Keep the Light On
Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 5: 13-20
February 5, 2017
The first spring that we lived
in metro DC we took the kids to the Cathedral open house day to check out
another Washington landmark.
It’s the only time when the
general public can climb to the level of the carillon in the central spire, and
the boys and I decided to go up. I don’t like heights, but I do like views. To
get up there you have to climb several tightly spiraling staircases, including
one that gets narrower as you go up.
As I learned that day, I don’t
like tight spaces, either.
You make this climb as part of a
group, walking up the stairs single file. By the time you get near the top if
your shoulders are even as wide as mine you have to turn your body sideways to
continue climbing. At that point, if there had not been a line of people coming
up behind me I would definitely have turned around. And, if the people in front
of me had stopped I probably would have hurt somebody.
But there was no going back, and
in that moment I thought quite clearly, the only way out is through.
I’ve been thinking about that
for the past two weeks. Lots of folks wish they could wake up and the
fearfulness of these days would fade as a dream. But executive orders clearly
targetting Muslims, cabinet nominees expressing radical right-wing views, and a
president proudly proclaiming “torture works” or casually raising the
possibility of a U.S. military invasion in a conversation with the president of
Mexico are not bad dreams. They are our present reality, and, if the first two
weeks of this administration are prologue, the next several years are going to
be incredibly challenging for millions of people across the country and around
the world.
The only way out is through.
About the same moment I had that
thought way up in a tightening staircase, I also had these twin thoughts: “why
are there no more windows up here? Why couldn’t they at least put in a light?”
When the only way out is
through, it’s super helpful if someone can light the way.
And then I thought, right, Jesus
tells us, “you are the light of the
world. If you find yourself in a dark, narrow, difficult place, let your light shine.”
And when you find yourself in a time
when the foundations are crumbling under the weight of injustice, when immigrants
are scapegoated, the needs of the poor ignored, minorities threatened, and
women labeled hysterical for insisting on fundamental equality, well, if you
should ever find yourself in such a time, heed the words of Isaiah: “Shout out,
do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!”
The challenge, however, comes
pretty soon when you realize that you’re losing your voice from shouting out
every single day.
Did you see that tweet last
week? “First they came for the Latinos, Muslims, women, gays, poor people,
intellectuals and scientists and then it was Wednesday.”
Yeah, it feels like that, and,
surely, that can quickly begin to feel overwhelming. When the deepest values of
your faith and your citizenship feel under assault and feel that way on different
fronts for different days, it can quickly begin to feel like you are trying to
hold back the tide. So, what do you do? Give up? Give in?
The only way out is through.
During this 500th
anniversary year of the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation I’ve several
times already quoted Anglican Bishop Mark Dyer, who observed that every 500
years of so the church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale. That’s
another way of saying that in particularly challenging moments, when the way
has grown dark and narrow, people of faith have found a way through.
If you go back a thousand years
before the great Reformation you find Christianity and the West, itself,
tottering on the brink as the Roman Empire was collapsing.
As Phyllis Tickle describes it,
“What politically and culturally would very swiftly spiral down into the Dark
Ages was already at work peeling the Christianity of the Early Church away from
the laity and inserting into the resulting vacuum a kind of animistic,
half-magical form of a bastardized Christianity that would characterize the
laity and much of the minor clergy over the next few centuries.”[1]
Western Christianity could
easily have died out in those years, but it was kept alive largely through the
monks and nuns of Europe’s convents and monasteries where successive
generations of creative leaders developed practices of prayer, reading, and
communal life that made a way through the darkness.
As leaders in every time and
situation have come to understand, the only way out is through. Moreover, the
history of “getting through” also teaches us the central importance of
sustenance for the journey. What will keep us going when we get weary, when the
path grows narrow and dark? Where will we find light, and how will we keep the
light burning?
We’re working on a Lenten series
focused on spiritual practices for difficult days through which we’ll engage
and explore some of the ways that we keep going. Obviously, spiritual practices
are important for our own self care as we work to resist injustice and repair
the breaches. At the same time, the practices themselves can be part of
resistance and reparation.
Singing is a great example, and
certainly not the only one, but it’s one that particularly works for me.
Here’s another really old song
that dates back even further than the one I sang with the kids a bit ago.
