216 I'm Fine

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “I’m Fine”, originally shared on May 19, 2022. It was the 216^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We’ve all been asked, “How’re you doing?” and said something like “Good” or even “Great!” to say that we’re fine when we’re not fine. It’s OK not to be fine. In fact, with God, in some ways it’s better. Today we’re going to find out why.

   But first, we have an announcement.

   I’m Pastor David Berkedal and my wife, Rev. Sally Welch and I began co-producing these videos, Streams of Living Water, at the beginning of this global pandemic, now becoming an endemic, and as we began to emerge into the New Normal to share a sense of connection and encouragement and an opportunity to reflect about what it means to be a Christian. Sally and I are retired clergy with over 80 years of ordained ministry between us.

   Now the isolation we all experienced at the height of the pandemic is loosening up.

   We are all living under fewer pandemic restrictions, though rising covid cases in L.A. County are a concern and we must be vigilant.

   Most churches have now gone back to some provisions for physically present worship and Christian community life, along with the necessary restrictions in place for the sake of others.

   I’ve been leading worship and preaching at different churches on Sundays. I will be preaching every Sunday at the same church, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Monterey Park, plus I will be working there a few hours every week starting on June 1^st. Sally will be taking up a more active schedule as a docent at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in L.A. at the same time.

   Therefore, we will go from two videos, podcasts, and blogs each week to one starting in June. The one video will be moving to Wednesdays, still at the same times: 11:15 a.m. on the “Streams of Living Water” Facebook page, at 11:30 a.m. on the David Berkedal Facebook page, and at 12 noon on our YouTube channel, “Streams of Living Water”, with the podcast and blog to follow.

   We hope that these videos, podcasts and/or blogs have been helpful to you, and we look forward to continuing our service to you as we move forward into whatever comes.

   Now, let’s get back to how you’re doing.

   “How are you doing?” We get asked this question or some variation of it all the time.

   My answer is often, “Pretty good for an old man.” It’s funny and lets me answer without answering.

   Most of us, though, are not completely fine, and some of us are not fine at all. And we may not be fine depending on the day, or even the time of day. But most of us will just say, “I’m fine.”

   We may not use the words, “I’m fine”, exactly. It’s pretty hard to say them convincingly these days. But we will use words like, “Good!” or “I’m doing well, thank you.” Or even, “Blessed.” Tone and body language make our words convincing, or not.

   Inside we may not be so fine, even when our exterior says, “I’m fine”.

   We don’t want to be a “Debbie Downer” (sorry Debbie), we don’t want to burden people with the things that are weighing us down, we want to focus on what we can do not on what we can’t do, we are coping or we want others to think that we are coping, or we don’t want to become an object of sympathy, or we want to be seen as caregivers not as care receivers.

   And, in many areas of life, we’ve gained thing through the pandemic.

   We’ve gained new skills and new friends, we’ve gained new hobbies and developed our old ones, we’ve rediscovered family and friends through Zoom and other apps, we’ve gained a new tool to share our faith with digital media, we’ve gained new ways to work collaboratively, we’ve met our neighbors and learned how to live with them, we’ve grown closer to our families, we’ve gained insight into ourselves and what we really want to do with our lives, we’ve gained time and gas money by not commuting. Oh, and some of us have gained a little weight. 😊

   Most of us are doing well in many areas of life even if we are feeling down. War has not visited our shores, we eat regularly, and we have a place to live. We are a part of a community of support. Things that were considered luxuries by previous generations are now considered necessities. Smart TV’s, smart phones, owning a computer and having high-speed internet, dining out or taking home food from restaurants, owning a car or two or three.

   Rappers and rock stars and “reality” TV stars, promote standards of living that are more than aspirational. Yet, if we don’t have these things that everybody on TV seems to have, we feel deprived. 

   Many people are floundering as we move through this pandemic. I saw a meme the other day that said, “Is it just me, or does it feel like the years 2020, 2021 and 2022 have been written by Stephen King and Directed by Quentin Tarantino, with a soundtrack by Bjork?”

