The term sandwich generation refers to people who
have young children with active lives at the same time they have aging parents. I am one of those who live my life in the
“sandwich” and particularly after the last couple of weeks, I understand why
the term is used to describe us. In
early April, my family had a wicked stomach bug pass through. While I never succumbed to the illness, I had
to help my family through it, losing some work hours along the way. Then, about a week later, my dad was taken by
ambulance the hospital with dizziness and chest pains. For now, at least, he
has escaped needing major surgery, which is a relief. Nevertheless, it made for a stressful few
days travelling back and forth to hospitals to visit him and coordinating with
my brother to make sure my mom had adequate care. All the while, life went on
around us. Events happened in the broader world and in our daily lives. There
was still work for both my wife and me, school for the kids, church activities,
baseball for my son, and dance rehearsal for my daughter, and more. We had to balance it all as best we
could.
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| "Sandwiched" by life. |
I feel smack-dab in the middle of the “sandwich”
right now, surrounded on all sides by the “bread” of life. It’s not exactly a comfortable place.
We were at dinner at our favorite Chinese
place when I found out about my dad.
Becca was at a sleepover with a friend but Brady was with us. Upon hearing the news that his pop was ill
and we would need to go visit him in the hospital, his first question was: Can we finish eating? (Clearly, he is
his father’s son.)
A humorous story, yes, but also illustrative of our lives. We’re busy living our life and all of a
sudden, something unexpected happens; suddenly we are find ourselves in a crisis and must decide how to
respond. Life typically doesn’t stop to
accommodate us in these moments. We
still have to eat and take care of ourselves so we can function and do what is
needed in our particular situation. It’s easier said than done though; it can feel
like “just one more thing” to fit into our already über-busy lives. I know I have felt more stressed and tired than
usual the past few weeks.
When
we found out my dad was ill, whatever plans we had that night and in the days
that followed had to go “out the window”.
We had to rearrange our schedule to make time for hospital visits and so
forth—not exactly what we planned to do with those days, but it’s what you do
in these situations if you have even an ounce of compassion for others in need. Even when I managed to do something “normal”
during that time, like work for a few hours or go to the gym, my mind was
occupied with thoughts of him.
Times of crisis of have a
way of putting what we say we believe
about God to the test. We like to speak
of a God who walks with us—but it’s
when the rubber of our faith makes contact with the hardscrabble road of life
that we find out what we actually
believe.
Particularly
during times of crisis, I find that plans for tomorrow have to be “written in
pencil”. Hard as it for me to do sometimes being a strong Meyers–Brigg “J”
personality, I have had to learn to be flexible, to take it day-by-day, and to
wait on God and see what tomorrow brings—Psalm
27:14. When Jesus taught the disciples to pray, he
told them to say: Give us [today] our
daily bread—Matthew 6:11—and not
to worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will
like have its own laundry-list of problems and God already knows about them—Matthew 6:31-34. Many times the past
couple weeks my wife and I just prayed for God to, “give us what we needed for today”
and, as always, God has been faithful to provide.
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| "Sandwiched" between Easter and Pentecost |
We’re
also in a “liturgical sandwich” right now.
We’ve come through Easter with the celebration of the remarkable news of
the empty tomb and we await the “birthday of the Church” with the coming of the
Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Jesus ascends into heaven after 40 days and then the
Holy Spirit comes 10 days later on the day of Pentecost. If we attend church, we know this story well;
we repeat it every year in our liturgy.
But
travel back in time with me to before the invention of liturgical calendars; place
yourself in the sandals of Jesus’ first followers as they process the remarkable
reality of the empty tomb for the first time.
They don’t know yet that the Ascension “comes next”, followed by Pentecost. They have to take things day-by-day—they have
to take it on faith, which is no
doubt frayed by recent events. Scholars
might say they are living in liminal
space—a place where the old familiar reality they knew is gone and a new
one is emerging, but is not yet fully formed. Passage through such space is usually not easy
or comfortable.
To say it another way,
these disciples are no longer who they were before Easter, but they have not
yet become who they will be after Pentecost.
They are in an uncomfortable place; the “sandwich” is closing in around
them but the only “way out” is to “pass through” it.
I
think Mark’s Gospel does the best job conveying the liminal space between the empty tomb and the coming of the Holy
Spirit. Mark’s original ending[1]
contains none of the post-resurrection stories that have become familiar to us:
no walk to Emmaus, no Great Commission, no doubting Thomas, no restoration of
Peter. All we know from Mark’s account
is that the woman that had come to finish burying Jesus are told by a
mysterious figure clad in white that Jesus is not here, he is risen and going
ahead of them to Galilee. After that
they, went out and fled from the tomb,
for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for
they were afraid —Mark 16:8.
I’m
not surprised by the women’s’ reaction; I think they are suddenly sandwiched
between two realities. They came
expecting to bury the dead that morning and now they hear that Jesus is not
here—he is risen. Whatever plans they
had must now be completely changed and reoriented. I
think I would be confused and afraid and reluctant to talk about what I didn’t
understand too. It takes them a while to process what is going on and adjust to
the new reality. Now from the other
accounts of the story, and even the extended ending of Mark, it’s clear that
the women do “adjust” fairly quickly and share the remarkable story with the
other disciples.
All
the disciples needed time to absorb the implications what the women proclaimed
to them, and what they subsequently witnessed for themselves. Clearly, that change happens—eventually. Consider the case of Peter, who goes from a
fearful denier of Jesus at the end of the Gospels to a forceful proclaimer of
the Word on Pentecost—Acts 2. In
fact, as we read Acts, we see that similar transformations happened to the
other Apostles—including Paul’s later transformation after encountering the
Risen Lord on the Damascus Road.
But
in order for that change to “take root” all these individuals had to spend time
in liminal space, “sandwiched” between an old reality that no longer fit them
and a new one that had not yet completely emerged for them.
I wonder if the weeks between
Easter and Pentecost on our liturgical calendar could be seen as symbolizing liminal space which,
while uncomfortable to pass through, is so essential to our spiritual growth?
If
so, then perhaps there is hope for me—and for any of us who feel “sandwiched”
by life right now. Perhaps God is using
our passage through liminal space to
do important work in us as he did with those first followers more than 2000 years
ago. Who knows, he might even be
setting us up to change the world.
[1] It is generally agreed
that Mark 16:9–20 were not originally
part of the narrative. It’s almost as if the original ending that sort of left
us hanging about “what happens next” was unsatisfactory to some, so they “tacked
on” these 11 verses that seem to summarize the post-resurrection stories from the
other Gospels.
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