For Us/Against Us

September 27, 2009
Be astonished! Be astounded! For I am doing things among you that you would not believe if you were told. Habakkuk 1:5
Mark 9:38-50; Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
As some of you know, I spent several days last week in Chattanooga helping my parents out following my dad’s hip surgery. I flew into Atlanta Wednesday evening and saw places that were under muddy waters from the storms that have devastated the area over the past several weeks.
You never know when the water is going to rise.
I went down to help my parents make some hard decisions that have become harder since my dad fell and broke his hip. Complicating matters, my parents’ basement had flooded with all the rain leaving my mother even more upset than she was already.
You never know when the water is going to rise.
On this weekend, three or was it four years ago, Tom Hull and I were on the Gulf Coast cleaning up after Katrina. Tens of thousands of people lost their homes; almost 1,000 lost their lives.
You never know when the water is going to rise.
In the past year, several members of this community have lost loved ones – to cancer, to complications following a fall, to a far-too-young heart attach.
You never know when the water is going to rise.
But then there is this water – waters of baptism, waters of righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, waters of justice rolling down.
Just as you never know when the water is going to rise, you also never know when righteousness and justice, when healing and wholeness, when salvation itself is going to rise as well.
And, as the stories we’ve just read so strongly suggest, you never know when a savior is going to rise up from the most unexpected places.
Esther, a Jewish woman who has married outside of her people into power, steps forward at risk to her own life to stop ethnic cleansing of her people.
Saviors come in strange and unexpected packages.
Theological orthodoxy is clearly neither sufficient or even necessary to saviors.
Gandhi was a savior who was far from orthodox in his Hindu faith, and certainly was not a Christian, though he was an admirer of Christ. According to a certain orthodox Christianity, Gandhi was bound to spend eternity in hell. According to Jesus, “if he is not against us, he is for us.”
Neither orthodox confessions of faith nor confessions of orthodox faith are necessary to participate in the salvation of the world.
Tich Naht Han was a savior who was also far from orthodox in his Buddhist faith. He was another admirer of Jesus, who helped bring peace to his war-torn land of Vietnam. Again, according to a certain orthodox Christianity, Han was bound to spend eternity in hell. According to Jesus, “if he is not against us, he is for us.”
Neither orthodox confessions of faith nor confessions of orthodox faith are necessary to participate in the salvation of the world.
This is not an expression of a certain kind of lazy liberalism, but rather a Biblically grounded statement about the nature of God and of salvation. God’s wildly inclusive love does not end at the edge of the church; indeed, it begins there anew and afresh to be received and experienced in an amazing variety of expressions. In God’s house there are many rooms, Jesus promised his followers.
While Jesus came preaching repentance and the nearness of God’s kingdom – in other words healing, wholeness, salvation – he did not come preaching an orthodox faith or requiring from those closest to him.
A few weeks back we read in Mark’s gospel the account of Jesus asking the disciples who they thought he was. When pressed, Peter offer the theologically, if not politically correct response: the messiah, the Christ of God. Clearly Peter expects the praise from the teacher due a good student who provides the right answers to the pop quiz. What does he get instead? Peter gets Jesus’ condemnation: “get thee behind me Satan.”
No, if you are going to understand the salvation offered by Jesus, if you are to receive it, you must take up your cross and follow.
In other words, the measure is faithfulness.
As Jesus’ story shows, if we are being faithful there will be scars.
In the early part of the 20th century, there was a period of religious fervor in England, and would-be saviors were arising left and right. During one revival meeting being led by the founder of the YMCA, a man entered the auditorium accompanied by a brass band and marched right down the center aisle to the stage. He stopped in front of the stage and proclaimed himself the messiah. The Y founder stilled the excited crowd, turned to the man with the band, and said simply, “show me your scars.”
Show me your scars.
This is no glorification of suffering but a pointing beyond the cross to the Kingdom and measuring the distance between the two in terms of the resistance encountered by those who follow the way of Jesus rather than the way of the powers that be in the world as it is.
Those who authentically live as bridges between the world as it is and the world that God is calling forth will bear the scars of that living.
Proclaiming a theologically orthodox faith requires little in the way of risk, but a faith that risks nothing saves nothing.
And when the water rises, we all want someone to take risks to save us.
The folks down South right now need some risktakers to come offering salvation. I promise you, they don’t care much about the orthodoxy of your faith, but I know from what I just saw over the past couple of days that they will greatly appreciate any contribution you can make to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance to help them dig out and rebuild. Sometimes we can be the hands of Christ in the world by opening up our checkbooks.
When the water rises, we all want someone to take risks to save us.
Folks in this community who have lost loved ones need a listening ear for that is salvation. I promise you, they don’t care much about the orthodoxy of your faith. Sometimes we can be the hands of Christ in the world by opening our ears.
Folks who need a helping hand, a listening ear, a strong back, a keen mind to chart a way toward the light in the midst of darkness, those needing a taste of salvation don’t care much about orthodoxy, but we can be Christ in the world by opening our hearts and risking them for the sake of the world.
"For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."
So, to extend our conversation this morning, have you ever been offered salvation from an unexpected source? Have you received unexpected grace from someone who was not against you even if you thought otherwise?  



