“God’s solidarity with us. And, God’s call to solidarity with one another”
“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” I spent most of my preparation, working on this material, for a long time, cursing the darkness, and then coming to a dead end. Then my friend, David Hilfiker, asked me, “What’s your point?” Then I realized, “I don’t have a point.” I was “cursing darkness.”
Then, one thing I did have was a quote from Karl Barth where he said, “When you’re doing your discipline of prayer, have your Bible in one hand and your newspaper in the other.” I don’t know what people do today, if they read their news on their computer—keeping that nearby. I thought that was good. I got excited.
Then, yesterday I got up early, thinking, “Maybe I can finally get this thing together.” And so I opened the Washington Post, fixed myself some coffee, and I’m sitting there, and I turned to the Editorial Page. And, as I turned to the Editorial Page, I just scanned the Editorial Page, and then looked over here at the right-hand side, where there were these words in the Heading: “When Solidarity Drowned Out Terror.” Thank you, Jesus. I just had the structure of my sermon. So about then, I got a request from our singers, who ask “What’s your theme?” and I said, “God reaching out; God’s solidarity with us. And, God’s call to solidarity with one another.”
Now, notice, I’m trying to talk in this teaching about God. I’m not talking about us working at being in solidarity with one another, as a start. I’m just talking about God’s solidarity, and if we get inside that, it will tell us tons about our call to solidarity with one another and the others in the world. In fact, in God’s way, there are no others. This othering is of the Old Order, not the New Order.
So, then my dilemma was how to take these wonderful scriptures that are given to us in the lectionary, and hear what God might be speaking through the combination of these various texts. Then I had to concede that, “Well, we need to be aware of the context in which we live, and that’s the non-God, that’s the against God. That is sin and rebellion. And, that’s showing up big time! There’s a couple of ways out there, and you can on your own just keep developing this.
One thing that’s very clear, that’s showing up, is mean-spiritedness. It’s spreading across this country like wildfire, and this story on the right-hand column of yesterday’s Post was the testimony of the Rabbi who is the Head of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Dayschool in Rockville, when he got a threat in the middle of the day that they were going to bomb his school. And so he was having to work with that with his teachers and with the kids, and so forth. And it so happened that there have been a hundred assaults, threats, serious threats of Jewish Institutions across this country just since January 1st. So this is the unleashing of terrible mean-spiritedness, which unleashes other mean-spiritedness, and just grows like topsy.
Now, we could say, “Alright. Get rid of Donald Trump. Get him impeached, vote him out of office, whatever.” We ought to stop for just a minute. It might be a good idea, if we can pull it off, BUT Donald Trump is channeling the country’s own sin. It goes way and whoa whoa deep. So, if you shut this guy up, there are a thousand, a million more voices to step up and unleash this mean-spiritedness. So this is a part of the context we’re in.
Now, another piece of the context is: Deception. You can’t believe anything. Truth is whatever you care to say it is. And what does that have to do, what does that do to human trust? --when you can’t trust what public figures say is fact, you know? And just can be their own alternative facts. I mean this is serious, serious sin. But there’s a third dimension of sin that we need to keep track of and that was my own experience I was having in preparing for today, and that was the sin of Despair. Have you even thought that sin is despair? Despair is sin? Now despair comes when you take what AA people call the Higher Power out of the picture. But as Bonhoeffer pointed out a long time ago, “We get crowded in the public space. We have crowded God, the idea of the Living God, who does things, who speaks, who has a voice out of the picture. And so, all that’s left is just us.” Alright? “Now, you bring God into the picture, the balance shifts.” And that’s what I want to talk about. God’s solidarity with us, and (our call to solidarity—no GOD’s call—not our call but) God’s call for solidarity with one another and the others and the need of the world.
Let’s scan the scriptures, not take them in depth, each one, but scan them starting with the first one, where these pilgrims are on a journey from the hinterland to the Holy City of Jerusalem, to come into the Presence of God—that profound belief that’s built into Israel’s DNA. But on the way, they have to go through some dangerous territory. And there are a lot of rugged hills, places where bandits hide out, and so they travel in caravans, and they put sentinels up on the hillsides around to watch while the people slept. And so, this guy, laying in his blanket, looks up and seeing those sentinels is thankful for those volunteers in their midst who went up there. But then he was asking the question of the community: “I/We, I lift up my eyes to the hills.” And then it turns into a question, but “Where, really, does my help come from?” And it comes from the Maker of the Heavens and Earth, the Creator, who is in solidarity with his Creation. So, that’s kind of a beginning context.
