In the Shelter of the Most High

 

In the Shelter of the Most High

 

A sermon shared at the Suttons Bay Congregational Church

 

January 17, 2021

 

 

Len Niehoff

 

 

Scripture: Psalm 91

 

 

         The pandemic has led many of us to return to old and familiar hobbies or to take up new ones. Last year, I built Lisa her first raised garden bed so she could try her hand at growing vegetables. She went at it with her characteristic zeal, and as a result we can now tell you all the things you can do with a crop of several hundred cherry tomatoes.

 

         I’m an enthusiastic amateur carpenter, so I’ve spent lots of time constructing boardwalks, potting benches, grilling tables, woodsheds, and the like. Lisa is a dedicated knitter, so she’s been hard at work on endless numbers of hats, mittens, cowls, and socks. At one point, we were so busily laboring at these two activities that I worried we’d get mixed up and I’d build a sweater made of cedar and she’d knit an addition onto the house.

 

         In the isolation of the pandemic, we also found ourselves watching much more television than we normally do. We started by bingeing on a show called Outlander, which attracted Lisa because of the knitted shawls and capelets worn by Claire, the protagonist. The show appealed to me because it is largely set in Scotland and I am a member of the Gordon clan on my mother’s side.

 

The Gordons had a habit of fighting in the losing battles for Scottish independence from the English, and Outlander rather graphically depicts some of those skirmishes, including the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the show, as the Scottish soldiers prepare for that battle, a woman begins to recite those inspiring words of Psalm 91. “He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler … He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge … You will not fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day … For he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways.”

 

Alas, although the Battle of Culloden lasted only about an hour, it went very badly for the Scots. They suffered massive casualties and found their uprising summarily repressed. The words of Psalm 91 offered inspiration to the warriors—but those stirring phrases did not play out in the reality of the fight.

 

         Psalm 91 is one of my favorite passages in the Hebrew Bible. Over the years, I have turned to it countless times for comfort and encouragement. But I fear that we cannot read it or hear it without sensing the deep theological problem it embodies: its words, beautiful as they are, can feel disconcertingly disconnected from our lived experience.

 

         If we read Psalm 91 in a superficial manner, then we might take it to offer the following message: “Here’s how it works. If you believe and trust in God, then He will shield you from bad things, protect you from bad people, and rescue you from bad circumstances.” That sounds like a great arrangement, but it doesn’t always align very well with what actually happens on the ground. To the contrary, life teaches us that bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, the innocent die young, the guilty die old, and so on and so on.

 

         Edward Abbey famously declared that “Life is unfair. And it’s not fair that life is unfair.” On many days, that diagnosis may seem more consistent with life as we muddle through it than do those lines of Psalm 91. And this leaves us with a serious theological dilemma: Is Psalm 91 simply a collection of false promises? Or does it have meaning for us after all—perhaps even a meaning that can bring us into a place of great courage and to a peace that passes all understanding?

 

         Now, the problem I describe here is not limited to Psalm 91. To the contrary, it is in many ways the central dilemma of our faith. How can we believe in a loving and compassionate God when our world is burdened by so much pain, suffering, violence, cruelty, unfairness, and death?

 

People have been trying to answer this question for so long that the effort to do so has its own name—"theodicy.” And that project has occupied such intellectual giants as Plotinus, St. Augustine, St. Irenaeus, John Milton, and Gottfried Leibniz. Indeed, Leibniz came up with the word “theodicy” when he wasn’t busy inventing calculus and refining the binary number system in ways that ultimately made computers possible.

 

         It can be hard to find a factual proposition with which all of the members of any given congregation will agree, but here’s an easy one for all of you: those guys that I just mentioned are smarter than I am. So, spoiler alert: if they couldn’t come up with a completely satisfactory answer to that question, neither can I. If John Milton, one of the greatest minds of the 17^th century, could not achieve his goal “to justify the ways of God to man” in the ten-thousand lines of verse in his epic poem Paradise Lost, then it’s unlikely I’m going to pull it off this morning in Suttons Bay, Michigan, even after three cups of coffee.

 

         My modest goal for today is therefore to make two points about Psalm 91 that I think might help direct us toward an answer, even if they don’t give us a definitive one. The first is a point about the language of Psalm 91. And the second is a point about what that language tells us about the nature of God and our relationship with Him.

 

         Let’s turn first to the language of Psalm 91. I invite you to notice that the words and phrases used in the psalm are overwhelmingly and highly poetic. Indeed, the psalm deploys an abundance of rich and evocative images.

 

It talks about living in the “shelter of the Most High,” abiding in the “shadow of the almighty,” being delivered from the “snare of the fowler,” finding refuge “under [the] wings” of the Lord, discovering a “shield” in his faithfulness, taking up a “dwelling place” with the Almighty, and knowing that God himself has commanded His angels to worry after us and lift us up. Little wonder we find so much poetry here: the psalms are, of course, songs, and it is their sound and their imagery that make them meaningful and memorable.

 

         Indeed, if we try to reduce the glory of any psalm to simple declarative propositions, then we drain it of its central meaning. Consider those moving opening lines of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.” We miss the beauty of the psalm—and, I would argue, we miss the point—if we recast that poetry as: “God makes me nap in my backyard and walk next to drainage ditches.”

