Judged and Labeled by God

 

Sermon 8-16-20 

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Though Ryan won’t remember much of anything that happened on her baptism day, I still sort of feel like I still ought to apologize for Jesus here. I’m just afraid that he might not be making a good first impression. This is considered one of Jesus’ many “hard sayings.” It goes right along with Jesus’ teaching on plucking out our right eye if causes us to sin… saying he wants us to hate our parents for the sake of the Gospel… saying he came “not bringing peace but a sword,” … saying “the camel going through the eye of a needle” will have a better chance of being saved than a rich person. Yup, these are all Jesus’ words.

And here, we have a couple of whoppers like the blind leading the blind, what comes from the heart is what ruins a person, and finally, Jesus seeming to ignore this woman clearly in need, and then calling her a dog. Yikes, Jesus. Not a good look.

So much ink has been spilled over the centuries to explain, soften, or justify what Jesus says and does to this woman, and I don’t think any of them are completely satisfying. Maybe we need to look for a crumb, or rather, a trail of crumbs, that just might lead us to a destination that makes sense to us.

Every woman in every time and place who has spoken up and spoken out has always been judged harshly - and this Canaanite woman is no exception. She was, after all, judged and labeled as an outsider in nearly every possible way – Canaanite, poor, single mother of an ill child, who was a girl, and she was loud and demanding.  

While this woman was labeled and judged by the world, she judged rightly the correct label for Jesus.  She called him Lord and Son of David while the religious leaders of Jesus’ own people despised and rejected him. She knelt before him and engaged in spirited dialogue with him, while his own disciples seem to almost constantly wander about with their mouths hanging open in surprise.

She knew what Jesus was capable of, and was not afraid to fight to get it, for her daughter’s sake. Even if it meant facing a tired and judg-y savior. She knew that in the end, he would not and could not go against his nature. She knew he would do the right thing – that he would “throw her a bone,” so to speak. And she was right. And I think that’s why he called her faith great.

I wonder if Jesus ever thought about this woman and her great faith again. I especially wonder if he thought about her on that dark Passover night, as he prepared to face his passion and death.

I wonder if Jesus remembered her words about the crumbs and the dogs as he blessed the bread and broke it, and watched the crumbs from the broken pieces fall from the table.

I wonder if Jesus remembered and missed her persistent faith and intelligent repartee as he looked at the confused and surprised faces of his disciples, who would soon abandon, deny, and betray him, sitting at the table with him instead.

During his ministry on earth, Jesus began the work of breaking down boundaries and destroying the labels we give one another. In his death, Jesus is our Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And in his resurrection, we all are reborn and relabeled as children of God. We, as gentiles and foreigners in God’s original promises, are not left to be satisfied with the crumbs from the table. We have been adopted as children in the waters of baptism, and given a place at the table forever.

And God is continually adding extenders to the family table. And just when we think that the table is full and can’t possibly be stretched out any farther without completely collapsing, God keeps pushing.

Sometimes we are pushing outward WITH God, participating in the mission we share as baptized children of God, bearing God’s creative and redeeming word of love to ALL the world. Other times, we find ourselves pushing the other way, telling God that the table has gone far enough and surely there is no room at the table for THOSE people we label as “unworthy.”

Hanging above the dining room table at my grandma’s house is a poem copied out in fancy calligraphy letters by my uncle when he was a kid. It’s hung there as long as I can remember, and to this day it’s still my grandma’s favorite poem. It goes like this:

I dreamt death came the other night and Heaven’s gate swung wide.

An angel with a halo bright ushered me inside.

And there! To my astonishment stood folks I’d judged and labeled

As “quite unfit”, “of little worth”, and “spiritually disabled”.

Indignant words rose to my lips but never were set free,

For every face showed stunned surprise --Not one expected me!

Imagine, if you will, your own arrival at the so-called Pearly Gates, waiting in line to get checked in by one of the saints. You take a glance around and are astonished at the diversity of people with you in line. You strike up a conversation with some people around you, and when they ask you what congregation you belonged to back on earth, you proudly respond “Family of God Lutheran Church in Buckingham PA”!

