WORSHIP NOTES
The
grandfather of comparative religion in the United States, Huston Smith, once
said that “Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge and facts.
Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.” That means we must be on guard against knowledge that is outdated or
dead, too whenever we approach the Bible.
For the Bible is a library of sorts: it is a compilation bound together from
separate sacred scrolls once written on papyrus. As a Greek word – biblos – it literally means scroll from the early days before the
individual “books” of the Hebrew and Christian Testaments were gathered
together into a coherent collection.
Apparently,
the Hebrew oral tradition began to be gathered during the days of King David –
1000 years before the Common Era – but took another 700 years before being synthesized
into its current form. The Christian
stories were also born of the oral tradition although the letters of St. Paul
were circulated in a written form as early as 30 years after Christ’s death
while the whole of the canon was not codified for another 250 years. The reason I
start with this reminder as I continue my series into what the wisdom of the
ancient prophets of Israel have to say to those of us in 21st century
America is simple: it takes some work
and careful attention to sort out what is living from what is dead within this
sacred library.
And you’re not
going to get much encouragement from the dominant culture to do this type
of sorting: not only do we all have jobs
that need tending, families to feed, wars to wage, mortgages to pay and
addictions and distractions by the truckload to divert our attention; but the ethos
of this era is so driven by the limited vision of scientific empiricism and
marketplace capitalism, that we tend to see almost every situation, condition
and person set before us as a problem to be solved. We so fervently desire
answers, solutions, and resolutions that we barely comprehend the prophetic
task of waiting upon the Lord as enunciated bu the in the Bible. Smith puts it
like this:
The
scientific method is nearly perfect for understanding the physical aspects of
our life. But it is a radically limited viewfinder in its ability to offer
values, morals and meanings that compose the center of our lives. Indeed, science is like a flashlight in the
hands of people living inside a huge balloon. They can illuminate anything
within the balloon, but cannot shine a light outside the balloon to see where
it is floating – or even if it is floating at all.
For that type of light and insight,
Smith tells us, we must go to the sacred scrolls of our Biblical library and
learn to slowly sift through the stories in order to discern the living
wisdom of God even as we bury what is dead. It is not that the scientific,
deductive path is wrong, mind you – I am grateful for it in the care of
my wife of late – it is just incomplete – especially when it comes to the work
of discernment.
Smith
concludes his warning by telling us: “If we take the world’s enduring religions
at their best, we will discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.” Did
you hear that? The BEST of religion
offers us the distilled wisdom of the HUMAN experience! And one of those living insights
carrying wisdom within it for contemporary humanity is found in ancient
Israel’s prophetic poetry. As I have
been trying to clarify since Christmas, the prophetic task is to teach us that
whenever there is cultural, spiritual, emotional, political, personal or institutional
transition taking place, God’s people are required to spend time in the house
of lamentation and grief before we can move into a new residence that lets the
past become the past.
Professor Walter Brueggemann
calls this the work of relinquishment: “I am one,” wept the
prophet Jeremiah from within the devastated walls of a defiled Jerusalem, “who
has seen affliction under the absence of the Lord… my soul is bereft of peace
and my happiness is gone forever.” Call
it the blues or lament, the distilled wisdom of the human race embedded in prophetic
Scripture is clear that we cannot move faithfully, patiently, creatively or
assuredly into the future without grieving. This is God’s promise to us: we
do not have to dwell in the house of denial forever nor reinvent the
wheel when it comes to aligning our souls with the way of the Lord where God’s
banquet table awaits us with a cup that runneth over.
But we do have to pay attention to the
testimony of our sacred ancestors – that great cloud of witnesses – who are
waiting to lead us through the valley of the shadow of death – our season of
relinquishment – so that on the other side of this life not just the
next, we might be enveloped by the goodness and mercy of the One who promises: Comfort,
comfort O my people, speak tenderly to Jeru-salem and cry to her that
she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
That, in a
concentrated nutshell, is the core of this message: lament
born of a new reality is foundational: grief embraced by faith is our way
through the valley of the shadow of death – and hope poured into our hearts by God comes to those who wait upon the
Lord
This is not
at all the methodology of our
problem solving obsession, but it is absolutely essential for a mature and
healthy soul. Brueggemann writes: The
hard work of relinquishment accepts no short cuts. This task requires a trust
that does not blush and a history that does not blink… For prophetic ministry
in any generation requires a courage beyond fearlessness… a willingness to live
beyond all proof, and a trust that relinquishment positions us to receive
blessings from the Lord… yet again” when the time is right.