 

By the same token, we don’t want to reduce the rich and imaginative poetry of Psalm 91 to something that sounds like an advertisement for a lottery ticket. “Believe in God now and you may already have won a victory over someone or something bad! But remember—you have to play to win!” No, we can put aside the poetry of a psalm only at the expense of putting aside everything important that it is trying to tell us.

 

The great translator of ancient texts, Paul Roche, once made this point in connection with the Greek word “Thalassa.” “Thalassa” is a word dense in significance in Greek mythology and invokes images of the primeval spirit of the sea. Roche noted that a clueless translator could mess things up entirely by rendering the word as: “a vast expanse of salt water.” That translation might be accurate in some strictly literal sense, but much of the depth and complexity of the word “Thalassa” would fall away with it.

 

         The theologian David Tracy argues that the Bible often uses this sort of poetic language for a specific reason. After all, the Bible is not a travel guidebook or an instruction manual or an ancient version of Google Maps. Rather, the Bible seeks to shed light on things that lie at the very limits of human experience and understanding: life; death; creation; redemption; rebirth; and, most fundamentally, the nature of God and the essence of our relationship with Him.

 

         Tracy points out that we do not have the capacity to describe these things directly. We therefore must use what he calls “limit language”—things like parables, metaphors, and poetry—to gesture toward a Truth that we cannot convey outright. One of my favorite examples of this comes when Paul writes in First Corinthians that in this life we see only “through a glass, darkly”—using a bit of poetry because he does not even know enough to describe in straightforward terms what he does not know.

 

         Paul expresses a lot of his theology through poetic, imagistic language. Just consider that famous passage in the sixth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, where Paul urges us to “put on the full armor of God,” including the “belt of truth,” the “breastplate of righteousness,” the “shield of faith,” the “helmet of salvation,” and the “sword of the spirit.” Like the 91^st Psalm, these lines clothe us for the battles of life in an array of metaphors. 

 

         Throughout the gospels, Jesus too uses this sort of “limit language,” often answering direct questions with metaphors, images, or stories. Who are we? We are “the light of the world.” Why shouldn’t I judge other people? Because I have a log in my eye. How does the word of God spread? Like seeds that land in differing soil. What is the kingdom of heaven like? It’s like a mustard seed. And it’s like yeast. And it’s like a treasure hidden in a field. And it’s like a pearl of great price.

 

We even use such language in attempting to describe Jesus. Who is he? He is the lamb. The shepherd. The prince of peace. The alpha and the omega. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once observed that our language does not even allow us to describe fully the aroma of coffee; how, then, could we expect it to describe perfect love, grace, and compassion made incarnate?

 

The Bible therefore uses the tools of poetry. The text overflows with metaphors and similes and symbols and parables and all those other devices we learned about in English class but didn’t fully appreciate because we didn’t yet know that this is the language of the prophets, and the saints, and the apostles, and a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth. It is the language of Truth and Mystery—and, for those subjects, it is the only language we have, except maybe for the music of Bach.

 

That brings me to the second point about Psalm 91: through the very use of this sort of language, the text signals to us that the ways of God are, and must, remain deeply mysterious. Psalm 91 does not provide us with detailed information about how or when or in what manner God will embrace us, shelter us, fight for us, and deliver us. It just assures us that God will do so, perhaps in ways we cannot even recognize, let alone fully comprehend or appreciate.

 

The confidence that this is so constitutes the very essence of our faith. But, you will notice that this faith does not require us to believe many things. Instead, it asks us to subscribe to just one central idea: that God loves us. If we accept that single principle, then all sorts of things logically and necessarily follow from it.

 

Those include believing that God will provide for us, although in His own manner and time and not always in ways we understand. He will serve as our refuge and our fortress; He will cover us with His pinions and take us underneath His wings; He will command his legions of angels concerning us. How do we know this? Because a loving and compassionate God could not do otherwise.

 

This promise does not make anything inevitable. It does not mean that we will enjoy economic prosperity, or good health, or unalloyed happiness. It does not mean that people will respect us, honor us, love us, or even like us. And it certainly does not mean that we will be spared our hours in the valley of the shadow of death.

 

But it does mean that anything is possible. It means that even in that darkest of valleys we will have the most loving force in the universe at our side. It means that even in the midst of loss, or grief, or suffering, or despair, or depression we can experience the intimate presence of the Living God. “With man,” Jesus says in the 19^th chapter of Matthew, such things are impossible. “But with God everything is possible.”

 

*

I am a long-time boxing fan and so was very excited several years ago to have the opportunity to visit the Muhammad Ali Museum in Lexington, Kentucky. By coincidence, today is Muhammad Ali’s birthday. Later today I’ll celebrate with a little root beer, his favorite drink.

 

Ali said many memorable things in the course of his life, and a number of them are quoted in the museum’s displays and on its walls. But, during my visit, I was particularly struck by the following words, which seem to me resonant with our scripture for today. Ali once said:

 

“Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion.

 

“Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare.

 

“Impossible is potential.

 

“Impossible is temporary.

 

“Impossible is nothing.”

 

*

         Ours is a faith of impossibilities made possible. A God who sent his beloved Son to redeem us. A messiah born in a manger. A healed leper. A calmed storm. A walking paralytic. The blind given sight. The mute given speech. Thousands fed with a few loaves and fishes. The dead raised. An empty tomb. A resurrected Christ waiting on the shore to have a little breakfast with the disciples he taught and loved.

