Here is some online news for this week that sets context for what is on my heart today:

I went to put flowers on our family graves with my Grandma Vera one Memorial Day weekend when I was in grade school, and I remember we were standing by my Great Grandma's grave in the cemetery on the bluff above the Ohio river. And I noticed something I thought was interesting.

"Grandma, why do all the graves face in one direction?"

A hush came over her. She closed her eyes, laid her weed trimmers on the ground, and began to clap. Her tears came and she whispered, "Glory to Jesus!" I moved back a little because I knew she was getting the Holy Ghost and she had already accidently hit me in the head a couple times swinging her purse at the Tabernacle where I went to church with her on Sunday evenings after attending the Disciples of Christ service with my Mom, Dad, Sister, and maternal grandparents in the morning.

She started walking around our family plots praising and speaking in tongues. I had gotten used to her effusive worship style and tongue speaking at the Tabernacle. And I also learned not to bring it up too much at home because it would result in slammed doors and loud voices in my parents' bedroom. But I had never seen her get the Holy Ghost before in the cemetery.

She began to quote I Thessalonians 4 in her soft southern lilt as she cried, walked, and clapped her hands. A few verses in she turned and looked at me with tears in her eyes waving her hands, " Aaaaaand the deeeeeeead in Christ shaaall riiise fuuuuuuurst."

I was enthralled and a bit terrified. I loved her so much. She had a deep relationship with God that sustained her through many challenging things: poverty, a huge family, an alcoholic father, burying two children before giving birth to my Dad, and her marriage to my grandfather who was 35 years older than her and who she had took care of as he died of an ugly coal mine related cancer. Her spirituality was wrapped up in her hard life and intense trauma. But her devotion to the Holy Spirit was powerful. It impressed me deeply and still flows through my blood and bone like Ariadne's thread. And as my congregation knows, I bring up the Holy Spirit more than any UCC or Disciples of Christ minister they have ever had.

I'm also delighted this week to mark myself safe from John Nelson Darby's dramatic, misguided, and harmful dispensationalist theology about "the rapture" that is popular in evangelical white Christian nationalist circles, and still haunts us in the US as folkx post anxiously, study dispensation charts, imagine Hollywood fueled zombie like "resurection of the body" scenarios, and watch yet another predicted rapture day pass.

Misinterpretations of scripture, including I Thessalonians 4 abound. Paul was offering a calming pastoral word to concerned believers at Thessaloniki who wanted to make sure their deceased beloveds would be included in the impending Parousia which he had told them was happening fast- like tomorrow at 3:00. This SHOULD BE a huge issue in any New Testament conversations because Jesus did not return the way Paul said he would. But instead we have freakout on Rapture Tok.

I think there really is a part of us that would love for God to blow a trumpet and come and rescue us from this terrible dreary mess that we have made of our planet, our nation, and our relationships with each other.

But instead, we are all still here. And Jesus, the Risen Christ, is showing up in front of us- not for his second coming- but for his 10 thousandth and 10 millionth coming in ICE detainees, in Gaza refugees, in the Trans and Non-Binary communities, in our homeless siblings, the woman who can't afford her insulin, and the children who are hungry tonight.

I hope you ‘all will join me in sinning boldly with unfettered empathy as we seek justice and work together to be Jesus' hands, eyes, heart, and feet in our world.

And it is my prayer that you wilI catch rapturous glimpses of Jesus and of the kindom of God rising in each other- perpetually present and returning- in this hot and holy mess that is our here and our now.

— Rev. Jeanne