What To Do Now?

No use beating around the bush. The Presidential election has upended the entire country. Some rejoice. Some grieve. Some are on fire with rage. Others are trying to find some way to be positive.

What’s a Christian to do? No, let me rephrase that. What are you to do? And does Christian faith have anything to offer you in your response? You do indeed have a response, and you are already making it and will continue to do so, though you may shift a bit here and there. Keeping silent is a response. Wait-and-see is a response. Spewing vitriol is a response. Saying “I told you so” is a response. Gloating is a response. So is desperation.

Sermons are not the place to dissect election returns. Nor, for my money, are they the place to moralize or paper over difficult things with pious platitudes. But sermons are a place, one would hope, for telling the truth. My purpose is to tell you some truth. Nothing of what I am about to say is anything more or less than my attempt to tell you what I believe to be the truthful answer to one question: what does Christian faith have to offer you in your response to this election’s results?

You might notice, as I do, that sometimes the scriptures appointed for a given Sunday, though selected years ago, might well have been chosen with current events in mind. Such is the gospel for today. “…Jesus said, ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’” He said that as people were oohing and ah-ing about the beautiful temple, Judaism’s most sacred institution. Well, the temple has long been gone, and all that is left is part of the old retaining wall now known as “the Western Wall” and sometimes called “the Wailing Wall.” 

The Western Wall, Jerusalem

Generally speaking, we are not fond of seeing the institutions that we revere and respect dismantled stone by stone. We don’t do well seeing the things we’ve worked and prayed and sacrificed for and sometimes given our lives to trashed and smashed by those who either do not understand or who do understand yet repudiate the very values that guide the building of communal fabric that through symbol and sacred promise bind the quarrelsome human family together. Sometimes reality dishes up the tragic vision of us standing before the ruins of a once noble civilization with little left to do but weep and wail and gnash our teeth, sticking prayers of grief and sadness into the crevices between the few stones left standing, bleak reminders of what once was and is no more.

One of the ironic twists in all this is that the very destruction that threatens to obliterate all that we hold dear, and very well may do so, is the catastrophe that in another way spotlights truth. I do not mean that the truth is necessarily hopeful or comforting. Quite often it is anything but. The entire biblical narrative is replete with stories of ruinous reigns, invasions, exile, defeat, oppression, slavery, and subjugation. Indeed huge swaths of the story, whole books of the Bible, are attempts to appropriate calamitous developments and the occasional ray of hope. When catastrophe happens the light shines on the reality exposing the situation for what it is.  Exposed is the folly of believing in the invincibility of human endeavor. Exposed is the betrayal of values. Exposed are the deep fault lines and fissures between tribes pitted against each other, divisions that simmered under the radar, ready to break out when crisis shook the nation. Exposed over the long haul is the truth of the prophets’ thunder warning the careless of disaster. Exposed too is the promise spoken by the Prophet Malachi, “For you who revere my name the sun of righteousness will arise with healing in its wings.”

We may wish to think that our situation is unique. Not so much. We’ve been here before. 1776, 1860, 1917, 1929, 1941, 1963, 2001, and lots of other times. I take no comfort in that fact. I do take comfort in knowing that

           

                                   

…history’s pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.[1]

And that is the first and most important thing that Christian faith says to us. There is a God far stronger than the forces of injustice and oppression. Paul wrote to the Galatians what can easily be said to any and all of us, including our President-elect, “Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap.” It might take awhile for something that goes around to come around, but rest assured: it always does. Don’t fall for the seductive notion that when things are going your way somehow it is because an external God is smiling in blessing upon you, or that conversely when things turn sour somehow an external God has withdrawn and is no longer at work. For God works through all things to bring about the eternal and timeless purpose. Sorrow might spend the night, but joy cometh in the morning. Is our memory so short that we don’t recall the struggles of our forebears, the persecution of the innocent, the pogroms and hate campaigns that have buffeted the saints from pillar to post and from age to bloody age? The kind of insanity that produces just such suffering was cousin to the profound and torturous depression that produced the oft-quoted and dimly understood passage from William Cowper,

                        God moves in a mysterious way

                         His wonders to perform

                        He plants his footsteps in the sea

                         And rides upon the storm.

