Transforming Fear into Love

March 12, 2017
2nd Sunday of Lent
Excerpts from Exodus 24 & 34
Psalm 83
2 Timothy 1:8-10
Matthew 17:1-9

“This is my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” When the disciples hear these words coming from heaven, they are overcome with fear. Moments ago, Peter had been ready to put up three tents on this mountain – one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. And now, Peter, James, and John are lying on the ground in fear… until Jesus reminds them: “Do not be afraid.” In the blink of an eye, Peter has gone from the confident planner to being paralyzed with fear. And that’s not that hard to image. Fear is powerful. Paralyzing at times. Fear can take many forms in our lives. It can stop us from speaking out, for fear of retribution. It can keep us suffering in silence, unwilling to ask for help. Fear is powerful and often illogical.

In today’s readings, fear meets its match, its kryptonite, as it were. Grace.

Grace that manages to break through the normal and the everyday. That’s what we glimpse at the transfiguration, a disruption of the norm and a supernatural event that causes fear in the disciples. In the icons of the transfiguration, Jesus is usually depicted standing between Moses and Elijah, enshrined in gold and light on the mountaintop with rays of light emanating force, piercing the disciples. In contrast, Peter, James and John are shown lying down or with their faces turned away. We glimpse a moment of liminal space, a moment of transition and transformation and we become acutely aware that something is happening. Something is happening and we are invited to be transformed from fear to love.

In the first reading, we hear about another mountaintop. A mountain where Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu saw God, ate, and drank. A mountain where Moses spent forty days and forty nights before receiving the words of the covenant. And maybe we too long for a mountaintop. A place where we could go and see God face to face, to ask those burning questions that besiege us.

In this season of Lent, there’s a feeling of waiting for the inevitable. A feeling of hope in spite of the darkness. Peter, James, and John needed this hope. Six days earlier, Jesus had told his disciples that he would be handed over to the chief priests, killed and raised up on the third day. Difficult news for anyone to swallow. It is not difficult to imagine the sort of darkness the disciples were living in – having to come to grips with the revelation that their beloved teacher would be taken from them and killed. At the same time Jesus was asking them to take up their cross and follow him. We can imagine the feelings of fear, hopelessness, betrayal…through this, Jesus asks his disciples for acceptance of what is to come.

And now, Jesus takes Peter, James and John with him up on a mountain, apart from the others and is transfigured before them – as if they didn’t have enough to deal with. But this clearly supernatural event only gets better. Out of nowhere, Moses and Elijah appear, talking with Jesus and then a voice emerges from the heavens, “This is my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” The disciples naturally fall to the ground in fear and it is Jesus who rouses them, reassuring them and telling them to not be afraid. It might not be only fear that causes the disciples to fall down and turn away, but the knowledge and awareness that they are participating in something greater, something beyond their wildest imagination. They know they are being invited into transformation.

Who are these words from heaven for? In the disciples, they seem to cause more fear than anything. Perhaps it is Jesus himself who needs to hear these words, this reassurance of God’s love, of approval, of his mission. Despite the supernatural nature of the transfiguration, perhaps this is a moment where we see Jesus’ humanity bleed through. Aware of the task before him, the difficulty of accepting what he is called to do, he takes some of his friends and goes up on a mountaintop to pray. And what is the result? Two of prophets come to speak with him and his father’s voice booming from the heavens.

We know what comes next. We continue our journey through lent leading to the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the last supper, the crucifixion and eventually the resurrection. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s take a moment to stand here on the mountaintop, to consider our own selves on the brink of transition and transformation. Out of fear and into love. Be not afraid. New things are scary and often hard. Sometimes we don’t feel ready for the change, something we feel that we are incapable of bearing it. We so easily forget that the journey up the mountain, the journey into the wilderness, can carry with it the potential for transformation.

