Fifth Sunday of Easter          

Revelation 21:1-6  

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals, who will dwell with them as their God; they will be God’s peoples, and God will be with them, and will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And, the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new. Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then they said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

Mysterious Ways        

God works in mysterious ways. At least that’s what we all like to say to each other every time something confusing or unfortunate happens. I know that we can all point to times in our lives when we might have felt the need to say something like this, as a way to reassure ourselves that God has a plan, that God is with us, that the suffering that we’re feeling has some kind of purpose and will eventually lead to something good and worthwhile. It seems like that’s what John is saying in our Revelation passage today, “the home of God is among the mortals…they will be God’s people, and God will be with them, and will wipe every tear from their eyes…the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new…to the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

Easter is all about renewal and rebirth. We believe that we will be taken from the depths of despair, and risen to new heights, living in the glory and majesty of the presence of God.

It’s hard, though, to see what’s coming when the path ahead has so many twists and turns. All of us are on a journey, a journey that is new to us, on an unfamiliar road. We walk this road by faith, trusting in an all-powerful and mysterious God. I’ve spoken at length about the injury that I sustained just prior to moving here, and how this has been a time of healing and recovery for me. And, I mentioned in my last Waymarks article how this has also been a time of spiritual and emotional healing, but aside from a few individuals, I haven’t really gone into any of that. I thought that today, if we’re going to talk about God’s mysterious ways, that this would be a good time to broach that topic.

Back in 2017, I was working as the floor manager at an all-you-can-eat buffet in Simi Valley, California. I needed some kind of job to make ends meet while I looked for a job in ministry. This was my first time working in a restaurant. I had always wanted to try it to see what it was like, but this was a pretty terrible job. The family that owned the restaurant was from China, and they either didn’t know or didn’t care about California labor laws, and they expected me to enforce their unethical labor practices. After a few months of that, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I turned in my apron and my name tag. I didn’t have another job lined up, but I didn’t care. I don’t think I can emphasize enough how soul-wrenching it is to spend four years of your life learning how to care for other people as a career, and then turn around and treat people badly as part of your job.

Quitting that job was one of the most liberating experiences of my life, I just had this incredible sense of relief knowing that I would never have to go back there. And, like a miracle, I got a call the very next day from Sleepy Hollow Presbyterian Church, because they were looking for a youth minister. They couldn’t afford a full-time youth minister, but a member of their congregation recently had a stroke, and was looking for a live-in caregiver. So, the pastor and the family ministries elder thought they could put these two jobs together, and I would be able to make a living in Marin, one of the most expensive places to live in the United States.

At first it was great! I had done a lot of youth work before, so that was nothing new. I had never been a caregiver before, but the woman I was taking care of was actually pretty independent and mostly just needed someone to drive her around and be there in case she fell and hurt herself. But, as the years went by, and she got better, she became more and more demanding. This was exacerbated by the fact that we lived together, so we were basically around each other all the time, whether I was working or not. It eventually got to the point where it felt like she stopped seeing me as a human being, and really only saw me as a resource to be used. She made me to do all kinds of work for her, things that were way outside of the scope of a caregiver’s responsibility, like sweeping the leaves off her roof and pruning trees. And, even when I wasn’t on the clock, she had no qualms about asking me to do things for her, even when her other caregiver, who was on the clock, was sitting right there.

I would make excuses for her. I would tell myself that it was the stroke, that she had brain damage, and she couldn’t help herself. But, no matter what you do to excuse someone’s bad behavior, it doesn’t change the behavior itself, and it continues to wear away at you. Our relationship got so bad that I actually threatened to leave on four different occasions, but she somehow always talked me out of it. The situation had all of the hallmarks of an abusive relationship. It would get bad enough for me to say that I was leaving, she would apologize and promise to change, then it would be good for a while, but inevitably, it would get bad again. There were times that I tried hiding in my room on my days off, but she didn’t like that because what was the point of having roommates if you never interacted with them? I tried maintaining a list of chores on a white board in the kitchen, so that she wouldn’t feel the need to give me so much verbal instruction, but she didn’t like that, because she has the compulsive need to order people around. She had no respect for me as a person, and scoffed at any boundaries that I tried to maintain. I was constantly anxious, which was probably the reason my blood pressure was so high.

So, why did I stay for so long? As I said, I did try to leave a few times, but one of the main reasons I stayed was because I was still trying to get ordained. I was trying to get ordained into my youth minister position, and if I left my caregiving job, I would’ve had to leave my youth ministry job, because I wouldn’t have been able to afford to live in Marin. And, if I had to leave my youth ministry job, it would have been a huge setback in my ordination process, so I kept telling myself that I needed to tough it out. That it wouldn’t be that much longer, and it would be worth it in the end.

The prevailing brand of American armchair theology tells us that God will only give us as much as we can handle, and that God tests us through trial and hardship and pain. It’s easy to buy into this theology, because it helps us to understand the difficulties in our lives. But, it’s a dangerous theology, because not all pain is created equal. Some people’s lives are simply unbearable, and some of the things that happen to people are unfair. So, if we were to hold on to this theology, what would it say about God? It would mean that God is callous to our pain, at worst a sadist, and at best, uncaring. That doesn’t sound like the God that I know. There’s more than enough pain in the world to go around. God doesn’t need to add to it. What I do think happens, is that God takes our pain, takes our tragedy, takes our trials, and helps us to get through them, uses them to transform us and help us grow.

There’s another saying, more armchair theology, that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Of course, this isn’t always true, but I think God tries really hard to make it true as often as possible.

I did eventually get ordained. It was a joyous moment, a moment that I had been working so hard to get to for so long. And, God didn’t have to put any roadblocks in my way, the world did more than enough of that, not to mention the roadblocks that I put in front of myself. It was God who helped me to persevere and overcome them, and I was finally able to update my ministerial profile, which allowed your conference minister to find me. God really does work in mysterious ways. Just not in painful or coercive ways. I think that all of us, when we take the time to examine the strange and twisted paths of our lives, we can see those points where God intervened and changed things for the better. Pay attention to the painful times, the scary times, and the difficult times, because those are often the times when God is most present, not because God causes them, but because that’s when we need God the most. Remember that you are never alone as you walk the journey of your lives. You are God’s beloved, and God will always be there for you.

Amen.

~ Rev. Charles Wei