Now, we come to the Genesis passage, and today’s text from the Lectionary is Genesis 12, which I’ll get to in a moment, but Genesis 3-11 sets it up, or Genesis 1-11. Now Emily preached last Sunday about the Creation, and here we see Order out of Chaos in Chapter 1. Then we have a re-telling of the Creation Story in Chapter 2, which is about a Garden in the midst of the Desert. So you see these two juxtapositions: Order and Chaos, Barron-ness and Fertility. Folks, this is what’s at stake. Are we going back—and the idea is going forward—but are we really going back to Chaos? And this mean-spiritedness is unleashing chaos. Are going back to in-fertility, where there’s not enough rain, and nothing grows, when we’re made for a garden? Now, it’s important for all of us to understand, at least from my standpoint, that the whole book of Genesis is not about what was, not about a time back there when there was this idyllic garden. Genesis 1-11 is just talking about what is, about a Creation on that ridge between Chaos and Order, and between Fertility and Barron-ness. And the descent into sin and despair is the subject 3,4,5,6—on through 11. So there are four stories: there’s the Adam and Eve story, the Cain and Able story, the Noah and the Flood story, and the Tower of Babel story. And if you read those consecutively, it’s just like (the sound of an explosion), until you get in Chapter 11 this picture of nobody being able to communicate with anybody else. And so, the whole world is fractured, the opposite of solidarity. And what we’re seeing go on about us today is this fracturing of the world. Now, what I’m hoping I’m getting across here, what I hope I’m getting across is that Babel is about Life. And it’s speaking that Life in images, in symbols, in metaphors, in stories, some of them fact and some of them not meant to be newspaper fact but to be ways of thinking.
And it all started with a false promise, where this walking-talking snake comes in and sashays into this conversation with an innocent woman, and says, “What’s this about ‘You can’t eat from this tree?’” And she tells him, and he says, (laughing) –the snake, the snake doesn’t knock the structures—"somebody got too much power here.” So what the snake is about is demolishing the power, or equalizing the power, of the Creator, who’s walking around and participating in a very earthy way in the care of this Garden. “So, you won’t DIE? That’s a false word. Your eyes will be opened and you’ll see Good and Evil—which means you’ll see everything! You’ll be just like God.”
Now, in this secular age, where in public spaces, where is it possible to bring God seriously into the conversation. You can’t do it. You’ll violate this group, or that group, or that group. But what showed up here at this school was all the outpouring of support and these various religions—Christian, Muslim, Hindu, so on and so forth, all variety of Christian, and they said, “We’d like to make a statement to your children and your families.” They don’t say anything. They just stand on the stage, so as to say, “We condemn that threat and we stand with you. And we’re thankful and grateful that you’re here!” So, God works in mysterious ways, really? (Amen.) God works through Hindus, God works through Muslims, God works through Christians, God works through Jews, he works even through us.
So, here we have this descent into Chaos, and just read Genesis 11, you’ll read Chaos. Now, Genesis 11 is followed by Genesis 12, actually (laughter) you know. And what happens there? Then you have a whole other kind of story: the story of the people, the starting of a people, and it’s a story about God’s way of going about solidarity. It’s God’s solidarity with us by the very fact that God took the initiative to call this figure, Abraham. And the very nature of the call was to follow on a journey, the outcome of which would be in history that all of the nations of the earth would be blessed. I mean, folks, there’s dynamite in this book! (laughing). Dynamite!
