Sermon: Who Are You?

Text: 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

Date: July 1, 2007

Bob Haslanger, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

Paul Hewson wears sunglasses that look a bit like these. His sunglasses are part of his famous distinctive appearance. They are so much a part of his look that Pope John-Paul asked him for a pair of his sunglasses when they met.

Who is Paul Hewson? And why did the Pope want to wear his sunglasses? Perhaps the Pope wanted to see what the world looked like through Hewson’s glasses. Or perhaps he wanted to connect with Hewson’s spirit through the magic of appearing like him.

Hewson is known as Bono, the lead singer and principal lyricist of the Irish rock band U2. He is also known for his activism concerning third world debt, Africa and the AIDS pandemic. It’s his activism that brought him to meet with the Pope.

What do Bono and the Pope have to do with Elijah and Elisha, prophets and discipleship?

Eugene Peterson has called U2, and especially Bono, prophets. He said in an interview,

U2 doesn't seem to be calculated in what they are doing. It just comes out of who they are, and maybe that's why people respond to them, because they are so unconventional in the rock music world. And then there is the social passion they have evidenced in the African world, and the effort that they go to speak to people of influence in order to try to convince them that pain and suffering and impoverishment are the responsibility of those who are in positions of influence …

So I've used the word prophet for them. Walter Brueggemann describes prophets as uncredentialed spokesmen for God. Well, I think that fits them pretty well.[1]

 

Is Peterson off base here, calling rock musicians prophets? Is he using the term loosely or accurately?

 

Here’s what he says,

 

A prophet, almost by definition, doesn't fit into the categories you expect, which is what gives them bite, and clarity, and the sense of grabbing us by the scruff of our neck, and saying, "Listen to this: this is truth, this is what's going on." The whole authority of prophets comes not from what people say about them or the credentials that they have, it's from the truth of what they are saying. This is true of the Biblical prophets and of prophetic voices all through history. Often prophets use the name God but sometimes they don't.[2]

 

Brueggemann writes,

 

[P]rophetic ministry consists of offering an alternative perception of reality and in letting people see their own history in the light of God’s freedom and his will for justice.

The task of prophetic ministry is to evoke an alternative community that knows it is about different things in different ways.[3]

 

Would Walter Brueggemann, renown Old Testament scholar, expert on the Prophets, consider Bono a prophet?

He hasn’t told me one way or the other, but listen to this.

 

So this is the paradigm I suggest for the prophetic imagination. A royal consciousness committed to achievable satiation. An alternative prophetic consciousness devoted to the pathos and passion of covenanting. The royal consciousness with its program of achievable satiation has redefined our notions of humanness and it has done that to all of us. It has created a sub­jective consciousness concerned only with self-satisfaction. It has denied the legitimacy of tradition that requires us to remember, of authority that expects us to answer, and of community that calls us to care. It has so enthroned the present that a promised future, delayed but certain, is unthinkable.

 

The royal program of achievable satiation

(a)  is fed by a management mentality which believes there are no mysteries to honor, only problems to be solved. …;

(b)   is legitimated by an "official religion of optimism," which believes God has no business other than to maintain our standard of living, ensuring his own place in his palace;

(c)   requires the annulment of the neighbor as a life-giver in our history; it imagines that we can live outside history as self-made men and women.[4]

He continues, “Only the prophetic word is mobilized against this compelling reality.”

Bono has met with and confronted world leaders, including President Bush on the subjects of Third World debt, Africa, and the AIDS pandemic. U2 has challenged its fans and those who listen to their music with songs about God, materialism, spirituality, activism. They have annoyed not only those in power, but their own adoring public with challenges to the “royal program of achievable satiation.”

Was Peterson serious as a Bible scholar when he called them prophets? I think so.

Elijah is one of the great Prophets. He is recognized not only in Jewish and Christian history but in the Koran as well. In the passage read this morning, Elijah completes his prophetic work and is taken up in a whirlwind. Elisha symbolically picks up Elijah’s mantle as he picks up the role of Prophet. Elisha is confirmed as Elijah’s successor in front of those who came to witness Elijah’s ascension.

The role Elisha takes on is to speak the word of God’s judgment, confronting kings and officials of his time. Elisha faced his challenges with his inheritance from Elijah. He had a very different style – less talk, more miracles. He didn’t become Elijah; he spoke with the same spirit, the double share of spirit he had inherited. The passing of Elijah’s mantle was a symbol of the passing of the prophetic role.

So what about Bono and the Pope? Do you want to read a little more into the passing of those sunglasses now? After all, the Pope never asked George Bush, or any other political leader for their sunglasses.

At the top I asked, “Who is Paul Hewson?” Now I ask, “Who are you?”

That’s a question each of us asks whenever we meet someone, whether we ask it out loud or not.

Who are you?

But it’s also a question to ask in a mirror. It’s a daunting question if you consider it in the light of Bruggemann’s description of the “royal program of achievable satiation.”

Am I “fed by a management mentality which believes there are no mysteries to honor, only problems to be solved.” Do I imagine that I can live outside history as a self-made man? Do I believe that it is God’s business to maintain my standard of living?

