Might Rest and New Life be Found in the Wilderness? | Monday Invocation
“On this Easter Monday, I come to remind us, family, that there is grace and rest for us too in this wilderness”
Shae Washington
Jeremiah 31:1-6 NRSVue: Joy at God's people restored
At that time, says the LORD, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.
Thus says the LORD: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, the LORD appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel! Again you shall adorn yourself with your tambourines and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant and shall enjoy the fruit. For there shall be a day when sentinels will call in the hill country of Ephraim: "Come, let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God."
Greetings of love and peace this Easter Monday, family! What a journey it has been this Lenten season. We have moved through the high highs and the low lows of Holy Week, including the torturous death of Good Friday where all feels final and lost, and the glorious resurrection of Sunday where all is new and the limits of empire are laid bare. Today on Easter Monday, the glory still feels tangible - “Christ has risen! He has risen indeed.” Or, as often proclaimed within the Black tradition, “He got up!”…And, as I reflect on the pangs of our current world - a warming and groaning earth, continued assaults on “the least of these”, evil seeming to not have to take account, and more, I suspect that for many of us, grief continues to loom. The wilderness remains our landscape. And yet, our living God is here with us! I wonder if rest and new life might be as well.
In Jeremiah 31:2,4 it says, “Thus says the LORD: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest…Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel! Again you shall adorn yourself with your tambourines and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.”
I’ve spent the Lenten season meditating on the wilderness, particularly on women in the Bible who spent time in various wilderness spaces (physical, emotional and spiritual) through a devotional called, Prone to Wander by Joanna Harader. I took this journey with a small group of incredible women, all of us on our own personal wilderness journeys. What I have found has not been the wilderness solely as barren, dry, harsh, silent, wasteland, but also a place of hope, escape, and freedom. A place where God speaks and miracles happen. A “clearing” space like in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, away from the gaze of the dominant norm, where Black folks learn to “love our flesh,” as talked about by Tamice Spencer Helms on the podcast Black Modern Mystic.
As LGBTQ+ peoples and allies, we are all too familiar with wilderness spaces, whether we’ve been cast out by others, or fled there on our own. It is here where we cultivate the ability to hold the pain and the beauty, the devastation and the moments of delight. It is here where our resurrected Jesus meets us and offers us living water, welcomes our questions, offers us grace and turns away our accusers. It is here where we rebuild and are built. The ground may be hard that we are tilling, but we are learning that it is this solidness that can hold the fullness of who we are, and who we are becoming. On this Easter Monday, I come to remind us, family, that there is grace and rest for us too in this wilderness. May we raise our tambourines in joy and in resistance. May we find each other on the dance floor with other merrymakers remembering that death doesn’t get the final say. Amen.