 

         And our own lives become witnesses to this truth. Think of all the things that have become possible for us just when we had concluded that they were not: A sense of strength, when we had none left. A feeling of peace, when we felt overwhelmed. A gift of care or kindness or currency, when we had given up on generosity. An occasion to smile or laugh, when sadness threatened to overtake us. Calm in the storm, quiet in the cacophony, light in the dark, a still small voice comforting us in the chambers of the indifferent silence, a warm blanketing presence in our coldest and loneliest hours.

 

         The theologian Howard Thurman wrote:

 

         “God knows the heart’s secrets and deals with us at the level of the heart’s profoundest hunger. Where there is fear or anxiety, these take precedence over the ebb and flow of the inward tides. In order for the deepest things in us to be touched and kindled, both fear and anxiety must be wiped away. This we can do for ourselves, sometimes, but not often. The one thing that they cannot abide is conscious exposure to the Love of God.”

 

If we look around us, and within us, we see so much evidence of grace. Resorting yet again to poetic language, the scriptures in several places compare God to a “thief who comes in the night.” Granted, in these our lives we may never catch Him in the act. But, make no mistake about it, He leaves fingerprints.

 

*

Psalm 91 does not offer us easy answers. The psalmist knew that, if you’re looking for those in human existence, you came to the wrong place. Instead, the psalm offers us something better—a poetic expression of the Truth that necessarily follows from belief in a loving and compassionate God, even if for now we can grasp that Truth only through a glass, darkly.

 

Oh, sisters and brothers in Christ, rejoice this good day, rejoice. Rejoice, despite everything, rejoice. Rejoice, even in these difficult times, rejoice.

 

For you do indeed live in the shelter of the Most High. You abide in the shadow of the almighty. You will find refuge under the wings of God. You need not fear in the night, for you have made the Most High your dwelling place. And he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. He will be with you in your times of trouble. And he will show you his salvation.

 

And the people said: Amen.  

 

The Last Word

 

The Last Word

 

Children’s Message, Sermon, Pastoral Prayer, and

Benediction

 

Suttons Bay Congregational Church

 

December 6, 2020

 

Children’s Message

 

            Parents are different in lots of ways, but there are some things that many of them have in common. One of those things is that most parents like to say something to their children just before their children leave to go someplace else.

            For example, when their children go to bed, parents say things like “sweet dreams” or “go to bed you sleepy head.” My father always said “goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” That may not have been the best message to help a child relax and doze off. How could I sleep and fight off bedbugs at the same time?

            Or when children go to visit a friend or relative, parents say things like “be good” or “mind your manners” or “don’t let your grandparents spoil you.” That last one usually doesn’t work.

            And parents don’t stop saying these sorts of things even when their children grow up. When their grownup children leave to go back to their own houses, parents say things like “stay in touch” or “let us know if you need anything” or “don’t forget to call.” Or “don’t forget to call.” Or “don’t forget to call.”

            Now, parents do all these things because there’s something they want their children to know. You see, all these words basically say the same thing. They say:  no matter where you go next, no matter where you are, I’m thinking about you.

And that’s true whether you’re going to bed, or going to school, or going to visit, or going to raise a family of your own.

            Now, what I want you to notice is that your church family does this, too.

At the end of every service, we say something called a benediction—a fancy word for a blessing—over everyone, including you. It is the church’s way of saying that no matter where you go next, no matter where you are, we are thinking about you. And so is God, who is your parent, too.

            I have a favorite Bible verse about this, and it comes from the first chapter of the book of Joshua. Will you say it along with me as a kind of prayer? I’ll say each sentence and then you can repeat it.

So say this with me: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. For the Lord God will be with you wherever you go.”

            Amen.

Sermon

Scripture: James 5

 

Let me tell you a story.

As most of you know, I have been practicing law and teaching at a law school for a very, very long time. My first argument in the Michigan Court of Appeals, which took place about 250 years ago, played out in a strange and memorable way. The lawyer for the opposing party had not filed his brief within the deadline set by the court rules. As a result, he lost his right to oral argument and I would be the only lawyer participating.

            When you check in at the Court of Appeals on the day of your argument, the clerk gives you a form that asks how long you plan to speak. The rules give each side up to half an  hour. Because I was inexperienced, and didn’t know what else to do, I wrote down “30 minutes.”

            When my case was called, the presiding judge on the three-judge panel looked at the form and raised an eyebrow. He said: “Uh, Mr. Niehoff, you’ve indicated that you’ll need the full half hour to argue your case today. Is that right?” I said that yes, I would. He continued: “And you’re aware that the opposing counsel did not file his brief on time, so we won’t be hearing any argument from him?” I said that yes, I was. He went on: “And you know that you won in the trial court, so all we have to do is affirm the ruling below?” I said that yes, I did. He concluded: “But you’re still sure that you’ll need the whole thirty minutes to argue?” I said that yes, I was.

            At this point, the presiding judge put his hand over the microphone on the bench, turned to the judge to his right, and said in the loudest stage whisper I’ve ever heard: “I think we should affirm, what do you think?” That judge responded: “Affirm.” Then he turned to the judge to his left and repeated the question. That judge, too, responded, “Affirm.” By virtue of this little exercise, I knew that, without saying a single word, I was going to win the appeal by a vote of 3-0.