                        Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take!

                         The clouds ye so much dread

                        Are big with mercy and shall break

                         With blessings on your head!         [2]

So it is that Christian faith says clearly that God is not a tribal deity synonymous with this or that political position—or doctrinal position for that matter. Precisely one of the things that this election has exposed is the extent to which large numbers of Christians imagine God to be exactly that. What we can say with firm assurance is that God as revealed in Jesus Christ cares inexhaustibly for the weak, the poor, the outcast. We may be wrong about justice and truth, but it is never wrong to seek diligently to know and to do them. We may be ever so wrong about mercy and how to show it, but to be committed to a life marked by mercy and all its allies—kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, compassion—is never wrong, for those are exactly the qualities and virtues that our courteous Lord embodies and manifests.  We do not have to be in doubt about the will of God when we focus on the model we have in Jesus. Learning how to live not just like him but in him is the point of all Christian practice, from prayer to political action. And being in Christ is exactly the strength and compass for just such an hour as this.

That brings me to the next thing that Christian faith says to those of us who are looking for some way to appropriate this election. What we do and how we react is greatly important. It matters. Will being hated we give way to hating? Will we add to the total anger and madness in the world? Will we succumb to the very divisiveness and contentiousness that for a long while have been waiting anxiously for an opening to ascend the throne? Let me be clear. Refusing to hate does not mean capitulating to the forces of repression and destruction. Refusing to hate is not the same as acting nice. And refusing to hate is certainly not the same as refusing to do anything. No. The alternative to hating is to organize, to keep the pressure on, to use every legitimate tool to fight injustice, to stand up audibly and visibly for the powerless and dispossessed. Those are not political strategies derived from a left-wing playbook; they are actions derived from the God of the Bible who always, always comes down on the side of the poor and defenseless.

Don’t ever forget that the Jesus who took on the scribes and Pharisees of his day, calling them out on hypocrisy and a totally manipulative reading of their very own Tradition is the same Jesus who taught us to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us. The most twisted and diabolical souls that we despise are the very ones to teach us that no one is below—or above—the need of prayer. I didn’t make that up, nor could I. It is not some obscure passage stuck in a small book of a minor prophet, but in the Sermon on the Mount from our Lord himself.

Arnold Friberg, "The Prayer at Valley Forge"

A few days before the election, Joe’s nephew was visiting us from Texas. We took the occasion to go to Mount Vernon. I had not been to Washington’s home since I was a child, and was excited to make this long deferred pilgrimage to the grounds where one of America’s saints lived and died. I think the thing that impressed me most at Mount Vernon was the grace and candor with which the story of slaves there is now told to the public. One could fault Washington for his complicity in that system which he himself grew to question as time went on. But somehow we find it in ourselves to forgive people like that because we know that on balance their character and commitments were such that even what we now see as their part in a tragic darkness does not eclipse the good that they did. And where did that good spring from? It arose and flourished from the roots of faith, watered by prayer, informed by scripture, nourished by sacrament, practiced through discipline. It was not that Washington was or is an example only of a faith that is narrowly Christian, much less that he was flawless, but that his Christian faith molded him into a man who manifested strength and gentleness, efficiency and good humor, dedication and profound humility. Your task now and mine is not to be a Washington, but to manifest authentically, as he did, the marks of what we profess and confess. Our vocation is the same today as it was last Sunday or the one before that or what it was on the day we were baptized and what it will be on the day we die: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.

We do not walk this way alone. We walk it with an innumerable caravan of ordinary folk who despite the clamor of hate and war hear a voice saying, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2016

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[1] James Russell Lowell, “The Present Crisis,” in the Harvard Classics, English Poetry III, from Tennyson to Whitman, online at http://www.bartleby.com/42/805.html, accessed 12 November 2016.

