To Be Loved, To Be Seen, To Be Heard

Today has been a weird Christmas Day. Not bad, just different and strange. I got to have a lovely Christmas morning with E. A. and the boys. We opened presents in our living room and listened to our holiday playlist. I got to see everyone’s faces light up at different gifts. I got to lay against my wife on the couch as she read and laughed as I played video games with one of my sons. Then I went to work at the hospital and I will be here until Boxing Day afternoon.

Yet I got to eat Christmas lunch in the cafeteria with my cohort as all of us worked full shifts today. We gathered in our normal circle in our CPE room and learned from each other like we do three times a week. It was my day to share my statement of ministry, which is our statement of what we think effective spiritual care is to each of us. I already knew that my statement delved too deep into the theological at the expense of the experiential. I wrote about Christ as our guiding example, about “God with us” and the ministry of presence, the Greek word kenosis and the way we approach serving others with humility.

All technically good practices but my educator asked me where I was in this process. It was a good example of what Christians should strive towards; it was a good general statement. Yet where did my story intersect with all of this?

The first reading for the Third Sunday of Advent is Zephaniah 3:14-20 and this is a short story about why part of that verse always stops me in my tracks.

Taylor Swift once famously sang that when you’re fifteen and someone tells you they love you then you’re going to believe it. When I was fifteen, I was gangly, unsure of myself, and generally did not think that I mattered that much. I do not know how the conversation started that led to Zephaniah started, but I do know where it ended. One of the staff members at the camp my family ran (also that summer, a professional theater troupe; long story, different story) named Lauren encouraged me by reading this verse:

The Lord, your God, is in your midst,
a warrior who gives victory;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will renew you in His love;
He will exult over you with loud singing
as on a day of festival.
—Zephaniah 3:17-18a

Nearly thirty years later, I distinctly remember hearing this verse for the first time. And it was probably the perfect time for me to hear it. A few years later, I probably would have waved it off because Christians way too often decontextualize passages meant for the people of Israel and make it about us feeling good. I wasn’t there yet, so Zephaniah stuck with me. I guess when you’re fifteen and someone tells you God loves you, you’re going to believe it. So, thank you for that, Lauren. Context or not, that verse always reminds me that God loves me.

Peace is the movement of Advent that often sounds the most hollow. Hope is an anticipation. Joy and Love are traces of which we receive many glimpses. I guess it is true that we might receive glimpses of peace as well. Yet I sometimes wonder if those glimpses are just respites born of privilege; a peace that comes from being fortunate to be born into a life not knowing hunger, war, or prejudice.

No justice! No peace! This was one of the cries in the Summer of 2020. Covid had locked all of us down which left us without distractions when the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others came across our newsfeeds. Tens of thousands donned masks and carried signs of protest. From bullhorns we heard it declared that none of us were free unless all of us were free. No justice, no peace. Summer 2020. Winter 1955. Advent 2024. Winter, spring, summer, and fall ad infinitum.

Peace is often the desire of a person who is sitting in a hospital room with their dying loved one. Typically they desire peace for the beloved with tubes connecting them to machines. They do not usually ask for peace for themselves. Folks will ask prayers for all kinds of miracles, but it seems that most know that being at peace with the loss of a loved one is a bridge too far. I am not even sure that most people would take that peace even if they could. It is true that time heals many things and the years may ease the sting of loss, yet there is no complete end to grief. Complete peace is just out of reach. Though the beautiful flipside of this reality is that no end to grief means that there is no end to love.

Hope

This is the first Sunday of Advent and for many a church the theme of this day is hope. I have spent a good portion of the day thinking about hope. I think hope is often relegated to wishful thinking or starry eyed optimism. One hopes they can do well, hopes for the best, hopes that everything will work out. This hope can be dashed, lost, or given up. For hope to mean something in this world it has to sustain a barrage of blows. Hope has to be more than wishful thinking to survive.

Working in a hospital has made me realized all the more how tenuous our grasp on hope can be. Hope has to be fierce here. And even if that hope is undeterred by bad diagnoses, surgeries, and the ominous cacophony of life-sustaining machines, those hopes can still find themselves sometimes crashing into the cold reality that a loved one will not be okay. At least, not okay in the way we hope.

There is a song on Vampire Weekend’s latest album called “Hope.” I really like the song, but I wonder if I should. The plaintive refrain is “I hope you let it go / I hope you let it go / The enemy’s invincible / I hope you let it go.” Sometimes I hear those lyrics and it is a comfort to me. Other times it feels like it is just waving a white flag in the face of an unfair world.