            The presiding judge took his hand off the microphone, smiled at me, and said: “Well, Mr. Niehoff, you can go ahead and argue if you like, but in all candor it may not improve your chances.” I didn’t have much experience but I did have a modestly operational brain. So I smiled back at him and said: “In conclusion, I thank the court for its time this morning.” To this day, it was the most effective closing argument I’ve ever made.

*

            We all understand the importance of the words that we say last. For example, we traditionally say something kind, encouraging, or affectionate when we part company with someone—such as “see you soon” or “take care” or (these days especially) “stay safe and well.” Indeed, if someone parts from us by simply walking away or hanging up or disconnecting it feels abrupt and jarring—and communicates its own kind of message.

The words we say last can make a significant difference in what happens next. A minister friend of mine always gave his adolescent children the same parting instruction when they left the house. He simply said: “Remember who you are.” He wanted that phrase ringing in their memory when they met with the pressures and temptations they would inevitably confront and would have to navigate.

Over the years, I’ve gone back to that idea many times. Indeed, if you wanted a single phrase to return to again and again for strength and direction, it might be hard to come up with a simpler and more powerful one than “remember who you are.” Unless, perhaps, it is “remember whose you are.”

            Countless stories have come down to us of the last words spoken by famous people shortly before they passed from this world to the next. If that person had a keen wit, the anecdote may even be funny. For example, just before he died Bob Hope’s wife asked him where he wanted to be buried. He replied: “Surprise me.” And Oscar Wilde, physically failing in a shabby room in a Paris hotel, reportedly declared: “That wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.”

            But the last things that someone says can be profound and rich in meaning. Every Good Friday, we pause to consider what we by tradition call “the seven last words of Christ” on the cross. Of course, there were actually more than seven of them. And they were not his last words at all, because Jesus spoke also as the risen Christ.

The gospels give us slightly different versions of both sets of those last words—the ones spoken on the cross and the ones spoken as our risen Lord. But I am particularly fond of the words of Jesus that make up the last verse of the Gospel of Matthew: “And remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Those words must have given great comfort to his disciples and they should give great comfort to us. After all, if He is with us still, then He speaks to us still.

            The fifth and final chapter of James, to which we turn today as we complete our study of this important book, has been described by scholars as a collection of “closing exhortations.” James here offers a set of parting shots—phrases that he wants ringing in the memories of those early Christians to whom he was writing as they confronted and tried to navigate the pressures and temptations of their world. They are his own version of my friend’s direction to his children: “Remember who you are.”

            This morning, I invite you to notice two things about this final chapter of James that seem to me particularly important. The first concerns its structure. The second concerns the last words that James speaks to us.

Let’s begin with an observation about structure. On a close reading, it seems clear that James does not just direct his comments to one audience. Rather, he has three different audiences in his sights.

            He begins by addressing those who have placed their faith not in God but in material things. He calls them out for living in luxury and pleasure while others suffer. He charges that they have become rich through fraud and through the abuse of laborers.

And he does not mince his words. Recall how the fifth chapter begins: “Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you.” Well, that’s an attention grabber, isn’t it?

            But his tone changes dramatically when he then shifts to address a second audience: those who are struggling and suffering. He tells them to be patient, to be kind to one another, to show endurance, and to strengthen their hearts. He assures them that the Lord is compassionate, merciful, and, most importantly, present in their lives.

            James then turns to his third audience. He addresses everyone together. And he underscores that the way toward redemption lies in love expressed not just individually but in community. He says:

            “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, so that you may be healed.”

            Now, all this talk of “sin” may fail to resonate with our twenty-first century sensibilities. It may sound old-fashioned, harsh, and “judgy.” For our tastes, it may have too much of the sulfuric scent of fire and brimstone about it.

            And figuring out exactly what counts as a sin may confound us. Years ago, the New Yorker ran a Charles Barsotti cartoon on this theme. It depicts a  smiling St. Peter saying to a man being interviewed at the gates of heaven: “No, no, that’s not a sin, either. My goodness, you must have worried yourself to death!” As you might imagine, the man looks very relieved; I myself find it a very consoling idea.  

Talk of sin may make us think of those specific lists of prohibitions that we find in many of the letters of Paul: “Don’t do this, or this, or this. And certainly don’t do that.” In this sense, the concept of sin takes on a kind of regulatory quality, a detailed code of conduct that requires our obedient compliance.

This view of sin reminds me of another New Yorker cartoon where a man with less good fortune is standing in front of the devil at the gates to the infernal pit and saying: “Why wasn’t a list of these sins made available to me and why wasn’t I allowed to have it examined by my own expert.” Alas, I doubt that it works that way.

            Now, I do not want to argue against the concept of sin as a set of particularized prohibitions. That sort of specificity may prove useful to those who seek very direct guidance with respect to discrete issues and behaviors. And, as another minister friend of mine was fond of observing, the Bible is a holy book of sacred commands, not a self-help guide of friendly suggestions.

            But it also holds true that scouring the Bible for detailed instructions can lead us astray. The theologian Robert McAfee Brown liked to tell the story of the man who believed that the Bible would tell you precisely what to do if you simply opened it and randomly pointed toward a verse. One day the man flipped open the scriptures, stuck his finger on a page, and read to his disappointment the phrase: “Judas went out and hanged himself.” Appalled, the man gave it another try. This time, he hit on: “Go and do likewise.”

