Sermon: Awake
Texts: Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37
Date: Nov. 30, 2008
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
I can’t help noticing that just about every time I turn on my radio these days there is one word that keeps popping up, over and over and over again. Can you guess the word? It’s “crisis.” It’s “crisis” this and “crisis” that, along with ancillary words like “worried” and “fearful.” Granted, I am listening to NPR, not Smooth Jazz or Rock n’ Roll classics, so I guess if I didn’t want to hear “crisis” so often I could tune to a different station. But that wouldn’t make the crisis go away; I just wouldn’t be hearing about it every few minutes.
It was intriguing, then, to see that “crisis” is in the margins of every single one of the lectionary texts assigned for this week. The biblical scholars who have done their homework on the texts point out that there is a different crisis in the historical background of each one of the readings. Behind Psalm 80 is the national tragedy of the fall of Israel to Assyria, when many people were carried off into exile in a foreign land. Behind Isaiah’s prophecy are the defeated people who have not yet recovered their equilibrium and prosperity even though they have been able to return from their long exile. Behind Mark’s gospel lesson, the young Christian communities were suffering at the hands of the oppressive Roman government after the Jerusalem temple was destroyed. And behind Paul’s letter was a church community threatened with persecution from outside and with division within the church. Crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis. Suddenly we have more in common with the first listeners and readers of these words than we may have imagined before our current crisis began to unfold. Kind of makes you want to prick up your ears to hear what our ancestors in faith were saying during their crises.
So what words of the ancients are broadcast into these various crises? Psalm 80 has a very blatant plea to God: “Stir up your might and come to save us!” There is a refrain that runs through this psalm, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we might be saved.” Sounds like the folks living through that crisis were feeling like God had turned God’s back on them. They longed to see God’s shining face, not what they perceived as God’s cold shoulder.
The prophet expresses a similar wish that God would return from wherever She has gone off to and reveal Himself in power just like the good old days. Tear open the skies, make the mountains quake, surprise us with some awesome deed. They, too, feel that God has hidden godself away. They would like to see some divine action to clean up this mess, thank you very much.
That’s so awfully human, isn’t it, to wish, when we’ve gotten ourselves into a mess that has bloomed into a crisis, that someone, anyone, will just come and fix it? Save us! Restore us! Where are you, God? Can’t you do something about this? It’s an enduring fantasy of humankind that we will be magically rescued from trouble, and that someone else will clean up the messes we have made.
The writers of the curriculum we use for adult Bible study asked these questions in connection with these texts: “What might you pray in a time of crisis in your community? What do you think is an appropriate request for a community to make in time of trouble or crisis?” That set me to wondering whether it is appropriate for a community to cry out to the Lord, “Stir up your might and come to save us!” I am of two minds on that. First, I would say that it is absolutely appropriate. When we are hurting, it is fitting to let God know what hurts, how it hurts, why it hurts, when it hurts. We don’t have to edit our prayers or consider their correctness before we utter them.
What would be inappropriate would be to plead for God to save us and then sit on our hands and wait for divine action. There is very little evidence that God swoops into the human scene like Mighty Mouse singing out “Here I come, to save the day!” and rescues people. Bishop Spong describes this notion as an outdated image of a God who “periodically invades history.” We can’t passively wait for God to “fix it” no matter what “it” is.
This is particularly true when the crisis is of our own making. I think one of the most telling lines in the Isaiah text this week is the complaint to God that “you have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” The people have confessed via the prophet’s words that they have sinned. And here they are moaning about how they are having to pay the piper; God didn’t magically protect them from the consequences of their sin. Dang it. It’s an honest regret, again, very human. There is a lot of discussion on the airwaves right now that sounds like confession; sounds like pundits and other people reminding us that it was, among other things, our American love affair with easy credit and comfort with deep debt that got us into the current financial mess. There is a growing consensus, it seems to me, that we have been delivered into the hand of our iniquity—even if not every individual was involved with risky financial transactions.
An aside: Some folks seem to be pinning their hopes for rescue which in an earlier age might have been directed to a divinity on political leaders. There is a whiff of almost messianic expectation rising out of anticipation of a new Administration, for example. Hopefulness is a good thing. But President-elect Obama is not the Messiah. He and his White House crew are not going to be able to fix everything like magic no matter how hard they might work. It took years to get into this mess and it’s going to take years to get out of it. (That should go without saying, but this human fantasy about rescue is so enduring, it seems worth pointing out.)
