Make Room for Good News & Lament

Beloved friends of LaSalle Street Church - 

It has been a week! If you were able to join us this past Sunday I pray you were nourished by our communal time together - we powerfully worshipped and lamented, heard a profound reflection from someone in the Latino community, heard John 1 read in Spanish, observed our youth leading in several places, explored how we follow a living and liberating Word of God in Jesus, and then enjoyed several new classes, gatherings, and fellowship together after communion. God is faithful and shows up as we bring all of who we are to church - our tiredness, joy, weariness, action, overwhelm, gratitude, anxiety, and praise. Which is a great reminder for us all this week (myself included), to make space to look for both the Good News and the Lament we are living in.  

At our staff mtng this Tuesday, we practiced this habit in a small way with one another. Our opening check-in was to share a place of lament, and a place of hope or good news that we were bringing to the mtng. It was encouraging to hear from one another both things that are legitimately difficult, or scary, or weighing on us - to share that burden and be met with understanding - and then to also hear where God is at work, where our families or relationships or others realities are bringing us life.  I wonder if we each need to be reminded to do this in our day to day right now? I found myself thinking about my own need for this each day this week; similar to how we ask our kids about their highs and lows from the day, maybe grown-ups need this too.   

We are living through a unique time where Chicago, the Near North where we worship, our communities where many of us commute from, and our own church Body, has had to change and adapt to deeply troubling policies: armed agents in camo with automatic weapons on city steets, thinking about how to handle ICE presence and potential everywhere, and how to persevere while experiencing injustice and fear. And we do this all while also holding the hope, promises, and faith that pulls us together as a people. It is complex and calls for endurance, staying grounded in the truth, leaning on one another, and deepening our roots for both self care and justice-seeking action.

This week I want to encourage you in some way to both look for the good, and to make room for the difficult. To see the high points, and to not deny the lows. We have to practice looking for signs of hope, noticing what brings life, connecting to our community, sharing the court cases that are won, noting small joys and in the everyday - whatever feeds your spirit, don't take that for granted. Notice the good, savor it, share it with others, and use it as fuel and fire to keep going. It takes work to choose hope, to root deep, and to imagine a future up ahead that will look better, will recover and rebuild, to trust God at work now in the present. "I am sure I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!" Sometimes we sing this chorus over and over to when it's most hard to believe it.  

We also have to practice making room to lament, to name and grieve the deep injustices, violence, anxiety, dehumanization, and limitations that we are observing. We can read the Psalms for words if we need them, we can pause after reading the news and give ourselves room to feel and cry, we can pray or sit with loss and the pain we're witnessing and simply hold it, turn it over to God, pray for those most impacted, or share with someone else when we're feeing overwhelmed. Naming lament, pain, and even anger to God is encouraged throughout scripturel; it is a necessary part of how we honestly process and metabolize the weight and reality we are living through and turn to a God who weeps with us through it all. 

I also want to share a few of the books referred to in last week's sermon and a few prior, in case some reading about interpreting scripture, original blessing, or how sabbath is key for resistance to empire might be life-giving for some of us. Remember both the goodness and the laments together this week LaSalle, and share them with one another! I am sure we shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living; YES I am sure!   With thanks - RevLiz