Now death come a knockin’ on my neighbor’s door sayin’ come on neighbor
ain’t you ready to go? And my neighbor stoop down buckle up his shoes and he
moved over to the Jordan stream. And then he shout: hallelujah! Done all my
duty, got on my travellin’ shoes.
Now death come a knockin’ on my sister’s door sayin’ come on sister
ain’t you ready to go? And my sister stoop down buckle up her shoes and she
moved over to the Jordan stream. And then she shout: hallelujah! Done all my
duty, got on my travellin’ shoes.
Last week when the choir was
warming up Justin observed that “hallelujah” is just about the most fun word in
the world to sing. It’s pretty much the same word everywhere. It simply means
“praise the Lord!” But you don’t even have to sing, ‘cause the lyric says
“shout!” When I say “shout,” you say “hallelujah!”
Now death come a knockin’ on my momma’s door sayin’ come on momma ain’t
you ready to go? And my momma stoop down buckle up her shoes and she moved over
to the Jordan stream. And then she shout: hallelujah! Done all my duty, got on
my travellin’ shoes.
This song and dozens of others
from the days of the Underground Railroad worked on two levels: on the surface,
they were simply Christian spirituals, but they were also songs of resistance
for moving on over to the Jordan stream
also meant running away to freedom. It was a song of the struggle.
Now death come a knockin’ on my daddy’s door sayin’ come on daddy ain’t
you ready to go? And my daddy stoop down buckle up his shoes and he moved over
to the Jordan stream. And then he shout: hallelujah! Done all my duty, got on
my travellin’ shoes.
Singing was, and remains, a
spiritual practice and a practice of resistance. It is not, of course, the only
one. It wasn’t even the only one employed back in the days of the Underground
Railroad. It was, of course, illegal to teach slaves to read and write. As my
buddy David LaMotte says when he does this song, “it’s hard to start a
revolution when you can’t pass notes in class.”
So how did notes get passed? If
you were on the run you looked for signs, and sometimes they were in certain
patterns in quilts hung in farmhouse windows. If you saw the right pattern you
knew that you could knock on the door, they’d let you in, give you something to
eat, a place to rest, and directions to the next safe space.
Imagine that: quilting as a
spiritual practice of resistance.
Well, it’s not that difficult to
imagine, actually. Lots of people quilt as a prayer practice. Others knit. Did
you see all those pink hats at the women’s march a couple of weeks ago?
Knitting as a spiritual practice of resistance.
And that march was not the first
time, by any means. This stole, and thousands like it, were knit during the
days when the Presbyterian Church was voting on GLBTQ justice concerns. Many of
us wore these to General Assembly and Presbytery meetings as signs of
solidarity. Knitting as a spiritual practice of resistance.
The simple creative work of
ordinary people often makes for the most powerful practices of resistance.
Now death come a knockin’ on my preacher’s door sayin’ come on preacher
ain’t you ready to go? And my preacher stoop down buckle up her shoes and she
moved over to the Jordan stream. And then she shout: hallelujah! Done all my
duty, got on my travellin’ shoes.
We sing these old songs now, and
it’s easy to look back and think, “well, if I’d been alive back then, I would
have been right there as a part of that resistance, that freedom struggle.
Because it was so clearly the right thing to do.” But would I have? Really? For
to do so meant not only breaking the law, but risking one’s life and the lives
of one’s family. Would I have been willing to do that?
So I look around at my own life
now and I have to ask, “would I have been Isaiah? Or would I have been among
those he called to account for failing to uphold the cause of the widow and the
orphan?”
I saw another tweet last week
that said, “if you wondered in history class what you would have done back
then, well, what you are doing now is what you would have done.”
I’m challenged by that at the
deepest level of my faith. I know that the values of my faith call me to resist
all that stands opposed to justice, all that stands opposed to love. I know
that those values call me to “satisfy the needs of afflicted.”
I also know that I cannot do
this work alone. As a good friend put it just the other day, “Individuals can
resist injustice; it takes a community to do
justice.” And not just any community, but, indeed, a community that engages
practices for sustenance and resistance over the long haul – all the way
through – and on over to the Jordan stream. This is how we keep the light
shining.
Now death come a knockin’ on my front door sayin’ come on David ain’t
you ready to go? And I’m gonna stoop down buckle up my shoes and move over to
the Jordan stream. I’m gonna shout: hallelujah! Done all my duty, got on my
travellin’ shoes. Once more … last time.
posted by David Ensign at
7:55 AM
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