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.
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.
posted by David Ensign at
7:37 AM
<< Home