Author Archives: jledmiston

I had forgotten that “Doubting Thomas” was a twin until I re-heard yesterday’s scripture lesson which is the usual passage following Easter Sunday.  We don’t hear much about the disciple Thomas except that he was a twin.  I’m assuming his twin was male considering the fact that females were often ignored in First Century Palestine.  But of course, the twin could have been a fraternal sister.  I’d never thought about it much until yesterday.

Did Thomas and his sibling share a fun twin language?  Did the twin die young?  Was the twin living in Galilee down the road?  Was the twin a follower of Jesus?

There was a Newsweek cover story in 2011 with Princess Diana on the cover imagining what she would have looked like if she’d lived to the age of 50.  This article made me crazy because  1. this was not news, and 2. We have no way of knowing what she would have looked like or been like.  Why go there if you are a news magazine?  Or any media outlet?

I could sit at my desk all day long and imagine what Thomas’ twin might have been like.  But it doesn’t really matter.  It’s not cosmically important to for us to know about the twin and – if it works this way – we can keep a long list of questions we’d like to ask God in the afterlife along with “who was behind the grassy knoll?”

If we need to know, we’ll know.

Human life includes unanswered questions:

• Why did my father have to die the week of my wedding?*
• What possible good could come from my husband dying when our baby was only six months old?
• Why did I survive the accident and my sister didn’t?
• Why didn’t I get into that college when I spent my entire life doing everything I was told to do to get in?
• Why didn’t he love me?

Sometimes, as time progresses, we can look back and see the hand of God and the reason why something happened or didn’t happen.  And sometimes we never find out the why.

Can we be okay with never knowing?  

Deep faith is more than relinquishing our lives and brains to an unseen God who directs us like helpless puppets.  Deep faith involves trusting that we are seen and loved even when life feels random and meaningless.  I don’t have the power to give someone faith.  I can only point in that direction. I can be a storyteller sharing what I’ve noticed.  I can be a tour guide pointing out interesting details that might have been overlooked.

It would be cool to know that Thomas had a sister with a successful sewing business or an olive farm.  It would be interesting to know that Thomas had a twin brother who was a mapmaker or a boat builder.  But we don’t know.  We will probably never know.

Thomas and the remaining ten disciples experienced a deep unknown after Jesus was crucified – even after Jesus appeared to them again.  It’s hard for us to get our heads around this because the story is so familiar.  But it must have been terrifying.

The earth and all of us who dwell here are facing an unknown that will continue to alter our lives well into the coming months and years.

But we who live in hope believe that love will win.  And we believe that – if we need to know – one day we will know.

*These are all questions I’ve literally been asked as a pastor.  What we can’t understand can feel crushing. Sitting with each other in the unknown helps.

When I first moved to Illinois, all three of our kids were in college and we were experiencing our first Empty Nest Experience.  I was just coming off a couple decades of driving kids to events and making birthday cakes that resembled the plane crash scene in Lost. I brought with me every kind of cookie decorating sprinkle, paper cupcake holders for every holiday, and lots of sports trophies.  But it was clear that – in a place that had never known me as the mother of three – I was simply a middle-aged woman with a career.

I never once used those sprinkles or cupcake holders.  My college students who became young professionals were no longer interested.  And neither was I.

And so yesterday, I packed these fun baking items up or threw them out in the ongoing adventure of moving back to N.C.  There might be a future when I make cookies with children again, but it won’t be anytime soon.  There go the sprinkles.

When you move from one house to another,  the reality that we are also moving from one chapter of life to another becomes very clear.  People who live in the same house throughout their lives are blessed in many ways.  There is comfort and security in knowing that your former life is still all around you.  Or at least it’s in the attic or basement.

And it’s also true that when you never have to move to a different house, it feels softer when you move through the different seasons of life.  We can put that the stroller and toddler chair in the attic if we can’t bear to part with it.  And then we can put the roller skates up there.  And then we can put the science projects up there.  And then we can put the high school yearbooks up there.  And after 40+ years in the same home, we have an attic full of treasures that someone else will get to deal with after we die or move to a retirement community.  There’s a comfort in not having to part with artifacts that mark the past.

When we move more often, traveling lightly becomes practical and psychologically necessary.  Practically speaking, it’s expensive to keep moving All The Stuff from one place to another.   Psychologically, it helps delineate the changes happening to us.

So, yes my nervous system is on overload this week.  All of our nervous systems are on overload – whether we are moving or missing people or exhausted from home schooling or terrified of surviving financially.

I suggest that we find something in the thick of all this transition that brings relief.  Maybe – at your house – baking cupcakes or cookies would be the perfect comforting activity.  I have plenty of sprinkles and cupcake liners if you need them.

Have you ever seen your pastor cry?

Pastors have lots of reasons to weep and yet we try to control ourselves.  Nobody can fully prepare for the constant good-byes of professional ministry: the families who move away, the families who basically disappear without understanding why they left, the youth who leave for college and never return, the people who die.  Pastors are not supposed to be blubbering messes and yet sometimes we are.