            Also, this concept of sin as a list of specific prohibitions has its limitations. It can distract us from the big picture and lead us into disputes over details. I have often been struck by how many times in his letters Paul has to include the kind of instruction we find in the second chapter of second Timothy: “Have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.”

            And I don’t think that in this passage James has those sorts of specific prohibitions in mind when he refers to sin. Remember that he is talking here about what heals a community. I don’t believe that he envisions that happening by people getting together and saying “I was an idolator” or “I was licentious” or “I was a drunken carouser”—you know, the sorts of things people merrily disclose on social media these days. 

            In my view, to connect the concept of confession with the idea of healing, as James does, we need to think about sin in a different, broader, and more complex way. I suspect that James may be using the idea of sin in that other sense. And I believe that this other understanding of sin aligns particularly well with our current circumstances and the challenges before us as a society and as individuals.

            This other way of thinking about sin views it as consisting of those actions and states of mind that run against the central and new commandment that Jesus gave to all of us: to love one another. When we love one another, when we build a community of mutual support and respect, we serve the Kingdom of God. When we judge and antagonize one another, when we destroy community for the sake of our personal agendas or tribal loyalties, we sin.

            Now, I want to emphasize that this is not necessarily a “kinder and gentler” understanding of what it means to sin. I am not advocating for a weakened, mushy, comfortable conception of sin that cuts us all sorts of endless breaks. To the contrary, I suspect that this idea of sin actually holds us to a higher moral standard.

After all, under this definition a person could avoid many of the things that Paul lists in texts like the fifth chapter of Galatians—licentiousness, drunkenness, carousing, and so on—and still qualify as an world-class Olympic-level sinner. This definition recognizes that someone who hates their neighbor is mired in sin, regardless of whether they are also a stone-cold-sober non-carousing maritally-loyal churchgoer. Without love, Paul tells us in that famous passage in first Corinthians, we are just resounding gongs and clanging cymbals—and we remain awash in our sinfulness.

            With all that said, it is important also to stress that James plainly does not want or expect us to shy away from telling the truth in our efforts to foster compassion and community. Remember that he begins his closing exhortations with words like these: “Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out!” This is not the voice of someone who wants us to address the evils of our world by sitting down, shutting up, and looking the other way.

            Now, let’s return to the directive that James gives to us: confess our sins to one another, so that we may be healed. Think about what this requires, particularly if we embrace that second definition of sin that I just described. It means that we must candidly acknowledge the ways in which we have worked against love and community. And it means that healing cannot occur unless and until we have the faith, strength, and resolve to do so.

            Let me also return to my point about structure. Note that James offers this instruction in the last part of his closing exhortations, when he is speaking to all of us. Not just the rich. Not just the corrupt. Not just the oppressive. He knows that—in the sense I have just described—we all sin and therefore all have wrongs to confess to each other and for which to seek forgiveness.

            But James has not quite finished with us. The argument he develops reaches its crescendo in the last line. He says:

            “My brothers and sisters,  if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

            This is the final thought that James wants to leave ringing in our memories. Yes, we need to confess our own failures of love and compassion. But we also have to work energetically to help others move beyond their failures.

            We hear the same sentiment in a wonderful passage in the tenth chapter of Hebrews: “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.” We are in this sense called to be Holy provocateurs, or, as the late John Lewis put it, relentless makers of good trouble.  

James calls us to get everyone on a path with a heart. To cultivate everyone’s capacity for grace and forgiveness. To invite everyone to get with a program that comes not from us but from God and from the deep interior veins of our shared humanity.

Whenever we do this, James assures us, it “will cover a multitude of sins.” I find it deeply interesting that James does not specify whose multitudinous sins will be forgiven. He might be talking about ours. He might be talking about those we seek to help. Or he might be talking about both.

I think it’s the last. I think he’s telling us that when we strive toward the Kingdom of God then vast showers of redemption rain down over all of us. Grace works that way. It has its own mysterious methods of going viral. It has its own amplification system. It has its own multiplication tables. What an inspiring message to hear during Advent, in this our season of hope and expectation for the things to come.

            It seems to me that, in the end, James asks us to subscribe to a simple but infinitely powerful creed. And I think Advent offers an excellent time to hear it, to embrace it, and to live it. We might sum it up this way:

I will serve the offices of love.

I will work to build community.

I will confess my failures to fulfill The Great Commandment.

I will do better.

I will speak the truth.

I will provoke goodness.

I will strive to bring others along on this journey.

I will remember who, and whose, I am.

“Now may the words of our mouths, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable to you, Oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer.”

And the people said: Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

            Our pastoral prayer this morning draws on the words of the great theologian Howard Thurman. I hope they will ring in your memory this week:

            Dear Lord.

            Keep our hearts open this day to all things that commend themselves to us as truth.

            Keep us humble, so that we might remember that we are never free from the possibility of error.

            Keep us at peace, so that deep within ourselves we can be still and be guided and made wise by your spirit.

            Keep us alert, so that we can recognize when our anxieties, our fears, our ambitions, even our hopes and dreams may deceive us into calling truth error, and error truth.

            Keep us diligent, so that we can seek the honesty and integrity that God yields to those who lay bare their lives constantly before him.

Keep our hearts open to the light, so that we might learn to wait for the light, confident that the light will come to cast itself across our paths at the point of our greatest needs.

            Oh Lord, here in the quietness we seek the renewal of the spirit of our hearts and minds that we may be living, vital instruments in your hands, this day and every day.

