Easter Preaching: Desire, Mystery, and Belonging (A Guest Post)
Sarah Robinson Flick has been a listener for over thirty years. In 2016, she left her longtime position as a psychiatrist medical director in a large public mental health center to focus on a “third act” that includes writing, offering spiritual direction to clergy and others, and traveling. Sarah has long believed in the calling of vocation and seeks to follow paths that support healing and wholeness. She is inspired by the season of autumn, great movies, visits to sacred places, the courage of those who work for social justice, and the presence of the Holy in everyday life. Sarah especially loves reading books of all kinds and eating gelato of all flavors, as well as spending time with her daughter Katie and husband Bob, an Episcopal priest, with whom she lives in Texas. Desire, Mystery, and Belonging is her first book.
The beginning of the season of spring holds multiple meanings for me.
I love to see the wildflowers arrive where I live, the bluebonnets and firewheels and others.
I love the clear cool air, the soft breeze across my face, which is so rare here.
Our lovely spring feels like a transition that passes very quickly to oppressive hot sun and steaming humidity.
These tender April days are precious.
Foreboding Spring
Spring is beautiful and fragile and, for me, foreboding.
I have experienced multiple losses during this season, expected and unexpected.
I experienced pregnancy loss in the spring of 1994. My father died in May of 2004 after a long and debilitating illness.
My sister died in her sleep without warning from heart disease in April of 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was beginning.
These spring months bring sadness and memories of helpless grief and exhaustion.
I hold it all, the lovely wildflowers and the aching grief.
The Formative Power of Desire
In my own spiritual journey, I have been shaped by the Franciscan St. Bonaventure’s thought (paraphrased) that to know God, we can choose to follow our deepest desire, to be the “most ourselves” that we can be.
My experience has been that following my deepest desire, following the path to be my most authentic self as I am created, almost always leads to the mystery of unknown outcomes, of uncertainty, of lack of closure.
We embark on adventures every day and throughout our lives without guarantees that we will reach our destinations.
Belonging, in community, to God, with myself, has supported me through the mystery and returned me to desire over and over again.
Knowing I am never alone and that I belong in many contexts empowers me to have faith in desire and faith in the promises that the Holy offers.
This pattern of desire, mystery, and belonging has followed me throughout my life.
It has been shared in my spiritual direction conversations with people from diverse life paths, including those in ordained ministry.
Grief Meets Resurrection in Spring
In spring, my deepest desire is for resurrection, for new life.
The mystery I find myself in is memory, memory of sad and anxious loss, memory of when grief obscured the tender beauty of this season.
As Holy Week arrives, I anticipate praying with my community, with my God, with my own heart as we walk through the end of Jesus’ earthly life and the beginning for all time of Jesus’ resurrection.
We ponder together this journey of Jesus that transformed our lives forever.
Belonging together, we find the courage and the grace to approach the new life that defies death for all time.
Reflections for Preaching
Spring is a tender time.
How might this tenderness affect you? Affect your preaching?
How might you carry the desire that turns your gaze to Christ and find the strength to become who you are all through your life? When you preach, how might you invite your listeners to turn their gaze to Christ?
How do you hold in your hands the touchstones of mystery and smile at the flowers that bloom, even briefly, during these precious days? How might you invite your listeners to identify and hold their touchstones of mystery?
How do you extend the grace of belonging to God, to each other, and to yourself? How has Christ extended that grace to their listeners, and how might you preach that they extend it outward?
As followers of Christ, I pray we know for ourselves and preach the joyful words that new life is ours, and that all are welcome here, this day and always.