The hardest I’ve wept as a pastor: leaving congregations I’ve loved, burying elders I’ve loved, burying children.  No one prepares us for the layers of losses.

The best pastors I know show their vulnerability.  They share their hot-messedness.  They make it clear that they haven’t cornered the market on God’s Truth.  They authentically apologize when they make mistakes.

All pastors are human.  We cry.

We can only offer sound pastoral care if we serve according to our scars – not our wounds.  There was a time that I got choked up every time I preached and a lot of that had to do with losing my mother.  I didn’t have to be preaching on mothers or even thinking about my mother, but it was a deep, deep wound.

Wounded pastors lose the capacity to serve in healthy ways because we become the pastored rather than the pastor.  #BoundaryProblems

And yet, we also need to share our scars if in no other way than knowing the importance of keeping our mouths shut when other people share their brokenness because we know.  We know the pain.  We know to be present and we also know we can’t possibly fix it.

Some of the best ministers I’ve met have never been to seminary.  They are the neighbors who bring pie and sit in silence.  They are the friends who pray when they say they will.  They are the staff members who wear bow ties to the last staff meeting.

Tears of joy are obviously different from tears of despair.  I’ve experienced both in parish ministry, and if you look at human tears under a microscope, tears literally vary in appearance depending on the reason for the tears.

When was the last time you saw your pastor cry?  The answer reveals some essential information about that person.  Please pray for your pastors this week – both those who went to seminary and those who inherently know how to preach the gospel in the way they live their lives.

It’s quite possible that all of us need a good cry these days.

Image source.

What have we learned from the pandemic so far?

I’ve learned that I really like to touch my face.  And eat out.

After living in two different time zones for the past two years, HH and I are in the throes of packing up our home in Illinois and moving everything to North Carolina.  And I’m learning all kinds of things as I go through every piece of paper, every drawer, every cabinet.

I’ve learned what not to do next time as often as I’ve learned what to do in life.

Don’t:

• Keep mean letters/notes someone might have sent to you.  (Why do that to yourself?)
• Go cheap when doing home improvement.  (That guy who removed the dead tree had no idea what he was doing.)
• Keep blurry photographs.  (Why?)
• Save spices after they’ve lost their flavor.  (Jesus said something about this.)

Do:

• Keep journals because we forget things and it’s good to look back and remember what we’ve survived.
• Recycle everything you don’t want to keep.
• Save a copy of your dog’s adoption papers. (That was a good day.)
• Expect to find treasures you lost a long time ago.

Moving during a pandemic has its challenges.  Goodwill, Salvation Army and Habitat ReSale stores are all closed.  Realtors can’t show your home to potential buyers.  Good-byes are difficult during social distancing.

But these are the days we also learn gratitude for the friends who send pizza and the moving guys who don’t cancel and the wonderful memories and the unknown joys ahead.

Every Day’s a School Day – especially during a pandemic.  (Thanks AAM.)

Like the first disciples of Jesus who remained in hiding after the Resurrection, still living in fear, we continue to be in seclusion behind our own closed doors today.  In addition to the binge baking, HH and I are packing our worldly belongings.  We have about ten days to pack up our home in Illinois to complete our move to North Carolina.

Moving sucks.

Most of us don’t like what it means to move.  It means deciding what to toss and what to keep.  Moving from our first empty nest home where we were custodians of our young adult children’s stuff “until they could take it” means sorting through artwork, trophies, various sizes of ruby slippers, and an arsenal of Nerf weaponry in deep discernment.

Do we take their childhood memorabilia with us? Or do we simply take photos of the memorabilia?

Are we keeping the fine china and crystal?  The kids don’t want it.

And the books.  What does it mean to give away almost all my books for the sake of downsizing?  The writing careers of Anne Lamott and Barbara Brown Taylor are now in boxes in my living room.  Do I keep the Bible commentaries when I do most of my exegesis online now?  Yes, we are keeping the autographed Harry Potters.  No, we are not keeping all the anthologies of short stories.

Traveling lightly is a spiritual practice.  I’ve seen The Darjeeling Limited enough to know this truth.  Also there’s Abraham.

Moving – even behind closed doors – is an act of resurrection.

Christ is risen!  Christ is risen indeed!

And let’s not forget that the risen Christ can enter even through locked doors.  There’s no hiding when God wants us to move forward.

Image of our front door in Illinois on Easter morning.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

Although most of the lyrics to Raise Your Glass by Pink are not church-appropriate, I always think of Jesus when I hear this refrain:

So raise your glass if you are wrong,
In all the right ways,
All my underdogs,
We will never be never be, anything but loud
And nitty gritty, dirty little freaks
Won’t you come on and come on and raise your glass,
Just come on and come on and raise your glass

I imagine Jesus sitting at table with the disciples on the Thursday before his death singing those words.  The disciples were culturally powerless people following someone who told them to turn the other cheek, love their enemies, consider themselves blessed in difficult times.  He made “weak” the new strong.  He would soon make women the first evangelists.