            Oh Lord, may it be so.

Benediction

            Sisters and brothers in Christ, go forth into this good day with these parting words of commitment ringing in your memory:

I will serve the offices of love.

I will work to build community.

I will confess my failures to fulfill The Great Commandment.

I will do better.

I will speak the truth.

I will provoke goodness.

I will strive to bring others along on this journey.

I will remember who, and whose, I am.

Open your hearts, minds, and eyes that you might seek and find the renewal that is yours for the taking, held out for you in the hands of the most powerful, and most loving, and most powerfully loving force in the universe—who knows your name.

Amen. And amen. And amen. 

An Ocean of Need

A Sermon Shared Online

May 17, 2020

Scripture: Matthew 6:24-33

         Epictetus was one of the great Stoic philosophers of antiquity. A hard life would seem like good training for such a job, and Epictetus had one, at least during his early years in Rome.

Epictetus was born into slavery during the tumultuous reign of the emperor Nero. He was physically disabled, perhaps from birth but maybe because of a severe beating he received from his master—ancient sources disagree.

After the death of Nero, he secured his freedom, began to teach in Rome, and things were looking up. But he had to flee when the new emperor, Domitian, expressed his opinion of the local philosophers by banishing them.

        

Epictetus went to Greece, where he established a school and took on pupils. In fact, the writings we have that are attributed to Epictetus are actually the notes and transcriptions of one of his disciples, Arrian. We owe a great debt to Arrian, even if he just did all that work for extra credit.

 

As the reputation of Epictetus grew, he became a celebrity and eminent people sought him out. True to form, though, he did not allow all the attention to turn his head: he maintained a simple and humble life and had very few possessions.

After his passing, an admirer supposedly paid a handsome sum for his oil lamp, an irony that would have left Epictetus either quaking with laughter or shaking his head in dismay.

         Epictetus makes for excellent reading during hard times. He helps us keep in mind the difference between the things we can control and the things we cannot. He reminds us that we have no power over external events, but that we have almost limitless power over how we respond to them.

And he offers us countless quotable maxims: “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” “There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things that are beyond the power of our will.” “First say to yourself what you would be, then do what you have to do.”

         When James Stockdale was a student at Stanford University, he became an enthusiastic reader of Epictetus. Stockdale went on to serve as a pilot in the United States Navy in Vietnam. He carried what he’d learned from Epictetus with him.

When Stockdale’s plane was shot down and he ejected over enemy territory, he realized that he would be taken prisoner of war and held under the worst imaginable conditions. The story goes that as Stockdale descended toward the ground in his parachute, he thought to himself: “Epictetus, here I come.”

         It turned out that Stockdale needed every lesson that Epictetus offered him. He remained imprisoned for more than seven years. He spent four of them in solitary confinement. He was brutally tortured, leaving him with physical difficulties and severe pain for the rest of his life.

Years later, as a vice-admiral and a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Stockdale would acknowledge the critical role that Epictetus played in his mental and physical survival.

*

         In recent months, many of us have felt things fall away from us that had become integral parts of our sense of well-being, our identity, our very existence. We have felt ourselves slowly drifting down into unknown and evidently hostile territory. We have worried about what comes next.

Take the modest pleasure of joining friends for dinner on a Friday night. We have woken up into a world where leaving home poses material risks, where we have to remain distant from people we love, where the local restaurant has closed—perhaps permanently, where our resources are limited, and where we may struggle to distinguish Friday from all the other days of the week, given their dull sameness.

In time, this situation will pass. But we know we will have lost some things that matter to us, if we haven’t already. It doesn’t help that we don’t know with anything like certainty what they will be. Anxiety and uncertainty just love working together.

And those are the losses of the privileged. For the poor and disadvantaged, staying safe, sheltered, and fed posed almost insurmountable obstacles even before the pandemic. The arrival of the virus has brought into plain view the rampant poverty that infects our country, the brittle fragility of so much of our population, and the legions of people who subsist on the fractured and crumbling edges of survival. We all have to get by with less; but some of us started with nothing. What will become of them?

Such times invite us into a closer and deeper kinship with certain ideas, including many that are central to the teachings of Jesus. One of those comes in a familiar passage in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. With all due respect to the grandeur of the King James version, permit me to render it in everyday parlance.

“Look,” Jesus says, “you have a choice. You have to decide who and what you’re going to serve. You can serve God, or you can serve material things, but you can’t serve both. It’s up to you.”

He goes on: “But let me tell you this. You cannot make yourself happy by serving material things. A life defined by all that stuff cannot give you freedom, peace, or fulfillment. To the contrary, having shiny objects at the center of your life just breeds anxiety, because you’ll constantly worry about losing them—and you will.”

He continues: “Freedom and contentment lie in not worrying about tomorrow and what you will lose. It lies in living fully today. It lies in committing your heart to things that cannot be lost.”

“Nature tells us as much. Look at how the birds don’t fret about food—but get fed anyway. Look at how the lilies of the field don’t worry about clothing—but are beautiful anyway. In fact, they’re more glorious than Solomon in his fanciest jewels and robes.”

He concludes: “It’s this simple: I love you. And, because I love you, I need you to know that the more you invest your soul in material things, the more you will worry. The more you worry, the less happy you will be. All that worry won’t get you anything—and it certainly won’t get you anything that matters. It will not add a single hour to your life.”