You never know when the water’s gonna rise.
You never know when it will rise up in your eyes
And pour down tears
That will glisten like your fears
That the sun will never shine, that things will never turn out fine
You never know.

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, "What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled."
Then Queen Esther answered, "If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me—that is my petition—and the lives of my people—that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king."
Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, "Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?"
Esther said, "A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!" Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.
Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, "Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stand s at Haman's house, fifty cubits high." And the king said, "Hang him on that." So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.
Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.
________________________________________
Mark 9:38-50
John said to him, "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us."
But Jesus said, "Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
"If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
"For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."

Sewn In Peace

September 20, 2009
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8; Mark 9:30-37
Along with many of you, I’ve watched with mounting dismay and disgust what is passing for public discourse on health care reform and other issues of the day. I’ve watched the ridiculous displays of partisan vitriol from angry citizens and public officials. I’ve read on-line exchanges between Left and Right.
Through it all, I see people talking right past one another, and I wonder, with the author of James, “these conflicts and disputes – where do they come from?”
Oh, to be sure, there are real and legitimate points of difference in the great debates of the day, but none of that seems to be at stake in these “conflicts and disputes.”
Moreover, in these conflicts and disputes I see something deeper at stake that has at once nothing and everything to do with public discourse, and, at a deeper level, everything to do with issues at the core of our identities.
Perhaps I should say, our multiple identities. For, without getting clinical about it, each of us wears several identities as parent, child, employee, student, boss, neighbor, citizen, gardener, football fan and so on.
But before all of that we share this: we are beloved children of a loving God, and, as Christians, we understand God best through the lens of the gospel of love and justice spoken in and through the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Before donning any of our several identities, we are marked, in the waters of baptism, as Christ’s own for the world.
In a profound sense then, if not in a decent, orderly and Presbyterian sense, this is our common ordination, or common calling. Jesus told his first followers that they had not chosen him, rather he had chosen them and called them for the ministry of sharing the gospel.
Of course, they immediately set out trying to force that gospel of wildly inclusive love into cultural and institutional categories that they understood. In the reading from Mark this morning that is exactly what is going on. The disciples are on the way to Capernaum, and along the way they are engaged in a great debate – a conflict and dispute – about which one of them is top dog. Who is going to be CEO of Jesus, Inc.? What is the best plan for setting it up? Oh, and how do we get to Capernaum from here?
Maybe they got to the level of policy. “John says that next time we feed 5,000 people we should divide them by hundreds for efficiency, but James says the traditional way is to divide into 12 groups.”
“Well, Andrew says that next time we do a healing we should let everybody in, but Matthew says we should specialize in giving the blind new sight. He says it’s in Isaiah. Besides, we have some success with that and we should stick with what works.”
“I’m for the public option!”
“Well, I’m against it!”
And so it goes.
“These conflicts and disputes – where do they come from?”
That they should arise on the way to Capernaum caught my eye. Capernaum was home base for Jesus and the disciples. So they are heading home for a bit of time apart – kind of like our Oct. 3 mini-retreat, a time for us to think together about who we are. Even there, however, the baggage of cultural expectations weighs upon them and they wind up arguing about that most common and divisive question: who’s number one.
Jesus responds to the argument by telling his followers that the first among them shall be last and servant to all. He turns their worldview of hierarchical and patriarchal systems completely upside down, and inside out – or, better, outside in.
