I recently had the joy of spending time down on the Oregon
coast. Standing at the “edge
There on the beach I also noticed a great thing. People on
that beach at that moment were incorporated by the scene in a non-judgmental way.
It did not matter if you were poor or rich, young or old; it did not matter the
color of your skin, your legal status, your health, or your sexuality; it did
not matter if you were from Oregon, Washington, or Timbuktu – we were all
embraced by that place and in that time. We were all given the gift of sun and
wind and waves and sand and rain.
There on the edge of the continent with our backs to the
city, for that moment, the politics of power, the plots for control, the
policymaking of exclusion, could be left behind and we could imagine what the
world could be like if we left point gathering behind and instead embraced the gift
of abundance that our God has placed in our midst. The waves will not runout.
The wind will not cease. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, forever.
The sand will find its way into everything. And the sun, that glorious sun will
continue to poke her face out of behind the clouds to remind us that we are
made for joy. All of us on that beach were recipients of the gift of that day, of pure grace.
This scene is what I am going to carry with me into this Lenten
season that begins on February 14 with Ash Wednesday (no I will not mark your
forehead with an ash heart!). Our theme for the season will be “Hidden Figures:
Embedded injustice.” We encourage you all to watch the three-time Oscar nominated
film, Hidden Figures, to prepare for this season. We will discuss several scenes
of the movie during our Wednesday Night Vespers service. We will be challenged.
More importantly, we will be asking ourselves how can we help usher in a world
where all God’s people feel included and welcome.
God’s work through the Christ is to show us that this world
is not about what we gain, or who we identify with, or what group we belong to.
Daniel Erlander taught us this in his wonderful little book of stories “The
Tale of the Pointless People.” He wrote about how this is all we are – stripped
of everything except what we are the first hour, the first day of our life, a
child. It is there at the waters of baptism that we realize “all is taken away
and we are rich, full, blessed.” We are stripped of every accomplishment, every
honor, every point – to be “only” a child of God. On that beach in January I
could imagine what that might look like.
“It is not what you gain. It is whose you are,” Dan writes. “You
do not need points.”
