interesting things to think about... even though i'm not christian or religious
A sermon preached at
Plymouth Congregational Church
Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis
November 7, 2004
the Rev. James Gertmenian
Text: Psalm 46
The need for healing in our country after this erosive election - erosive not so much for the way it ended as for the acidic and grinding spirit it churned up in so many - is a palpable thing these days. Perhaps the losers, seeing their dreams slip away and fearing deeply for the nation, have the more immediate sense that healing is necessary. The winners, after all, may understandably enjoy their moment of elation and the sense of relief that accompanies the achievement of their goal. But thoughtful people on both sides of the electoral divide ought now to be looking across that chasm and setting out to bridge it. Thoughtful people on both sides know that neither the despair of the losers nor the triumphalist glee of the winners are affordable for more than a couple of days, since all of our resources - emotional, spiritual, political, and material - need now to be directed toward solving the intractable problems that lie before us. Those extreme responses - despair on the one hand and triumphalism on the other - are, rather, extravagances of emotion that will deplete the national will and ultimately cause more hurt than is sustainable in this great but weakened country. We are, after all, in this messy and dangerous world together - red states and blue, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, and we are, lest we forget, all partly responsible for both the mess and the danger. We have work to do, and in order to do it we should now be spanning the divide and joining hands with one another.
The bridge we need, however, cannot be built with gauzy phrases and balsa-wood promises. The desire for healing cannot alone replace the long, complicated work of healing. Jeremiah said, "They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying 'Peace, peace,' where there is no peace." And we should be careful that, in our hope for a new amity, and in facing the pressure of our common dilemmas, we not ignore the issues and behaviors that have separated us or pretend that they never existed. Let us at least muster from within ourselves the honesty to say that new rifts have opened up in our body politic - and, as I will say later, in the body of Christ as well - and that these rifts are real and formidable. Sentimental appeals for healing couched in the language of pietistic patriotism will never do the job of bringing our nation together. Wishful thinking won't make it happen, either, nor will the capitulation of one side to the other. The President, for his part, needs to do more than offer the sop of a few conciliatory phrases or the occasional appointment of a Democrat. He needs, instead, to make substantive moves toward a more inclusive agenda. And, on the other side, those who oppose the President must avoid charading cooperation while secretly hoping and praying for the administration to fail. Such disingenuousness does no service to the nation and ultimately undermines the very causes that liberals hope to advance.
No, the bridging that is necessary, and for which all people of good will yearn, needs more than a warm heart; it needs a clear eye and steely resolve, too. And when it comes to spanning the distance between this week's winners and losers, perhaps no line in scripture is so structurally reliable as the one from the forty-sixth Psalm in which a voice from beyond us all insists over the din of our political process: "Be still, and know that I am God." It is a profound calling that demands much of each side, and we stand together under its power. For those who equate their electoral victory to some eschatological triumph, and who suggest that with George Bush's re-election, God is in the White House (a direct quote from one of the President's supporters), the words "Be still," come as a firm, though loving corrective, a gentle demand for more humility, an invitation to stop ringing the victory bell just long enough to hear the authentic voice of the minority, to say nothing of the cries of the poor, the moans of the wounded, which also need to be heard and which are, after all, the true voice of God... God who is at the same time above every party, every interest group, every candidate, every administration, every religion, every nation. "Be still, and know that I am God," when addressed to the winners, is an unambiguous call for them to step back from the idolatry that would replace the transcendent God with a temporarily ascendant ideology or a partisan power. George Bush was, after all, elected, not anointed. A bit of that stillness, that humility, and that acknowledgement of God's place above all partisanship would be a welcome sign from the White House just now... and would go a long way toward nurturing the healing that the President claims he seeks for the nation.
On the other hand, the losers also need to hear, "Be still, and know that I am God," though, for them, the words carry quite a different message. When their laments and the woes, the cries of despair and the insults hurled against the other side, and the fusillades of black humor drown out any whisper of hope, any possibility of reconciliation, God says, patiently but firmly, "Be still." Despair, understandable as it might be, especially for those who invested so much of themselves in a losing cause, becomes, after a brief time, a self-indulgence, a self-pity that is unbecoming for those who truly believe in their cause. Yes, weep for a time. Yes, let a blast of anger clear out the sadness that clogs your heart. Yes, grieve, in the depths of your soul, what is clearly a real and significant loss. But then, sooner rather than later, the tears must be wiped away and the work taken up again. The anger, except just that part of it that fuels righteous effort, must be let go of. And the grief, if it continues, should do its work in some quiet corner of the soul, neither forgotten nor allowed to impede the more pressing work of the nation. Many of the saints whom we remember today are people who suffered loss after loss, but who, instead of giving up, instead of despairing, simply kept at the work to which they were called. They are noble examples of faithful courage, and can be inspiring models for those who felt defeated on Wednesday morning.
Respect for one another, a pervasive willingness to listen, the dropping of all pretension to moral or intellectual superiority on either side, and, above all, the practice of that common stillness before God is the hard work that our nation has before it... these, even while we do the equally hard work of forging, with others, a peace in the world, of caring for our most vulnerable citizens, and of securing the common weal. I wonder, in that context, what each of you - whether Republican or Democrat, Green or Independent - has determined to do to neutralize that acidity that has marked our national discourse. Note that I am not suggesting that anyone sacrifice their basic principles to achieve this balance, only that we seek, together, to lower our voices and elevate our conversation, recognizing that in these perilous times, any common ground we can find is surely holy ground.