Touched by an Angel,
Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

Ash Wednesday or A Year in the Wilderness

A year ago (liturgically), I lost my job. A job that had seemed perfect on paper – advocating for sexual health and reproductive justice within a religious context. Being a voice for progressive religious organizations in a multi-faith context. Sure, the location wasn’t ideal, but I was willing to make it work for this amazing opportunity. I lost the job only a few weeks after getting it due to financial circumstances for the organization that were beyond anyone’s control. I lost my job on Ash Wednesday, a few weeks before I was set to go to Israel and Palestine for the second time to attend a conference on the conflict. As someone who, for better or worse, makes sense of their life liturgically and theologically, it was as if I had been thrown into the wilderness with no support. I remember calling my parents in tears, texting my roommate, waiting for my aunt & uncle to come home so I could tell them. It was nothing I did and yet I felt like an incredible failure. It was a month before my thirtieth birthday and I was, once again, unemployed.

The weeks I had at that job were amazing and stressful. I learned I didn’t hate policy as much as I thought I did, I learned the fast-paced environment of responding to current events and legislation sated my adrenaline junkie. I learned how to spin information for social media and I got the chance to work with some really amazing people. And I will never forget the moment of “White House on line one, New York Times on line two” that made me realize what we were doing mattered.

A year later, on Ash Wednesday, I am once again unemployed. I have come in second and third for some amazing jobs that went to equally amazing people. I have worked temp jobs, babysat. I’ve now applied for graduate school (again) and I keep searching, hoping, praying, to find that opportunity that will lead me out of the wilderness, out of the cloud of unknowing.

There have been moments of respite, certainly, but it often feels like much of the past year has been spent wandering in the wilderness, with clarity about vocation simply a mirage that disappears when I try to get close. It has been a struggle in discernment, trying to juggle finding a way to pay the bills alongside finding where God is leading me. There were (and are) numerous times I have felt lost and hopeless, wondering at what point perseverance becomes stubbornness and obstinance?

I have been blessed to have incredible support from family members who have tried to give me the space to struggle and wander while keeping up the guise of independence, but such things cannot last forever and as financial concerns weigh more heavily on my mind I’m torn between trying to follow my dreams against all odds and just giving up. The wilderness is a struggle. There are overwhelming temptations, but what is worse to me, is the length of time one can be in the wilderness. If one knew when the end was, if it was a finite amount of time, it would be easier to bear. But the indeterminate wilderness? I don’t enjoy it. (Yes, I realize you’re not supposed to enjoy the wilderness). I don’t like not knowing when something will end, especially when each series of cover letters and resumes and applications seem like exercises in vulnerability, trying to sell myself while putting myself at the mercy of others. I want more control than that. I want boundaries on my wilderness. I want to know that this too shall pass and ‘All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’ Because the longer the wilderness goes on, the greater the doubt, the notion that my vocation is just an illusion I’ve created in my head.

Last Lent, I had the privilege to stand on the edge of a sand dune in the Judean desert, eyes closed, sun setting as a Minister read the account of Jesus’ temptation in the dessert. I was overwhelmed to be in this spot, to have my surroundings match my mental and spiritual state. Glancing around there, I saw how easy it would be to get lost in the desert. As I enter into Lent this year, I feel the need to remind myself of the end of the story, “Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him” (Matthew 4:11). Somewhere, sometime, this wilderness will end and I can only hope there will be angels there for me.

A Life Divided

The journey of Holy Week continues as we rapidly approach the Triduum, my favourite time of the liturgical year. My previous post reflected on being willing to follow God’s will and how God will make us ready. Today’s picks up on a similar theme and started when a friend from high school emailed me the following quote:

”One who is content in what he has, and who accepts that [one] inevitably misses very much in life, is far better off than one who has much more but who worries about all s/he may be missing. For we cannot make the best of what we are if our hearts are always divided between what we are and what we are not.”
-Thomas Merton

This quote brought me to tears instantly, hitting me like a ton of bricks, particularly the second sentence: “We cannot make the best of what we are if our hearts are always divided between what we are and what we are not.” The quote seemed to mirror where I am in life — afraid to commit, to try for things because of the “what ifs?”. I’ve been burned recently and I’m just not sure if I can take that risk. If I commit to one thing, does that close the door on other possibilities and opportunities? I’m here in a self-imposed whirlpool of angst and indecision while each successive day only makes it worse.