What do you expect their reaction to be? Will their face light up, having heard about how we prioritized the community, and went above and beyond for the people around us in need, sharing our assets to benefit and to help one another, even in a pandemic?

 Or will they remember a congregation that paid more attention to our weeds… but didn’t seek to weed out racism? Will they remember a church that is literally on the doorstep of New Hope… and yet, are reluctant to consider becoming Reconciling in Christ? … Will then remember a church that would privilege “rent” and budget bottom lines over existing relationships with community groups who use our building?

What if, on that day, someone from AA or from the Classical Conversations group showed stunned surprised that members of our congregation somehow made “it into heaven”?

The good news is, Jesus DOES expects you at the table. And he also expects all “those people” we judge and label as “quite unfit and of little worth” to be there too. Jesus really, really meant it when he gave his disciples his marching orders at the very end of Matthew’s gospel: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of ALL NATIONS, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

And that’s exactly what we are going to do today. Ryan Elizabeth will be labeled as a child of God, welcomed with open arms into this community of faith, where No Label has barred her from being gathered into the body of Christ – not gender identity or sexual orientation or nationality or economic status or anything else that threatens to divide us. This is an exciting day, and we of course are eager to welcome her as a new member of this congregation. But… are we the type of congregation that she will take pride in being a part of as she grows up? Or will she feel like she will have to apologize for the actions and inactions of this congregation in the face of a world that is in desperate need for a crumb of hope right now? Will she have to remind her congregation of their identity - just as this Canaanite woman reminded Jesus of his? 

Ryan will be marked by the same sign of the cross that we all have – labeled as loved and belonging to God, and called to share signs of that love with the whole world. In the economy of God, there is always enough to go around. Let’s make sure that THIS – the body of Christ -  is the label that we will be remembered for. Together, as Christ’s body here on earth, even though we are dispersed, let’s show the world more than a crumb. Let’s show them Jesus. Amen.

From Transfiguration to Eternity

2-23-20

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

It is good to be able to experience something just a little bit out of the ordinary, isn’t it? For example, a few weeks ago I took some time out of my regular schedule to spend an entire week reading all the books that has I had wanted to catch up on for the last few months but haven’t had a chance to. But one thing I did not expect to receive alongside knowledge and insight – a sore back from all that sitting. I have no idea how I did this college and seminary!

That week I got to “spend time” in a Religion 101 classroom with Barbara Brown Taylor. I dove into the life and wisdom of Rozella Haydee White, a speaker I had heard for the first time during the 2015 national youth gathering in Detroit. I read a memoir of a Latina Lutheran woven with the stories of immigrants and refugees in the Bible. I dug into how to cultivate a culture of generosity in congregations. I even traveled the world with mortician and death researcher Caitlyn Doughty as she explored death rituals in other countries. 

In one chapter of this particular book, called “From Here to Eternity” Doughty she wrote about her visit to a Buddhist columbarium in Japan called Ruriden, which is very surprising by our standards. The columbarium (a place where cremains are laid to rest) is a room full of thousands of niches containing tiny buddha statues all the way around. When a family comes to visit, using a swipe card coded to the location of their loved one’s remains, the tiny Buddha figurines begin to glow violet, and the Buddha figure that contains your loved one’s ashes shimmers with a bright white light. It may seem strange to us, but to the people of Japan, this is a deeply meaningful part of how they honor the people they love who have died.

The transfiguration story and Transfiguration Sunday is a strange little holiday in the church year…it sneaks up on us out of nowhere and puzzles preachers and church goers alike. But this story – and this Sunday - serves a very specific purpose. It is the space that separates the season after Epiphany and the season of Lent. It is the hinge that connects Jesus’ baptism and Jesus’ death. It is the liminal space – the “thin place” - the changes the course of Jesus’s journey and prepares him for what is to come. It is the mountaintop experience that catches the disciples, and us, off guard, and makes us wonder what we signed up for. It stops us in our tracks and interrupts our “regularly scheduled daily lives.”