“So here’s the deal. Life is a series of choices. Every single time, choose first the Kingdom of God instead of all that other stuff. Then everything you really need will come to you.”

Now, in order to tease out what this passage means, and especially what it might mean for us, I need to tell you the stories of three rich young men. The first of them comes to us later in the Gospel of Matthew, in the nineteenth chapter. You know the story.

Jesus encounters a rich young man who isn’t actually a bad guy—although he gets a lot of unfavorable air time in sermons. He has tried to live honorably. He has kept the commandments. Indeed, if we could find any fault in him it’s that he seems a bit too proud of those accomplishments.

Perhaps consistent with that theme of pride, the young man wants something more: he wants to be perfect. He asks Jesus how to do it. He probably thought that was a smart and safe thing to do.

But Jesus gives him an answer that he does not like and that might even have struck him as foolish and dangerous. Jesus says: “Well, if you want to be perfect, then go sell all that stuff of yours, give the money to the poor, and follow me.”

You see what Jesus did there: he placed before the young man the same decision that he was talking about back in chapter six. In essence, he declares: “You have a choice. God or material stuff. One will give you freedom and peace and fulfillment, the other won’t. Your call.”

The young man can’t bring himself to give up all the nice accessories of wealth—the robes, the rubies, the Rolexes, the Rolls Royces—so he leaves. Importantly, however, the text tells us that he does so in a state of sorrow.

Think about that for a moment: the instant the young man made the wrong choice a  deep sadness overcame him. So knew immediately that Jesus was right. The magnetic pull of all those sparkly ornaments proved so great that he walked off anyway.

This brings me to our second young man, also rich, but who made a very different choice. Siddhartha Gautama was born into a royal family near the border of Nepal and India about 2,600 years ago. Siddhartha’s parents had extraordinarily high expectations for their child, anticipating that he would someday become a great and powerful leader.

In a well-intentioned but wildly misguided effort to help him fulfill his destiny, they spoiled Siddhartha dreadfully and sheltered him from the problems of the world. As a result, he became thoroughly acquainted with life’s pleasures but remained a stranger to its hardships.

Their plan failed, however, when Siddhartha left the palace and came face to face with human suffering, sickness, and death. Having seen them, he could not un-see them.

These events left Siddhartha with a difficult decision to make—one that should by now sound familiar. He could continue to chase after the material rewards of this world, or he could seek to understand the causes of human suffering and help alleviate them.

He chose the latter course, shed the elaborate trappings of privilege, reduced life to its essentials, and set out on a quest for answers. The answers he found prompted people to follow him in great numbers and, as you know, to call him Buddha.

Buddhism consists of a complex and multidimensional collection of philosophies, beliefs, and texts and resists a quick and tidy summary—indeed, trying to describe it at all runs against some of its foundational insights. But it is fair to say that at the core of Buddhism lies an idea stunningly similar to the one suggested by Jesus in the passages I just discussed.

Buddhism recognizes that our suffering comes from our desires. Our forward-looking striving deprives us of the joys of the here and now, and drives us to commit our thoughts and energies to the finally fruitless task of accumulating things we cannot keep—objects and accolades, prizes and praise, status and stuff.

To be clear, Siddhartha’s search for enlightenment was not some inwardly-focused Olympic-level self-improvement project. The whole point of his undertaking was that he had seen suffering, had empathized with it, and had dedicated himself to addressing it. This fulfills the very definition of  “compassion,” a word that comes from roots meaning “to suffer with”—to understand the struggle of someone else and to exist inside of it with them.

In one of his poems, the Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh gets at these ideas and their interconnectedness in the simplest of language. He writes:

I vow to offer joy to one person in the morning

And to help relieve the grief of one person in the afternoon.

I vow to live simply and sanely,

Content with just a few possessions,

And to keep my body healthy.

I vow to let go of all worry and anxiety in order to be light and free.

Or as the Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn puts it, throw away your self-absorbed mind and “only keep the question: ‘What is the best way of helping other people?’”

Compassion lies at the heart of Buddhism, just as it does at the heart of Christianity—at least when we do it right. Indeed, if it does not, then we have made a different kind of choice than the one to which the founder of our faith calls us. In that case, we have not left the palace; we have just traded one turreted fortress for another.

This brings us to our third rich young man. Giovani di Pietro di Bernadone was born in Assisi in the late part of the twelfth century. His mother gave him that trippingly poetic name while dad was away on business. Upon returning, his father—a prosperous silk merchant and a practical man—nicknamed his son Francesco. We know him as Francis.

As a young man, Francis enjoyed a carefree and indulgent existence. He loved fine clothes, reveled in the songs of troubadours, spent money lavishly, and otherwise more or less constantly threw himself a big party. But, as with the Buddha, the realities of suffering interrupted this perpetual celebration and its attendant fantasies.

Also as with the Buddha, history and tradition have left us with stories of various events that worked to change Francis’s heart. On one occasion, the legend goes, Francis was busily and successfully selling his father’s fine cloth in the marketplace. As he took in handfuls of money and doled out armfuls of beautiful wares, a beggar approached him. Francis looked into his eyes, and saw his despair.

Francis knew that he had to live differently. Against the strident resistance of his family and friends, he cast off his inheritance, took a vow of poverty, and dedicated his life to caring for the poor. After a year, with only eleven followers surrounding him, Francis led the tiny group to Rome and asked Pope Innocent III to recognize the fledgling group as a new religious order devoted to a life of simplicity and service.

