Facing and Following – June 26, 2022
8th Sunday of Ordinary Time: 3rd Sunday after Pentecost
To cross a creek bed where the water has recently gone down, is not a clean or easy affair. It is mud; it is rocks; it is debris; it is slime. The path that Elisha crosses is a perilous one, dangerous step after dangerous step. Carrying the weight of the mantle, precious and actually heavy, but also to take on Elijah’s prophetic mission: fighting against idolatry and injustice. Go, walk through the mud in the face of sorrow and suffering and betrayal of hope. Slosh through the dehumanization, pettiness, and falsified piety; and try not to drop the duty in your hands at the moment. Try to hold fast to loving God and all that God loves. This crossing is anything but a walk in the park.
It is told in Exodus tones, an escape from the prevailing contempt of the little and large Pharaohs: the obvious and hidden powers behind the thrones so often easily. Manipulating us by means superficial, amateurish, and cheap: and it works every time. Never does God say this holy way shall be easy, but did the prophet slump at even the idea of it? The weight of the world, a mucked up path, a disintegrating unity. Did he want to sink in the mud already feeling pummeled by frustration and loss?
This week was the summer solstice, and some of my favorite people on the planet made their way up some complicated climb to a peak snowy and steep, so to glance at the sunrise and sunset on the longest days of the year. Their faces glowed with delight and joy, refreshment and athleticism and pride. I have multiple precious friends who love that stuff: climb African mountains, ford every stream! The more gear and more complicated the better! Sometimes they push me up the smaller treks, but, I don’t really enjoy the adventures where I have to look down more than up. The calculated anxiety at every other footfall, knees that suggest you shouldn’t don’t do that: especially the following day. I want to celebrate the glories of rocks and hills and mountains, but I also desire a path to the end that isn’t so demanding or heartbreaking or body-breaking. A reasonable approach when thinking of flesh and bone and rock and road. However, when it is metaphor, no demands, or heartbreak is the path of numbness, dullness, and petrified fear, it is self-enslavement. It is the being a cog or a rock, not of heart and soul. We step out and up because we care. We know if we are truthful that we will have our hearts broken, our mind outraged, our trust toppled. To not be numb is to be vulnerable, to face the facts of the world and keep going through the mud and the muck.
Over and over our gospel today speaks of Jesus setting his face toward Jerusalem. Eyes on the road, a way that wouldn’t be considered ‘paved’ these days. He sets his eyes to the journey and the destination, a path to delight and devastation and resurrection. When in English we speak of facing something, it only sort of comes from the fact that it is for most people our eyes on our face that see what it is we must accept. Instead, the verb face descends to us from the same root as fact. If you imagine this journey, Jesus’ face is not toward their questions and concerns. They are doing as they have been asked – to follow him. To look at them and lead them would be the posture of a tour guide. He looks ahead into the beyond into the silence of God. We who draw near to Jesus, are set free. In our nearness to him, with our hands close enough to tap his shoulder. We in our following, we see what is crossing his path before it is in ours. These facts, this reality is freedom from the conscriptions of the Pharaohs and their armies.
Keeping heart and mind and feet in the way of courage and compassion. We gain a different type of liberty, unchained from being controlled by who knows what but it isn’t on your side, or God’s. This journey this path has always had mud and rocks and weather, but now it reminds me more of fictions of a dark and wet uphill hike through Narnia, Panem, Kobol. The trek was difficult enough but now the arrows are flying at us. Sometimes I am a daydream believer where the world is full of hearts of rainbows just waiting to be revealed. Where all public servants are potential Jed Bartlett’s and Leslie Knopes and we are all in this together. These days I feel like we who are not at the controls are as meaningful to the contemporary world Pharaohs as golfballs at the driving range. The efforts to trample democratic processes, the skewering of a good society, and to lay waste to the privacy and wellbeing of the majority, makes me tremble and cry. All this promise and then all this heartbreak keeping people in their place under the thumb of Pharoah through vile falsehoods, carousing, and learned helplessness: Lord have mercy. Despite the sunshine, these are the facts we face. To come in here today with these headlines, with these readings, and sing fra la la la, would be like Cookie Monster popping up on the Death Star. Facing grief and fear and dismay is holy work. Praying through it is holy work. The faithful response is attention, devotion, and action; setting all of the feelings and ideals before God in a real conversation like you are on that path with Jesus, close to his ear. And then hand in hand with him, we keep going on the journey. We dig into the witness of the faithful who have traveled across muddy rocky paths carrying everything with them. They journey with us through these heartbreaking times. They are with Jesus out in front of us.
The good news today is we are able to embrace curiosity over fear. We are called by prophets and sages to only surrender to God’s compassion and lovingkindness, and to never sit down and give up to the Pharaohs. The only proper relationship on this path is one of truthfulness and solidarity. Keep walking with Jesus, up the hill to the blessed and snowy peaks. Keep serving liberty and dignity in every step. Keeping going in pursuing justice for the last, least, and lost which is the command of God. Jesus is out in front of us, face toward whatever is next, he is in front of us, through the mud and the rocks. He has reached back for your hand. He bid’s you, if you love me, follow me.