Category Archives: Faith

“Anticipation”: A Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent (Year C)

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Sandy“There will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars, and on the earth distress among the nations confused by the roaring of the sea and waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding for what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and glory.” (Luke 21:25-36)

In this passage the world is being shaken loose.  It occurs to me that the upheavals described in apocalyptic texts like this one are very much like the language of creation only in reverse.  In the first chapter of Genesis God calls things into being one after the other and pronounces them good.  The sun and moon, the earth and waters, and all the living things are summoned into life by God’s creative Word.    A world takes shape.  But in our Gospel today that world is shaken to its foundations   The secure, predictable world we have come to know and rely upon is threatened and can no longer be relied upon.  The primordial chaos that the original creation turned back, now threatens to break loose upon the world.  Then at the very climax of the distress the Son of Man appears in power and glory.

Those early Christians who heard these words in the New Testament period no doubt heard them as reassuring words.  Words that expressed the faith that although the world around them was up for grabs and insecure Christ was still in charge and coming soon.

Isaac Watts expresses the mood of this passage in this hymn:

“Deep are his counsels, and unknown,
But grace and truth support his throne;
Through gloomy clouds his ways surround,
Justice is their eternal ground.

In robes of judgement, lo! he comes,
Shakes the wide earth and cleaves the tombs;
Before him burns devouring fire;
the mountains melt, the seas retire.”

Although we may not share the world view of first century Christians let me suggest tha their description of a world where everything is being shaken loose can speak to our own sense of insecurity in a world whose foundations are shaken.

How many of us have felt the secure world we knew was being shaken to its foundations?  Our life is a perpetual series of change.  We move, we gain or lose a job, we marry,  have a child, someone we love gets sick or dies, a relationship ends, things change.  In truth we live among flux and change all the time.  It is not always cataclysmic change, but change nevertheless.

Last spring I was coming back from my Princeton program and I stopped in Bergen County, New Jersey to visit the litle town I grew up in. The small old  church looked very much the same as when I left over thirty years ago, but much else had changed.  The house I grew up with was torn down shortly after I left, but there were also new roads and developments, and as I drove around I got disoriented sometimes by the changes.  The town that exists in my own mind and the town that exists now are bear some resemblance, but are not quite the same town, just as I am not the eighteen year old who left that town so many years ago.

There was an obituary this week for someone who worked at the Busy Bee, a Pittsfield restaurant that I have heard about, but was long gone even when I got here in 1982, displaced by the misguided urban renewal of the nineteen sixties, the same plan that took away the much missed train station on Depot Street.  Folksinger Dave Mallet sings a song that laments these losses:

“I  miss Main Street, where everyone knew you by name,
I miss Main Street, O how this little town change.
It’s all part of progress, changing the old, for the new.
I miss Main Street, What in the world is this world coming to?”

The point is that the security of the familiar is an illusion of time, and in time we eventually all come to know the feeling of a world that no longer feels secure.

Advent invites us to consider what there is of abiding security in the face of the shaking of the foundations.  What can be counted on in a world where everything is shaken loose? Listen to the witness of Psalm 46:

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the seas;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

We need such a word of hope and reassurance.  It is too easy sometimes for us  to become fearful and insecure in the face of the world’s changes.  Things will change, of that we can be sure, although the changes are often as unpredictable as the results of the recent election.

There was a good slogan on the sign board at Zion’s Lutheran Church this past week.  It said:  “Election results:  God Reigns!”  That is just right. isn’t it?

Advent reminds us that God comes to us not only at the end of time, but also from time to time, in gentle visitations that we may miss for our preoccupation with making a secure world apart from him.

The Advent word is not just a word of reassurance, but also a word of judgement, a word of challenge and an invitation to change.  There are things about all of us that need shaking to the foundations, and surely things in our society that could well be shaken loose to make the world a more just and Godly place.

Our attempts to find security can be idols. There are idols of race and clan and class that tempt us to find security there.  There can be a fearful clinging to a secure past which is not open to the new thing that God is doing in our midst.

A world where the solidities we have counted on are shaken loose offers us the opportunity for new life, new hope, and new faith in the God who comes to meet us even as the foundations are shaking.

The language of Advent is the language of anticipation for God’s new future.  It is not a future we can make for ourselves.  It may be something we can not readily see or even imagine.  Through thick and thin, through trying times and good times,  faith waits and watches, alert for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

(I preached this sermon on December 3, 2000 at the First Church of Christ in Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

A Rumination on Loss

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A therapist friend of mine believes that most of us, most of the time, given the choice, will choose to feel guilty rather than powerless, since guilt implies that we might have done something different and, thereby, had a different outcome, giving us the impression of some control.

I’ve experienced my share of both, but it is powerlessness that is my theme today.  A little before 9 am on Thursday last, I was preparing to go snowshoeing.  There I was sitting in my pajamas in my living room when I heard a distinct sound like “glub glub,” the dreaded noise that tells you it is time to call your sewer guy to clean out your line.