There they were at table:

• Wrong in all the right ways.
• Underdogs.
• Loud.
• Freakish.

And if we don’t consider ourselves any of these things, I wonder why we are following Jesus in the first place.  He told offensive parables about Samaritans and prodigals.  He did offensive things like talk to women in public places and touch lepers.  He was literally an enemy of the State.

Following Jesus is an act of defiance against all that is “correct” and “exclusive.”  Especially during these times when many of our practices and procedures are being tossed out the window, we have the opportunity to see what’s most important.

Relationships are more important than regulations. Communion with Christ is more important than the type of crackers we are eating.  Proceeding with the work of the Church is more important than gathering for meetings.

Let us raise our glasses tonight and try to be more like Jesus – who was not the Savior the world expected.  At all.

Image of the Antioch Chalice.  Also I like the Glee version of Raise Your Glass more than Pink’s.

These are days when we are called to remember medical professionals in prayer.  Or grocery store employees.  Or food delivery people.  Or scientists seeking cures.

Today I’d like us to remember those who are expecting babies in the midst of a global pandemic.  It’s scary enough being pregnant.  Pregnant bodies ache and swell in unfamiliar ways.  Pregnant bodies experience moments of utter exhaustion and other moments of superhuman strength.  Pregnant people are expecting new life, imagining new life, preparing for new life but don’t know what that new life will be like.  We do know that – once that new life arrives – our own lives will never be the same.  But expecting a child in the throes of social distancing and toilet paper hoarding ratchets up the anxiety levels substantially.

But this post is not about pregnant people.

This is a post about the Church that will be born after this pandemic.  My very wise friend and colleague Mary Ann McKibben Dana has famously said that the Church is not dying; it’s pregnant.  Unfamiliar things are happening. And sometimes we feel like we are going to die.

But we are not dying.  We are simply experiencing some serious labor pain.  Before any of us had ever heard of COVID-19, there was concern about what the 21st Century Church was becoming.  There was pain about technical transitions and other transitions.

A pregnant Church during a pandemic is even scarier.

• Will everybody be used to staying home on Sunday mornings?
• Will we permanently shift Bible studies and meetings to ZOOM calls after noticing that  attendance was actually higher when people didn’t have to travel for those gatherings?
• Will our congregations without the capacity for technology permanently shutter their doors?
• Will we stop passing the offering plate after acclimating to online giving?
• Will the trauma after weeks of sickness and death, after not being able to say good-bye properly to retiring pastors or family at their death beds, after missing out on joyous celebrations like graduations, after losing our jobs, after having to shelter in unsafe places be too much to bear?
• Will Church mission and other programming become more trauma-informed?

We don’t know.  But I agree with those who say that “this is hard” but it will be even more difficult after the pandemic ends.  Yes, there will be joy in the streets.  There will be happy group hugs.  And then there will be processing all the grief.

And so let us pray for those who are expecting babies in these pandemic days.  And let us also pray for the pandemically pregnant Church.  There are crucial trends coming.

Greek icon of Mary and her cousin Elizabeth both expecting babies.  I love the extra person checking on them from behind the curtain.  That person is all of us.

I’m trying to imagine how things will be different after scientists create a vaccine for COVID-19 and we can all go back to eating in restaurants and returning to the office.  I wonder if we will decide that working from home is viable for a large percentage of workers.  I wonder if we will stop shaking hands when we greet each other.  I wonder how spiritual practices from Passing the Peace to passing the offering plates will forever be changed in houses of faith.

Our songs will be different.

And yet touch will remain important.  I believe The Church will continue to be a community where people are touched – in healthy ways – physically, spiritually, emotionally.

One of my favorite moments in HH’s Sunday worship has been the benediction.  The benediction doesn’t get nearly enough attention in seminary, but – if you remember nothing else about the worship service – I hope to be moved by the benediction.

At HH’s church on the Sundays he preaches, he stands at the base of the chancel (i.e. the front of the sanctuary) and he asks people to face the center aisle and “if you are comfortable” touch the shoulder of someone near you.  This means that – for a moment – everyone is connected to someone.

As HH speaks the words of the benediction and walks slowly down the aisle, there are always tears in someone’s eyes.  It’s moving to see people who may or may not know each other connect.  It might be the only time some of those folks will touch another human being all week.

It is beautiful.  Except today, it’s not safe or healthy.

One day we might be able to touch each others shoulders again.  Maybe we’ll even touch someone’s hand whom we don’t know.  One of the opportunities of going through a pandemic together is that life as we’ve known it has changed for every single one of us, and soon and very soon – I pray – we will discern new ways to reach out into the world together.

Image of the great Diana Ross (November 20, 2015 in Las Vegas)