welcome to harvard-epworth Church

When my family attended Navy church services when I was very young, we got into our “Sunday Best.” For my brother and me, that meant stiff little polyester boy-suits, clip-on ties, shiny shoes, and Brylcreemed hair. For some church-folk today, getting into one’s “Sunday Best” isn’t so much about stiff clothes, but about putting on a stiffly smiling mask of strength and invulnerability to protect and hide the hurting, tender child of God that resides under the mask. It is a tragic irony that for many people, church is the the last place they feel safe to express grief or loss or fragility; church is the last place to be seen crying.

My chaplaincy work at Lahey Hospital has given me a concentrated experience of being with folk as they cry– in shock at dreaded diagnoses, in grief over tragedy, in anger at the lack of solutions or answers, in mourning over loss. I’ve witnessed a lot of tears at the hospital over the last few months; I’ve shed a bunch as well. And I’ve come to appreciate how precious a faith community is that feels safe enough and human enough to weep in.

I am so grateful that Jesus wept. It’s a reminder of how holy and human our own tears are.  

Lenten Blessings,

Pastor Mitch

As always, Steve Garnaas-Holmes describes it better than I can:

 Jesus wept.

                           —John 11.35

For Lazarus, for Mary and Martha,

for Jerusalem, for us—Jesus weeps,

and invites us into the spiritual discipline of weeping:

to cede control, to be, after all, a body, baby-weak,

subject to the sting of love,

the pangs of our connectedness.

The rend in the fabric of Oneness

is made real in the rend in your eyes,

the crack in the wall, the opening of your flesh.

You surrender to a current,

like a river pulled into the ocean,

deep within you, flowing out,

a holy out-flowing.

Tears come when you have gone beyond yourself,

embodying a divine bond, severed yet still holding.

Weep; for even if you have not suffered

you have loved a suffering world.

Break the seal.

Feel the aliveness of a good cry.

For if you can weep you can hope.

If you can weep you have loved, and will love again.

You flow with God, who weeps for us in grief,

and weeps with joy.