September 7, 2008 Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 119:1-3; 33-42; Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-14
You know what time it is.
That is what the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. “You know
what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep…The night
is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put
on the armor of light.”
The first century Christians knew what time it was. They saw on the one
hand the violence of the Roman Empire, and the obscene wealth of the ruling
class that was heedless of the extreme poverty of others. They saw the civic
religion with its glorification on the Empire’s materialistic, militaristic way of
life, and they saw how it perpetuated and accelerated Rome’s downward
trajectory toward moral and spiritual bankruptcy.
On the other hand, they heard the good news of Christ, and they felt a
power in it greater than any empire. They heard the nonviolent, anti-materialistic
way of self-emptying and self -sacrificing love, and in their heart they knew that
God’s weakness was stronger than human strength and God’s foolishness was
wiser than human wisdom. To use Paul’s image, they saw both the dark night of
the Roman Empire’s way of life and the beautiful light of Christ’s way, and they
knew what time it was. The night was far gone. The day was near. And so while
they knew the danger and fear of opposing such a powerful Empire, they also
knew the joy of Psalm 119’s promises—happy are those who turn their hearts
away from selfish gain to God’s ways of steadfast love.
I believe that like those early Christians, we know what time it is, too.
This fall we will be showing a movie in the Newcomb Room called The Eleventh
Hour. Anyone who goes through life with the newspaper in one hand and the
Bible in the other knows without being told what that movie is all about. It is the
eleventh hour for the American Empire. It is the eleventh hour for the life
sustaining capacity of the earth’s biosphere, at least for life as human civilization
has always known it. It is the eleventh hour for the human spirit.
On the one hand, we can see the dark night of America’s materialism and
militarism, the strangle-hold of the military industrial complex on our
democracy, the economic injustice and violence and spiritual sickness that our
way of life breeds. We can see the collapse of ecological systems around the
globe. We can see the self-destructiveness and meaningless of lives whose
highest ambition is consuming, whose motto is, “The ones with the most toys at
the end wins,” as one bumper sticker puts it.
On the other hand, we see at the same time the brilliant day of the realm of
God and the way of Christ lived out on earth. We see in the saints and martyrs of
the past and in the living models among us the possibilities of a different way of
life—a nonviolent, just, sustainable, healthy and spiritually rich way of life for
all. When we turn our eyes from the vanities of empire and turn our hearts away
from its religion of selfish gain, we can feel a power far greater than military
might or Mobil-Exxon’s wealth or the advertising industry’s voice—a power
hidden within the apparent weakness and foolishness of Christ’s way.
We know what time it is, how it is the moment for us to wake from sleep
and lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, and join the
side of the martyrs and the saints.
We know what time it is and we know we have a job to do. We have a
calling in this eleventh hour. It is a calling to love, of course. But how? It is a
calling to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provisions for the flesh, to
gratify its desires,” as Paul says. Or as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, it
is time to strive first for the realm of God and its sacred way, trusting that all the
provisions of the flesh will naturally come if God is our focus.
But what exactly will that path lead us to do?
Partly, we know the answer to that question, at least as a church. On April
27th we voted unanimously to endorse the Mission Statement that is printed in the
bulletin, as well as the Vision Statement and Objectives and Goals that go with it.
That plan is the result of much praying and listening and conversation. But how
we will go about fulfilling our Objectives and Goals remains to be discovered.
So does the effect all our efforts will have. We could follow our plan and yet
remain a fairly quiet voice. We could feel good about what we do, we could
shine our light here on the hill hoping people will notice, but is that enough in
this eleventh hour?
The Prophet Ezekiel did not think so. It was not enough for him to see
what was wrong, to see the coming collapse into catastrophe and meekly whisper
his prophecies. He heard God say, “So you, mortal, I have made a sentinel for
the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give
them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked ones, you shall surely
die,’ and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from their ways, the wicked
shall die in their iniquity, but their blood I will require at your hand.”
