A healing buffer

27Jul
Going on from the grain fields on the sabbath, Jesus went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, the Pharisees asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.
-Matthew 12:9-14



I like Mondays. I’m up early, ready to begin the week with a freshly minted To-Do list and the time to complete it. Friday arrives on a chill draft of sadness. “Did I do enough?…Of course you didn’t; there’s still stuff on Monday’s list.” It is a silly dialog. It’s a symptom of the human-doing versus human-being disease.


When our family lived in New Haven, I got to experience four seasons. In mid-March the first crocus blossoms were pushing through the crust of aging snow. Ahh, almost spring! The days stretched out like a wall of fresh plaster, to receive a new, heroic fresco called, “This Year it Will be Different.” Then, too quickly it was fall and Halloween; Christmas would follow in mere days; and this year looked like so many others. “Did I do enough?”


The good news is, God gave us the the Sabbath as a healing buffer between the Fridays of disappointment and auspicious Mondays. God gave us the sabbath-months of mid-winter for reflection and preparation for the arrival of the Epiphany crocus. Sabbath-time. It is a time of rest and reflection, a time to forgive ourselves and one another by praying ourselves back into communion with God. By giving ourselves to the Grace of God’s infinite attention, we are made right sized and oh so sufficient. Yes, it is lawful, even necessary to heal on the Sabbath.


In the final hours of walking with my mother to the edge of her life, she asked, “Was I good enough…?” In the grand context of end-of-life, the question, it seems, is a final exhale of humility, the requisite squeak of this life’s exit door opening onto the dying’s next. The question is one I expect we will all ask, “Was I good enough, did I matter?” It is almost a reflex as we take the lovely transition from life’s ultimate “Friday” into the place where all things are being made new.


This week our Trinity family lost another Great Lioness of God, Sally Cockerham. It would be so like Sally to ask, “Did I do enough, did I matter?” “Oh Sally, yes! Yes; welcome home to my heart, to the eternal Sabbath…” says the Lord.

Musical Reflection - Ěriks Ešenvalds, The Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge



 Loving Creator, call us in our Shabbat time with you to remember our beloveds who dwell with you. Call us to remember the detail of their faces, the sound of their voices and their laughter, the smell of their dinner table, their touch; and above all help us to remember and share the stories of moments when they healed the trajectory of our lives. Show us how close remembering can draw us to them, to you. Amen.

Compassion

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