What does it mean to be shaken?
Our text for today…
invites us to listen to Jesus’ words, describing times that feel dark and foreboding, times we might feel like our inner safety and security is being shaken.
So what does it mean to be shaken?
That’s our guiding question for today, and perhaps a place to begin might be to allow your mind to float back to a time when you remember feeling shaken up inside.
Maybe it was an unexpected change, like so many we’ve faced the past couple of years. Or maybe a sudden loss suddenly tossed you into a sense of inner chaos. Perhaps you are feeling the aftershocks still today – like the ground beneath you hasn’t yet steadied, and you are still seeking something solid to hold on to.
One gift Jesus offers us is the notion that when things are being shaken inside us, we can trust that the core of that experience is a hopeful process. The things which we have lost in our external world may have been deeply good, precious and beloved to us. At the same time, the things which are being shaken loose inside us through change, grief, and loss are things which perhaps were no longer serving us well.
If it’s helpful, you might imagine a campfire and notice when the logs are stacked too tightly, there’s not enough oxygen flowing to keep the fire lit, so for the embers to come alive, the logs must be shaken loose. Sudden loss, crisis, or even a positive but dramatic change can feel like that kind of shake up.
And change is always stressful – regardless of whether it’s welcome or unwelcome. And our text today offers us the hope that being shaken on the inside is often an essential part of the process of becoming… from time to time, some things inside us will need to be shaken loose… to make room for what is essential for our continued healing, growth and maturing.
And so today on this first Sunday of advent, the question I’m inviting us into is this:
When things are being shaken loose inside us… what is helpful for us to keep in mind and remember? What practices help us to endure the shaking process? And how can we help one another hold onto hope, even during the stressful and sometimes agonizing process of being shaken?
So I’ll invite us to hold those questions in mind while we listen to Jesus’s words in Luke chapter 21. He is giving his listeners a warning of cold, dark, and hard times to come. He mentions wars and insurrections, he speaks about earthquakes and storms. He talks about persecutions and people being forced out of their homes. So real cheery stuff.
And then he says this:
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” (Luke 21)
So we might hear this as Jesus offering us a perspective on what is taking place when we encounter hard times that feel fearful and foreboding: the powers of the heavens are being shaken.
“powers” of heavens:
- miracles
- healing
- left Jesus when touched
- received with the Spirit
In the Greek this word powers is almost always a reference to the power of God made visible here on earth – it’s translated as miracles or the power to heal, or the power Jesus told his friends they would receive when the Holy Spirit came upon them on the day of Pentecost.
So we might imagine the powers of heaven as being power entrusted to us, human beings here on earth, the church, the body of Christ -- the power to do good and embody God’s presence here on earth.
So what then might it mean for that power in us to be shaken?
“…but now [God] has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.’ This phrase, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of what is shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.” (Heb 12)
The author of Hebrews offers us a helpful clue about the shaking process. We read in Hebrews, “that God has promised, ‘yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.’ And this phrase, ‘yet once more’ indicates the removal of what is being shaken – that is, created things, things not of God—so that what cannot be shaken is what will remain.
The removal of what is being shaken… so that what cannot be shaken is what will remain.
Many foods are harvested through shaking so that the hard outer shell—the part that’s toxic or lacks nutrients – is removed, and what remains is the nourishing part.
So holding that image in mind, I’ll invite us to take a deep breath, close your eyes if it’s helpful, and turn your attention inward where you might listen to yourself and the Spirit…
What is being shaken loose inside you?
What is being removed because it no longer serves us?
What do we imagine will remain which cannot be shaken?
What is being shaken loose inside you this advent season? What is being removed because perhaps it no longer serves you – individually, or us, collectively as a community? And if we are being shaken right now, what do we imagine will remain and how might turn out to have been essential for our healing, growth and maturing? I’ll give you a moment to just notice what surfaces for you, and how that awareness might connect us with hope, even in the midst of being shaken.
Alright, when you’re ready, we’ll come back together… our text goes onto say something important I think about where we can draw comfort when the shaking process feels frightening or distressing.
Jesus offers us this hopeful image:
“Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” (Luke 21)
Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory.
So we have the image of a shaking process which removes from us what no longer serves us, leaving only that which is essential for our healing, growth and maturing. But the process itself – the being shaken feels frightening and distressing – like seeds being tossed in a basket.
And now we’re offered this image of the Son of Man – Christ – coming in a cloud – with a different kind of power.
So what might it mean to receive the Son of Man coming in a cloud?
Scripture often gives us the image of a cloud when referring to groups of people, humans, gathered together like drops of water, like a mist, or a cloud of witnesses.