So—we might cry out for God to save us in a crisis, but in my opinion, we shouldn’t expect some supernatural deliverance from our difficulties. In fact, expecting some spectacular deliverance might distract us from attending to the help God is actually sending. You all know that old joke about the deeply religious man who was caught in a flood and was supremely confident that God would save him? One neighbor came by in a truck before the water cut off the road and offered a ride, and he refused because God would save him. Another neighbor came by in a boat after the water had risen to the second story of the house and he refused to go because God would save him. The waters kept rising and he wound up on the roof, but refused to be airlifted off by a helicopter because God would save him. When he drowned, and encountered God on the other side, he spoke of his disappointment that God did not save him in spite of his great faith. You know how God answered, right? “I sent you a truck, a boat and a helicopter; what more did you want?”
The text from 1 Corinthians is a good reminder that God has enriched the community with the gifts needed to face current challenges or crises. Paul writes to the young church, “In every way you have been enriched in [Christ], in speech and knowledge of every kind…so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” A few sentences later, Paul speaks of how God will “strengthen you to the end.” It’s not that God will not work in the world to address our problems; the point is that God works through the creation, not around its edges. Isaiah includes a metaphor that connotes this as well, saying that God is the potter and we are the clay. We are the material God works with to heal the world. God calls forth the gifts of individuals and communities to meet the crises with which we are faced. Alice Walker concluded an open letter she was writing to President-Elect Obama with this tag line: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
Look around this room. We are the ones we have been waiting for. That may feel a tiny bit disappointing. Not to disparage anyone in the room—it’s just that the durable hope for rescue may have led us to imagine greater heroes than ourselves to bail us out sometime vaguely in the future. Thich Nhat Hanh has a chapter in his book Peace is Every Step entitled “Hope as an Obstacle.” In it he suggests that hope can become problematic if clinging to hope in the future keeps us from focusing our energies and capabilities in the present moment. He writes, “We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace, or the Kingdom of God. Hope becomes a kind of obstacle…Enlightenment, peace, and joy will not be granted by someone else. The well is within us, and if we dig deeply in the present moment, the water will spring forth.” [1]
At first one might wonder if such philosophy is in direct conflict with the Christian tradition. After all, the reading from Mark leans toward the future, and speaks of the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God for which we are to wait and watch. However, Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God, or the Kin-dom of God in a more contemporary rendering, is that it is always both present and future. God’s rule breaks into the present even as we look forward in hope to its completion or fulfillment in the future. I think the gospel’s urgent words about keeping awake apply to the present every bit as much as a future event.
This very idea of being awake is a great occasion to bring Christianity and Buddhism into dialogue with each other. When I read the last line of the this morning’s gospel text, “What I say to you I say to all, ‘Keep awake,’” I recalled the story of Buddha’s enlightenment. Have you heard it? It is said that soon after his enlightenment the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha's extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped and asked, "My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god?" "No," said the Buddha. "Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?" Again the Buddha answered, "No." "Are you a man?" "No." "Well, my friend, then what are you?" The Buddha replied, "I am awake."
There is a purpose in Buddhism to being awake. It’s not just a triple-grande-mocha-latte state of vibrating nerves. It’s being so present in the moment that you are open to compassion and fully able to rise to the occasion of the current need. Buddhists practice mindfulness as a way of being fully awake in the world. Thich Nhat Hanh (a Buddhist monk since the age of 16) describes the mindfulness like this:
In Buddhism, our effort is to practice mindfulness in each moment-to know what is going on within and all around us. When the Buddha was asked, ‘Sir, what do you and your monks practice?’ he replied, ‘We sit, we walk, and we eat.’ The questioner continued, ‘But sir, everyone sits, walks, and eats,’ and the Buddha told him, ‘When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating.’ Most of the time, we are lost in the past or carried away by future projects and concerns. When we are mindful, touching deeply the present moment, we can see and listen deeply, and the fruits are always understanding, acceptance, love and the desire to relieve suffering and bring joy. When our beautiful child comes up to us and smiles, we are completely there for her. (Living Buddha, Living Christ; p. 14)
Hanh says that when bombs were falling in his native Vietnam, he and his fellow monks had to make a decision about whether to stay in their monastery and continue their meditative practice or go out to where the people were and help them in their suffering. They decided to do both. They called it “Engaged Buddhism.” Mindfulness, he says, must be engaged.
