In Wendell Berry’s fiction, he returns again and again to the imagined small Kentucky town of Port William. Spanning decades, the American backdrop to his small-town stories inevitably speaks to wars that break out: Vietnam, Korea, WWII. But when Berry writes of the backdrop of war, he writes something like, “The War broke out again.” As though War itself is a pulse or a drumbeat; The War is always there but sometimes underground and then, almost inevitably, bursting above ground yet again.

This moment in which we find ourselves is not a new moment. Yes, stories are new, statues being ripped down and tossed in lakes and rivers feels new. COVID-19 disproportionately impacting people of color maybe seems new. But this moment in streets across the United States is not new. Oppression is not new. Power structures that dismiss and favor a few over the many are not new. Shouting down injustice and demonstrations of protest are not new. We are in a moment that is part of a long movement, and we white folks and white communities of faith are being called to act, together, out of love and compassion for our neighbors.

While we gather today from varied faith traditions, we share sacred stories and ancient texts that call us to act for good in the world on one path. In fact, those sacred stories point to the empires and powers of the past and ask, even demand, resistance to oppression and the structures and systems that benefit the few at the expense of the many. It is in that tradition that we hear our call to action today.

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I didn’t go out this week. I didn’t walk the streets of New Orleans. I didn’t attempt to climb the Crescent City Connection. I didn’t go to Jackson Square and leave my burdens at the river alongside thousands of neighbors who have gathered faithfully for a week.

I haven’t been able to figure out why I didn’t feel motivated to join these gatherings this time. A few days ago, I spent some time scrolling through photos of marches and rallies and protests and vigils I have attended with you in recent years. When we gathered with Muslim neighbors to decry the travel ban on majority Muslim countries. When we traveled to Memphis to march with sanitation workers and unions on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s death. When we cried out to protest the separation of families at the U.S./Mexico border. When we joyfully paraded through the streets in last year’s PRIDE with a message of love, remembering PRIDE started not as a celebration but as a protest and our love keeps the beat of that first marching song.

Why not this week? I don’t fully know. I feel guilty for not doing so, and I don’t have an reservations in sharing that with you. But I also know that guilt is not the right motivator to show up. So I have listened to my Knowing, as Glennon Doyle says, dropping down into my body and listening for that inner word on how I am called into this movement, not just this moment.

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This isn’t the one where I pretend I have the answers to the questions; especially the questions that aren’t yet fully formed.

This isn’t the one where I suppose myself to be an expert on much of anything because I know I’m barely an expert even of myself.

This isn’t the one where I pound my fists and make my case and see the straight line before us to march together into the streets.

This is the one in which I acknowledge my complicity in systems and structures that benefit me, my family, and the congregation I pastor because most of us were born with white skin.

This is the one where, imperfectly, I tell some truth about my life and pray to God you hear the invitation to do the same about your own; stumbling as we go.

This is the one where I reach way back into the words of the ancients, the ones who told sacred stories to their children and their children’s children and miraculously wrote them down for us to do the same.

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At the beginning and end of scripture, we find two stories of two gardens—Genesis 2 and Revelation 22.

And in-between the garden of the beginning and the garden of eternity, there are all other kinds of gardens and seeds and trees and plants and fruit. There are gardens that spring up in the desert, gardens set as the backdrop for a radical choice to be made, metaphorical gardens of the spirit for those who do justice, gardens of beauty where lovers meet and discover a world just for themselves.

Leaning on the work of Paul Morris and Deborah Sawyer’s, A Walk in the Garden,* we come to understand “Throughout the Bible, the garden as a well-watered space set apart for the intense cultivation of plants is an image of both nature and sacred space. At a literal, physical level the garden is a place of life richly nourished, well attended to and appointed for the enjoyment of its human owners or residents. As such, it is a touchstone of such motifs as provision, beauty, abundance and the satisfaction of human need. Next to heaven, it is the preeminent image of human longing.”

“[T]he garden is one of the framing images of the total Bible story…more than a place; it is also a way of life and a state of soul.”

In addition to being “a picture of the perpetual abundance and nourishment of nature,” it is critical to remember that gardens also “require cultivation.” Even the first poetry of a garden that God speaks into being call for a partner-gardener to tend and propagate what is there. Yes, the garden theme evokes images of safety and relaxation but also “a place requiring ongoing human upkeep.” The literal and literary gardens of scripture require our human participation in their thriving.

*Quoted in The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, “Garden”

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Whenever I attempt to be anything but completely honest and telling some truth about my life, I know my words fall flat and echo of insincerity because my words are too distant from my heart. So here’s the truth on this Palm Sunday: I’m really sad. I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning and do this. I don’t want to pretend that I’m ok an really holding it all together. I’m sad that we’re on week four of gathering for worship by zoom and will easily go another 4 weeks and possibly longer than that. I’m sad that I’m laying out communion elements on my dining room table and trying with all of my might to make this feel normal. I’m sad that we won’t go through Holy Week in person together. And I’m heart-broken to think of Easter morning without singing our Alleluias together in our sanctuary.

I want to lay that out on the table alongside the bread and the wine because I know I am not the only one with this grief in my heart, waking me up in the night, lulling me to sleep in the afternoon, nagging at me that we have lost something.

I’m also angry. I’m angry about the lack of leadership on the national, federal level in our country. I’m angry that the national priorities of this current administration favor a few and not the whole, favor the select and not the vulnerable. My anger is on the table right beside my sadness.

Maybe this is the first year in my life that waving a palm branch and saying, “Hosanna! Save us!” has actually meant something to me that was anything close to what it may have meant to the folks following Jesus that day. Maybe my grief and yours will guide us into a Holy Week in which we feel the isolation, the fear, the despair, and also the promise of resurrection.

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HBR: You said we’re feeling more than one kind of grief?

Yes, we’re also feeling anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain. Usually it centers on death. We feel it when someone gets a dire diagnosis or when we have the normal thought that we’ll lose a parent someday. Anticipatory grief is also more broadly imagined futures. There is a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety. We’re feeling that loss of safety. I don’t think we’ve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this. But all together, this is new. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level.

To face this grief:

1. Come into the present

2. Let go of what you can’t control

3. Stock up on compassion

Holding today’s texts before us, I want to add some of my own notes to Kessler’s:

1. Show up for yourself and for others.

2. Feel the full range of your emotions.

3. Listen for the Divine.

4. Act from Love.

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