Dealing With Uncertainty
A sermon for April 26th, 2020
Our two passages this morning are both passages about living in uncertain times. 1st Peter is talking to the church “in exile,” in a time of fearfulness and hiding, the early church’s time of persecution and separation from Jesus’ physical presence on Earth. The disciples walking on the Road to Emmaus are in another, shorter period of uncertainty, leaving Jerusalem on the Sunday after Jesus’ death, not sure if the resurrection is really real or not.
These scriptures fit the moment we’re living in, but they also fit liturgically; at least, they do if you’re Jewish. It’s currently Omer, the time between the Jewish festivals of Pesach (Passover) and Shavuot, the festival celebrating receiving the law on Mount Sinai. Our Christian calendar actually follows the same basic time frame between Easter and Pentecost; Pentecost is actually based on Shavuot. But while this Christian season of Easter is supposed to be a time of celebration, in Judaism, Omer is a time of wandering, uncertainty, and mourning. It’s the time of wilderness wandering between being freed from the familiar oppression of Egypt and receiving the new reality of the law on Sinai.
Our life right now feels more like Omer than Easter, and these passages fit right in.
But these passages also give us an idea of what to do in uncertain times and that’s what I want to offer you today. There are four things that stick out to me as I read through these two passages.
(1) Name what you’re feeling.
The story of the road to Emmaus describes the disciples as being sad. It seems like a simple description, something we’d use when talking to our children about their small feelings, but the Greek work actually conveys a deep sorrow of the soul. (Which, to be honest, some of our children are perfectly capable of feeling.) And when the stranger who approaches them on the road asks them what’s going on, they don’t hold back. They’re honest about their feelings and their situation. And that honesty is what opens the door for what Jesus has to tell them.
It’s important for us to be honest about what we’re feeling in this time. Life isn’t normal. We can’t just carry on as if nothing is happening. The sadness, grief, anger, and confusion that we feel, we need to be honest about all of those things. That’s the only way goodness can come in.
At the same time, we need to be aware of circles of grief. We should always be pouring comfort in and frustration out. (Click here for information about circles of comfort and grief.) It’s important to be honest about our feelings, but, at the same time, aware of what those around us are going through.
(2) Keep your eyes open to new ideas.
While the disciples are honest about their feelings, there’s something stopping them from hearing the good news of the resurrection. The women have returned from the tomb and told everyone what they saw, but these disciples didn’t believe them. Even with firsthand, eyewitness testimony, they don’t have room for hope in their hearts. They’re deep in grief. Even Jesus, opening the scriptures to them, isn’t visible to them. They can’t see the hope right in front of their faces.
Now, we live in a world where it’s difficult to trust the hope that we see. We live in a world where it’s hard to find the reliable sources among the unreliable ones. But that doesn’t mean that we need to be closed off. There is still real hope out there, and real information. It takes time to find it, but it is there.
(3) Ground yourself in normal things.
And that brings me to what is maybe the most profound part of the Emmaus passage for me. It’s not in the theological arguments or biblical interpretation that they recognize Jesus—it’s in something so normal, something they’ve probably seen him do a thousand times: the breaking of the bread. We remember it when we remember the Last Supper, of course, but Jesus was likely the one to be giving thanks, and we certainly know that he was the one sharing the food around. In this regular, everyday thing, they recognized Jesus. The normal thing is what cut through their despair and uncertainty.
Hard as it is to believe, there are still plenty of normal things happening around us. Flowers are blooming, butterflies are flying, bees are buzzing. Children are playing and laughing and fighting with one another. We eat and we drink. We clean. We exist. While much has changed, there’s much that has not. When the world around you feels uncertain and unmanageable, take a moment and look for the normal. Look for the normal, everyday things. These things can be sacred to us now. They can remind us of the hope and love and goodness that anchor us, in good times and bad.
(4) Love one another deeply from the heart.
1st Peter picks up where the Emmaus passage leaves off, I think. Once we’ve named what we’re feeling, kept ourselves open to whatever hope can come our way, and have grounded ourselves in normal things, we’re ready to do what 1st Peter calls us to do, which is to love one another deeply from the heart. Sometimes, I think, Christianity is too hard for us humans to handle, because our faith asks us to be kind in times of crisis and patient in times of panic and loving in times of despair. But if we’re learning from the Emmaus passage, if we’re grounding ourselves as we need to be grounded, God can begin to do good work in and through us, and that good work will look like love.
God will be with us and see us through this uncertain time. We’ve seen God do it over and over again in the past and God is always faithful to keep promises. And the good practices that we form now, in this time of uncertainty, we can carry with us into a time of certainty. Whether the world around us is uncertain or not, if we can name what we’re feeling, keep ourselves open to hope, ground ourselves in the sacred of the everyday, and love one another deeply from the heart, God will be able to do wonderful things in and through us.
Amen.