The next piece of the story disturbs the boundaries completely, as Jesus tells the disciples that the children will have center place – this in a culture that placed precious little value on children – perhaps even less than our own in which children are far more likely than adults to live in poverty, to go hungry to be victims of violence, and to lack adequate health care.
At least in first century culture they did not apparently give lip service to valuing children.
Jesus, however, embraced them and, in so doing, undermined the social norm of placing high value on achievement, affluence and power.
The Markan text also tells us the Jesus sat down here, which is key to understanding the dynamic. To sit with the twelve indicates that what Jesus has to say here is particularly important for those charged with carrying out his mission after his death. He’s gathering his closest friends together to make sure they get it.
Thus, this is a word of particular importance for us – those who would today be called disciples.
And what is the word of the Lord for us? Surely we are called to question a social order that suffers many of the same ills of Jesus’ time. Reading Mark this morning alongside James, we may also discern a particular call to question public discourse that seems bent more on scoring political points and reinforcing power structures than on feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the sick.
If we are to be the church of Jesus Christ, if we are to be his disciples, we are invited here to rethink things – to rethink who’s in and who’s out, who’s up and who’s down, who’s worthy and who’s not. More than that, in truth, we are called to rethink those categories entirely.
We begin this rethinking in our own lives on the most basic levels. Who is honored in your life and why? When we think about our families and our most intimate relationships it’s pretty easy to see that we honor them because of who they are, because we love them and they love us. And that love is not contingent on their success or the ways that they make us successful. But when we move out into other circles of relationships – at work, or school, or in church – do we fall back on the categories of power and affluence and influence: what can this person do for me? Do I honor him because he’s in with the in crowd? Do I honor her because she has power and authority? Do I honor her because she can advance my agenda? Is this the one who will help me achieve? Is this the one who is number one?
Who is on top? Who’s number one? That’s the question the disciples ask and argue; but it’s the wrong question, Jesus insists.
So the story goes, once there was a young preacher. He thought he was pretty hot stuff. Thought he was on the way to power in the church and influence in the city. He came to a small congregation in the city and dreamed of building a great following. But it wasn’t working out that way. The congregation was struggling. It was hard to pay the bills, and even harder to fill the pews. The people were discouraged and so was the young preacher.
One day he was talking with a wise elder from a neighboring church, and venting his frustrations. The wise elder listened quietly, and after a long silence he said, “well, I’ve visited your church and been with you all, and I have this incredibly strong intuition that the messiah is among you. One of your number is the Christ.”
The young preacher knew enough not to question the wisdom of this elder for whom he had deep respect, but he was pretty confused by the comment. Still, at the next session meeting, he shared the wise elder’s observation. And the church’s elders looked around at each other in wonder. It didn’t take long for the comment to spread through the congregation. Word travels fast in small churches, after all.
The people were a bit amused and skeptical. Each one thought, “well, it’s sure not me.” But they were also taken by the word, and began to look at each other, each asking, “could she be the one? Could it be him?”
And they began to pay closer attention to each other, each treating every other as if that person might be, could be the messiah, the Christ. Over the weeks and months, newcomers visited, and they noticed how the people treated one another, and they thought, “wow, this is the kind of community I want to be part of.”
And so it went, for weeks and weeks, and then month after month, until a year had passed, and the young preacher met the wise elder again. The elder asked how things were going, and the young preacher said, “you won’t believe it, but the congregation is growing stronger and stronger day by day. The people are amazing. They are doing incredible ministry together – praying together, studying scripture together, helping one another in amazing ways, feeding the hungry, welcoming the homeless, peacemaking, doing justice. The people don’t come to be served, but to serve each other. It’s just remarkable. I don’t know what happened, but we are in a very different place than we were a year ago.”
The young preacher shook his head in wonder. The wise elder simply smiled and nodded.
“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all … whoever welcomes the least of these, welcomes me.”
Amen.