So today I
invite you to first consider with me what the destruction of Jerusalem meant to
ancient Israel emotionally, politically and theologically. Second, let’s try to
tease out what that suggests for us as 21st century Americans. And
third allow me to encourage each and all of us as First Church to tenderly move
through our own grief into a hope that is already being born among us in small
ways for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
But let’s
recap this series thus far for both those who haven’t been here each week as
well as for those who may not know these ancient tales, ok? To date, I’ve tried
to say the following: Because the stories of Scripture are our shared heritage
within the Judeo-Christian realm, we need to mine them for meaning. It’s not that these are necessarily the best
stories about spirituality – and they certainly are not the only ones –
they are simply our stories. It’s like our families: they too may not be
the best families and are certainly not the only families in creation, but they
are our families and to overlook them is an act of denial.
Further, I
believe that real wisdom emerges from depth in one discipline rather than
sampling fads or trends. Knowing a
little bit about a lot of things has its place at a cocktail party, but in
matters of the heart and soul, shallowness is not our ally: we need depth not
merely breadth. So I have pushed
profoundly into the prophetic wisdom of ancient Israel because this is
the soil into which we have been planted.
It is the tradition that Jesus embraced as well as our own spiritual
progenitors. So, by way of summary, over the past three weeks I have noted:
First, how our ancient ancestors
in Israel wrestled with three different understandings of covenant and faithful
living with God. Some believed that worship rituals were
the essence of faith; others concluded that God had made them a holy people
through the bloodline of Abraham; and still others – particularly the
prophets – sensed that Sabbath keeping and right relations between neighbors
was the fulfillment of covenantal life. These are the Davidic, Abrahamic
and Mosaic covenants.
Second, how there was a fierce
and on-going debate between each of these spiritualities. Over time, the prophets demanding justice and compassion found themselves in
opposition to those who emphasized either the way of racial purity or just the
practice of sacramental duties.
And third, when the city of
Jerusalem and its Temple were sacked by Babylon in 587 BCE, most of ancient Israel was
rendered emotionally and spiritually devastated. They had no way to comprehend
how God could seem to turn away from the so-called chosen. To which the
prophets countered: God’s absence is NOT
forever; so learn to weep – own the agony of this era – and cry out unto the
Lord without ceasing for only those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength.
That’s the
summary, ok? It is, to use Brueggemann’s
insight, the way reality helps us grieve our way into hope – and that’s where
we’re going today. After the obliteration of Jerusalem, there were two groups of
mourners: those who were taken away as slaves into Babylon and those who
remained in the burned out debris of a once holy city. Too often we forget this
second group of mourners, those left behind when the elite were shackled
and forced into exile. But it is often the case that those who are forgotten
and marginalized grasp God’s truth more profoundly than the best and the
brightest: not only do the broken have less to lose from the status quo, they
have been shut-out for so long and on so many levels by the dominant class that
they are light years ahead of us when it comes to opening our hearts to the
liberating power of lament.
Think of
what the feminist movement brought to those of us trapped in the dismissive and
condescending ways of our sexist habits. Consider what the environmentalists
have brought to the table about climate change that are only now being taken
seriously by the elite. Take a moment to appreciate how the Black Lives Matter
movement is calling you and me back into our long journey out of white
privilege and closer to the beloved community.
The Reverend
Traci Blackmon, one time pastor of Christ the King church in Ferguson, MO
during the rioting and now working on racial justice matters for the national
United Church of Christ put it like this:
Nobody gives up privilege
willingly, but living in God’s kingdom is all about relinquishing our comfort
and convenience. That’s why this moment
in time calls us to nurture bravery, humility, diversity and empathy so that we
can discover how to disagree well – for it usually involves more listening. Jesus said
much the same thing to his homies when they questioned his integrity by
appealing to a contemptuous but facile familiarity: Doubtless you will quote to me the proverb, “Doctor, heal
thyself.” And you will demand that I do
some miracle here, too. That’s why I’m telling you NO prophet is ever accepted
in his or her home town.
And he went on to challenge them as one of Israel’s prophets
saying: quit
playing games. If you want to know the
will of the Lord in our generation, go to the hungry, the lonely, the broken
and oppressed: When did we see Thee Lord? When I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me
something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took
care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. Whenever you do this unto the
least of my sisters and brothers, you do so unto me.
In the
Hebrew Bible the story of those left behind in burned-out Jerusalem is found in
the book of Lamentations. This is the accounting of those who “were subject
every day to the sights and smells of a city in shambles…this is the testi-mony
of their deep sense of abandonment made evident in the poetry born of the
ruins.” Chapter 3 succinctly summarizes their plight: “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten
what happiness is; over and over I weep: “Gone is my glory and all that I had
hoped for from the Lord.”