As a friend of mine recently reflected, “How many of us go through our lives just going through our lives?” And yet, every so often, we all experience something like the joy and fear of a mountain top/ life changing moment. Sometimes they are sudden and come upon us unexpectedly – a surprise diagnosis, a shocking job opportunity, nearly missing a fender bender, or an accidental meeting that changed your life. For example, the morning I opened the email on Ash Wednesday 2017 to find out that I was in the top 10 in an international preaching contest that I had forgotten that I entered was one such moment.

Other transformational moments mark the hinge moments between important life stages, between two different states of life that we have been preparing for in one way or another, for months or even years:

Engagement - Wedding day – marriage

 School – graduation – “real life”/job

Pregnancy – birth – life

Pre-baptism – baptism – following Jesus as a disciple. (You get the picture)

The transfiguration of Jesus is the hinge moment in his ministry – setting him on the path toward Jerusalem, and his death on the cross. Similarly, Transfiguration Sunday is the hinge between the season after Epiphany, and the season of Lent.

Peter’s problem is that he wanted to live in this “hinge moment” up there with Jesus, Elijah and Moses on the mountain. The longer they stay up there, the longer they put off facing the whole “death of the son of man” thing. But we can’t live on the mountain top or in those transitional moments for ever. As wonderful as your wedding day might have been, can you imagine how stressful that would be to live every day in that kind of intensity? You would never go around your daily business wearing your graduation cap and gown. After your diploma is in your hand, you get to work putting what you’ve learned into practice.

After God had affirmed Jesus, using the same words as God did during Jesus’s baptism (though adding “listen to him” as an addendum), and the disciples had seen Jesus in his glory, consulting with two of the most revered prophets of all time, Jesus and his disciples had to come down the mountain.  They had to return to real life. Though the life they then returned to would never be the same again. This surprising experience is something they carried with them, and eventually made its way to us, to keep surprising us as well. They had seen Jesus through the eyes of God, and they would never be the same.

But that tends to be the case, when we look at others through the eyes of God – if the light of Christ has been given to each of us as we have been baptized, what would happen if we acted like we could see this shining flame ALL the time? What if we intentionally looked at one another, using God Vision? And what if you also saw YOURSELF that way?

One of my favorite books is Lila by Marilynn Robinson. Lila grew up poor and orphaned in the 1930s, and only saw herself through the eyes of those who looked down on her because of things she did to survive. Seemingly and surprisingly by chance, she ends up in a small town in Iowa, and marries the local minister.

On the day that preacher proposed to AND baptized Lila, he remembered the day they met: “I expected to continue with [loneliness] the rest of my life. Then I saw you that morning. I saw your face.” Lila replied, “Don’t’ talk like that. I know about my face.”

But he persisted. “I suspect you don’t. You don’t know how I see it.”

One night during a snowstorm after they were married, the two of them were talking, and Lila’s husband said, “Family is a prayer. Wife is a prayer. Marriage is a prayer.”

Lila, remembering her own baptism, adds, “Baptism is a prayer.”

To that, her husband replied, “No, baptism is what I call a fact.”

Your baptism is a fact. God’s love for you is a fact. God chose you – that’s a fact. As strange as it may sound, the light of Christ shines out in you too – as that light shown in the face of Jesus.

The season of Epiphany may be over, but the light will never be extinguished.  And as we face our own mortality and mark Jesus’ journey to the cross this coming Ash Wednesday, I would dare to say that it is not darkness that we are really afraid of. It’s shining that we fear. We would rather wait in the wings and hide in the cloud – or in three little huts – on the mountain top rather than go down the mountain to shine. But as Marianne Williamson wrote in her poem “Our Deepest Fear:”

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us....

We ask ourselves - Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.....

We are all meant to shine… We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; It's in everyone....

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

And that means, we gotta shine.

This world is a pretty scary place, And it can be even scarier when we go out on a limb and “let our light shine,” especially when what we do or say will be perceived as something that is surprising or shakes up “normal life.”  In those times, we can remember that the light that is within us is not our own - it comes from a source of light that is greater than us. Our light comes from God. God illuminates our way and defeats the powers of evil in this world. In Jesus, God revealed to all people God’s love in the flesh. And that love is given to each of us to shine in the world.