With that as a somewhat lengthy preface, let me open a conversation that we will have to have more of in the months and years ahead, namely a dialogue that addresses the fault lines within American Christianity. I have heard more than one progressive Christian express a sense of near-complete estrangement from our more conservative or fundamentalist co-religionists, and some on the more liberal end have wondered whether they should even leave the church altogether rather than risk being painted, by the media or anyone else, with the same broad brush as those Christians who crowd toward the right. I confess to some of my own discomfort in the face of these strains, but I resist the impulse to run away, because I know that the higher calling and the nobler way is not to surrender the faith but to keep it.
-Keeping the faith, for progressives (and here I include Republicans and Democrats) means staying in the debate about what the core of Jesus' message was and is.
-Keeping the faith for us means learning to articulate liberal Christianity to a reductive press and a skeptical world so that a more expansive and inclusive vision of the Gospel can take root and flourish.
-Keeping the faith means insisting that the moral weight of Jesus' teaching is not primarily on narrow, personal sexual and reproductive behavior, but on the broad, public commitment to justice and peace.
-Keeping the faith, for progressives, means declaring that science and religion are not enemies, and it means exposing the hypocrisy of those who would enjoy the benefits of technology while denying the validity of basic scientific truths, like evolution and quantum physics, on which that technology is based.
-Keeping the faith means valuing and protecting the creation rather than continuing to damage and deplete it.
-Keeping the faith means rejecting the equation of power with righteousness, of Christianity with Americanism, and of public piety with true spirituality.
-Keeping the faith means praying daily for the safety of our soldiers even as we, with equal fervor and in the name of the Prince of Peace, abhor the machines of war they are forced to employ.
-Keeping the faith means having the humility before God to repent of sins like those at Abu Ghraib, not to treat them as anomalous lapses but to have the moral clarity to understand that they are the inevitable product of the confusion of our own power with God's.
-Keeping the faith means lining up with God's preferential option for the poor, so clearly propounded in scripture.
-Keeping the faith, for progressives, means abandoning rigid certainty as a way of being in the world, as a way of expressing religious belief, or as a way of doing politics.
-Keeping the faith means replacing legalistic and dogmatic absolutes with an awestruck wonder at the way in which God grows with us, changes withus, lives with us, dies with us.
In all of these things, churches like Plymouth offer an alternative view of Christianity, of religion, than that which seemed to emerge victorious in the election. With respect for those who differ, but with the firm conviction that this alternative voice must be heard... with a willingness to listen but the courage to dissent... with the humility to see our own faults but a joyful embrace of our own strengths, and with the patience of seeing the long view but the impatience of an urgent hunger for justice, those of us who understand ourselves to be progressive believers are called, in this time, to keep the faith, not to abandon it, to keep the faith and to ensure that it is not stolen from us by anyone with a narrower view or a louder voice, to keep the faith not as our own possession or as the sole answer but as a necessary and vital ingredient in a pluralistic world. This, I believe, is Plymouth's charter, and never could it be more important than it is today. This church has a charge to keep... and we will keep it.
In my closing minutes, I want to address a few, more focused words to those in our congregation who are Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transgendered and to your family members and friends. A number of you have written or spoken to me in the last few days to say how dismayed you were to see amendments against gay marriage and, in some cases, even gaycivil rights, being passed by large margins in eleven states. Some of you spoke of feeling frightened, imagining, as well you might, that a new wave of hatred and fear is about to wash over you. You feel betrayed by a country that promised to value every human being equally... and perhaps even more damaging, you feel betrayed by representatives of a religion that claims love as its foundational value. I understand your fear. Many of us here at Plymouth do. But I want to remind you that this spasm of hatred is the lashing out of a dying dragon. This dragon, homophobia, is angry because it is dying. And it is frightened because it is dying. And in its anger and its fear it may even seem stronger than it really is. But it is dying. What is being born is the love of God which will show forth in a time in which your God-given value will be recognized by all. In the meantime, though, I want you to know this: Whatever happens anywhere else, in this place, and in this family, you need not be afraid. Even if every state in the Union were to pass an amendment, these walls stand to protect you. This is a sanctuary where your lives will be celebrated, and your loves blessed, and your relationships honored. And from this place we will go out and fight together for human rights for all. That is a solemn covenant which we here make with one another. And woe to this church if it should ever break that covenant, for in so doing it will have broken its own heart.
The forty-sixth Psalm says "there is a river whose streams makeglad the city of God." I want to close on a note of gladness, today. This is not a gladness of any particular party or any ideology, but the profound and elemental gladness that comes from knowing that God's purpose - which is peace and good will among people, equitable sharing in the things of the earth, and respect for the gift of creation - is working itself out even when we cannot see it. If, in order to drink from that Glad River (to use Will Campbell's wonderful phrase) we need to wade in right next to someone whose politics, or world view, or religious understanding is different from ours, then let us, by all means, begin wading. Somehow, there, with the current of God's love swirling around our legs, and with all of us nearly losing our balance for the sheer joy of it, we might be able to see one another for who we really are and understand, with a new vision, our essential oneness as human creatures. There, with the rush of God's justice flowing down inexorably is Micah promised it would, we might discover a new politics - a politics of generosity and abundance. And there, with the cooling spring of God's presence welling up in each of us, we might finally join hands with one another and become, in our very flesh, pilgrims across every human divide, seekers after reconciliation, and bridges of Peace.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
