11/23/2025 - Held Together

Jeremiah 23:1-6
Colossians 1:11-20

I am a nerd for oracle and tarot. 

I always begin my clergy coaching sessions with an oracle card pull. 

During my last session, my coach pulled this image from the Wild Chorus deck that really struck me: a crow perched under a dark, brooding sky, its gaze fixed on a piercing stream of light breaking through the clouds. And in that narrow beam of light, golden ginkgo leaves drifting downward.
Initially, what struck me most was that there was no tree in the image — just these leaves, falling from nowhere.

As I sat with it, I found myself wondering: were these leaves real or imagined?

We began talking about Ginkgos — often called “living fossils” — the oldest surviving tree species on earth. They’ve endured ice ages, mass extinctions, the bombing of Hiroshima. They are emblems of perseverance, renewal, and life emerging again after devastation. Season after season, age after age, they endure.

Quickly, the question “Are the leaves real or imagined?” faded in importance. My wondering shifted to:
What were the ginkgo leaves that carried me through my long season of transition?
What were the ginkgo leaves that carried you, Holy Innocents, through yours?

Jeremiah and Paul are both writing to communities living through transition — communities as disoriented and weary as many of us have been.

Jeremiah speaks to a people scattered and traumatized. Their nation has collapsed. Their temple is gone. Their leaders — the shepherds — have failed them.
“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture,” God says.
The people’s trust is fractured; their very identity feels lost.

And into that devastation, God speaks a word of healing:
“I myself will gather the remnant of my flock… they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them… and they shall not fear any longer.”

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s not a promise of things returning to the way they used to be.
It’s a promise of renewal — new shepherds, new life, a new name: The Lord is our righteousness.

That word, tsedeqah — righteousness — is relational. It means right relationship: healed trust, restored community, wholeness woven back together.

Colossians echoes that vision of gathering, but stretches it across the cosmos.
Paul reminds a struggling, anxious church who Christ truly is:
“the image of the invisible God… in him all things hold together.”

That phrase — hold together — comes from the Greek synistēmi (soon-is-TAY-mee): to cohere, to be bound into wholeness.
So, what Paul is saying is — Even when everything feels like it’s falling apart, Christ is the One still holding you — and the whole creation — together.

Whew - I feel that.

Especially in times of transition, grief, instability, and change upon change, our gathering is not just our doing — it is God’s doing.
It’s there that the spirit has been quietly collecting the scattered pieces, softening hearts, renewing courage, and knitting us into a community held together in Christ.

It’s always so easy and tempting to look backwards — to measure vitality by what used to be.
But Jeremiah does not promise, “I’ll take you back to the old days.”
And Paul does not say, “Christ will restore what once was.”
Instead, Christ is the firstborn of the new creation, the One who brings life out of death.

As I continue to be present and engage with my own healing, my own renewal taking place — the card reminded me of the importance of being able to imagine that healing is possible — and at the same time — seeing the real signs that healing is already taking place. 

And renewal often shows up in simple, holy ways:
In gathering around at coffee hour or a meal – Thanksgiving gathering was incredible.
In music. Games. Making sandwiches.
In laughter.
In children being children.

These moments aren’t small.
They are signs — gingko leaves — of God’s healing at work — reminders that we were never meant to navigate life alone.
When we laugh, when we share bread, when we tell stories, when we show up for one another — we witness to the Christ who “reconciles all things to himself….”

I know I am a broken record, and I don’t care — Joy becomes a form of resistance — against despair, against isolation, against the lie that what’s broken will always remain broken.

So as we continue walking this good road, may we remember:

Christ is holding us together — even when we feel fragile.
Christ is gathering us — even if the flock still feels scattered.
Christ is renewing us — not to return to what was, but to step into what can be.

And like those golden ginkgo leaves drifting through a break in the storm — signs of life that survives what should have destroyed it — 

May we look for the quiet gifts God keeps sending: moments of beauty, endurance, hope, joy that carries us through.

Let us keep showing up.
Let us keep rejoicing.
Let us keep noticing the ginkgo leaves in our path.
Let us keep trusting the One who gathers, heals, and makes all things new.

Amen.