Tongues of Fire

September 13, 2009
James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-30
Friday evening I was invited to speak to a gathering of Muslims breaking the fast of Ramadan on September 11, in a service and celebration in Lafayette Park across from the White House. I want to share a bit of what I said Friday evening, because it bears on these passages from James and Mark, and on what we are called to do here, at Clarendon, in the fall of 2009.
I began with a traditional greeting, “Peace be with you.” And went on to say,
I bring you greetings from Christian Peace Witness, a ecumenical coalition of more than 25 peace fellowships in the United States. I am honored to be with you this evening to break fast, and to break barriers that have too long divided the children of God.
As Samina and I have spoken together over the past few days, our conversations always come back to that: the children of God, and, simply, the children.
There was a story in the Post today that focused on young people the paper called the ‘9-11 generation,’ those who were little boys and little girls on September 11, 2001.
I am the parent of such children. I think, in particular, about our middle child, who is now in high school. He was a second grader, seven years old. He was home that morning as we watched the Twin Towers fall, and it shook him to his core. I will never forget, one evening later that fall as I was tucking him into bed, he looked up at me and asked, “daddy, will things ever get back to normal?”
I answered him with fatherly reassurance that, yes, time would begin to heal the wounds we all felt, and that fearfulness would fade. But I thought to myself, “back to normal? I certainly hope not.”
For if back to normal means returning to a status quo in which we are so divided among ourselves that the violence of 9-11 was inevitable, I want no part of normal. If back to normal means leaping from national tragedy directly into endless war, I want no part of normal. If back to normal means distortions of our faith traditions, mistrust between Christians and Muslims and Jews, and ethnic profiling by our national security apparatus, then I want no part of normal.
No, what I want for my children and for all children is something new in the world, something that I feel being born among us in gatherings such as this one when we sit down together and speak words of friendship and understanding, when we light up the night with peace.
This Sunday, in many churches, we will read these words from Christian scripture:
“From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.”
As we think back to 2001 and the years in between, we know that many words have been spoken in anger and hate and misunderstanding about and among the children of God.
Let the words of our mouths be words full of compassion and of passion for building together a world in which breaking bread together is normal, in which loving one another is normal, in which justice and peace are normal, in which our words, ‘peace, salaam, shalom,’ ring from every church and mosque and synagogue.
Thank you. May peace be among us all. May we light this night, and all nights with the light of love.

I believe that such words do ring from this church, and that we are truly building a house of prayer for all of God’s children because we are learning together to speak words of hope instead of words of exclusion.
We have certainly been reminded this week about the power and importance of words, and of the folks wisdom that holds, “better to keep silent and let the world think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
Those words should be tattooed on every public official in this town!
And, truth be told, they ought to be inscribed on every pulpit as well. For certainly, over the past six years at least, there have been words uttered from this pulpit – and this mouth – that I wanted back even as my lips were forming them and my breath was carrying them forth.
Most of the time, I find myself feeling that way when I give breath to cynical words. To be sure, cynical words are easy and, let’s face, they can be fun to say and even somewhat funny to hear. But cynicism is not a faithful response to the world. Cynicism is not, to be quite clear and specific about it, a Christian response to the world.
We are called to give an account of the hope that is within us. Cynicism – especially the hip, detached, ironic form of it, the form that is soooo cool – kills hope, and worse than that, it gets us off the hook for all that living in hope demands of us.
And while hope alone is not enough, life without hope is walking death.
Hope is always important, but I think it is particularly important for us right now as we begin the program year at Clarendon. We face some conditions that might feel hopeless. It is a fact that we have just lost or will likely lose soon a number of key leaders in this community who have moved or will be soon moving.
It is a fact that the leaders of this community, starting with yours truly, allowed or reach to exceed our grasp on some capital improvements in recent months that have left us in a cash flow crunch the likes of which we have not faced in a generation.
It is a fact that we continue to struggle at the edge of viability as a congregation, and that we remain a small, rare, place in terms of global Christianity giving voice to what remains a minority report on welcoming and including and empowering gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of faith. Truth be told, we remain a minority report in the same vein with respect to women. It would be, in so many respects, far easier to shut up. To go along to get along. To simply close the doors and sell the property and leave the entire enterprise behind.
Nevertheless, we are here because we are called to speak a word of hope into a culture of cynicism and despair.
Last week we had a house guest, a young man who was in our youth group many years ago in Kentucky. He join us for worship last week, and told me later that it was the first time other than the holidays that he had set foot in a church in more than a decade.
He also commented on what energy and spirit abides in this place, and how important the words we spoke together were for him to hear.
We don’t have to travel back to the fall of 2001 to find a world desperate to hear words of hope, and to find people desperate to know that they are loved.
That world and those people are all around us.
Jesus told his followers, in the passage from Mark, to say nothing about who he was, but he also told them in the next breath, to carry the cross of Christ into all the world, to pick up the cross and follow him.
We are, therefore, an evangelical people. We are not called to go out into the world and tell our neighbors or coworkers that they’re going to hell if they do not accept Jesus Christ as they personal savior. Save us from that.
But we are called to go into the world and recognize the hell that we have created for ourselves, and speak words of love and comfort, to reach out and ask that neighbor or colleague, “is there anything I can do for you?”
We are not called to go out and proclaim that if others do not experience the presence of God in the same way that we do that they are excluded from the household of God.
But we are called to be welcoming and hospitable in all that we do wherever we are, and to speak words of invitation.
We know, in this place, that we have found something rare and precious in this world: a community of hope, a place of welcome, people with passion and compassion.
If we lose it, it will not be because what we proclaim in this place is false; it will be because we did not proclaim it to the world. There is a world right outside of our doors that is as desperate, confused and lonely as it was in September of 2001. To be cynical in response is not hopeful. To be fearful is not faithful. To remain silent is not loving.
May our actions on behalf of our desperate, confused and lonely culture speak more loudly than our words. But let the words from our hearts speak, and let us also open our lips that our mouths may proclaim the gospel of love and justice.
Amen.

