“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies…”

– Romans 8:22-23

Companions on the Way,

February is a bridge month, split between the brilliant light of Epiphany and the ensuing descent into Lent.  The last burst of Epiphany comes in a mountaintop vision of a transfigured Jesus holding council with Moses and Elijah—stand ins for Israel’s covenant and prophetic traditions.  Dazzled by the light, the three awestruck disciples who’ve made the hike with Jesus struggle to understand what it all might mean.  Peter finally settles on the idea that they ought to set up tents and stay awhile—why not let the adulation sink in!  He mistakes the martyr’s white Jesus is wearing for party attire.

I don’t blame Peter.  After all the day-by-day slogging through fear, loss, trauma and fickle internet connections the pandemic has brought upon us for twelve months running, I’m eager for a celebration, too!  The vaccines are beginning to do their thing, to slowly turn the tide.  But there is no magic by which we will be transported back to our pre-pandemic lives.  Even when the road ahead is lined with hope, the losses are real and close at hand; no inoculation can sweep them away. The bridge we cross this month moves us off the stage of luminous light and points us down the hill to the road leading to Jerusalem.  Over the threshold of that bridge are the words: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  Never, in this generation, have these words bespoke such truth.

In a prose poem entitled WARNING TO THE READER, Robert Bly writes:[1]

Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful when all the oats or wheat are gone, and wind has swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside, we see around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken wall boards, bands or strips of sunlight. So in a poem about imprisonment, one sees a little light.

But how many birds have died trapped in these granaries. The bird, seeing freedom in the light, flutters up the walls and falls back again and again. The way out is where the rats enter and leave; but the rat’s hole is low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the sunlight on the walls not to promise the anxious and panicky blackbirds a way out!

I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems of light may sit hunched in the corner with nothing in their gizzards for four days, light failing, the eyes glazed . . .
They may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open boardwood floor . . .

On the Mount of Transfiguration, limned by such awe-full light, one could imagine—as the disciples did, as the birds in Bly’s poem did—that in those slats of light lies freedom!  But the downward wending trail of Lent testifies to the deeper truth: the only way out is down and through—through the rat’s hole.  The only true gateway to resurrection is the cross.

Our hope for this life and the next, finally, comes not from any power we have nor attribute we possess, but from trusting that we do not journey alone.  Christ journeys with us; we have each other; and are accompanied by the Spirit “who intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”  And that, dear ones, is enough.

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik

[1] From his collection, What Have I Ever Lost by Dying? (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) p. 65