Martha was down in Boston to be with her sister who had just had knee surgery, so I picked up the phone and called her to get the name of our sewer company.  While I was talking to her I heard with rising panic the loud sound of fast running water, and I ran downstairs to see what was up.  A heavy flow of sewage was pouring out of the downstairs toilet into my living quarters.

Still holding the phone I asked my wife how to turn off the water, and I did that but to no avail.  Then I turned off the toilet, but still the deluge continued.  I stood there barefoot in raw sewage powerless, watching as my den and library filled up with dirty water.

What to do? I called 911. ( I was reminded of the old Smothers’ Brothers bit when Tommy fell in a vat of chocolate, and he yelled “fire,” figuring no one would come to rescue him if he yelled “chocolate”!)

The fire department came in about ten minutes (that was the last call I could make as the water shorted out the phone. I searched for my little-used cell phone.)

Meanwhile, I watched dirty water rising into my living space, darkening the wall-to-wall carpet.  We have a raised-ranch, so there is no basement.  Soon the carpets were all covered.  The heavy flow then went over the threshold into the garage, and then, when the garage was covered, out into the driveway.  This went on for over an hour.

Eventually the DPW came and found the sewer clog in the street and it stopped flowing, and I was faced with the dismal aftermath.  Being a Calvinist I have never liked the nihilistic metaphor “Shit happens,” but it seemed apt now in a quite literal way.

I called a cleaning service and soon they drove by my house to a neighbors and I chased them down.  “We’ll be down soon, they said”  Later they arrived, and the first thing the guy said was, “Your house is trashed!”  (He was obviously on loan from the Diplomatic Corp.)

What had to be done?  The rooms must all be gutted and sanitized.  Everything paper, cloth, leather, or porous that was touched by the 4 to 6 inches of raw sewage must go.  The door frames must go.  The sheet rock up to six inches above the water line must go.

These rooms contained the ephemera of my life.  My beloved books were in these rooms, Bible commentaries, most everything by Karl Barth, everything by P.T. Forsyth.   Lots of novels and poetry.  Most of these have been boxed and moved to high ground.  How they fare from the days of humidity and odor only time will tell.

Into the dumpster go my Harvard blue books; old term papers (“Antiochene versus Alexandrian Exegesis” for Gerald Cragg); a friend’s dissertation (sorry Jason); high school basketball and cross country clippings (“Floyd leads strong harrier field!”); papers and articles from my radical anti-Vietnam days.

My children’s pictures were in these rooms, as were Christmas ornaments from 35 years of family Christmases (recently packed away so carefully).

Into the dumpster go my first stereo speakers, KLH, from1972.  They were still sounding great.

The dumpster is covered with today’s snowfall and today it is a repository of my life’s momentos.  I understand that they are not the life itself.

And as losses go, this is a relatively small one. Nobody died.  It is only stuff.  I could be living in a tent on a medium strip in Haiti.

Still, every loss resonates with old losses.   And my litany of old losses is a long one:  my mother died when I was 18, the same year the city took our home to build a school.   Some best friends from childhood, college and seminary were all gone by the time I was thirty.  Then ten years ago I lost my health, and six years ago I lost my vocation.  Lots of losses.

Loss, powerlessness, and vulnerability remain my unseen companions.  Since my bike accident ten years ago I have lost the illusion that the world is a safe place.  I don’t feel safe in a car.  I don’t feel safe in my own home.  I feel the world is a dangerous place.  The world is a dangerous place.

But I remain one who stands under the word of God, and so I turn to the Psalms, especially the Psalms of Lament.  They have a formal structure that simply put goes something like this: “complain, complain, complain, complain, praise.”

Psalm Six is a good example.  Here the poor Psalmist is crying all night and day over his troubles.  His bones ache.  His soul is in anguish. He’s got enemies (the usual stuff).  He’s had a bad day. He argues with God that if God lets him die he will no longer be able to praise him (a sort of pre-death Kubler-Ross bargaining.)  In the end he is satisfied that the LORD hears and receives his prayer.

Sometimes that’s all you get, but it is enough.

“Witnesses to the Resurrection” Church scandals and the faithful who stay

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My friend Tony Robinson, author, speaker, preacher, and peripatetic traveler for the good of the church, is an acute observer of what is going on in our world.

I heartily recommend his website Anthony B. Robinson, and especially the page called “What’s Tony Thinking?”  A few days ago he posted some good thoughts from Peggy Noonan on the Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse story.  He wrote:

“I am becoming a fan of Peggy Noonan’s Saturday columns in the Wall Street Journal. This week she wrote on the Catholic clergy sex abuse troubles concluding by saying, “There are three great groups of victims in this story. The first and most obvious, the children who were abused, who trusted, were preyed upon and bear the burden through life. The second group is the good priests and good nuns, the great leaders of the church in the day to day, who save the poor, teach the immigrant, and literally, save lives. They have been stigmatized when they deserve to be lionized. And the third group is the Catholics in the pews–the heroic Catholics of America and now Europe, the hardy souls who in spite of what has been done to their church are still there, still making parish life possible, who hold high the flag, their faith unshaken. No one thanks those Catholics, sees their heroism, respects their patience and fidelity. The world thinks they are stupid. They are not stupid, and with their prayers they keep the world going, and the old church too.