[2] William Cowper, “God moves in a mysterious way,” The Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation), 677.

Heart’s Desire

Luke 11:1-13

There is hardly any way that I am ever going to be anything other than a Christian.  I am well aware that I am a Christian because I was born one, because my parents were at least nominal Christians when I became their son, and because the culture in which I began my life was to all intents and purposes Christian.  It is equally true that at a good many points in my life I have affirmed and owned this faith tradition in which I was born and baptized.

            But it is impossible to grow up in this particular culture and not be at least marginally aware that in the marketplace of religious ideas, Christianity is only one among many brands.  Rather than seeing these as competitors, I look at all of them as so many fingers that are pointing to the moon.  The fingers are interesting, even important.  But the fingers are only pointing, not the point.  “Look at the moon, stupid,” a friend of mine says.  And the “moon” is the Truth, the ultimate truth, the bedrock soul of the universe, the most common name for which is probably “God.” 

           

A wise friend, when I told him several years ago that I was interested in pursuing Buddhist meditation, asked me, “Are you prepared to give up desire?” I said no, I didn’t think so.  He said, “Well, that’s the ultimate line between Christianity and Buddhism and the essential difference between Christian and Buddhist contemplation.”  In Buddhism the cessation of desire is perhaps the key outcome of practices such as meditation.  In Christianity, desire is in harmony with reality and therefore in harmony with God, not opposed to God. 

            Desire is what I’d like to talk with you about for a few minutes.  My starting point is today’s gospel. In Luke’s narrative, Jesus and his disciples are on the trip to Jerusalem that will end with the crucifixion and resurrection.  Along the way he is praying.  His disciples take note of it, asking him to teach them how to pray as he does.  So he gives them some words.  They are not quite the version of the prayer that we know as “the Lord’s Prayer,” but they are the core of that prayer.  Notice how much of the Lord’s prayer voices desire:  hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, give us our daily bread, forgive us our sins, do not bring us to the time of trial.  All of these are desires stated as petitions.  The one thing that is a declaration rather than a desire is that “we forgive everyone indebted to us.”  What is conspicuously absent in Luke’s version of the prayer?  “Your will be done…”  And that is the way we normally think of God, isn’t it? As a being with a certain will—that things be done a certain way, God’s way.  We see ourselves as either in conformity with God’s will or not, usually not.  So we spend a good deal of time and energy imagining that God wills one thing and we another.  Many of our prayers suggest as much.  “Help us to ask only what accords with your will,” goes one.  A hymn, one among many on the theme, contains the verse, “Breathe on me, breath of God, so shall my heart be pure, until with thee I will one will, to do and to endure.” 

            What would happen if we were to shift from seeing God as having an unchangeable will for us and for the world and see instead that God desires something for us, desires something from us, desires something about us and the world?  What if our job on earth were not to figure out what God’s will is and to bring ourselves into line with that will? What might result from our shifting into a frame of reference at whose center is what we desire?

            Let’s get back to Jesus’ response to his disciples.  After he gives them the model for prayer, he launches into a little teaching about desire.  He tells them the parable about the fellow banging on the door of his friend at midnight asking for a loaf of bread to share with a guest.  The point of the parable is that even when inconvenienced, the friend will grant the neighbor’s desire if for no reason other than to shut him up.  Then Jesus distills his point in a direct piece of counsel that amounts to a promise.  “Ask and you will receive, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.”  It is prayer that he is talking about, remember.  But what is prayer?  It is the deep desire of the heart.  Now Jesus is not saying that no matter what you desire, if you simply cast that desire in the form of a prayer to an external God somewhere “up there,” you’ll be sure to get it, as if God is Santa Claus and you are a kid making a Christmas wish list.  So desiring is something very much deeper than wishing. Desire exceeds dreaming about various possibilities that seem quite nice.  Desire is a stirring of the energy of our soul, something that comes out of our very nature.  That does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that our desires are good.  It is not a good thing to desire evil or harm to befall innocent people, though that may be a very popular desire.

