision hope.

My friends, in the days and weeks ahead, as I mentioned on Thursday, I invite us to care for one another gently and well. We realize that grief has no timeline, no desire for emotions to be buttoned up and stuffed down. Express fully what you feel, and let us trust one another to receive it with care. In times such as these, let us remember that we are signs of God’s presence among us – as a congregation, we have been drawn together by Christ’s promises because they are larger than ourselves or our own interests, and we have been called to share that overwhelming love with those who need it. Together, let us grieve and let us realize that Christ stands with us in this tomb, until by the grace of God we are pulled out together. Let us be a source of light, no matter how dimly we may be able to see it right now, and trust in our lives built upon God’s unending desire to see the fruits of grace. I wanted to close my sermon today with a poem that I feel Kari would have loved, one that reminds us that life is about so much more than the things which bind us or cause us to fear. When we are living in the promise of God’s coming new heaven and new earth, our lives become about wonder, mercy, and justice. Poet Laura Martin writes that:

“You are not in this day

To close the deal,

To sing the coda,

To sign the dotted line.

You are in this day

To pay homage to

Wonder that you didn’t

Order.

You are in the day

To let what makes you

Shiver

Catch you again.

You are in this day

To know that

Blessing is what

Bends to reach you

In the way that

Rising dawn

Stretches itself

Against night.

Go then to

Make full the cup of justice,

To break the bread

Of a thousand mercies.

Go then and know

That a tree was born when

You were,

And that you live

Under its branches.”

May we go this day, my friends, knowing that God journeys with us whenever we are feeling the weight of our lives. Know that God finds us in the still, broken moments and calls for community, for togetherness, for belonging. Know that God calls us to break the yokes of injustice and harm and for us to proclaim that new life will win the day. Let us know this day – and may you know, deep in your bones (really, truly, know) that we are called to live in this moment of a thousand small mercies, which among us look an awful lot like acts and words of love, which are of God. May we continue to journey together, hand in hand, in hope and in promise. Thanks be to God, my friends. Amen.