I don’t know about you, but this virus stuff gets me down sometimes. Have you noticed you are too? When you are down, how do you comfort yourself? Some people might make a phone call or go for a walk…but I make comfort food. Tuna Casserole, Spaghetti, French Fries…What are your comfort foods? I know the pastors’ Bible Study Group had me wondering. Some of theirs included Grits and Pot Pie… I can understand Jesus feeding 5 thousand or so people when I think about it from this angle. People who need comfort food can’t think spiritually at all.
But you know that even without this virus scare, there are many times when we gather despite our pain. There are people here who have had a death in the family, divorce, job loss, financial hardship, wayward children or isolated parents. But we gather. Sometimes our worship service itself is a comfort. We don’t feel free to share that. We cannot see the heartbreak or the wounds from the outside.
In this letter from Paul to the Romans, he has just told them (in Chapter 8) that nothing can separate them us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And yet here he is in Chapter 9 saying “I feel great sorrow and anguish for my people, the Israelite brothers and sisters because they have not believed Jesus is the Messiah. The pastor’s heart is breaking. Remember that these disciples were preaching in the synagogues in the towns of the Mediterranean. Many rejected the idea of Christ as Messiah and stopped Christians from being seen as rabbis. This broke all the apostles’ hearts. They and their families were Jewish. Christ was a rabbi. There was grief over the situation. He eventually comes to have peace about it but that doesn’t happen for a couple more chapters.
We all know heartbreak. And one of the most heartbreaking is finding out that our children either don’t attend worship somewhere or have left the faith completely. This causes us grief. We have seen our families walk away from the Lord. We grieve their absence here.
We may walk and talk to our friends and family, witnessing to how the Lord has changed us—made us better and new. Ultimately though it is the Spirit that calls and gathers us into communities where we have full spiritual lives—bread and wine and joy together. Sad as we are to see anyone walk away from the body of Christ, we have to let go, let the Spirit work again so that they long for our community as we long for them. We pray for an opportunity to invite these friends and family back among us.
And us? when I was reading a commentary I found this noteworthy: “the rabbis note that God writes the Word, the law, on the heart rather than in it. They say this is so that, when the heart breaks, the Word falls into it. Absent the heartbreak, the word is never internalized completely.” This is how we come to know God, when we come through pain. Surely God grieves at our refusal to be part of the blessed community. After all is said, Paul ends the passage with “the Messiah is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” It is in prayer that the pastor finds peace and comfort.
We miss you, Pastor Angela