One might say the same of many “heroic laypeople” in all sorts of congregations and communities of faith amid failures of leadership and scandals and disarray among higher ups. So many good people keep on keeping on in the face of disappointment, deceit and challenge. They are the witnesses to the resurrection.”

 

That last observation is a particularly wise one, I think.  I can remember sometimes looking out at the congregations I have served after a particularly nasty fight over something ephemeral and wondering, “Why do they even bother to come back every Sunday?  There must be more here than meets the eye.”  And, of course, the answer is that there is!

As somebody once said about Noah’s ark: “If it wasn’t for the storm outside,  one couldn’t stand the stench inside.”   Still, Tony is just right.  These faithful are living witnesses to the resurrection.

>Where I Ruminate on Faith as Following

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For me the big one was the bad bike accident, but it could have been any number of other events. Because I think most of us have had at some point the disconcerting realization that our life is not under our control. As a pastor for thirty years I spent a lot of time with people after they had this realization.
A spot shows up on our X-Ray. Our business goes bankrupt. Someone we love gets sick and dies. Someone breaks into our house. Suddenly, we become acutely aware that the world with all its possibilities for beauty and happiness and meaning is also fraught with unexpected shocks, temptations and difficulties.
That is where faith comes in. It seems to me that faith is not primarily belief but trust. Faith is the recognition that we are not in control of our lives, and we can not foresee all the places where our journey will go, but we trust God to lead us and to be with us wherever it goes.
So faith is not self-reliance (that American idol) but God-reliance. It is trusting that the journey has meaning and purpose even when we can not see what it might be. Kierkegaard rightly wrote that “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Faith, then, is not a possession or a quality we have in and of ourselves. Faith is a trusting relationship we have with the one who does control our lives and who knows where our journey will lead. Barbara Brown Taylor says that faith is “a dangling modifier.” It needs an object to complete it. Faith is always in something or somebody.
So faith looks to God in trust. Abraham is a model for such faith, because he left his comfortable home and went where God led him. He followed the promise even when he couldn’t see the outcome. He trusted the promise-maker to be a promise-keeper. His journey in faith led to him being the father of a great nation, and the one from whose family the redeemer of the world would someday be born. Abraham couldn’t know this, of course, couldn’t see ahead into the future, but still he followed. He trusted God to lead and he would follow.
Likewise the followers of Jesus didn’t know where their lives’ journeys would take them, only that it would take them with him. And when it led to his cross they could see no future, but later came to know that his future and theirs were on the other side of the cross, against all expectations.
So faith follows. We come to God in need with empty hands. The great theologians of the Reformation saw clearly that we are not saved by our virtue or our good works, not by any righteousness we may have, but only by faith. “Faith is the humility of obedience,” says Karl Barth. Faith knows that we are not in control, that we do not know where we are going, that by ourselves we are lost and afraid. When my children were small and we were in a crowded place, they would instinctively reach for my hand. They knew I could be trusted to lead them and keep them safe.
So faith trusts God to lead us, not necessarily to comfort and to happiness, for the life of faith is not insulated from life’s pains. On the contrary, we may be led to suffering we might otherwise avoid. But to follow in faith is the only true way to find life’s path, and reach journey’s end as we are meant to do.
Barbara Brown Taylor employs the image of a rope bridge to speak about the journey of faith (I imagine it as one of those scary ones from the Indiana Jones‘ movies):
“Faith is not a well–fluffed nest, or a well-defended castle high on a hill. It is more like a rope bridge over a scenic gorge, sturdy but swinging back and forth, with plenty of light and plenty of air but precious little to hang on to except the stories you have heard: that it is the best and only way across, that it is possible, that it will bear your weight. All you have to do is believe in the bridge more than you believe in the gorge, but fortunately you do not have to believe all by yourself. There are others to believe it with you, and even some to believe it for you when your own belief wears thin. They have crossed the bridge ahead of you and are waiting on the other side. You can talk to them if you like, as you step into the air, putting one foot ahead of the other.” (The Preaching Life, p. 94)

I take comfort that we don’t take that walk alone over the gorge. Abraham is undoubtedly there on the other side. And Sarah, and Peter and James and John, and Mary Magdalene, and St. Francis and Julian of Norwich. I picture Calvin and Luther and Pope John XXIII, Dorothy Day and Mother Theresa. And many others, some of whom I have known myself, that history will never recall. They weren’t perfect, just ordinary men and women who trusted in God and followed him into their future together.
“It takes a lot of courage to be a human being, but if Jesus was who he said he was, the bridge will hold. Believing in him will not put us in charge, or get us what we want or even save us from all harm, but believing in him, we may gradually lose our fear of our lives.” (Taylor, p. 94)
We will no longer fear, even though we know we are not in control of our lives, even though our journey is going to unknown, unseen places. Because he can be trusted with our lives we needn’t fear, only follow.