Now the Hebrew
word, ‘abad, is translated here as “gone” – gone is my glory – gone
is all recollection of hope. But most
scholars argue that ‘abad should actually be rendered:
“perish.” Do you sense the difference? Gone
is abstract, but perished is heart-breaking. This was the birth of the blues in Israel, when both the poor and the
powerful realized and accepted that they had been called away from “any emotional
sense of well-being to one of loss, from any political sense of
guarantee to one of acute vulnerability, from any theological sense of
chosenness to one of abandonment. This new context of loss, vulnerability, and
abandonment (touched everyone) and amounted to a vindication of prophetic
realism against the ideology of exceptionalism and prophetic grief against (all
forms of) denial.”
Now maybe it’s
just me, but I hear something similar taking place in both the long abandoned
cities of our nation as well as the once prosperous neighborhoods of America’s shrinking
middle and working class. There is lamentation
in the air – anger and confusion, too. Sometimes it is expressed in the overtly
hateful diatribes of Mr. Trump’s fascist hymns; but it is there, too in the
equally heated populist protest songs of Mr. Sanders. Many of our people believe we are the brink of
despair – and we very well may be.
Professor Brueggemann put it like this in a way that resonates in my
heart: There is an
anger in America being acted out in the disguise of nostalgia: a yearning for
the good old days of a simpler life. It looks
innocent enough on the surface but contains a dreadful truth just below our
view.
Remember the
provocative mantra of the 2012 political campaign: take back our country? This slogan reflects
the sense that someone has seized our world from us, not unlike the way in
which the Babylonians seized the world of Jerusalem away from its inhabitants.
Nostalgia is an attempt to recover the world that is gone – perished – if
indeed it ever existed. Nostalgic anger
is manifest in the “stand your ground” gun laws that are shot through with
macho fear and racism… Nostalgic anger is alive in our culture that is obsessed
with apocalyptic, end of the world motion pictures… and it is active in the
“every man for himself” ideology that has turned Washington, DC into an
unsustainable political quagmire. Can you believe that a second-rate
ideological novelist like Ayn Rand is now being held up for us as a legitimate public philosopher
of value and wisdom? This is pure lunacy. But, in our nostalgia, the
disappearance of any notion of preserving the common good validates the feeling
of many that we have been abandoned – bereft of peace – with joy and hope gone for
at least the foreseeable future. (Brueggemann)
And what
about closer to home: in a culture bereft of peace the current heroin epidemic
consuming the Berkshires makes sense. Same with random acts of violence: this past Wednesday I was heading home from
midday Eucharist on First Street when two young, white gang bangers jumped out
of opposing cars and started to beat the snot out of one another. And if that weren’t bad enough, the friends
and neighbors who gathered around this fracas didn’t try to stop it but,
cheered them on. Before I could get my
phone to dial 911, they jumped back into their SUVs and sped off in opposite
directions. Denial of our cultural disease is no longer possible. We know
better: the reality we see all around us has exposed a culture empty of generative power and bursting at the seams with
destructive anxiety.
So pay careful attention here: it was
into a comparable moral vacuum that both the elite in Babylon and the working
poor in Jerusalem began to hear songs of hope, dream dreams of deep change, and
claim visions and write poems of a healing that was greater than anything they
could imagine. “In the midst of exilic despair over destruction and
displacement,” you see, God breaks into our reality and moves our laments from
grief into the promise of a buoyant future.
Now we can’t do this ourselves, beloved, we can’t abrogate the time
table of the Lord. We can’t bind the
chains of the Pleiades or loosen Orion’s belt. We can’t lead forth constellation in its season or shake water from a stone. We can’t
even imagine what a new heaven and new earth – a new temple, a new city, a new
covenant – might look like. All we can
do is wait upon the Lord who
has promised to renew our strength. Wait upon the Lord – are you
listening? Wait upon the Lord: this is NOT a call to passivity or
navel gazing. It is taking the time to feel in our core the agony of the
world’s suffering. It is rediscovering our common bonds – the social good – where
all humankind is made in the loving image of the Lord. AND… it is trusting that
when we are ready, God’s time will break into our time with a promise that
overrides despair. Brueggemann is persuasive
on this point: “As long as the displaced
are preoccupied with the palpable causes of their despair – the city in
shambles, the hegemony of the empire – the utterance of sacred promise is not
credible. It is simply more wishful thinking.”
And that is
why the prophetic task insists upon the power of the Lord in these circumstances. Confessing that all true
utterances of hope “arise from elsewhere – from the God who indwells the
abyss and who initiates a new historical possibility that is not disrupted by
the city in shambles nor restrained by the force of empire,” the poetry of the
prophets throws conventional wisdom out the window and “raises up a word from
outside all explanatory categories” that resonates with our hearts and
liberates our minds: it is the cry I have a dream! Sing a NEW song!