Together, we are able to shine, to rival even the sun in the sky…. Just as Jesus did, both up on that mountain, and in his words and actions, in his life and in his death… and beyond. So, as God says, Listen up! Listen to Jesus - Get up, and do not be afraid. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Jesus is Not Special

3-3-19

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

One Saturday when I was in middle school, my youth group carpooled out to Devils Lake State Park, about an hour north of Madison. It was a gorgeous fall day as we trekked up and down the hills around Devil’s Lake and enjoying the spectacular view. After a while, though, I noticed that my knees were starting to feel sore – not from going UP the steep hills, but more from going DOWN them. This is apparently a common phenomenon among people who do a lot of climbing – it often takes MORE energy to get DOWN a mountain than to go UP… and sometimes climbers get into trouble when they use up ALL their energy on the way UP, and don’t have enough strength to get back down again.

It’s sort of a wonder, then, that Jesus came down the mountain at all. After all, who would not want to just hang out with Moses and Elijah, with just your 3 closest friends, and keep your clothes dazzling white when you lived in a dusty climate WAY before TIDE was invented. Jesus COULD have taken Peter’s suggestion of building some tents for Moses and Elijah too, so they would be tempted to stick around for an extended camping vacation. It sounds like heaven for an introvert like me. Just set up shop and make people come to YOU. Especially knowing what would happen to Jesus after he came down.

But if Jesus HAD stayed up there on the mountain forever here in Chapter 9, where would that leave the rest of us? Sure, Jesus would remain shiny and nice, flanked by the Big-League Prophets and Peter, James, and John. But then, Jesus would never have taught us the Lord’s prayer, which doesn’t happen until chapter 11. Jesus would not have taught his parables about God’s kingdom. Jesus would never have healed the sick and blessed children or encountered Zacchaeus “the wee little man.” Jesus would not have his last supper, and he would not have suffered, died, and risen again.

We can’t live up on the mountain, and neither can Jesus. Jesus obviously did come down the mountain, the very next day, and just in time too.  Almost immediately from the crowd that was following Jesus, a father comes forward begging for help. It sounds to our modern ears that his son is suffering from some kind of epileptic fit. Whatever the cause, this helpless child is suffering, and no on else but Jesus can help.

As Jesus approached the boy, the illness cast the poor kid down to the ground yet again, which must have been terrifying to witness. But Jesus got closer, and so his pristine, dazzling white clothes became covered in the dust that the convulsing boy must have invariably kicked up. And, both still covered in that dust, Jesus healed the child and gave him back to his father, who I’m sure was too overjoyed to notice all the dirt. His boy was whole again, and that’s all that mattered. I’m sure that father was glad Jesus came down the mountain.

Peter didn’t want Jesus to come down the mountain. Perhaps he was afraid that Jesus’s shiny special-ness might wear off if he didn’t stay up there. But what Peter didn’t know yet is that Jesus is for everyday use, not just for special occasions. He didn’t know yet that Jesus was serious about getting involved with the messiness of being human, and that meant getting a little bit dusty sometimes… and other times it meant staining his face with tears or even bleeding from a cross. But this is how we know that the love of God is real – real love gets dirty. Real love gets shabby and threadbare from use.

In that favorite children’s story, The Velveteen Rabbit, the stuffed toy that became so well-loved by his boy that all his fur rubbed of, his whiskers fell out, and his lovely brown coat had faded to a dull grey. This boy too became sick, and the velveteen rabbit stayed by his side as he got well again.

But when the boy was better, all his things – which were thought to be “germy” - were packed up to be thrown away, including the rabbit. As the rabbit sat out with the rest of the garbage that night, The Nursery-Magic fairy came to visit him. The rabbit’s scruffy and well-worn appearance proved that the boy had loved him very much. Love had already made the toy rabbit real to the boy… and so the fairy simply completed the process of becoming real by changing the toy rabbit into a real one.

I love what the Skin Horse says to the velveteen rabbit early in the “becoming real” process: “Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you…You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily…  or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off… and you get … very shabby. But these things don't matter at all.”

Being real is being a little rough around the edges, a little dusty and mundane. Because that is where we live MOST of the moments of our lives – up the mountain but also down it. 