If we hear the word of God speaking to this time and we heed Ezekiel’s
calling to respond, then we are going to need some courage, and we are going to
need some wisdom, and we are going to need a voice—a prophetic voice that is
as bold and loud as we can make it. As St. Francis said and Rhonda Myers
repeated this summer, “Preach the gospel always; if necessary, use words.” We
need to find a way for both our actions and our words to speak loudly and widely
enough so that those who are in danger of dying in the catastrophe of this age
hear God’s warning.
This is a matter of life and death not just for others but for us, as Ezekiel
says. Recently an article in the Christian Century magazine asked the question
why there have been so few North American martyrs. Why have so few
American Christians died trying to establish the way of Jesus Christ on earth?
Certainly there have been some, most famously Martin Luther King Jr. But the
answer, according to one analyst, is that American Christians have been too
willing to compromise with the materialistic and militaristic and unjust ways of
our society. If we insisted on Christ-like nonviolence and resisted with our
whole lives the consumer culture and its environmental destruction and
economic injustice, we would be martyrs soon enough.
A martyr is someone who witnesses—that is what the Greek root of the
word means. We need to be training ourselves and our children to witness the
truth of what is happening in our world and at the same time witness the truth of
the way of Christ, and then bear witness to the discrepancy between the two. We
need to learn how to live as a warning of the danger of things as they are and a
sign of hope of things as they could be. A martyr is someone who lives as if the
realm of God and way of Christ were already established here, and by doing so
without compromise, martyrs help to make that way a reality, even as they die
trying.
If it is truly the eleventh hour, then we have this cause not only to live for,
but to die for—to give our all.
How, though? How will we find the courage and wisdom we need?
A recent New Yorker article retold the story of Wag Dodge. Wag Dodge
was a forest fire-fighter back in the 1940s. One day he led a team of fifteen men
who parachuted into a remote canyon in Montana to put out what was supposed
to be a small fire. They found it burning out of control, but they walked down
into the canyon to fight it, with the wind at their backs. Suddenly the wind
shifted, and a fifty-foot high wall of flame came howling toward them on a fierce
updraft. Wag screamed for them to run, but the flames were moving at seven
hundred yards a minute. Wag looked over his shoulder as he ran and saw the fire
only fifty yards away. He knew he had only seconds to live, and he thought there
was nothing he could do.
He stopped running, and in a flash of insight, he suddenly saw exactly
what to do—something no one had ever thought of before. He lit a fire ahead of
him even as the flames came up behind. The fire ahead of him quickly made a
large buffer zone of burned grass with no fuel left for the wall of flame. He threw
himself into the smoldering embers ahead of him, covered his mouth with a wet
handkerchief and a few minutes later arose shaken but unharmed. The fire had
jumped over him. All but one of the others died.
The New Yorker article that told that story was reporting on the latest brain
science on how we have insights. The article talked about a Zen Buddhist
meditator who was given a set of puzzles to solve. At first he got nowhere as he
strained his focus to figure them out. But then he shifted his approach and used
meditation skills to relax and unfocus his mind. The article said he became “an
insight machine,” and solved puzzle after puzzle.
Like Wag Dodge, the human race is in a canyon with a firestorm roaring
up it straight for us with seemingly no escape. The winds of consumerism and
greed and violence, the corporate and national forces behind the fire seem too
powerful. But if we do what the scriptures suggest, if like Wag Dodge or like a
Zen master or like someone in our own contemplative Prayer of the Heart, we
stop straining and let go of our concerns, making no provision for the flesh’s
desires, if we turn our hearts entirely to God in trust, then the miracle of
unforeseen insights can happen. We may not know the way ahead, but we know
the way to find the way. But to take that step, to stop and let go of our old
compromised way of being and make ourselves completely available to the Holy
Spirit to guide and empower us—will we dare to do that, knowing that it will ask
us to face the fire? Knowing that it may make us different, unpopular,
uncomfortable—knowing it may even make us martyrs?
We know what time it is. We know that it is the eleventh hour. Our
children and unborn generations and the earth itself are all waiting, their lives
hanging in the balance. How will we respond? How will you?
Let us pray in silence, turning our heart to God, listening for the Spirit’s
word in our heart…
Sermon 09/07/2008