March 26, 2017
Texts: Psalm 23 “Goodness And Mercy”
Samuel 16:1-13 “Anointing Of Young David; God Sees The Heart”
John 9: 1-41 “Jesus The Light Of The World; Healing Of The Blind Man”
Ephesians 5: 8-14 “Christians Now You Are Light”
MEMORY TRUTH COMMUNITY SUFFERING SOLIDARITY
I confess to feeling off balance since the election. Maybe you’ve felt uneasy too--out of control, transfixed by the news, outraged at the latest tweet; worried sick about our immigrant friends and neighbors; attention distracted: captured by the three-ring circus of Washington, by the pounding of the news cycle. The immediate is king. But at some level, we know better. Outraged, fascinated, obsessive attention does not get the world or my spirit to a better place.
In his talk a few weeks ago at the Festival Center, Wes Michaelson summoned us to remember our spiritual formation within this remarkable community of Church of the Saviour. To remember the quiet wisdom of our Church Mothers and Fathers—calling us to the Inward Journey—of prayer, silence, and meditation; and welcoming us to the journey into Community where together we explore our call and our gifts and we learn how to forgive and accept forgiveness; and then this wisdom summons us to the Outward Journey—toward engagement with society and solidarity with the world of forgotten and marginalized people. We hear and respond to the call to places of suffering where Christ is living. Our heritage tells us we are not just about trying to make an oasis for ourselves and our friends. As Christ’s disciples we are led to the places of deep stillness right in the midst of the noise and confusion and pain and then to acts of compassion and solidarity. But how is this possible?
The psalm for today can bring us back to our anchor in this time of radical disequilibrium. Psalm 23. I’ll read it in the beautiful King James Version.
As I read it, I’ll ask you to close your eyes, breathe slowly and deeply, and see yourself in the lovely and safe space of the Psalm.
The Lord is my shepherd
I shall not want
He makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside the still waters
He restores my soul: he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil
My cup runs over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
We fear no evil, not because there is no evil, but because God is with us. It isn’t that the shadows of death are not all around, but that God is there to guide and comfort us and light our way. . What are ways we can ground our lives in God’s goodness and mercy? What rod and staff does the good shepherd hold out to comfort us and help us maintain our footing?
MEMORY
Wes Michaelson reminded us that the anchor of our Judeo-Christian faith is embedded in our MEMORY of God’s actions in history: At Passover each year the children of Israel are taught to hold a reenactment of their deliverance from slavery. Family and friends eat the Passover meal together. The core Christian liturgical act—the communion service—is founded on memory “Whenever you eat this bread and drink this wine, you remember the Lord’s death until he come.” These ceremonies are incorporated in our bodies. “Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of my enemies. My cup is full and overflowing” On the road to Emmaus, the resurrected Christ became known to his friends in the breaking of bread. Religious memory keeps us rooted in our faith story. In the face of many loud competing narratives—and there are many that entice us—keeping our faith history alive is critical. We need to know our heritage and teach our children. Our stories include some of the core documents of our American democracy: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all of us are created equal and we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Our Christian memory will help keep us grounded in TRUTH. I heard a commentator describe how truth is defined in Washington these days: Say something very, very loud. Say it three times. And Lo! it becomes true. “The Devil, the trickster, is the father of lies,” it says in John Chap 8.
The right answer to Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” is not always easy and plain to see. Our lectionary for today in John 9 illustrates the strange difficulties we face is ascertaining and accepting truth: A blind man comes to Jesus asking for healing. Jesus heals him; his sight is restored. The formerly blind man’s neighbors present him to the Temple authorities. I suppose they were hoping for a celebration. But no: The temple authorities would not believe their eyes: They kept stubbornly to their ingrained point of view: Jesus is a sinner, therefore he can’t really heal. I’ll read part of the story from John 9:25-34. “So for the second time the Pharisees summoned the man who had been blind, and said,
“Speak the truth before God. We know that this man is a sinner. We don’t know where he comes from” …..The formerly blind man replied, “I’ve told you what happened already but you took no notice.” Then the authorities became abusive. … The formerly blind man exclaimed, “How extraordinary! Here is a man who has opened my eyes, yet you don’t know where he has come from ….If this man was not from God, he could do nothing.”
“Who are you to lecture us?” (The blind man had been a beggar.) Then the religious authorities turned him out of the temple.
The preconceptions and miseducation of the Pharisees blind them to the truth of the matter. They can’t see it.
In our world of loud lies, fake news, and photo-shopped images, we’ll need to review our touchstones for truth very often, because we are often deluded by bright lies and preconceptions too.
The gospel stories can guide us to recognize truth and what it means for our lives: For example: John 8:32 says, “The truth shall set you free.” So: Is what I am hearing freeing or entangling? “God's word is truth.” says John 17:17 Is what I am hearing consistent with this? Meaning God's Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, the law to love our neighbor? To care for aliens, widows, and orphans?
