A Word from Pastor Lisa: What We Need Is Here

“Today I sense that all is here,

ever more and soon to be.

Within us and between us is

everything we need.”

– Carrie Newcomer, “Everything We Need”

The hits from this pandemic just keep coming. We surpassed 150,000 COVID-19 deaths in our country this week, and some people, including Christians, still believe it’s a hoax. We discovered MCCSC would begin with online instruction only for our children. We’re praying for teachers, administrators, parents, and students, especially those with financial hardship, difficult family situations, and need the safety and nourishment school provides. Protests for Black Lives Matter rage on in places like Portland, where federal troops have been aggressively deployed. We’ve discovered one of the primary people inciting violence in the Minneapolis riots was tied to a white supremacist group.

When we consider the overwhelming nature of the news, I want to shout, “Where are you, God?” The psalmist claims you are “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1, NRSV). If so, now would be a good time to act. This is one of the most troubling times we’ve known. God, why can’t you swoop in like a superhero or a divine first responder and rescue us from this mess?

This week on my prayer walk, I was having a good reckoning with God, listing all of the reasons we here on earth are overwhelmed right now. I was taking God to task on the promises of Scripture being true. How can You be our rock, redeemer, refuge, and strength and allow all of this suffering to continue? In the midst of my rant, I remembered this phrase from Wendell Berry’s poem, “Wild Geese,” that Carrie Newcomer has turned into a song: What we need is here.  

What if in the midst of a pandemic of scarcity, division, and oppression, we lived as if that phrase were true? We have everything we need to fight the coronavirus, but we must stop fighting with each other over masks and physical distancing and work together to reduce transmission while vaccines and treatments are produced. We can reach out to the lonely or isolated, support local businesses, and care for those who are unemployed.

We also have what we need to support teachers, students, and parents, especially if we find creative and safe ways to offer child care, learning pods, and assistance with food and technology. (If you’re interested in helping us do this as a church, please contact me here.)

We have what we need to dismantle racist structures, but we start by repenting, making reparations, decentering white voices, overturning power structures, and advocating for massive policy shifts. Fighting the cancer of racism is generational work. While we might never be in remission, what we need to challenge is here.

In all of these situations, the changes are not quick or easy, or else we would have done them already. They will take lots of prayer, patience, time, and a willingness not just to change, but to be transformed. Paul calls this becoming a “new creation in Christ: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor 5:17) While it is Christ who brings about this new creation, reconciling us to God and each other, God has also entrusted the message of reconciliation and transformation to us. That transformation starts with the resources and gifts God has already given each of us. So we pray, in the words of Wendell Berry, “not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.”