Acceptance is the key to the first part of that quote. I’d take it one step further; it’s not enough to simply accept God’s will for our lives, to accept the path God is calling us to, we need to also embrace it. We need to say yes, to take the step forward and embrace the possibility. The second part of the quote, “We cannot make the best of what we are if our hearts are always divided,” seems to tie in well with another Thomas Merton quote that reads, “A life is either all spiritual or not at all. No [hu]man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you life for. You are made in the image of what you desire.”

A life divided is a life not lived out to the fullest. God wants us to flourish. God loves us unconditionally and has plans for us, plans to use our talents to our fullest potential. Our hesitation can prevent that, it can keep us from fully experiencing the love and joy of God — to be surrounded and even overwhelmed by that unconditional love. It scares us because it is beyond the realm of human experience. Can we even conceive of God incarnate embracing us, kneeling down to tenderly wash our feet, taking away all our fears, insecurities and sins, leaving us with a feeling of pure, unadultered love? I can’t. Not easily. The simple thought of it threatens to bring me to tears.

God does not ask us to do the impossible. God only asks us to give ourselves wholly to the possibility of what S/He might have in store for us. It is like a dance. To stand at the edge, listening to the music, feeling that tug, moving slightly to the music, but not quite participating. When God stops in front of us and holds out a hand in invitation, it is up to us to take it, to join in and get swept up in the whirlwind of the dance. We cannot worry about what others will think, of whether we’ll know the steps or not — there is no need to worry. God will lead us in the dance and we only need to follow, to let ourselves be spun around and grasped firmly in a loving, secure embrace before we spin out of control. Dancing is about trust, about letting go, trusting that your partner won’t drop you when they dip you, lift you, or flip you. Trusting that you won’t slip and fall —but if you do, God will be there to pick you up because the dance goes on.

When I was home for joint birthday celebrations two weeks ago (my grandfather’s 90th and my 30th), there were various pre- and post- parties at my parents’ house. During one of them, my cousin decided to change the music to something more danceable. I seized the opportunity and asked him to dance since he’d been the one to switch the music. After a bit of hesitation, he took the opportunity to lead me in a fast whirling, spinning dance to the music of Motown. There were a few near misses since we don’t get a chance to dance together often, but we quickly fell into sync, twirling around the living room like we’d always been doing this — as usual, I was barefoot. We hadn’t rolled up the rug beforehand as is custom in my parents’ house before the dancing begins and I joked I’d have rugburn on the bottoms of my feet from dancing barefoot, but I didn’t care. In the moments of the dance, I didn’t care about anything else —I couldn’t worry about the fact that I didn’t have a job or any of the other concerns weighing on my mind. Everything else disappeared because I needed to be fully present in the dance – to be led and twirled and dipped. At the end of the dance, there was no worry, no fear, no discontent. All that was left was the exhilaration and overwhelming joy of the experience. That is what I want for my life, for my relationship with God — an exhilarating, overwhelming, joyful experience dancing in the whirlwind.

I don’t want a life divided, I don’t want a life half-lived. I take this moment, on the eve of the Triduum, to say yes. Yes to the unknown. Yes to the possibilities. Yes to the mad, crazy, wonderful dance. I suspect that God will lead me to something beyond my imagination. I say yes.

As we approach the holiest days of the years, perhaps a bit of reflection is in order —what is got calling us to? Are we willing to end the division in our hearts and follow God wholeheartedly?