As some of my United Methodist women clergy friends wrote in a devotional (We Pray With Her), “Life has those big, beautiful moments, but mostly it’s made up of mundane things…  The good news is that God is in the business of making mundane things holy.” (page 65) Another friend said to me, “Jesus is not birthday cake… Jesus is our daily bread.”

Jesus is not special and doesn’t have to be put away up on a mountain to be kept safe to be used only on special occasions, like breakable fine china. Jesus also uses very “non-special” things for his work. Water and a promise become the means we are called beloved Children of God in our baptisms. Ordinary bread and wine become the means we are welcomed and fed by Jesus’s presence so that we don’t lose the strength to keep going down the mountain and survive and thrive in this dusty world. Jesus is with us every moment, in the breaking of bread, in the dust and in our tears, in our sweat as we work for justice.

We are about to embark on the season of Lent, which begins on Wednesday with a smudge of ash on our foreheads and a reminder that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Jesus gets down there in the dust of life, and next week he’ll be spending 40 days in the dust of a barren wilderness. But we’ll take more about that next week.

For now, Jesus is both up on the mountain, shiny and savoring the glory of his identity of be the Beloved of his Father, before descending into the dust that makes up our daily realities. Jesus is up there on the mountain, but Jesus is also down here on the flat places as well – as he preached last week in his sermon on the plain. He is down here where real love gets a bit messy, and love might get revealed in the ordinary things, hidden in plain sight.

One of my favorite poems is called “To be of Use,” and part of it goes like this:

“The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.”

Real Love is not about the big birthday parties or cakes you got on your birthday – you saw their love every time your parents kissed your booboos better, or changed your diaper, or taught you how to tie your shoe. Real Love is not about the vows that you made on your wedding day in a white dress or immaculate tux, but it’s every time you said “I love you” before leaving the house, every time your spouse folded the laundry or loaded the dishwasher. Real Love is being present in all the little moments, not just the big ones. Real Love was made to be… useful. And it was made to be used OFTEN… every moment of every day.

This means that we might get a little dinged up on this journey called life. When follow Jesus’ example, WE are likely going to get dusty, smudged, faded, or even broken. Like one of our communion chalices – it came apart right at the seam. But we glued it back together, and we will be using it again. Jesus does the same – healing our broken and loved-off bits, so that we can continue to be vessels of the Real Love of God in the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Let Your Light Shine

February Newsletter Article

“In the same way, Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and glorify you Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16

I remember coming across this verse as a teenager and instantly loving it. For me, this verse told me that the light of God was in me, shining out. And yet, at the same time, this verse frightened me a little bit. For a shy, introverted teenager the thought of shining out and attracting attention scared the dickens out of me. But I still liked this verse, and even used it as my confirmation verse. Because it reminded me that the light does not come from being and doing good. It is through what I do that shows God’s light shining within me. And light is meant to be shone. It would not make any sense to turn on a lamp and then through a blanket over it.
And yet, that is what we so often do. In this extended season of Epiphany, the season of light, we are reminded that it is not darkness that we are really afraid of. It’s the light. Darkness is comfortable – it covers a multitude of sins. It gives us an excuse to NOT to live into who God is calling us to be. But, as Marianne Williamson wrote in her poem “Our Deepest Fear:”

We were born to make manifest 
The glory of God that is within us.

This year, in the New Jersey Synod’s yearly February retreat for high school youth at LBI, the theme is “Mine” – the fact that we belong to God enables us to navigate an often scary and unsafe world, knowing that our God walks with us. Each of our young people are lights shining out in the darkness every day, in the midst of bullying, drugs and alcohol, challenges at home or school, navigating social media, and growing into who God has created them to be. And they need our support and example now more than ever.

We too can let our light shine into the darkness that is in our own lives and in the lives of others. It does not have to be complicated or heroic. Just the normal, regular, everyday light-shining of love will do.

Here is the entire poem:

A Bent-Over Prayer

Found on the internet:

Banish the bent-over spirits:

memory of red guilt or
a long-ago foolish choice:
wrong marriage or
bitter divorce;
small crimes or
little legal brutalities;
a legion of torment
of additions.
Sexual abuse, manipulation,
domestic violence;
losses of mind, sight,
hearing, mobility,
self-doubt or
its grand mirror—
grandiosity.

