I am feeling this anniversary.

A year ago at this time, my mother was touchable.

A year ago at this time my mother Barbara Jane Fawcett Macaulay Forrest had determined that the pain and the ongoing struggle of remaining alive was no longer her calling.

A year ago my mother turned toward death.

My siblings and I and our children gathered by her side over the course of three months. We respected her sense of her own life and her own death.  She had trained us well in this way.  We wanted to hold onto her with all that we had:  Her wonderful laugh, her titanic power, her tiny frame.  The way she cleared her throat, her soft hands, her delight in savoring morning coffee and the newspaper, and dearest of all gifts, the way she took us all in with her eyes and heart.  My mother was the center of our family.  No question, ever.

She had a gentle death.

And of course, it was a precious piece of us all that passed with her into death and resurrection life.

No more are we children of a living parent.  There is no grandma to mend and fuss and offer correction.  There are no bran muffins and no one standing by the window to mark our comings and goings.  I cannot pick up the phone to share with her a sunrise or a heart break.

But oh, the ways she lives and the ways we each live are forever more the fruit of her being.  When we gather together, she is in our midst.  When I pray for courage or strength, she is one of the guardians I feel amplifying my prayer.  I catch glimpses of her in my mirror and I see her in the creping of my hands.

I walk these days in grief and in wonder.  How is it God sparked me into the womb of my mother?  How is it we raised each other?  How is it I learned so much and chafed so much and wrangled so much and was blessed with so much through being my mother’s daughter?

I encountered the living Christ in the company of the woman who gave me life.

May God continue to bless and keep you, Barbara Jane.

We miss you so.

…Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

Jesus, Luke 9:23

Day by day we make choices.  We discern how it is our words, our actions and our thoughts are cross worthy.  On an individual basis, this makes for daily discernment.  As a people who are citizens of a larger world, our decision to take up the cross of Jesus the Christ matters; it matters greatly.

This is a challenging time to approach a pulpit, brothers and sisters.  I want to share a bit about that.

The UM church teaches that the world is our parish.  John Wesley and United Methodists who followed espouse a faith that is individual and communal.  There is no such thing as a private faith.  Wesley taught that the cross of Jesus must be taken up by the people of Jesus as we together work for the teachings of Jesus to be made tangible here, in this world and in this life.  There is no holiness but social holiness.

Jesus, good Jew that he was, echoes the teachings of the prophet Micah.  It turns out the Lord requires of us that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.  (Micah 6: 8)

Scripture is full of teachings about how it is we are to care for the poor, the immigrant and the refugee.  Scripture is full of admonitions for a people who forget that God’s vision for full life is not found in our own individual comfort.  God’s vision for fullness of life is lived when we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly knowing that God is the ethical and foundational ground of our being.

During the month of February, when our president was issuing orders that will scatter families and deeply impact the lives of countless human creations of God, we followed a series of readings from scripture used by people of many denominational affiliation.  Our scriptures have been about tending the needs of the poor, about making sure that the poor and the immigrant are fed, and about turning the other cheek rather than nursing outrage.  Those readings are being shared in congregations and parishes across the world.

As an ordained minister of the gospel, I simply cannot ignore the teachings of scripture and the ways our world has yet to learn and live them.  The world is our parish.  The teachings of our faith are not meant to be cloistered in our sanctuaries, they are meant to be taken up daily as we seek to follow Jesus.

There are those who visit our church or who have long shared community here who bristle at what they term “political” sermons.

There is a difference between partisan and political.

I seek with all the wisdom I can to craft sermons that are not partisan.  To endorse one or another political party from the pulpit is a misuse of the privilege of preaching. Neither justice nor Jesus belongs solely to Democrats or solely to Republicans.

And, I will not and cannot preach the gospel of Jesus the Christ without considering what it is to deny self and take up the cross of Jesus in this day and this time.  I seek to follow Jesus and I keenly seek to unpack what it is to take up the cross of Christian discipleship as we encounter questions of the life we share.  How will we name the challenge of racism, violence, oppression and poverty?  How can we “resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves” (UM membership vows) if we are not willing to name them and voice the pain of those too long oppressed?

Taking up the cross of Jesus means we Jesus followers are unwilling to go along. It means that we will suffer the pain of knowing that we have participated in systems that oppress. To take up the cross means that we pledge allegiance to Jesus the Christ before any power or principality, including our nation.  It means that we are willing to hear voices and opinions that are not our own and we are willing to bear the discomfort of being a cross bearing people.

I know that across this city and across this land each preacher tussles with what it means to bear the cross of Jesus.

Here at Christ UMC, bearing the cross of the Christ means that we will not pretend that systems and humans have been redeemed and that all is swell in the world.  We know that systems and humans continue to harm each other in ways grievous to the heart of our God.  We believe that we are called to take up the cross of Christ in order to learn and live another way – in our hearts and in the polis.

We know we need each other in order to live the message of Jesus in this church and beyond this church.

We trust that God is in this with us, breathing and leading us to the living of justice, kindness and humility.

Come to church.  Struggle in community as we seek to lift high the cross of Jesus the Christ.

I just finished writing worship for Sunday.

Malls and gas stations and near every other establishment on earth are pumping Christmas Carols into the air.

In the church, we are marking Advent.  It is a time of waiting.  It is not yet Christmas, so we practice the pain of waiting.

It is the musical waiting that makes it hard to write worship this time of year.  I want to break out the songs that so need to be sung:  Songs about joy and love and glorias ringing from the choirs of angels.

I want that.

Instead, we wait.

Scripture from Matthew on this coming Sunday features John the Baptist calling people to change their hearts and lives in order to live God’s vision of grace.

Isaiah speaks of the peaceable kingdom and a world in which  those who have long been enemies will find harmony.

Paul prays that the God of hope will fill the new followers of Jesus with joy and peace.

Harmony, heart shift, joy and peace.

Perhaps this time of waiting isn’t so bad, after all.

In church on Sunday we sang words that felt like prayer and plea:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

Surely in these days we long to be reminded that Emmanuel is:  God is with us.

We are freshly up from Thanksgiving tables.  We read newspapers and wonder about who and how we are in this world.  We think about how we will ready our hearts for the big hurrah that is Christmas.  There is no snow nor freeze in the northland and it makes for a sense of wobble in these days of Advent.  There are many things that command our attention and worry our beings and the prayer goes up:

O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

It’s a worthy prayer.

Perhaps these days of Advent might be a noticing and naming of how we live “God with us” in the now.

Grace is so real.

Perhaps these Advent days of readying ourselves might be spent sniffing the wind for hope.

The Word became flesh, and flesh it remains.

Where is it you experience Emmanuel, God with you?

How will you call it home?

Today at church we celebrated All Saint’s Day.

We lit forty candles symbolizing those from our congregation who died during the year. We named them, and we heard the vibrations of their names echoed in the sound of a bell tolled after each name.

In my mother’s church, her name was read. Miles away from that place, the vibration of her heart was sounding in my own.

Later in the day I scrambled to ready myself for a church gathering.  I threw on a much-mother-mended sweater bought on the Isle of Skye.  I have worn it with gratitude for nearly twenty years.  Mom kept it healthy with her knitting and mending genius.

Today as I put it on I noticed a hole in the elbow and it hit me that my mother can’t fix it.

Mom can’t fix it.

This hole in my sweater has unraveled me.