If we are willing, God will make us ready

It’s been a bit of a dry spell on this blog lately, but then there isn’t always much water in the wilderness. On Palm Sunday, I was fortunate enough to attend services at ”St. Paul’s Newton Highlands for a Passion service with music from JC Superstar (which is one of my personal Lenten traditions). For the vocals, St. Paul’s did a gender and age blind casting which I appreciated and interwove narratives from scripture with the songs from JC Superstar to craft a cohesive passion story. Hearing one of my favourite musicals in the context of a mass brought together two of my loves and made the service that much more meaningful. It was exactly what I needed. The liturgy was punctuated by a refrain from another of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musicals – a modified version of “Close Every Door” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that went as follows:

Close every door to me, taunt me and torture me
Bar all the windows and shut out the light.
Do what you must with me, from dust to dust with me,
I’ll stay the course through the day and the night.
If my life were important, I would ask will I live or die,
But that’s not the question, the answer is love.
Close every door to me, throw stones and more at me,
Children of mercy/justice/freedom are never alone.
For we know we shall find, what God has in mind,
For we have been promised that we are God’s own.
-modified by Gretchen Grimshaw

The presentation of the Passion narrative was moving, but it didn’t prepare me for being blown away by Rev’d Gretchen Grimshaw’s sermon. The line that stuck with me most was “If we are willing, God will make us ready.” How many times do we plead unreadiness or unworthiness when responding to Gods call? As a child, I was taught that God answers our prayers in one of three ways: Yes, No, or Not yet. Do we give God the same responses?



I know there have been times when I’ve given God a very loud and resounding “No! Absolutely, positively not!” Have I moved away from that to a response of “Yes, but…”? I feel as though I’m trying to negotiate with God. Is that even possible? I want to be willing, I want to say yes, but I’m scared. I’m scared of what God will ask of me, I’m scare of what I might have to give up. I’m afraid of the unknown and yet at the back of my mind, I believe that saying yes wholeheartedly and accepting God’s invitation is the only way out of the wilderness. Mark’s gospel tells us that the angels were waiting for Jesus at the edge of the wilderness — are there angels waiting for me? Sometimes I think that it is my reluctance —my hesitation— that keeps me in the wilderness. Why should I hesitate to leave the wilderness when I don’t like it here — it’s difficult and I feel I’m approaching my wit’s end. Still, I can’t seem to give God an unconditional yes. I keep trying to arrange things my way. I know that no one except God can guide me out of this wilderness and all I have to do is say yes. But I can’t or I won’t. Though my friends, family, and mentors want to help and might be able to point me in the right direction, it’s up to me to take that step, to take God’s outstretched hand and say, “Yes, I love you, God. I choose you. Yes, I am willing.”

It’s often easier to say yes in the goodtimes. In the wilderness when we feel like Job — drained, spent, exhausted and with nothing left to give — we can find ourselves reluctant to say yes to the unknown because we feel we can’t endure much more. I find myself hesitant to relinquish the few things in my life that still give me security. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” I feel I’ve lost so much this Lent that I’m reluctant to risk anything else. Instead of taking that step, taking God’s outstretched hand, I want to just curl up and attempt to comfort myself. It’s a hollow comfort but at times I nonetheless insist on it.

When God holds out that hand, I stammer and sputter, reluctant to take up the offer. All my knowledge and belief in a loving, supportive, and benevolent God flees in the face of fear. I insist on my lack of readiness and my unworthiness, claiming I won’t be able to do what God is asking me despite the fact that I hear God telling me, “I have made you worthy and I will make you ready. All you have to do is say yes.”

I want to say yes, but I’m not ready. My heart yearns for God’s embrace, but I’m dragging my feet. Today I still say “Not yet” and “Yes, but…” My impulsive streak wants to say “Forget it all. Why the hell not?” That isn’t equivalent to an unconditional yes though. There’s a difference in agency, in will. One seems to be an end to resistance, an acceptance of inevitability, almost akin to being an accomplice by association. But God asks us for more. A “yes”, freely and unconditionally given, seems predicated on an act of will and agency —it is a choice and an action. It is not simply a resignation and acceptance of something inevitable, it is choosing and moving towards that direction, towards God. It is the difference between active and passive. I’m not sure if there’s value to the “Why not?” response or if it’s closer or further from a firm “YES” however, I think (and hope) that I’m moving towards that unconditional yes and God’s unfaltering patience with my stubbornness comforts me. I can’t say yes just yet, but I’m inching in that direction, towards the unknown and out of the wilderness. If I am willing, God will make me ready.
-written 2.IV.2012