Laboring in the Vineyard

James 2
September 6, 2009
Work is as old as human history. Genesis tells us that, this side of Eden, work is our lot. Scripture describes all kinds of work: shepherds, tentmakers, sellers of purple clothe, fishing, tax collecting, military service, medicine, teaching to name but a few. No job is raised up as particularly Godly and none is denigrated as unfaithful or, in any case, beyond redemption – not even the world’s oldest profession.
Work is, simply put, the human condition. From the time we are first able to help out around the house until the day we die, there is work for us to do.
Which makes me wonder why we only have one day to celebrate this. After all, it’s like the weather, we have it every day why not celebrate it as often as we can.
So, this morning, let’s celebrate the gift of work.
Oh, to be sure, we do not always receive work as a gift, and we can all quite easily name the parts of our own particular work that we do not enjoy, but this morning I want to focus on what in our work we celebrate, and, more to the point, where in our work do we find God or feel God’s presence. In other words, let’s talk a bit about the spirituality of our everyday lives.
I believe it was Holly Near who sang, “our work is more than our jobs, and our life is more than our work.”
So when we think about finding God in our work we don’t limit that work to what we do for money. Lots of us do yard work and house work, but few of us get paid for it. Many of us provide lots of child care, but no so many of us get paid. Many of us find ourselves providing a good deal of elder care as well, but, again, not for money. All of that is work even if none of it is your job.
The author of James is quite insistent that faith without works is dead, and I agree wholeheartedly. But, at the same time, I would suggest that work without faith is deadening. It is soul killing to go to work – whether it’s a job, school, or any of the other kinds of work that we do – to go to work without any expectation of encountering the spirit of the living God somewhere along the way.
Where, in the everyday, to you sense awe and wonder and the beauty of the created order and of your fellow creatures?
My work takes me into people’s lives at their most vulnerable. I have been amazed and overwhelmed time and time again at the privilege it is to be with the dying. That is work that would be soul-killing if I did not engage it with faith, and with eyes wide open to the presence of the living God in the midst of death. Sometimes it is part of my work to speak God into that setting through prayer, but far more often, no words are necessary. The spirit needs no naming, she is simply felt – a very present help in times of trouble.
I am happy to say that death is not everyday stuff in my work. You are, no doubt, just as happy about that.
I am happy about it in large part because the other place or situation in which I can almost guarantee myself an encounter with the living God is in the midst of God’s people; that is to say, quite obviously, in your presence I feel God’s presence. In your faithfulness, I feel the faithfulness of God. In your work, I feel the living God at work in your and through you. As you let me be Christ for you, you are Christ for me.
I believe this is what the author of James was talking about. If our faith consisted only in sitting around saying, “I believe, I believe,” but our lives did not reflect the trust that is the heart of authentic faithfulness, our words would be empty and our lives would be hollow.
But I see in you, over and over and over again, lives that have been hallowed – lives that are full and marked by the awe and wonder we feel in the presence of the living God and moved into work for the coming of the kingdom. We are laborers in the vineyards of the Lord. Come labor on.
Amen.