Who do I see when I look into that mirror? Even if I reject that royal program, am I someone who is “learning about God,” or is trying to live up to Christian principles? Do I see someone who is calculating their discipleship quotient, measuring the work I do by Christian standards?

The question for me is one of authenticity. Am I who I appear to be? Is there congruence between ends and means, between what I do and the way I do it?

I had the opportunity to find myself acting completely without any sense of artifice or pretension recently. Utterly open and genuinely spontaneous without concern for how I appeared. I was playing with my one year old grand daughter; just the two of us.

Gerard Manly Hopkins sonnet that is the Consider This item in your bulletin speaks to this congruence. “What I do is me: for that I came.” “Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is.” At that moment I was as a kingfisher, a dragonfly, a chiming bell. I was a grandpa.

It wasn’t something I was learning about, or trying to live up to, or something I measured my success at. It was what I was.

I go back to Peterson and his description of U2, “[they don’t] seem to be calculated in what they are doing. It just comes out of who they are.”

In another essay Peterson says,

 

It is easier to talk about what Christians believe, the truth of the gospel formulated in creeds and doctrines… It is easier to talk about what Christians do, life as performance, the behavior appropriate to followers of Jesus codified in moral commandments and formulated in vision statements and mission strategies. We never lack for teachers and preachers and parents who instruct us in the mores and manners of the kingdom of God. None of us here are likely to pretend perfection in these matters, but most of us are pretty well agreed on what’s involved.

But what counts on my agenda right now is the Christian life as lived, lived in this sense of congruence between who Christ is and who I am.[5]

In Hopkins sonnet,

for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

It is not our calculation or our measurement that is important in living the life of a prophet or a disciple. It is the authenticity of Christ In Us. It is the congruence of the spirit within us with how we appear and what we do; the humility of being who we are.

Here is another passage from Peterson’s essay, Transparent Lives.

Two things that are basic to the Christian life are unfortunately counter to most things American. First, Christian spirituality, the contemplative life, is not about us. It is about God. The great weakness of American spirituality is that it is all about us: fulfilling our potential, getting the blessings of God, expanding our influence, finding our gifts, getting a handle on principles by which we can get an edge over the competition. The more there is of us, the less there is of God.

Christian spirituality is not a life-project for becoming a better person. It is not about developing a so-called deeper life. We are in on it, to be sure, but we are not the subject. Nor are we the action. We get included by means of a few prepositions: God with us (Matt. 1:23), Christ in me (Gal. 2:20), God for us (Rom. 8:31). With, in, for: They are powerful, connecting, relation-forming words, but none of them makes us either the subject or the predicate. We are the tag-end of a prepositional phrase.

God means to do something with us and means to do it in community. We are in on what God is doing, in on it together. We become present to what God intends to do with and for us through worship. In worship, we become present to the God who is present to us.[6]

 

If who we are is Christ In Us, we bring ourselves to God to do with us as God will. We bring ourselves to the table “to be taken, blessed, broken and distributed in lives of witness and service, justice and healing.”[7]

Perhaps when we look in the mirror to ask, “Who are you?” we might change the question to “Who is God in me.”

Isn’t that a place to find authenticity, of congruence between what we do and how we do it? Whether it’s consoling a neighbor, sharing joy with a friend, standing with Women in Black, writing a letter to congress, or playing with your children or grand children, finding comfort in being the tag-end of the prepositional phrase and allowing the God In Us to play in our place as in ten thousand others gives that act authenticity and congruence.

The call of discipleship is to teach the lessons of Jesus. To do that as a prophet is to provide an alternate view of the world that challenges the numb, satisfied, entitled, imperial view of the dominant culture. To do it as a disciple is to live as Jesus said. To Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And to love your neighbor as yourself. The way to teach it authentically is to live it.

I’m going to borrow another metaphor from Eugene Peterson. He borrowed it from Rick Bass, a renowned environmentalist. I’m a great believer in re-stating the wisdom of others, I get to look smart and you get the benefit of wonderful empowering thought.

 

Bass wrote an essay recently that I consider required reading for anyone who cares about the contemplative life, immersed as we are in this impatient, shortcut addictive culture. He writes that when confronted with a complex and difficult task, he used to imagine himself laying down one brick after another, brick by brick by brick, to eventually accomplish his aims. But he’s recently changed his metaphor from bricks to glaciers. A glacier is the most powerful force the world has ever seen. Literally nothing can stop a glacier.

A glacier is formed by the falling of snow that collects over a period of time. As the snow deepens, the weight compresses, ice forms, then more snow, then more ice, year after year -- and nothing happens. Nothing happens until that glacier is 64-feet thick. Then it starts to move and nothing can stop it.[8]

Each time we act with authenticity, no matter how small the act, we can build a congruent, genuine, life for ourselves and act as a model for others. Every day that life becomes deeper. It is a slow process but it will get to a point where it will move and nothing can stop it.

[1] Scott Calhoun, Bono’s Prophetic Vox, @U2, atu2.com, February 09, 2006

[2] Ibid.

[3] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, Fortress Press, 1978 p.110

[4] Ibid. p. 42

[5] Eugene Peterson, Transparent Lives, The Christian Century, November 29, 2003, pp. 20-27

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid