Where Love Lives

Where Love Lives

© copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder, Pastor
Second Sunday of Easter April 11, 2010

I John 3:11-18

Little children, let us love,
not in word or speech but in truth and action.NRSV

Thomas Andrew Dorsey has often been called the “Father of Gospel Music – this is the African American musician Thomas Dorsey1 – not to be confused with Swing era band leader Tommy Dorsey. Thomas was called “Georgia Tom” in his early years as a blues pianist. It is said that gospel music was the result of a combination of Christian praise with the rhythms of jazz and blues music. And Dorsey was there at the very beginning, in fact, many people believe he was the beginning of what we have come to think of as “Gospel Music.”

Before he found his way to the beginnings of gospel music he recorded a popular, raunchy jazz tune in 1928 that sold 7 million copies, an enormous success in those days, by any standard. The son of a Georgia preacher, Dorsey drifted away from God for a time. Then, in 1932, during a revival meeting in St. Louis, he received a telegram that would change his life. In the clinical way that telegrams used to bring news, he read that he had lost his wife and newborn son in childbirth. He was bereft: “God, you aren’t worth a dime to me right now!” Dorsey cried out, in his despair.

Then, living in the midst of that despair, he began to make a different response. Sitting at the piano, he created the lines of the first true gospel song, the song that Christine sang for us just a few minutes ago: “Take, My Hand, Precious Lord.” He fit the lyrics to what was already a familiar tune. The following Sunday, the choir of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in South Chicago, Illinois, sang it, with Dorsey playing the accompaniment.

Dorsey later described his process of writing this well-loved song:

“After putting my wife and baby away in the same casket, I began to feel that God had done me an injustice. I didn’t want to serve him anymore or write any more gospel songs. I wanted to return back to the jazz world that I once knew so well before. Then a voice spoke to me and said: ‘You are not alone.’ Everyone was so kind to me in these sad hours.

The next week ... in my solitude, I began to browse over the keys like a gentle herd pasturing on tender turf. Something happened to me there. I had a strange feeling inside. A sudden calm, a quiet stillness. As my fingers began to manipulate over the keys, words began to fall in place on the melody like drops of water falling from the crevice of a rock.”2

That song, which has been recorded by countless artists, from Elvis Presley to Roy Rogers, was Martin Luther King Jr’s favorite gospel song, and was requested by President Lyndon Johnson for his funeral service. Dorsey eventually wrote more than 250 gospel songs. He once said, “My business is to try to bring people to Christ instead of leaving them where they are. I write for all of God’s people. All people are my people. What I share with people is love. I try to lift their spirits and let them know that God still loves them. He’s still saving, and He can still give that power.”

Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light:
Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

Lifting spirits ... letting people know God loves them: Such places are places where love lives.
In an old story, a revered teacher from the old country asked his students, “How can you determine the hour of dawn, when the night ends and the day begins?” What is the difference between darkness and light?

One student replied, “When from a distance you can distinguish between a sheep and a dog?”
“No,” says the rabbi.
“Is it when you can distinguish between a fig tree and a grapevine?”another suggested.
Again the wise teacher responded, “I’m afraid not,” and then revealed the answer:
“The hour of dawn is when you have enough light to look human beings in the face and recognize them as your brothers and sisters. Until then the darkness is still with us.”

This goes to the heart of our passage from I John. John wrote, “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death.” This is the reason that the idea of love’s lack brought to John’s mind the Old Testament story of Cain, who murdered his brother Able. Absence of concern for others is not benign, it is a toxic, death-dealing way to live. Even Jesus said as much in Matthew 5:21-22:

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment...”

The heart does not mark the difference between hating a brother or sister in the faith, and murdering, they are both born of the same seed. To hate is to cut off relationship, to despise, and murder amounts to the completion of that idea.

When John writes “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another,” he is clearly not referring only or even mainly to life beyond the grave. In I John, eternal life is something in the present tense, something that comes to life every time a child of God, a brother or sister in Christ, is loved. This is not the stuff of sweet bye and bye, but of the right now.

Filmmaker Woody Allen, whose memory, like Ben Franklin or Oscar Wilde, will surely live on far past his death because of his many quirky observations on the world, once said, “I’m not afraid of dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” But of course, Allen is thinking of biology, not theology. When John says, “Whoever does not love abides in death,” he is writing theology, declaring that where love has gone missing in action, where there remains hostility within the family of faith among people God intended to be brothers and sisters in faith, where community is disregarded and only the will of individuals is taken into consideration, that is death. Death of community, death of the self-giving love communities established in Christ’s name are supposed to emulate, death of what Christ himself died to bring to birth. Just as when brothers and sisters in Christ love each other heaven and life eternal are already breaking in to our world, so when we do not live in love, we are dead already, dancing the Dance Macabre with death itself, without even realizing it.

Perhaps some of you will recall the now-classic novel by Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. In 1714 a rope bridge across a rocky gorge in the Andes Mountains collapsed, and five people on the bridge plunged to their common deaths. In the novel, a monk, ready to start across the bridge, saw the whole thing happen before him, as “he saw the bridge divide and fling five gesticulating ants into the valley below.” Brother Juniper sets out to discover who these people were and to see if there is any common link, any observable purpose in what happened to them. In the end, he declares,

“Soon we shall die, and all memory of those five will have left the Earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

If we ask most people about it, love is understood as a fragile emotion at best, here one moment, gone the next. You can lose it. You can fall into or out of it. It can abandon you as quickly as you find it. But we know our own faith is not characterized by such fragility when we describe it as the love of God. One friend of mine said that it may appear as gossamer-thin as a spider’s web, but in reality it – like a spider’s web – it has astounding strength.3 Paul said as much about the sort of love which John declares in this letter, when he said that nothing “can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”4

The great East Indian Christian convert and missionary, Sadhu Sundar Singh, once walked with a companion through a high pass in the Himalayas, when they came upon the figure of a nearly frozen man lying unconscious in the snow. Singh began trying to revive the stranger, but his companion protested, saying, “We will lose our own lives if we burden ourselves with him.” Still, Singh insisted they pause to help the man. Convinced that this idea was futile, even dangerous, Singh’s companion abandoned him and walked on.

Though he was alone with his charge, Singh was resolute. He managed to get the man’s nearly frozen body on his shoulders and began to continue his journey, carrying his heavy burden. Before long the physical exertion not only warmed Singh, it also warmed the stricken man, reviving him. Soon the two men were able to continue their walk side by side.

A day or two later they came upon Singh’s original companion, who had chosen to go on alone, discovering his frozen body in a heap in the snow.

How do we know that love lives and brings us into the presence of something that is eternal? John declares that love takes on this sturdy, eternal character…

• When all God’s people are seen as gifts to be celebrated and not burdens to be borne.
• When we can say, with meaning, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother, she’s my sister.”
• When, despite our native reluctance, we follow the apostle’s advice when he wrote:

Brothers and sisters in Christ, “Let us love, not in word or speech but in truth and action.”

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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1 http://www.npr,org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1069272
2 From sermon materials for "the Bridge Is Love," by Carl Wilton, September 4, 2004.
3 Ibid.
4 Romans 8

Why Do You Look?

Why Do You Look?1

© copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder, Pastor
Easter Day, April 4, 2010

Luke 24:1-12

Why do you look for the living
among the dead? NRSV

Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you all in the name of our risen Lord, and in the name of all who continue to live in amazement at what had happened on that first day of the week at early dawn. The world is always baffled at the power of that empty tomb. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” That was the question of the two messengers at the tomb. And that is the way Easter began, not on a note of triumph and hope, but with a graveyard death-watch of the faithful at early dawn. “When the women came back from the cemetery on Easter morning, they brought with them word of an empty tomb and astonishing news: ‘He is not here but has risen!’ All Christian preaching begins here.”2

Burial spices in hand, the women came to the graveyard at early dawn – the Greek modifier translated as “early” literally means “deep” – “deep dawn,” that opaque and mysterious time in the crack between night and day. They came to observe the traditional practice of anointing the lifeless, decaying body of someone they loved to keep it from smelling bad. It isn't a very pretty image. Death never is. No one expected the tomb to be empty. No one expected that oblique promises of a resurrection would be real. Surely not the disciples, who stayed in hiding that morning, back at the Jerusalem bed and breakfast. Like the Emmaus Road travelers in the story immediately following this one in Luke’s gospel, the disciples were “slow of heart to believe.” There was no trumpet fanfare to sound a note of triumph over death when the women came upon the tomb, no chorus of heavenly angels heralding the event and calling nearby shepherds to come and take note. Just that haunting question – from two men standing beside them in day-glow outfits in the graveyard – to the women who came, anticipating no miracle, no surprises: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Why do you? Why do we?

“History,” it’s often been said, “is just news from a graveyard.” That’s a rather cynical way of putting it, of course, and it does capture a jaded world’s willful and death-denying blindness to the past, reflecting the myopia of those who live as though the world began when they were born and will cease to exist when they are gone. But the phrase is also a memorable description of Easter. And, odd as it often strikes us, this is what you and I have to proclaim to the world on Easter: News from a graveyard.

He is not here, but has risen. Risen as he said! While there follows no immediate, joyful exclamation, no hallelujahs, no angel trumpeters, there is something with which you and I – modern people that we are – can relate: surprise, fear, skepticism, and doubt. But as inheritors of the memory of this promise, believers are granted new eyes with which to see the world. You and I will always be among those who seek the living among the dead; because of our life in Christ we simply see the world differently than those for whom the world remains stuck on Good Friday. Most often we see the world differently because we want to change what we see. And by the grace of God, we do.

A little over twenty years ago now a book was published that carried the title Morning-Glory Babies3. It contained the story of a community of Christians who took up a ministry with babies infected with the AIDS virus. The author wrote, “From the perspective of the media, death is the essence of the story about our children. ‘A Moment of Sunshine in the Shadow of Death,’ was a typical headline from newspaper stories about us. Upon finishing a story about the arrival of a baby girl named Melissa, one television producer asked if his network could have an exclusive on ‘The End of the Story.’”

The end of the story. That is the way the world sees it, when they bother to look. But the founder of that AIDS ministry saw things through Easter-eyes. And he wrote of his deep frustration: “For me, ‘the story’ is that Melissa is beginning to walk, or that she sings duets with little David in an unknown language only babies understand.” That is the story for those who seek the living among the dead. He is not here, but has risen. Risen as he said! And it is the memory of that promise that gives us new eyes to see the world, even if what we do see is profoundly disturbing.

And it is. The intention of Easter is not to help us repress and suppress all the tragic and bad things that can overwhelm us, the purpose of Easter is to give us courage to face them. We may face them, we may enter the darkness, because we do not have to face them alone. The darkness is inhabited now. That is what those faithful women discovered at the empty tomb. And they left the tomb enabled to see the world through new eyes. Because, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the one who is really in charge of the drama of history is that same one who is now One with the victims of history: the despised and rejected, the cast-off and neglected, the undervalued and ignored, which, in the final analysis, includes all of us in one way or another, whether we perceive it or not.

What you and I know of the world, what you and I see in the world is often profoundly disturbing. But what we see in the cross of Christ is God’s abiding commitment to this world; a cross that invites everyone of us to be just as committed to it. But beyond the cross, and confronted with the resurrection, you and I live with God’s determination to change the world as it is.

This is where the faith of Easter departs from mere optimism: that every cloud has a silver lining or our culture’s sentimental substitute of flowers that bloom every spring for the Bible’s declarations about resurrection from something really and truly dead. That is not what we are about at Easter, because there is a resounding presupposition behind what we proclaim when we say: “Jesus Christ is risen.” And the presupposition is this: that the work of that One who revealed his purpose in his first sermon at Nazareth, quoting words from the Old Testament prophets about healing and liberation, that work continues unabated from that time to this. It has not been silenced by the powers of death; it is going on. The resurrection is about God’s determination to change the world, as it is.

And the reason that’s the best news the world has ever heard is because you and I have been drawn into it. There is a job for us to do in a business that has no unemployment index. Maybe you’re not sure you can do the job if you take it. But I can promise you that you will be granted what you do not, by nature, possess: the determination, imagination and daring to participate in that work; to become stewards of life in the kingdom of death. Why else do you look for the living among the dead?

And we know it is that, don’t we? When the lilies are distributed all over town to shut-ins and grieving people, when carillons stop ringing the tune to “Jesus Christ is Risen Today,” when Easter day is done, racism will still be rampant in our world. The poor will still suffer. Assault rifles will still be selling like hotcakes. The homeless will still be without shelter. The emergency rooms will continue on as beehives of activity. Children will carry on breaking their parents’ hearts, and parents will persist in letting their children down. Healing and liberation will still be needed, because God is still determined to change the world as it is. And if we decide to be employed in this work, we will be found among those who seek the living among the dead, because God’s determination to change the world doesn’t go anywhere unless we do.

You and I don't have to produce blueprints for an ideal world in order to know where God’s life-giving energies need to be directed for healing and liberation. We simply need to look at the world as it is and see this world of ours through the lens of Easter; see the world as stewards of life in a kingdom of death. And when we do, we know where God’s compassion and commitment to change direct us.

Henri Nouwen, spiritual father to a whole generation of preachers, once wrote,

“The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God will never get lost. The resurrection doesn’t answer any of our common questions about life after death such as: “How will it be? How will it look?” But it does reveal to us that love is stronger than death. God’s love for us, our love for each other, and our love for those who lived before and will live after us is not just a quickly passing experience, but a reality transcending all time and space.”4

Possibly you have seen or read these figures that tell us if the entire world population consisted of only 100 people:

67 would be poor
55 of them would have an annual income of less than $600.00
50 of them would be homeless or live in substandard housing
50 would be without adequate, safe drinking water
47 would be illiterate
35 would be hungry or malnourished
6 would be Americans, and would hold 33% of the world's income
1 would have a college education

More often than not, figures like these are mentioned to make some sort of case for our guilt by association. But in God’s eyes, it isn’t a matter of guilt. It’s a matter of grace. They are merely a cross-index for liberation and healing; directing the resources of healing where they are needed. Deploying the energy and love that is essential for liberation ... where it will make a difference, where “nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste.”

And you and I are drawn into that work because the best news in the world is always news from a graveyard; good news about the universe, and about God. And as we find ourselves drawn to seek the living in this world of ours, we come to know something unique about who God has created and loved in this world.

For this world is not an orphan asylum hurled through endless space. We are travelers here, knocking on the door of the universe, asking, “Is anybody there?” And our Easter faith answers that question. “There is somebody there. The darkness is inhabited. Now... and forever.”

My sisters and brothers in Christ, grace and peace to you all from our risen Lord. For he is not here, but has risen. Risen as he said!

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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1 I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. George Chorba for seminal ideas in this sermon.
2 “Empty Tomb, Empty Talk,” by Tom Long, Christian Century, April 4, 2001, p. 11.
3 Morning-Glory Babies: Children with Aids and the Celebration of Life, by Tolbert McCarroll, St. Martins Press, 1988.
4 Our Greatest Gift, by Henri Nouwen.

I Don’t Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

I Don’t Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2010
© copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

About 40 years ago now, a musical group from England popularized a song that has been running through my mind ever since I first began reading over tonight’s New Testament text in preparation for this service. Some of you will recognize the words, others won’t, but they seem to me to be pertinent to the celebration of the Last Supper that Jesus celebrated with his disciples when he sat with them one Passover evening centuries ago. The words go like this:

You say “Yes,” and I say “No,”
You say “Stop,” and I say, “Go, go, go!”
I don’t know why you say, “Goodbye,"
I say, “Hello.”
Hello, hello!
I don’t know why you say, “Goodbye,”
I say, “Hello!”1

Even if it sounds a little befuddling, as much of the later music of the Beatles did, it seems to me that that song perfectly describes what often goes on in human relationships. We say one thing, our friend hears another. We want this, they hope for that. I want to work, you want to go fishing. You want to eat out, I want to cook hamburgers at home. While you expect this, I am planning for that, so no matter what you say, I will never hear you just right, because what I want you to be saying is playing so much louder in my mind than what you actually are saying.

The disciples, fresh back from the grand entry into Jerusalem, flushed with the reflected glory of the great man to whom they had attached their lives, for whom they had given up everything to follow, these folks were ready to hear a word of triumph. Their long treks over the barren northern provinces of Palestine could finally bear fruit; having “paid their dues,” as they say in the entertainment business, they were ready now for some truly big successes. Instead, what they heard from their master were unbelievable words, words of his impending death. No wonder he knew one of their number would betray him. Surely some of them must have felt themselves to have been betrayed! How could Jesus bring them all this way only to see him die? What was to have been a victory celebration turned out to be a retirement party. I don’t know why you say “goodbye,” I say “hello."

"One of you will betray me...” Goodbye.

"...that day when I shall drink it new in the kingdom of God.” Hello.

A passage which began by preparing Jesus’ disciples for his death – at least partially through their own betrayal, denial, or falling away, saying goodbye when they meant to say hello – ends with an equally shocking surprise when Jesus anticipated a glorious kingdom to come: saying hello when they have not even begun to accustom themselves to his goodbye! It’s confusing to us. It must have been confounding to them.

There are present day hellos and goodbyes in this passage. Here we have the foundation for one of the two holiest actions of the worship of the church, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. From Jesus’ own words, “Drink of it, all of you...,” it was clearly an action intended to bring Christians together in the future beyond Jesus’ death and resurrection. And yet, this holy hello has been one of the single most tragic occasions for division among believers. How ironic that as we despair over Jesus’ death tomorrow on the cross, tonight in different denominations – another word for the exclusion of one believer from another – we continue to tear his body asunder throughout the universal church, by our failure and refusal to even attempt to agree on this critically important act of worship. In this one great sacrament, meant to be God’s loving ‘hello’ to us, we continue to turn our backs on each other, on fellow believers. An occasion for a holy ‘hello’ has become another goodbye.

I don’t know why you say “goodbye,” I say “Hello.”

Even within our own church we individualize this sacrament to the point of eliminating any awareness of others during its celebration. The sacrament which Jesus instituted nourished each disciple individually, but it also bound them together as they were bound to him. In many of our celebrations, seated in our pews, we may have privatized it to the point that if anyone were to say “thank-you” or even clear their throat too loudly upon being handed a portion of bread, it would cause a stir, probably accompanied by raised eyebrows. “Don’t bother me now, I am having my moment alone with Jesus!” An occasion surely meant to be a ‘hello’ among believers, the New Testament version of a potluck dinner, this sacrament has become another ‘goodbye’ as we ignore one another’s presence during the serving of the holy meal.

Tonight, let me invite you to recall the fellowship aspect of the sacrament and feel free to speak to one another as you come forward to partake of the bread and wine. Nothing fancy, nothing threatening, not even anything too loud or boisterous. As the bread is offered to you, try saying a simple word of thanks. Likewise with the wine. Use one another’s names as you greet each other along the aisles. What kind of hello, holy or otherwise, fails to call us by name? No one shares a meal with another human being anonymously. Names have to be attached. “Rob, this is the body of Christ for you.” “Brenda, Jane, Tom, Pete, this is the blood of Christ for you.”

We search the gospel passage in vain for the familiar communion words from I Corinthians, “Do this in remembrance of me.” This meal, tonight especially, is not a jazzed up memorial service. Instead, probably more than on any other occasion of the church year, it is a time to participate in our oneness with Christ, a time to appreciate his living presence and our unity with each other; we are one in him, we who – sometimes at great personal cost – have chosen to follow Jesus, we are tonight declaring once again our discipleship by eating from the loaf and drinking from the cup. This requires our participation with one another as we partake of the bread and wine. We are disciples together. Speak to one another, exchange the words of life as the bread of life passes among you. I don’t know why you say “goodbye,” I say “hello."

Finally, Jesus closed this meal with a promise. The goodbye in anticipation of his death had been spoken, yet he closed their Passover meal with an unexpected word of hello: “I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of heaven.” The Lord’s Supper, on this night of all nights, is not only a memorial, an occasion for fond goodbyes, but an anticipation, a divine hello on which we may rely. For very soon, Jesus will come again to claim those who are his own. Just when things may look the bleakest, just around the corner will be our Friend and Master to say to us, “I don’t know why you say ‘goodbye,’ I say ‘hello.’”

© copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder

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1 Lyrics © Copyright Northern Songs. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. The lyrics contained herein are for the sole use of educational reference for the readers of this article. All other uses are in violation of international copyright laws.

April Fool

April Fool

copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder
Robert J. Elder, Pastor
Passion/Palm Sunday, March 28, 2010

Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29

Open to me the gates of righteousness,
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to the LORD.
This is the gate of the LORD;
the righteous shall enter through it.

The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD.
We bless you from the house of the LORD.

The LORD is God, and he has given us light.
Bind the festal procession with branches,
up to the horns of the altar. NRSV

Palm Sunday always provides a head-scratching opportunity for preachers. Easter is still a week off, and with it the celebration of the triumph of the resurrection. Today, Palm Sunday, we generally take part in a sort of mini-celebration, which, by the end of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, turns toward the dark days of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. So what is the point of Palm Sunday, really? Is it a sort of April Fools joke on folks who thought they had the right take on the sort of power possessed by Jesus, only to discover they were in error? Clearly, the disciples were taken entirely by surprise by the way the week turned out. They dozed instead of praying, they ran in fear, they were clueless about Jesus’ last dinner meeting with them and its meaning, they fought, they quarreled, they angled for position ... a lot like Christians today!

Today I have chosen to set to one side the well-worn gospel accounts of the Palm Sunday processional in Jerusalem in order to look at Psalm 118, from which the gospel writers later saw many clues as to the divine purpose behind Jesus’ unusual entry into Jerusalem.

So often we approach the Psalms as a sort of collection or book of quotations containing proverbial wisdom. But they are not just bits of piety and poetry and inspiration designed for captions on the inside of greeting cards. The Psalms are real expressions, real reflections on experiences of real life. They emerge from “confrontations with real evil, real dangers, real fears, real anxieties, real frustrations, and really nasty people.”[1] They speak to experiences common to all humanity because they emerge straight from the human condition. One of the most basic human conditions many Psalms address is fear: the visceral, fundamental, disabling anxiety common to all humanity. We all have experienced it, some may be struggling with it at this very moment as we sit in this sanctuary.

Psalm 118 might seem an odd text for Palm Sunday, though it does contain phrases reminiscent of the events of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The psalm reminds us that the context of praise with which it begins exists inside a larger environment of fear, sadness, anxiety, sorrow, disappointment, even terror. Hundreds of years before Jesus’ time, an environment of fear was the context in which joy was found by the psalmist, just as the context of life is death, the context of light is darkness, the context of sound is silence. The context of the psalm’s praise is the story of the whisker’s width escape from death by the young David, pretender to the throne, as he fled from Saul, the king of record, who was determined to destroy his would-be successor.

Without going into excessive detail, Saul had sent out armed forces, hit men, and schemers to defeat the young David. “David (was) a man with a contract on his head. The world (was) out to get him. He (was) not just imagining it. It (was) not just a bit of paranoia. He (was) not just mildly confused or bewildered. He (was) in mortal danger. His friends (were) not to be relied upon in the treacherous geopolitical world of his age. And the skills that had served him before, the talents, the abilities, all of the things that people had praised in him before, now got him nothing at all. He has been pursued. He has been persecuted. He has been slandered and much maligned, chased all over the land. As the spiritual says, ‘He has been buked and scorned.’ But in the end, by his perseverance, by the grace of God, and over enormous odds,”[2] his kingship was realized, and his ultimate triumph was made all the sweeter for the narrowness of the margin by which it was achieved.

Reflecting on David’s experience, the psalmist declares, “Out of my distress I called on the Lord, and he answered me and set me in a broad (meaning, ‘free’) place.”

David’s enemies were real. He wasn’t merely possessed of a need to employ self-improvement slogans like “mind over matter.” At verse 10 his enemies surrounded him on all sides. At verse 12 he describes them as surrounding him like a bunch of killer bees. At verse 13 he declared, “I was pushed hard, so that I was falling.”

It doesn’t require a military background to understand this sense of siege, of attack, of conflict and frustration. I have seen it in my friends. I see it in some of you from time to time. I see it in myself. It is part of the human condition, like breathing and eating and sleeping. Fear, conflict, and anxiety come with the task of being human. Most people I talk with don’t name some single gigantic evil enemy or force that is out to get them. Most people, most of my friends, and I, most of the time, don’t feel that there is a single pursuer after us. But we know the feeling sometimes of being surrounded by swarming bees coming from every direction, defying the meager protection of our hapless arm waving. They are little anxieties, small burdens and complaints. It would be better to have one big, clear, visible enemy with whom we could contend once and for all. But life rarely works that way. Insidious little claims on our spirits wear us down in our inability to isolate them and fight each one off.

The kind of fear of which this text is speaking is not the fear of death. It is the fear of life: fear of living, fear of the consequences of the next breath, the next hour, the next hour’s encounter. What will be the next impossible demand placed upon us? Will it be before sunset tonight that somebody will ask of us what we cannot possibly do? Tomorrow will someone say something we would rather not hear? Will the mail bring not tidings of great joy, but the dreadful news that the IRS is interested in us? It is fear of life and its consequences that puts us into a state of paralysis.

The fear of life means that most people dare not live fully or freely, but rather live what Henry David Thoreau called, “... lives of quiet desperation, (going) to the grave with the song still in them,”[3] lives in which we exist perennially on the defensive, anticipating a life in which, as an old proverb says, sorrows never come singly and joys never come in pairs.

In the services during the coming week we will be given reason to remember why fear entered into the hearts of the disciples following the hurrahs of Palm Sunday. On Thursday, we will celebrate the supper which Jesus instituted with his closest disciples, only to be reminded the next night that it took so little to cause them to flee in fear. And it is fear of life that drives so many of us into the darkest recesses of our own private anxieties and fears, showing all the signs of life lived in the shadows out of a fear of life itself: Depression, gloom, stress, morbidity, all the things the psalmist also marked elsewhere as signs of life lived in the valley of the shadow of death. In Jesus’ ministry prior to his resurrection, the disciples were almost uniformly weak-kneed, frightened of their own shadows, and rarely ever understood Jesus’ ministry or his words except on levels closest to the surface. That describes pre-Easter people pretty well.

I recall a David Frost interview with Nelson Mandela that was broadcast several years ago. Mandela was asked about the key to his success in helping a thoroughly racist South Africa move, mostly peacefully, from segregation and apartheid to peace and cooperation among the races. What, the interviewer wanted to know, was his formula for such peace? Mandela replied that it would not be diplomacy, or military might, or economic power that would guarantee peace and a shot at prosperity for his troubled country. It would be “the death of fear, the fear of oneself, the fear of the other, the fear of the unknown, the fear of the everyday circumstances of one’s life: white, colored, and black. The death of fear would be the beginning of new life.”[4]

As much as we look toward the resurrection of Jesus on the Sunday after today, we also look in his raised life for the death of fear and the renewal of hope and possibility for ourselves, and for our world.

copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder

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[1] My thanks to Peter Gomes, whose Harvard chapel sermon, “The Death of Fear,” (Pulpit Digest, March/April 1995) has had a great impact on my thoughts about, and my work on, this psalm.
[2] Ibid.
[3] http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L001406
[4] Ibid., Gomes sermon.

Paths to Happiness

Paths to Happiness

© copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder
Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 14, 2010

Psalm 32

Happy are those
whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered. NRSV

Psalm 32 begins with a beatitude, as does the most famous teaching in the New Testament, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Happy are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful...”[1] The heading the translators picked for this psalm in my deskside Bible is “The Joy of Forgiveness.” “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven...” It’s important to realize that this joy comes not from being the one to offer forgiveness, but the one on the receiving end. It’s a hard truth for most self-made, I-did-it-my-way, never-complain-never-explain people in the world.

Psalm 32 is a perfect spiritual accompaniment for our Lenten pilgrimage toward the prize of Easter, inasmuch as it begins not with groveling, guilt, and gloom, but begins with a conclusion toward which the rest of the psalm moves:

• It begins, in a way, with the triumphant result to come, and then explains how we get there.
• It begins at the end, with a beatitude, with the consequence of confession and forgiveness, in the same way we begin almost every service of worship, with a prayer of confession, then a word of pardon, before we get to the business of celebrating how we got there by means of the gospel.
• It begins in assurance, so we need not fear the journey through recognition of our sin, our need to confess it, and the release from bondage that is provided in forgiveness. The prize is ever before us, as it were.

I love the fact that the psalm begins, not with a rehearsal of human failures and shortcomings, but with assurance, with a promise of better things to come than what we may have known. Those with overblown confidence in their own moral rectitude, who do not realize from the outset that we all stand in need of the prevenient grace of God to make our paths straight, those who believe against all the human evidence to the contrary that by sheer force of moral will we can be self-perfecting, are invariably on a collision course with the reality that it simply isn’t so. We cannot save ourselves from our own immersion in human failing, no matter how hard we endeavor to rise above. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, we wander among the trees, hiding from God, hoping God won’t notice.

In Leonard Bernstein’s quixotic 1970s theater rendition of the Catholic Mass, the confession contains this exceptionally accurate portrayal of the human predicament of sin:

If I could I’d confess
Good and loud, nice and slow
Get this load off my chest
Yes, but how, Lord — I don’t know.
What I say I don’t feel
What I feel I don’t show
What I show isn’t real
What is real, Lord, I don’t know
No, no, no — I don’t know....[2]

Yet in the face of this, Psalm 32 opens with this primary assurance; before the psalmist can even move to confession comes the assurance of God’s grace to come:

Happy are those
to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit. NRSV

Isn’t this the central theme of Lent? Often we see it as a season of penitence, of “giving things up,” of dust and ashes. We are tempted to think of confession and penitence as a way we can earn our way back into God’s favor. Yet in reality, God stands by, ready to impute no iniquity, to relieve us of the move to deceit to cover ourselves. Lent is, in reality, the season of God’s making possible the steadfast, surrounding love that we cannot create for ourselves.

Psalm 32 makes three central claims about what is true in human life.

Sin is real. Make no mistake, the Bible never suggests that sin does not exist. It is entirely aware of the reality of sin, and of every human being’s participation in it. We may try to scapegoat, to cast the real blame for sin somewhere outside ourselves, outside our group, our country, our faith. But the reality that confronts us is that sin is real, and we are up to our necks in it, and that is just how it is. Sin is real.

And if sin is real, confession of sin is necessary. “While I kept silence,” the psalmist declared, “my body wasted away... then I acknowledged my sin to you ... I did not hide my iniquity.” No matter that God’s desire to forgive and make whole is prevenient, stands outside our own willingness to ask, still the asking is necessary. This is as true in human relations as it is in our relationship to God. I recall in my seminary days, being asked by an intelligent and well-spoken woman in a church I served, why we needed a prayer of confession every Sunday, “after all,” she said, “I don’t feel I have done anything wrong.” To this, the psalmist would reply “While I kept silence ... your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up.” I simply replied to this well-meaning but self-deceived person, “If you don’t think you have done anything wrong in the past week, you probably need to think some more.”

We all know the special misery of an offense against someone else that goes unconfessed: the burden of broken friendship, alienation, the estrangement which takes so much energy to remember. It takes a lot of work. We avoid eye-contact. We have to remember not to find ourselves in the company of that person. We have to remember and rehearse over and over again the source and cause of our estrangement, our non-reconciliation, non-confession, which takes a tremendous amount of psychic energy. Confession can erase the need for this complicated dance of avoidance and pain. Confession allows us to put a name on the problem, making healing and recovery possible.

And if confession is necessary, the psalmist makes clear that forgiveness of sin is not only also real, but also it is a source of surpassing joy. And here is a way to look at it that I had not thought of before reading it in an article by Peter Gomes, chaplain at Harvard University, who said “It is the Christian’s duty, as well as privilege, to be joyful.”[3]

Joy is not an option of the faith. It is a requirement. And we arrive at joy, according to the wisdom of the psalm, by way of acknowledging the reality of sin, confessing our own part in it, and receiving what God is already so prepared to give, the blessing of forgiveness which grants us a joy beyond measure. The psalmist, after declaring the assurance of God’s forgiveness, throws in that exclamatory word that often appears in the psalms: “Selah!” which means something like “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Amen!” all rolled into one.

About the sheer necessity of joy for Christian life, Dr. Gomes also declared to his Harvard congregation one Sunday, “Now you would not know that to look at the faces of most Christians. You don’t have the benefit as I do of the view from up here.”[4] Psalm 32 functions as a reminder that the joy of life in God is real, is imminently and presently available to us. While sin is real and confession is necessary, forgiveness and the joy it brings is also real.

It is said that St. Augustine was so convinced of this that he had Psalm 32 in its entirety written above his head as he lay on his deathbed, so that its message would be the very last conscious thought he would carry with him from this world into the next. Martin Luther regarded Psalm 32 as among the passages of the Old Testament closest to the very essence of the gospel.

Temptation and failure, of course, return to us again and again. Even so, we are never left alone in the wilderness of our struggles. Before there is failure, before there is shortcoming, before Cain even thought of laying a knife to Abel’s throat, there was the covering willingness and desire of God to forgive, to move toward error-prone humanity with the sweet song of forgiveness. God sends angels to us, heavenly messengers — sometimes in clothes of flesh and blood — who bring sustenance and restore strength. They will come to us suddenly, when we are exhausted and vulnerable. When we most need them, they will come and lift us up. In the second century, a desert father wrote: “The devil cannot lord it over those who serve God with their whole heart and who put their hope in him. The devil can wrestle with them, but cannot overcome them.”[5]

Notorious sin, public and private, can be forgiven. So can the sins that are so pedestrian, so everyday that we hardly recognize them even as we are committing them, sins of daily, clumsy, character assassination, gossip, self-excusing. In our commitment to the service of God, we do not languish forever in a place of condemnation. From the soot of Ash Wednesday we move forward into a Christ-saved world, toward Galilee, toward Jerusalem, toward our neighbor, toward our enemy, toward both the ends of the earth and deepest recesses of our hearts.

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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[1] Matthew 5:3 ff.
[2] "Trope: I Don't Know," Mass, Leonard Bernstein.
[3] “Confessions and Consequences,” by Peter Gomes, Pulpit Digest, January-February 1994, pp. 23-29. I am indebted to Dr. Gomes in this sermon for his threefold interpretation of the psalm.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Referenced in “Bedrock Truths,” by Patricia Farris, Christian Century, 2/17/02, p. 18

The Tragedy of Unoffered Prayer

The Tragedy of Unoffered Prayer

© copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder

Third Sunday in Lent, March 7, 2010

Psalm 63:1-8

I will bless you as long as I live;

I will lift up my hands and call on your name. NRSV

A lot of conversation about prayer suggests that it amounts to petitioning God for stuff we want. It reminds me of a story about the great Arnold Palmer, who once played a series of exhibition golf matches in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi king was more than a little impressed by Palmer’s skill, and so he expressed a desire to give him a gift. Palmer demurred, citing the honor he felt simply to have been invited. But once he realized the king would be upset if he failed to accept a gift, he thought for a moment and said, “Alright, Your Highness, a golf club would be a lovely memento of my visit to your country.” The next day, an envelope was delivered to Palmer’s hotel containing the title to a golf club, thousands of acres complete with trees, sand traps, water hazards, fairways, greens, and a clubhouse.

Sometimes I suspect we think this way about prayer, that it is a matter of receiving stuff for our prayer efforts.

I also remember a story I heard about one of baseball’s legendary players, Yogi Berra, who played catcher for the Yankees. During one game, in the bottom of the 9th, the score was tied and there were two outs. The next batter from the opposing team stepped into the batter’s box, and casually reached over with his bat and made the sign of the cross on home plate. Yogi Berra thought to himself, “Hey, I’m Catholic, too!” So he reached out, wiped off the plate with his glove, and said to the pious batter, “Why don’t we just let God watch the game?”

This is pretty good theology if we’re thinking about baseball games and their outcomes, but it’s really lousy theology if we attempt to apply it to our lives and to our faith. A philosophy that says “Why don’t we just let God watch?” runs against 20 centuries of church teaching about the necessity of prayer.

“Oh, easy for you to say,” you might be thinking, “you’re a pastor, you know all about prayer, you’ve studied up on it.” Well, of course that thinking ignores the facts that, first, prayer isn’t so much a matter of study as it is a matter of practice, and secondly, that effectiveness in prayer is never measured by skill, always by repetition. Repetition. That almost seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? If I say a prayer once, doesn’t God hear it, why does he need to hear it repeatedly? But any golfer will tell you that you can read all the books on golf you can find, you can watch golf on the Golf channel from morning to night, even attend PGA tournaments in person and watch the best golfers in the world and collect their autographs, but none of that will improve your game at all. The only way to improve your game is to get out on the course and play golf!

John Calvin, great-granddaddy of all Presbyterians, once said that the Lord’s Prayer is there to help us when our own ideas run out.” This is true, but it is also true that the Lord’s Prayer can serve simply to get our prayer life moving when it is stuck.

The Rev. F.B. Meyer was born in London, England in 1847, began pastoring churches there and writing books – lots of books – in 1872. He lived through the turn of the twentieth century. While some may recall the names of evangelists such as Spurgeon, Moody, Graham, and Bryan, Meyer was well-known in his day, but not so much today. This is so even though he wrote over 40 published books. Still, if he hadn’t written another word, it is worth remembering him for a single sentence he did write, and for which his name is still recalled at least by some. Once I began looking for it, particularly on the Internet, I discovered his name is referenced in literally hundreds of thousands places out there in cyberspace. All this about a man who died back in 1929! Though Meyer was well known in his day, hardly at all in our own, here is a cryptic sentence, which he wrote about prayer, and which appeared just a few years ago in a new book, and by which he has been referenced in hundreds of books and untold numbers of sermons:

“The greatest tragedy in life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.” [1]

I think, hearing that sentence, we can see why it is captivating. It takes one of the commonest things we hear and say about prayer – that it sometimes goes unanswered – and turns it on its head. By far, I suspect, there are more prayers that go unoffered than go unanswered. That isn’t to say there is nothing to the idea of unanswered prayer, but Meyer’s comment reminds us that often, suspecting there will be no answer, or perhaps not the answer we desire, we leave prayers unoffered, turning a deaf ear to what the Spirit might say to us if only we had been listening.

When, in the first verse of the psalm, the psalmist says, “O God ... I seek you...” Are we to take this to suggest that God is hiding, that God must be sought out, that God is generally unwilling to hear from us? I don’t think so. Wasn’t the scene of Adam and Eve in the garden the quintessential example that it is we who hide from God? American philosopher William James, best remembered for writing The Varieties of Religious Experience, once responded to a question about whether or not he prayed, saying, “I can’t possibly pray. I feel foolish and artificial.” Yet he wrote in his famous book that prayer is “the very soul and essence of religion.” One observer, considering her own inept attempts at prayer while contemplating her Catholic rosary, said, “I wonder if it ever occurred to William James that feeling foolish and artificial is as good a starting point as any for prayer. Prayer is like courtship; of course it feels foolish and artificial. It’s not something you can work at inwardly and then execute outwardly.” [2]

“Oh God,” said the psalmist, “you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you.” While the poetry of the psalms is impressive, this is not the sort of language that is impossible for any of us. A contemporary translation of this first verse of the psalm was rendered this way, making it sound even more contemporary:

God – you’re my God!

I can’t get enough of you!

I’ve worked up such hunger and thirst for God

traveling across dry and weary deserts. [3]

Are you, like so many of us, afraid to go to God with your tiny requests and petty concerns, someone who needs courage and grace to come boldly to God? Then make sufficient courage and grace the first thing you ask for. That’s basically what the psalmist began by doing in Psalm 63.

I remember well the day following the incredible news that those misbegotten terrorists had attacked and destroyed the World Trade Center towers by flying airplanes full of innocent passengers and highly combustible fuel into the buildings. It was horrific, as you all surely remember. That day we opened the doors to the sanctuary of the church I was serving at the time, across from the capitol in Salem, and placed a sign on the sidewalk out in front to inform passersby that the church was open for prayer. And people came in, in ones and twos and threes. Three of us – two pastors and a musician – stayed up in the chancel for a while grabbing bits of scripture signaling one another, “Now you pray, now you lead a hymn, how about this one? Now you read some scripture, now you pray again....” It was chaotic, but I have to say, I have seldom felt so useful in all my ministry. And after we ran out of words and hymns to offer, we simply set the doors open and left people to their prayers. And they came. They prayed. I don’t know what they prayed, or even to whom, but I do know this: If we were to place signs out in front of that building tomorrow morning and leave the doors open all day, I’d be surprised if half a dozen people came in out of any greater motivation than curiosity. The same would likely be true here.

It shouldn’t require a national tragedy or disaster to get people praying; though, sadly, it often does. But in the meantime, in all the times between or before disasters, why fail to pray, why perpetuate the tragedy of unoffered prayer?

It is Lent, of course. There is no better time or season to sit in a quiet place on a daily basis, and simply open our hearts to whatever God may be ready to offer us in prayer. If we need a model, how about this simple ancient Celtic prayer:

God with me lying down,

God with me rising up,

God with me in each ray of light,

Nor I a ray of joy without God,

Nor one ray without God.

Christ with me sleeping,

Christ with me waking,

Christ with me watching,

Every day and night,

Each day and night.

God with me protecting,

The Lord with me directing,

The Spirit with me strengthening,

Forever and forevermore,

Ever and evermore, Amen.

Chief of chiefs, Amen.

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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[1] Quoted in: Prayer: Does It Makes Any Difference?, Zondervan, 2006, by Philip Yancey, p. 283.

[2] “Foolish Prayer,” by Carol Zaleski, Christian Century, 2-23-03, p. 48.

[3] The Message//Remix: The Bible in Contemporary Language, by Eugene Peterson, © 2003, p. 977.