Our team of chaplains gathered for our monthly staff meeting on Wednesday. It was our first gathering since the death of our colleage, Kent. It will be the last gathering before the retirement of our colleague, Dianna. It was my turn to start with a reflection before we turned to the remembering. Here’s what I said.

+++

I want to talk about the value of stopping. And the value of honoring. And the value of remembering.

I want to talk about those things, but you all know well that stopping isn’t a spiritual gift of mine.

Not like it’s supposed to be a spiritual gift.

None of the lists of gifts of the spirit that we read in 1 Corinthians and other places include rest or honoring or celebration.

Wisdom, knowledge, faith, prophecy, giving. Yes. Administration, teaching, interpretation. Yes. Even in Exodus 31, Bezalel and Oholiab are given gifts of creativity and skilled craft.

But stopping and honoring and remembering aren’t spiritual gifts to use for others.

They are, however, gifts. They are commanded permissions.

Throughout the Old Testament, there are daily and weekly and monthly and annual and regular and once-in-a-lifetime routines and days and feasts and festivals.

Morning and evening prayer. Weekly sabbath. The new moon festival. The days and feasts.

Some were solemn, with repentance and fasting. Some were festive, with food and feasts and sharing and gathering.

All of them allowed people to stop their daily or weekly or monthly or annual work.

Some allowed for sadness. Some allowed for laughter. Each of them invited acknowledging God and God’s compassion and God’s direction and God’s abiding abiding.

+++

Jesus kept the feasts. We know that from reading about his life.

Which means that sadness and laughter and stopping were how he lived his life.

When we talk about being like Jesus, we think of loving, or of preaching, or of being at the fringes.

Some of the us that is God’s people talks less about reflection, about sitting, about feasting together.

Today we are stopping and honoring and remembering. As much as we can while we are on the clock, aware of the pager, serving in a place that is 24/7/365.25.

And we have the God-commanded, Christ-lived, Spirit-permitted and sustained opportunity to weep and remember and cheer and eat.

Amen.