I am not calling on anyone to become Buddhist. But I do think the gospel call to be alert, to be awake, to look for signs of God’s work in the world and be open to God’s call in our own lives, is in harmony with this principle. When we are awake, engaged with compassion in the moment, we can hear and respond to God’s call to us. God is always calling to us, but our awareness varies. Bruce Epperly writes in this week’s Process and Faith commentary, “Process theologians assert that God is present in each moment as the source of adventure, possibility, and creativity. But, the ubiquitous God is also variable in God’s presence.” What he means is that while God is everywhere present, the intensity of our experience of God’s presence and leadership will vary depending on our practices—mindfully turning toward God as a regular practice will increase the possibility that God will be able to lead us into new possibilities.
God’s summons to those alert for the call is a very ordinary/extraordinary event in human life. It happens all the time, and sometimes people who are awake respond with great courage and creativity to new adventure and possibility. I love this story of a basketball game involving the girls’ basketball team from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation in 1988. They had traveled to the town of Lead, South Dakota, and it was one of those times when the host gym was dense with anti-Indian hostility. Lead fans waved food stamps, yelling fake Indian war cries and epithets like “squaw” and “gut-eater.” Usually, the Pine Ridge girls made their entrances according to height, led by the tallest seniors. When they hesitated to face a hostile crowd, a fourteen-year-old freshman named SuAnne offered to go first. She surprised her teammates and silenced the crowd by performing the Lakota shawl dance and then singing in Lakota—“graceful and modest and show-offy all at the same time,” in the words of the writer who recorded the incident. She managed to reverse the crowd’s hostility—until they even cheered and applauded. [2] I try to imagine what it must have been like for her to stand on the sideline and make the decision to dance her people’s proud tradition. I would call that a call from God to use her gifts, and she was awake, engaged in the present moment, and she responded.
Another story, from the same chapter of a marvelous book titled The Impossible Will Take a Little While. The author of the chapter had been haunted by a photograph which she describes: It’s of a woman with two children lying on a bed, their arms flung across her body carelessly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world…one child blissfully asleep, the other just a little bit awake. The woman is lying on her side with open eyes, with an expression of alert concern, maybe fear, but also, underneath, a certain calm, and deep intensity. The caption: Irene Siegel, a Jewish American, sleeps in the home of a Palestinian family in Beit Jala as part of a human shield campaign to deter Israeli shelling of Palestinian homes. She recounted for the journalist who took the picture what it was like to meet her hostess Magdalene, who looked at her sideways and asked, “Are you Jewish?” Irene nodded. Magdalene threw her arms around her and said, “You know, I love you, Irene. I love you like a sister.” And they both cried, and talked until two in the morning, and they shared together the pain of the community surrounding them. [3] I try to imagine what it was like for Irene to decide to travel to Palestine and stay with that family as a human shield, and what it was like for Magdalene to open her home and her heart. I would call that a call from God to use their gifts, and they were awake, engaged in the present moment, and they responded.
It’s a marvelous thing, a wonder, the way God strengthens people as they step up to meet the challenges and crises of the day. It’s an ordinary/extraordinary everyday event, the call of God which is answered by the faithful in every branch of God’s enormous family. I am confident that God is calling each one of us to do our part, whether it’s engineering part of the solution to stop global warming or quietly deciding not to panic when the fear-mongers are raising a ruckus. We are called to do our part whether it is accepting a Cabinet appointment or feeding our neighbors. I’d like you to help me finish this message now by turning to someone sitting near you and repeating after me, “God is the potter, we are the clay.” “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” “God is calling; keep alert.”
[1] Hanh, Thich Nhat Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life New York: Bantam Books, 1991, p. 41
[2] Safford, Victoria “The Small Work in the Great Work” The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear Paul Rogat Loeb, ed. New York: Basic Books, 2004, p. 183
[3] Ibid, p. 189