   We’re living in what some have called The Great Resignation, resulting in labor shortages in every area of life. We are living with crazy gas prices, with inflation and the threat of recession, with the war in Ukraine threatening to bring on WW III, with crazy high housing prices, with the fracturing of our political system threatening the end of our democracy, the breakdown of all our institutions, with global warming threatening rising water levels and untamed wildfires.

   Our identity hasn’t been lost. It’s been broken into a thousand little pieces.

   And, we’re still finding our way through a global coronavirus pandemic, and its most recent variants.

   We’ve lost friends and family to COVID-19, we’ve lost time, we’ve lost education, we’ve lost work, we’ve lost experience, health care, and we’ve lost jobs and a sense of material security.

   We’ve lost a sense of connection to other people and, sometimes, we fear them.

   We’re out of practice in reading body language, interpreting facial expressions without masks, and the many consciouses and particularly unconscious signs that tell us how to understand our community, who we can trust, who will be our friends and where we belong, how to travel and how to shop.

   The world seems to have devolved into even smaller tribes than we remember, groups who shared our values seem to have gotten smaller, and our national dialogue seems to have become even more adversarial.

   We’re not fine. The masks we wear to protect us and others have become like the masks we wear to protect us from revealing to others the reality of our world and our relationship to it in our faces.

   The Bible tells us that it doesn’t have to be this way.

   Jesus offers an approach to life that seems unattainable because it is so counter-cultural, and yet it leads to life. It involves a living transformational relationship with the one true living God, a life of trust in God. He says, in Luke 12:27-30,

²⁷ Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ²⁸ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, you of little faith! ²⁹ And do not keep seeking what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. ³⁰ For it is the nations of the world that seek all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. ³¹ Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

   So, when we’re not fine, why is that OK? The thing about Jesus’ sermon on the mount, and Jesus’ preference for the poor and for sinners and for outcasts, is not that they are Jesus’ idea of the human ideal, but that those who have little alternative and know they need the Savior are way more inclined to trust in God find life in Him. Life that really is life. When we know that we’re not fine, that our self is not sufficient, that is when we are near to being saved.

   Paul, reflecting on his life as a missionary and his prayers for particular relief says, in 2 Corinthians 12:8-11,

⁸ Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, ⁹ but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. ¹⁰ Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ, for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

   There is no question and little surprise that the Church, the Body of Christ, is in decline in the United States and in Europe, the most widely affluent places in the history of the world. There is equally no question and little surprise that the church is booming in China, in South America, in sub-Saharan Africa, even in India, places where the church is persecuted and/or its people are poor. Why? Jesus reveals this in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. (Tax collectors at the time were greedy tools of the occupying Roman empire.)

   He reminds us that we’re not fine, and that before God we do not need to pretend. Our new life starts when we realize that we need a savior. Jesus illustrates this in Luke 18:9-14,

⁹ He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ ¹³ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

   For most people, life is not all good or all bad. We’re not always just fine or not fine. There is a mixture.

  If you fill a water glass to its mid-point, is the glass half-empty or half full? Of course, most of us are going to say half-full, because the psychology of our culture says that’s the way we are supposed to see it, that people who see it as half-full are more goal-oriented, optimistic, healthier, positive and successful than people who see it as half-empty. Who wants to be Eeyore?

   But is there another way that the water in the glass can be described that is not so either/or?

   Yes. I would say that the glass is 100% full. It’s half water and half air, but it’s 100% full.

   That’s the promise of the Gospel. Our lives will not be fine all the time. But God is good all the time. God is present in us and for us. We know the joy of God even when we’re sad because that gift of God can never be taken away from us. We are a new Creation in this sinful world because Jesus overcame the world on the cross. We know who we are because we know whose we are.

   Much of the time in this world we’re not fine. But Jesus has overcome this world and because he has done so, we’re fine.