And I think there is something helpful for us in this reminder that we may sometimes be craning our necks to look for Jesus in the sky, meanwhile, Christ is already here - in the flesh - embodied in us, whenever we’re gathered together in love, the body of Christ on earth.
And when we are shaken by sudden loss, our community may embodied Christ for us.
It’s profound that we can be that for one another – Christ in the flesh.
This is an image of an ofrenda, an altar of offerings, for a community grief ritual — a touching time to gather, journal, pray, bury, reflect, create, grieve and remember the changes and losses we’ve endured this past year.
In the words of Francis Weller, much of America is a grief illiterate culture.
“On some level, we are waiting for the village to appear so we can fully acknowledge our sorrows. Imagine the feeling of relief that would flood our whole being if we knew that when we were in the grip of sorrow or illness, our village would respond to our need. This would not be out of pity, but out of realization that each of us will take our turn being in need. And by renewing the bonds of belonging, we support our ability to remain healthy and whole.” – Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow
What if the shaking process is what prepares us to be the village – the body of Christ – for one another in increasingly more tangible ways?
“Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” (Luke 21)
And then they will see the “Son of Man” coming in a cloud, in us, in the body of Christ which we are becoming, with power and great glory… the power to be agents of healing, growth, and maturing for one another.
We are finding ways to courageously say yes to the process of being shaken, and we’re learning how to come together and grieve in community, so that we may also be prepared to receive God’s love, laughter, and lightness in a new way perhaps on the horizon.
Now our scripture wraps up with Jesus saying this:
“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21)
Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
So when things are being shaken loose inside us… how is God drawing near and holding us, even as we’re being shaken? And how can we help one another hold onto hope when the shaking starts to feel like too much?
”There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.“ (Luke 21)
I want to invite us to zoom out and look at this text as a whole, and notice the movement in Jesus’s words…
People will faint…
Then they will see…
Now stand up and raise your heads…
When I hear those words they sound to me like the movements of a dance…
First a fainting, a falling to the ground…
Then a seeing, looking around, and finding you’re not alone, your village surrounds you, here embodied in us—the body of Christ, and ways we are learning to be here for one another.
Now stand up and raise your heads… for your redemption is drawing near.
Redeemed:
- get or win back
- free from what distresses or harms
- free from captivity
- extricate from
- help to overcome something detrimental
- release or free
- change for the better
- repair or restore
And this word redemption can mean a lot of things. It can mean God getting us back, freeing us from what distresses or harms us or traps us… helping us overcome something detrimental, releasing us, changing us for the better, repairing and restoring us.
So what does the practice of receiving that hope look like?
“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21)
Stand up and raise your heads, that’s it…
In other words, the work is largely not done by us… we simply endure the shaking process and receive what we need for our healing, growth, and maturing. Our part in the process is actually very little.
As Francis Weller says it:
“Our primary work is to make ourselves receptive. The organ of receiving is the human heart, and it is here that we feel the deep ache of loss, the bittersweet reminders of all that we love, the piercing artifacts of betrayal, and the sheer truth of impermanence… hundreds of times I have heard how fearful people are of dropping into the well of grief. The most frequent comment is “If I go there, I’ll never return.” What I found myself saying was, “If you don’t go there, you’ll never return.” ― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow
I think it is very hopeful that we have chosen as a community, “to go there.”
We have been shaken, and we have grieved that together.
What now are we hoping will come from the shaking process – what are we hoping redemption will look like for us this advent season?
For some of us, I know the degree to which we’ve been shaken privately on the inside has felt so drastic, we may feel broken, irreparably even. And if that’s you this morning, I want to offer you companionship in that intensity.
May you find that what feels impossibly cracked by the intensity of your shaking process, is being made whole once more, through “golden joinery.” So that what cannot be shaken is what will remain – and what is redeemed is rendered even more strong, even more reflective of the beauty and healing entrusted to us humans, the church, the body of Christ – that we may find in this advent season the hope which we are tempted to look for in the heavens is already here and present among us.
May we be helped to endure and receive it.
Please pray with me.
Loving God
who shakes the heavens
and rattles the interior of our hearts,
May our fears be softened
by the hope of your nearness
which inspires us to draw near to one another.
In the name of God who shakes us loose,
Christ who redeems us,
And the Spirit, who heals our broken places,
Amen
Listening with you,
Further reading:
Systematic theology: Soteriology, Pneumatology, Ecclesiology
The Brain & the Spirit, Chapter 7, Reconnection, “The Body of Christ,” pp. 153–6; “Baptism”, pp. 157–8; “Eucharist,” pp. 158–60; “Sanctuary,” pp. 160–2; “The Story of the Body of Christ,” p. 162.
