Luke 12:22-28
I’ve been thinking a lot about hugs, about embrace. During the distancing of Covid I really missed hugging people, I missed arms encircling me, a gentle reminder that I am still here, my body known, briefly, by another. I struggled without those physical acknowledgements of my own presence. I frequently felt empty, unproductive, inadequate.
Perhaps that’s why I began to fill the empty space - my empty arms, with stuff: online purchases, extra classes, to-do lists, social obligations.
One can understand. Covid was destabilizing, so I clung to items and projects I could control, I reached for achievements and obligations that marked progress. And now, even as Covid loosens its grip on our lives, war rages and the all-too-familiar pandemics of racism and climate change continue to wreak havoc in our world. It’s a lot to hold. No wonder we still cling.
But, if I’m honest, this clinging to things? It’s getting a little exhausting. Charting the covid case counts going up and down and then up - I can pretend that there's an accessible logic, but there isn’t. And this degree that I’m working towards, that collar I might wear someday, those achievements I pursue, those objects that I surround myself with, acquiring these things does not keep the difficulty of the world from pushing in. They do not resolve the uncertainty of life, of faith.
But they might be keeping me from something.
It occurs to me that clinging to these false securities leaves little opportunity for embrace.
It is really hard to hug someone if you’re carrying a whole lot of stuff.
And, here my mind wanders to the daffodils outside my window, Jesus’s exemplary flowers. He says, in Luke, Don’t worry, don’t worry about all these things, these things that do not guarantee a longer or more enjoyable life, don’t worry about silly adornments that pale in comparison to the characteristic glory of God’s creation. Indeed, these flowers have left the comfortable dirt, pushed away the dubious snow, and stretched their green tendrils to embrace a warmth not yet fully present. And now they are embraced, their uninhibited splendor known by the soft Spring air.
I want to think that these daffodils might have had second thoughts, anxieties about letting go of the secure ground they’d been nestled into over this past year, just as I have second thoughts about letting go of these trappings that have kept me company during the pandemic.
Life out there is, after all, still frightening. It’s unstable. There is so much we do not know, so much we cannot control.
Still, I long for that embrace, I long to know and be known by the warmth of Christ’s love.
But, in order to receive grace, I must let go, release these hands from the vacuous objects that fill my life, I must relax my grip of consuming aspirations.
And as these drop, as they fall away, I can reach towards that which can only be given, I can open my arms to the love of the other.
Friends, may we have the courage of daffodils, to let go of constructed salvations and reach towards the warmth of embrace, towards the redemptive grace of a loving God.
Amen