            Jesus does not seem to be interested in parsing desires by sorting them into piles of “good” desires and “bad” desires.  He seems to be intent on saying to his disciples, “Cut loose, go ahead, ask for—what?  The Holy Spirit.  Fooled us, didn’t he?  We might have thought there for a minute he was talking about praying for just anything at all.  No, he specifically says to ask, seek, knock, for what assuredly God desires to give us, namely God’s very self, God’s immediate presence, which is what “Holy Spirit” above all means.  Holy Spirit is the code language for God here and now, not God in or from another world, another time.  Not God the transcendent Creator, but God with us right here, comforting, strengthening, guiding us.  The passage climaxes in the question, “If your child asks you for a fish, would you respond with a snake? 

Or if your child asks for an egg, would you present a scorpion?”  If that is beyond you, who are not all that great, how much more will God give you God’s own heart’s desire—God’s own Holy Spirit?” 

            All that is well and good until we begin facing what it is we really desire.  And frequently human desire is not for God’s very self at all.  I’m thinking right now of the cross-currents in this political season, and more widely, the differences in what people seem to desire on the whole for themselves, the nation, and the world.  I rather doubt, though I do not know for sure, that you who are here fall into the category of those who spew hate, who disdain people who are different from you, who cook up reasons to incite violence, who project your own worst traits onto those who are different, or who tell lies upon lies with absolutely no accountability whatsoever, and who then ask in so many words, “so what if I lie?  I’m popular with people.”  This is no joke and you know it.  Suddenly you may feel, as I do, that arguing against such a hideous caricature of desire is not what you signed on for.  You want to be peaceable and respectful, don’t you?  You want to respond to human need with compassion, don’t you?  And you don’t want to stoop to the level of the demonic clowns who make a mockery of respect by calling it weakness or who defame and insult people who try to make a point of calling for restraint to those who seem happy to kill people whose color is their own, as if to complain about that is itself a violent act?  What is this?  And why would we even be thinking about such idiocy on a hot Sunday morning in church? 

            The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, to coin a phrase.  It is that some folks, and you know who they are, are pretending that snakes are fish and that scorpions are eggs.  The world is turned topsy-turvy.  What is evil is sold as patriotic, as safety, as greatness.  And worst of all, 75% of those who attend church weekly are lining up behind the liars because they honestly believe (apparently) that God’s desire is to sanction their claim to own the country, and maybe even the world.

            Well, it is not.   And there is no way—none at all—to justify all that as Christian, or even religious.  No holy book, not the Bible, not the Quran, none of the Vedas and Upanishads of Hinduism, not the dharma of the Buddha, none can be twisted to justify this kind of perversion of the truth.  The danger for me, and perhaps for you, is that I will let my own mind and soul be poisoned by the very presence of this cancer in our public discourse to the point that my own desire is warped and twisted and I become as noxious as anyone. 

            It is not just prayer that we need to learn how to do.  We need to become conscious of what it is our hearts truly desire.  And even more, we need to awake to what it is that God is desiring for the human community.  And remember that the dream of God is always that the creation would so look upon the Creator that it begins to mirror what it sees, and we become like God, not by being God, but by allowing God to possess us, to infuse us, to saturate us.  Most of us are, like those disciples of Jesus, clueless as to what is to come.  We only know that we are on the road.  It will indeed take us to Jerusalem, no doubt, where everything that we know and believe may be sorely tested and we ourselves may feel utterly lost.  But at the end of the journey we will find that desiring God with all our hearts, minds, and strength is worth far more than gaining the world and losing our souls in the process.

            Don’t be shy or fearful about witnessing to your faith.  The hour for true Christian witness is here.  Ask, search, knock. You will have everything you need—and all that your heart desires.

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2016