Banish the bent-over spirits:

and good things, too:
obsessions now that
began healthy and
twisted a whole life;
professional demands,
creative dreams;
caring for an
ailing, aging parent,
proud-pushing an achieving child;
beautiful homes
shopped to sparkling,
beautiful bodies
jogged-starved to thin;
even church-work
where faith eats
its children.

Banish the bent-over spirits.

My shoulders sink,
and my spine curls
under the weight, while
my eyes turn in until
I cannot recognize
the one who heals.
See me here,
and call me, Christ.
Lay your hands on
the human meaning
beneath distortion.
In spite of a world
that disciplines healing,
in spite of people
who do not want
others well,
say the words
that set me free—

that I may straighten into praise.

from An Improbable Gift of Blessing: Prayers to Nurture the Spirit 
by Maren C. Tirabassi and Joan Jordan Grant

Emily Dickinson Never Ceases to Amaze.

I got a blast from the past listening to NPR recently - they were talking about the poet Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets, especially as a teenager. Once I got a slim volume of some of her poetry from the Scholastic Book Fliers (weren't those things AWESOME!) and I read every poem over and over. Eventually the cover fell off, but I kept reading it. One of my favorites was one that begins "This world is not conclusion." After hearing the NPR segment, I went to my "Collected Works of Emily Dickinson" from Barnes and Noble that I bought a few years ago to replace my worn out copy. I looked up the poem - yes, just as I remembered! Awesome! 

Recently on Facebook I heard of an event, "Show them a theologian." You pick a theologian and use his/her picture as your profile picture. I mentally rounded up the usual suspects - Bonhoeffer, Thomas Merton, MLK Jr, Henri Nouwen... but hmm, where were the women? I haven't read a lot of Julian of Norwich, and I'm not the biggest fan of Theresa of Avila. Then, bam! An idea! I could use Emily!

I wanted also to include one of her poems, of course, and why not use my favorite, to show that she often wrote about faith, God, and eternal life? And why type it when you can google search it? But I got an unintended surprise. The poem I found was not the poem I remembered from childhood. What I found was I think the original, before it was edited for cleanliness and also before it was ABRIDGED. It turns out the poem that I had known and loved was not the COMPLETE POEM. I had no idea. And the poem in its entirety is more amazing, more subtle, more thought-provoking than the original. I'll share both for comparison. The one I grew up with:



THIS world is not conclusion;
  A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
  But positive, as sound.
It beckons and it baffles;        
  Philosophies don’t know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
  Sagacity must go.
To guess it puzzles scholars;
  To gain it, men have shown         
Contempt of generations,
  And crucifixion known.



Nice and neat and drawn together. Now, this is the original, I think (I'm actually finding it hard to discover why it was edited the way it was). Imagine my shock and delight. 



This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond --
Invisible, as Music --
But positive, as Sound --
It beckons, and it baffles --
Philosophy -- don't know --
And through a Riddle, at the last --
Sagacity, must go --
To guess it, puzzles scholars --
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown --
Faith slips -- and laughs, and rallies --
Blushes, if any see --
Plucks at a twig of Evidence --
And asks a Vane, the way --
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit --
Strong Hallelujahs roll --
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul --


Wow. What a difference that last stanza makes. It entirely changes the meaning of the poem. The first one ends with such trusting certainty in the unknown, while the second (or rather the first? Since it was the original?) leaves you with that nagging feeling of doubt... or it it belief in an afterlife that is nagging the soul? (Narcotics here refers to drugs used for dulling a toothache). It's unclear, and so much more realistic and interesting. The first poem affirms that we will never know what is beyond death in this lifetime, and the second affirms that this knowledge nags at us like a toothache.  No one has pat answers about what lies beyond, of course. Our faith gets tripped up all the time. But to think of heaven as another species (as in, we'll have immortal bodies like Paul writes, perhaps? 1 Corinthians 15:53: "For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality." ) rather than a sequel (more of the same thing) is so much more compelling... and Biblical. Way to go, Emily.