Hope in Disorienting Times
Elaine Poproski Download: Audio
Scripture Readings:
Luke 24: 13–35 (NRSV)
13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. Read more…
1 Peter 1:17–23 (NRSV)
17 If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. Read more…
Looking to Sunday
by Elaine Poprsoki
Twenty years ago, April 23 was Easter Sunday. That evening my church gathered alongside representatives from other area Baptist churches to publicly acknowledge my gifts and call from God to be ordained, which means I was set apart for pastoral ministry. It was one of the most meaningful events in my life. I didn’t expect it to be quite so meaningful. Going into it, I thought of it more as a box to tick along my professional journey. But it was so much more than that. It was a kind of anointing. It was an affirmation from my community that I wasn’t just in a career or a job, but that God intended my life and the life of His Church to be intricately intertwined. We Baptists aren’t sacramental people, by which we mean that we don’t tend to define human things or activities as having a sacred or divine character, but when I was surrounded by people who placed their hands on me and prayed over me as a kind of seal of my ordination, it sure felt sacred and perhaps even sacramental.
That call to serve God’s Church has not always been easy. There have been times I wanted to give up or walk away, times I wanted nothing to do with God’s Church in all its messy, fallible, humanness. But twenty years in I find myself still unable to extricate myself from this people that is so much more than a human religious institution. The memory of my ordination, and the people who were part of it, continues to sustain me. Despite the hard times, I am humbled by the call God continues to place on my life. And right now, most days, I’m completely overwhelmed by the call.
I think most of us with some professional years under our belts realize that our schooling or training could never cover everything. Seminary (the name of the type of educational institution that began my official training for pastoral ministry) grounded me in things like church history, biblical scholarship, preaching skills, and pastoral care. But there’s no way it could have covered every eventuality. Certainly, it could never have imagined a time when the church would not be able to gather in person. And let me tell you, this particular time we’re in, a time of self-isolating and physical distancing and global economic uncertainty, has left me feeling somewhat disoriented.
That’s what happens when everything changes – when parents have their first child, when a life-long student graduates, when someone who’s worked their entire adult life retires, when the whole world goes into lockdown because of a microscopic virus. We are disoriented.
At the end of the gospel of Luke there’s a great story about a couple of Jesus’ disciples going home after Jesus’ crucifixion. (You can read it here.) They didn’t know He’d been raised from the dead. For them, it was all over. All the hopes and dreams they’d pinned on Jesus, all the expectations for a new world, all of it was gone in a most horrible, gruesome way. They didn’t know what to think anymore. They were disoriented (to say the least). But Jesus showed up on their road. Jesus met them in their disorientation and step-by-step He helped them understand. He opened their eyes to things that had been hidden. He opened their minds to truths previously incomprehensible. He opened their hearts to a love so huge it conquered death.
This Jesus continues to meet us in our disorientation. When we are overwhelmed, when we no longer know which way is up, when everything we thought we knew has proven false, Jesus meets us. This is what I’m experiencing these days. Most Sundays, faced with a grid of faces and phone numbers on my computer screen instead of flesh and blood people I can touch and whose air I share, I feel like everything I thought I knew about being a pastor no longer applies. I second guess my gifts and skills. But Jesus meets me in this place. Jesus reminds me that the call I answered more than twenty years ago, the call that was officially recognized exactly twenty years ago and that I’ve been living every since, is the same call today, no matter what the world looks like. Because, as important as the training and the skill development is, what’s most important is that Jesus is present. And there is nothing – no virus, no economic recession or depression, no spiritual attack – that can remove Jesus.
I wonder if you’re feeling disoriented these days. I wonder if you’re feeling overwhelmed. Do you resonate with the disciples on the road to Emmaus? As you prepare for Sunday, perhaps spend some time looking back at your own life, particularly your life since you were introduced to Jesus. Remind yourself of previous experiences of Jesus’ presence. What did He look like? What did He sound like? What did He feel like? What did He say? This same Jesus, the Jesus who rose from the dead and met His first disciples where they were, is with you. As you prepare for Sunday, may you know that to be true.