Now, let’s jump quickly ahead to Romans, where the issue in Romans 4 is solidarity between Jews and Gentiles in the Roman Church. The Jews have been forced out, by the decree of Claudius, and they were beginning to trickle back. And the Gentiles who’d come to Christ had doubts about these Jews. And Paul, in the Book of Romans, is really helping them re-group as one community. Now, that’s a very short-hand way of talking about a very complicated book, but it’s at the heart of it, the heart of it is this call to solidarity. And that’s grounded in God’s solidarity with us. You’re gonna ask the question, you know: “Why did Jesus die?” You know, our children ask that question. “Was it necessary?” Well, it was a consequence of his life, you know, he was a brave man, and he stood up, and this is what happened. Now, scriptures tell you there’s more to it than that: that Jesus dying was part of God’s solidarity with the World. It wasn’t to appease God. God didn’t need to be appeased by the death of his own Son! It’s about God coming into our space, and opening the doors to fertility, and awards at a whole other level! A level of freedom—when there’s peace, there’s freedom, right? And so, we have Paul: that’s what he grapples with and where he keeps coming again, back. He keeps returning to the Cross, because you can’t go any further in solidarity than the Cross. So, if anybody asks you, “Why did Jesus die?” And you said, “That’s just the way God is, in solidarity with us.” And so, when he hung on the Cross, what did he do, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!” Then he says to the guy hanging next to him, who’s convicted of a crime, he said, “Lord, remember me, when you come into your Kingdom.” He says, “This day you will be with me in the Kingdom!” Today! So, we are placed under a mandate, a mandate that our hope is in this solidarity. And folks, that lets us be free, so we don’t have to do anything! Have to. But we want to, when we get hold of this kind of love. When somebody loves you in this way, you are absolutely crazy if you don’t go toward somebody who loves you this way! (Amen!) It’s just plain ol’ common sense.
Now we come to John, wrapping it up here. Nicodemus comes to John at night, and that’s a big part of the story. So he starts this kind of “head trip” conversation about, “Teacher, you do all these wonderful things! It’s got to be that God has blessed you.” The Johannine Community, which the character of Jesus is channeling in the Gospel of John, the Johannine Community are seeing that it’s only as people become visible in their faith—that is to come at daylight, out in the open—that God’s power can work. And God just can’t work with secret Christians. Or secret Hindus. Or secret Buddhists. Or secret Jews. You’ve got to be out in the open. And one way we come out in the open is we show up at situations like this, that we stand in solidarity. Now you look at all of the missions that we’ve been involved with for many years. One after another has been solidarity with folks who are being left out. That’s what my experience in FLOC was. That was David at Joseph’s House. Bethany, you know. It’s been on through this solidarity.
Now, let me conclude with something going on right now. And that is, in a couple weeks, some of us will be going out to Wellspring to spend a couple of days in silence. And this is at the initiative of the Dayspring Community, who are saying, “What is God calling us to BE in this new time?” It’s a powerful question, and so their proposal, and that’s the call that went out, was “Let’s go the way we’ve learned from the Church of the Saviour: if you really want to hear God’s answer, get silent. Quit talking. Just be silent. Listen.” And we’ve also learned there’s power in listening together.
Now there’s another element in this which really speaks to me, which is for the last 20 years this Church of the Saviour tradition has been developing on separate silos. You know, 8th Day one silo, Seekers another silo, you know, 8 or 9 silos. And we’ve lost touch with what it means to be the Body of Christ together, to be One. “That they may be One,” is what John talks about. The important thing is not Oneness for the sake of oneness, not oneness to build an empire, but oneness in listening to God and sharing with one another what comes to us. Because in the New Order, the Voice of God—and if you can’t—if the word God doesn’t speak to you, just think the word Voice, all you have to do, just think of the word Voice—the Voice speaks to you. For this Voice to speak to you, if we send representatives from several of these communities who come together and spend from Friday night to Sunday morning in silence, and then on Sunday morning—and my job there is to kind of manage the time, so that Sunday morning we go around and everyone can have about 2 or 3 minutes in the first go-round, to share something of what’s come to them. They might say, “Look, this isn’t all that special.” Don’t you decide what’s special and what’s not. We’ve been ‘round here long enough to realize the specialness that comes from these various directions here. Yeah, walking in the door, we know people, special. And so, we’re there to listen for the “word of power” to move us from generality to some, some understanding of what moves us toward solidarity. Now that means some of us won’t be here Sunday after next, so in the meantime I would just be pleading for us all to pray for that weekend, not the coming one but the one after that. And, if something starts happening there, well, then the Dayspring people said, “We’ll invite others who would like to come.”
So, just to repeat what I’ve been trying to say: What it’s all about is God’s solidarity with us in the midst of Chaos and Barron-ness, and craziness, and crazy-making. And our call to be with God, for God, in this life as it is given—not as we want it but as it is given. Amen. (Amen.)