Faith 4 Work

James 1:17-27
August 30, 2009
I saw a license plate last week that cracked me up. It read, “jog4me.”
It reminded me of a business venture that a friend and I dreamed up a few years back. We imagined that if we could figure out a way to exercise for other people we could make a fortune. Everybody wants the benefits of exercise, but lots of folks would prefer not to do the actual work.
I think the author of James understood this attitude quite well. Lots of folks want to call themselves faithful, but not all of them want to live lives that reflect the faith. In other words, they can put together some nice words about faith, but the words ring hollow when they’re not followed up by a bit of honest effort.
And, as the book of James famously puts it a bit further on, “faith without works is dead.”
It was probably that line that drove Martin Luther crazy, and led him to wish that the text of James had never been written or, at the least, that it had not been included in the canon.
Luther’s Reformation rebuttal to the church was driven by his conviction that salvation – however one defines it – comes from God’s grace alone and not through any work of our hands or through the mediation of the institutional church and its priests. But salvation in Luther’s context responded to a felt need, an existential anxiety if you will, that was different from the deepest concerns of our own day.
Luther lived, wrote and ministered with people whose lives were summed up fairly accurately by Thomas Hobbes’ observation that life is “nasty, brutish and short.” When that phrase sums up your earthly existence it is natural, perhaps even necessary, to think of salvation as only something beyond this life and thus as something fundamentally disconnected from any work of our hands. It seems clear that we do not co-create with God anything beyond this time, and if our hope lies only beyond this moment then our hope lies solely in a faith that can be expressed without the work of our hands. Thus the great mottos of the Reformation: sola fide, sola gratia, or, faith alone and grace alone account for our salvation.
But in our time and in our North American context, most of us do not live lives that can best be summed up by Hobbes’ dismal description. Life is not nasty, brutish and short for most of us. Life is rich and full for most of us. Look around this morning. We are gathered in a beautiful park, we have a small mountain of food to share, and while there are no guarantees about tomorrow, this moment is full of grace.
To be sure, suffering and loss and ultimately our own deaths are part of the package, but we have inherited and continued to build a culture and economy that allow us to live better and longer lives than Mr. Hobbes could possibly have contemplated.
So the existential questions for us are a bit different. While, of course, the knowledge of our own mortality and the deaths of loved ones do lead us to consider how God holds eternity and what it holds for us, the more pressing and constantly challenging questions for us concern how we respond to the gift of this life, how we live this moment, what meaning do we find for our own lives.
In other words, the great existential question we face is not “what happens when I die,” but rather “how do I live a meaningful life.”
Salvation, in response to that question, has more to do with the root meanings of the word salvation – and those roots, in the Latin salus, point us toward questions of wholeness, healing and community.
Those are questions of life and of the work of our hands in accepting the grace, the gift of this moment, this life. They are questions concerning what it means to be a co-creator with God and what it means to be living into God’s kingdom.
Such questions, I imagine, led poet Wendell Berry to observe that “good work, done kindly and well, is prayer.” Such questions, I imagine, led Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschell to insist that marching for Civil Rights was “praying with our feet.” Such questions, I imagine, led Gandhi to say that, “properly understood and applied, prayer is the most potent instrument of action.”
Indeed, long before our time and before Luther’s time, St. Augustine is reputed to have said, “pray as though everything depended upon God. Work as though everything depended upon you.”
In a few minutes we will join our hearts in the prayers of the people, but first let’s spend a few minutes considering the work to which we are called – the kingdom work to which we are called by God as co-creators of the household of God, of the beloved community, of God’s reign of love and justice.
First, I invite you into a couple of minutes of silent reflection on your own, individual circumstance.
What kingdom work have you been called to in your own life?
Out of our several callings, and through our common life as one small congregation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), let’s reflect for a couple of minutes on out calling as church.
What kingdom work are we called to as a congregation/community?