God’s truth always makes the blind see. “The people who live in darkness have seen a great light,” says the prophet Isaiah. Our Ephesians lectionary scriptures remind us Christians: “Though you once were darkness, now you are light. Prove yourselves at home in the light, for where light is, there is a harvest of goodness, righteousness, and truth.” And the light by which Christians see is the Light of Christ who is the light of the World. Jesus himself makes this bold claim. In many places in Scripture we are told that God is not misled, as we too often are, by appearances: In the Samuel story, Samuel is sent to find the new King of Israel, and to anoint him with the oil of God’s favor. The prophet Samuel sees David’s tall, handsome older brothers first, and he wants to anoint one of them as King. But God says no. His choice is the youngest, the shepherd boy, David, because, God tells Samuel, “The Lord does not see as a mortal sees; mortals see only appearances but the Lord sees into the heart.”
COMMUNITY
Ephesians 4:25 teaches us another reason for sticking to the truth: “Putting away lying, let each of you speak truth with his neighbor for we are members of one another.”
We are members of one another.
Some of us in this community are reading or rereading books by or about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian who resisted Adolf Hitler during the 1930s and 40’s and was imprisoned in the ‘40s and hanged in 1945. Bonhoeffer lived in a country where truth was being systematically wiped away. Hitler substituted a narrative of Germany’s greatness and the Aryan super race. Hitler erased the history books, shut down the press, made the church his patsy, and shouted lies until they became “truth.”
But what did Bonhoeffer do and what can do we in much less dire situations do: Keep memory alive:
“Tell your children” Go back to our texts: the Bible. We really need to learn and relearn our story: that God is love. That we are to stretch out our tent pegs to give shelter to everyone. That we are not to pick all the produce from our field but to leave plenty for the poor to glean. That the last shall be first; that salvation comes because of the willingness of God’s beloved son to suffer for God’s children.
We are grateful at 8th Day to be anchored in a faithful COMMUNITY. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was pastor in the German church that pledged allegiance to the Führer instead of Christ. The Church became a tool of the state that persecuted and murdered Jews and others redefined as less than human. Nazi doctrines poisoned the world step by step. In our particular times, we pray that our church may learn how to be faithful. It’s not all that clear step-by-step. Therefore in walking together through dark places, we must trust to the wise leading of the Good Shepherd every moment.
I’ll reread our Psalm for today substituting the pronoun—“We” for “I,” “Us for “me”—in order to remind us that we can’t do this alone. We depend on our community for instruction, accountability, and courage. A hand to grab when we feel ourselves slipping into the mirey pit or faltering on the climb to the light.
The Lord is our Shepherd,--- yours and mine.
We shall not suffer want.
The good shepherd makes us to lie down in green pastures; he leads us beside the still waters
He restores our souls: he leads us in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yes, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil for God is with us.
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort us.
Thou preparest a table for us in the presence of our enemies.
Thou anointest our heads with oil
Our cup runs over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives,
And we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Wes Michaelson in his talk said something I believe that Christians in community need to remember and act on: “When they go low, we go deep.”
We are called to deepen our life in Christ to prepare for outspoken witness. At this particular moment in time, the little twig of church of which 8th Day is a part, is more or less ignored by the powers-that-be. But that could change. When the German church became an instrument of the Nazi State, Dietrich Bonhoeffer founded an Underground Church that went back to the truths of the Beatitudes, the truths of silence, community, and prayer.
Effective witness is not hostile. Read the Beatitudes again. Be Attitudes of love, respect, and forgiveness. They are due neighbors with whom we disagree. Not so easy when we are so sure they are wrong and we are right. Not so easy to separate oneself from the dominant wing of the church we love, as Bonhoeffer had to do, as Oscar Romero did, as we who were raised in the Evangelical church may be called to do. Not easy when we are scared of the consequences of our actions. And often we would just prefer to retreat and be inconspicuous. That, of course, is a huge temptation for those of us with status and resources. Bonhoeffer did not hide behind his privileged position in German society although it would have been extremely easy for him to do so.
A deep anchor, in faith and the grace of God, gave Bonhoeffer the serenity with which he faced ostracism, imprisonment, torture and death.
Rootedness, being deeply grounded and anchored in Christian community, can give us the strength to hold on and be held onto through the storms. And when we are in danger of being washed away, our comrades in community will reach out to us as Jesus did to Peter trying to walk on water. And when we are washed out to sea and drowning, when we are totally not in control of our own or anyone else’s fate, our hope holds us fast.
Wes Michaelson said:
“Situations of desolation offer us the opportunity for connecting more deeply to the reality of God’s love. We can learn to trust in this love because it seems we cannot depend on anything else. Such experiences of loss, feeling like death, can open us to a taste of the resurrection. All growth, all transformation happens in this way. It comes through suffering – the loss of control – which then can make us usable instruments for God’s power.”
How then can we be “usable instruments for God’s power?” What are we in this community called to be and to do? A few Sundays ago Paul Fitch brought some visitors to an 8th Day service: a Syrian refugee living in his basement, four or five undocumented Salvadorans. They asked for understanding, friendship, and solidarity. Surely we can do no less. How solidarity will play out in our community I do not know. Some of us have friends and relatives at risk. Some of us may be called to stand with Muslims who are targeted. Some of us are working to break up the road to prison or to dead ends that too many black and brown men are forced into. Some of us have long years of experience as despised minorities ourselves. Times which try men’s souls are part of the adventure of both becoming more human, and coming to experience the power and grace of God
It is a joy and a gift to stand with our brothers and sisters in the confidence that the Good Shepherd’s rod and staff will comfort us.