St. Francis has had a profound influence not just on individual lives and the history of the church, but on all of Western culture. Oscar Wilde declared that one of the sad facts of history was that no one since Christ himself had been a true Christian. We hear an echo of the same idea in G. K. Chesterton’s quip that “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

But Wilde added: “I make one exception: St. Francis of Assisi.” Wilde said of St. Francis: “He understood Christ, and so became like him.”

The poet Vachel Lindsay, another enthusiast for St. Francis, urged us to go forth and do likewise. He wrote:

Would I might wake St. Francis in you all,

Brother of birds and trees, God’s Troubadour,

Blinded with weeping for the sad and poor …

God make each soul the lonely leper’s slave;

God make us saints, and brave.

One could do worse, I suppose, than by beginning every morning by reciting that last line aloud, and then proceeding to try to live it.

         The French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus, an atheist, saw a deep connection between his own view of how to find value in life and that of St. Francis. In one of his journal entries, he wrote:

September 15

In the cloister of San Francesco in Fiesole there is a little courtyard with an arcade along each side, full of red flowers, sun, and yellow and black bees. In one corner,  there is a green water sprinkler, and everywhere the humming of bees. A gentle steam seems to rise from the garden as it bakes in the heat. Sitting on the ground I think about the Franciscans whose cells I have just visited and whose sources of inspiration I can now see. I feel clearly that if they are right then it is in the same way that I am. I know that behind the wall on which I am leaning there is a hill sloping down toward the town, and the offering of the whole of Florence with all its cypress trees.

But the splendor of the world seems to justify these men. I put all my pride in a belief that it also justifies me, and all members of the human race, who know there is an extreme point at which poverty always rejoins the luxury and richness of the world. If they cast everything off, it is for a greater and not for another life. This is the only meaning that I can accept of a term like “stripping oneself bare.” Such terms have always had associations of physical liberty, of harmony between the hand and the flower it touches, of a loving understanding between the earth and those of us who have been freed from human things.

Ah, I should become a convert to this, if it were not already my religion.

Albert Camus spent much of his life thinking about, and seeking after, freedom. He found it one day, sitting in a monastery courtyard, reflecting on those who have dedicated themselves to lives of simplicity and service, pondering the bees and the flowers—more beautiful even than Solomon in all of his glory.

         The current circumstances have given most of us an unexpected and unwelcome crash course in this way of thinking about and experiencing the world.

We have had to cast off non-essentials. We have had to manage our grinding anxieties. We have had to learn to live in the present moment—the radical impermanence of the future leaving us with greater puzzles than we can penetrate or, perhaps, even ponder.

We have had to find freedom, and peace, and compassion in a situation that is constraining, and disorienting, and plays to all of our worst impulses of greed and self-interest.

We do not remember signing up for any of this.

But, to paraphrase James Stockdale: St. Francis, here we are.

What do we do now?

Well, most of us will probably feel like perfection is way out of reach. As an imprisoned felon in one of Father Gregory Boyle’s books says, “I shot perfection in the foot a long time ago.” And more than once, at that.

 Many of us likely see ourselves as closer to the young Siddhartha and the young Francis than to the spiritually mature, older versions. We see more of ourselves in the rich young man than in the Son of God. We know from experience that we all too often walk away from good choices, and sorrowfully, too.

At least this holds true for me. I’m quite sure that I would have been that guy who bought the lamp of Epictetus, probably at a fashionable silent charity auction, then leaving it out ostentatiously for houseguests to admire over appetizers. I’m more likely to sit under a tree for the shade than for enlightenment. And I’m not going to wait breathlessly for LinkedIn to send me an email saying that my next great career move is canonization.

We understand what Jesus and Epictetus and Buddha and St. Francis did, but we still have to ask: How does that apply to us? What can we do?

We can follow instructions, to the best of our ability.

We can focus on the present day and the instant moment within it. We may not be able to keep all of the worries and destructive thoughts out of our heads, but we can respectfully decline to feed them. As Shunryu Suzuki said, “Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don’t serve them tea.”

We can keep asking ourselves: “What is the best way to help other people?” We may not sell all that we have, give the money the poor, and devote the rest of our lives to caring for the disadvantaged.

But we can choose to live toward simplicity. We can choose to live toward compassion. We can choose to live toward service. We all can do all of these things. Every. Last. One. Of. Us.

A story from the Zen Buddhist tradition tells of two masters who met atop a seaside cliff to demonstrate their skill at archery. The first master chose a small target tied to a distant tree, took aim, released the arrow, and hit dead center. The second master slowly and deliberately raised his bow—but then spun around, faced the other way, and let his arrow fly. It sailed elegantly through the air into the ocean. He lowered his bow, smiled at the first master, and said “bullseye.”

We do not need to set our sights on perfection to come closer to the life urged upon us by Jesus, Epictetus, the Buddha, and St. Francis. When we make choices toward simplicity, compassion, and service, we aim at a vast ocean of need. Every arrow we launch in that direction will hit its mark. It will be one bullseye after another.

If we can do these things, then we will be freer. We will be happier. We will be more at peace. We will be better servants of God and humankind.

We will, each in our own way, be saints and brave.

*

And, lo, Jesus said to them: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieve break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Amen.

And amen.