How Do Disappointment and Loss Teach Us Spiritually? 

Psalm 82:3 tells us to defend the poor and the orphan. This has been my vocational call since I was in college studying to be a social worker. In the time span between then and now, I have been a social worker, a minister and a therapist. I have been a Benedictine Oblate for 22 years. Peace and justice runs through my veins.  

Something odd happened last week that seemingly started a long time ago and is a reminder for many of those I have served in my vocational and ministerial work that they are not okay. The United States voted for a person who in word and action gives voice and affirmation to a form of Christianity that does not look like the faith of Jesus. The United States may have officially entered into a new form of governance, though time and history will have to be the ones to determine this.  

I needed a week of sessions with my clients to hear their stories and to sort out my thoughts on what to say in this post. When 9/11 happened, I was just 24, newly married, and I started seminary a month prior to the attacks. The Sunday following the attacks, I preached my first sermon as a seminarian. I don’t remember the exact words, but I remember grace and love punctuated my message.  

What Would Bonhoeffer Say 

In his 1934 sermon, “My Strength is Made Perfect in my Weakness”, Bonhoeffer offers: 

“Christianity stands or falls by its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power, and by its apologia for the weak 

“I feel that Christianity is doing too little in making these points rather than doing too much. Christianity has adjusted itself much too easily to the worship of power. It should give much more offence, more shock to the world, than it is doing. Christianity should take a much more definite stand for the weak than for the potential moral right of the strong.” 

Here, Bonhoeffer is writing to speak for the vulnerable patients at the care facility he is ministering at. During the Nazi regime, these patients were in grave danger of being executed because of their perceived weak position and not being the perfect Aryan race. As Christians who claim to be committed to not only the Christ, the metaphysical logos of Jesus, but also to the historical Jesus, a dead, brown Jew who lived in an occupied country who gave voice to the other, we too must stand and give voice and support to those oppressed in our country today.  

Bonhoeffer goes on to tell us that weakness is holy and that we must devote ourselves to the weak. This is in alignment with the Acts 2 church. Not only do we as humans as whole suffer, but Bonhoeffer also shares that God shares in this suffering because God suffered on the cross. He offers, “God suffers much more. Our God is a suffering God. Suffering conforms humanity to God. The suffering person is in the likeness of God. “My strength is made perfect in weakness” says God.” 

In his book, “Ethics”, Bonhoeffer among the many points he makes, he talks about love. He says that the word love, reflecting on 1 Corinthians 13:2-3 is “the decisive word which marks the distinction between man in disunion and man in the origin.” (page 51) Bonhoeffer points out that God is love. He insists that it is not a “human attitude, conviction or deed, but God himself is love. When we act selfishly, arrogantly, ignorantly, we are doing so out of guidance from a proof texted bible passage, the making of God in our own image and reacting out of fear. We are not abiding in the love, grace and providence of love. 1 Corinthians 13 goes on to say that if we do not have love, we are only crashing cymbals and clanging gongs.  

What Would Rage Against the Machine Say 

I have never been a pastor who pushed a prescribed faith. I certainly adhere to my Wesleyan heritage and theology and if I were still in a church, would teach this doctrine exclusively, but that does not meet you where you are. But this time, things are different. I see what happened last week as an act of a lack of moral courage. The election last week reignited my 19-year-old Social Work self, feeling all the feels for the “poor, widowed and orphaned”. Then I started to listen to all the Rage Against the Machine music that once inspired all this youthful ambition.  

Rage Against the Machine challenges us to “know our enemy”. their 1992 song, Know Your Enemy, is an anthem that calls for awareness, resistance, and unity against societal oppression. The question though, who is our enemy. Our current elected leader claimed that we had enemies within. While the Rage song is about corporate and political greed, our enemy right now is ourselves. We are fearful, ignorant people. We consume too much information from unvetted sources, and everyone can instantly be an ignorant trivia expert. We are all complicit with becoming the enemy within.  

The Spiritual Practice of Grace 

I spent the entire week last week hearing a lot of emotionally overwhelmed speak fear, anxiety and hopelessness into the air of my office. I said many times last week, reflecting on the history of our country and in general, the history of Christianity itself with all of it’s persecutions, riots and mudslides, that it was going to be okay, though I do not know what this okay is going to look like.  

Wednesday, as I looked briefly at some of the posts on Facebook, I simply added that I am choosing grace and then took a day away from all the rhetoric to reflect on this and cultivate an attitude of grace. When we engage in the spiritual practice of grace, we open space for receptivity and surrender to the reality of what is, though never losing sight of hope.  By opening this space, we balance our need for control, we temper our emotions and open our hearts for potential possibility. “Grace is a gift of God. Because it comes to us at God’s initiative, there are some things we can’t do about grace. We can’t earn it. We can’t control it. We don’t have to deserve it.” 

I want to close with a reflection on the words from our Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church. On November 7, Bishop Tracy Malone reflecting on 1 Corinthians 13:13 called all Methodists to “to exercise their faith and to pray, speak, and act for justice and peace.” She challenges our baptismal vow to ““to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.” While directed to the United Methodists, I think this gives all of us our marching orders over the next four years. We must be diligent, we must defend the poor, widow and orphan.  

Disappointment can teach us a lot of things. Humility, grace and gratitude. In the spiritual practice of becoming, God walks along side us as we choose how we handle loss. We are not alone, it is going to be okay, though I really don’t know what that ok is going to look like.