Take the
poetry of Isaiah: We listen to it in an unhistorical way every Advent as we sing: Comfort,
comfort ye my people, or, How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the
messenger who announces peace and brings good news. But we rarely, if ever,
recall that these songs were born in exile – in Babylon – when beyond all
reason, science, logic and linear thinking the ancient prophets began to see
visions and dream dreams. They had cried themselves crazy with lament and
pushed those in denial to do likewise. And then – and ONLY then – came God’s
word of hope born of grief and saturated with reality but blessed with sweet
hope nonetheless.
And THAT,
people of God at First Church, is why I’ve been burdening you with this series.
Some of us haven’t grieved the loss of the old First Church profoundly enough – and I know because I hear
the yearning for the old days all over town. Not so much here – although sometimes
– but more in the coffee shops where people say things like: “We just need another GE to come and then our problems
would be over.” Those days, beloved, are gone: forever!
That’s one
reality – but there is another: some among us – and sometimes I fall into this
group – haven’t yet allowed ourselves to grieve over the fact that we haven’t yet
been able to solve the financial problems facing our church. After all,
we’re smart and reasonably successful professionals in our day jobs who can
solve other problems: how come we can’t crack the nut here? I know, I’ve spent
numerous sleepless nights fretting about this one – and I know some of you
have, too.
To which the
witness of the ancient prophets tells us:
wait upon the Lord. Trust God more than self – know that
God has still more light to be revealed. We are not the all-powerful Oz. We are
not the one who threw the stars and planets into orbit. But damn if we don’t
resist being pushed towards humility, smallness and an active waiting upon the
Lord.
Once upon a
time, a Jewish grandma was walking on the shore of the Pacific Ocean with her
grandson whom she adored. She worshipped the ground this little boy walked on
and was delighted that his momma et her take him out for the day. She’d bought
him a new pair of shorts and sandals and a sweet little straw hat to keep the
sun off his 2 year old head. So, as they were strolling by the water laughing
and loving one another, out of nowhere came this monster wave. It was 12 feet high and slammed down on the
shore with an earth shattering crash.
And when grandma looked up, the little boy was gone. Once she
caught her breath she looked up to the heavens and prayed with one arm
outstretched as she beat her breast with the other: Blessed
are You, O Lord our God, creator of heaven and earth, King of the Universe. I
plead with you in your mercy to return my grandson, the apple of my eye. In
humility I beg of you, Lord. And
with that, another wave crashed upon the shore… and the little boy was
returned. As you might imagine, grandma
ran and embraced him, picking him up in her arms and covering him with kisses. Oh my God this was such a delight… I give you thanks and praise, Lord she
cried in gratitude. But after a moment,
she looked back up at the heavens and said:
You know when he left, he had a
hat.
We’re a
stubborn lot – and don’t honor God’s push and pull towards humility with the
respect it deserves – so we have to keep learning what it means to wait upon
the Lord over and over again. And that is part of what I think is taking place at
First Church right now. We’re being
asked yet again to wait upon the LORD to restore our strength; it’s not
something that comes easily to anyone especially hard working, middle class
folk like you and me. But that’s ok, because God isn’t going anywhere and when
we’re ready to get it, I believe that blessings and hope and a new ministry of
integrity and joy will be revealed. It
is already taking shape in small ways among us for those who have eyes to see.
But there’s a
third group who are really bringing in the hope – they don’t have your history or
my concerns – and they hold some powerful potential. And the reason I know this
is from Bible study. You know, I always
thought that the Lord is my Shepherd was one of the Psalms of David, but
apparently not. We know this because it closes with the words: and I
will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, right? Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the
days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Well,
there wasn’t a house of the Lord in David’s time – there was a tent - there
wasn’t a Temple – that came on Solomon’s watch.
And it was destroyed in 587 BCE and wasn’t rebuilt again until 517 –
that’s nearly 500 years after David and 70 years after the exile. But those who
came after the anguish, they could see the beauty that was waiting to be born –
and could see the Lord’s banquet table.
So, the
symbol I’m going to put on the communion table today is this little string of
prayer beads. It isn’t a check for half
a million dollars that would help close our budget deficit. And it isn’t a well
articulated plan to rescue our building and ministry from reality or grief or
change. It is a simple string of wooden beads that reminds me that ALL I can do
is actively wait upon the Lord with trust.
Last year I started to make
prayer beads for myself – and then for a few others who needed a small reminder
that: Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for… what? Thou
art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the
presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
The God who loves us will not only bind up all our
wounds, but will surround us with goodness
and mercy that shall follow us all the days of our live life: and we will dwell
in the house of the Lord… forever. Say that again: forever.
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