October 15, 2006, Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 90; Amos 5:6-15; Mark 10:17-31
This week’s sermon follows a similar trajectory to last week’s. They both
begin with choosing to experience negative feelings—last week it was suffering,
this week it is guilt. By facing the truth, we are able to transform negativity into
something positive. In both cases, the end is joy. This is the best that any spiritual
path can offer—not escape from negative experiences, but the transformation of
them into positive ones that lead to joy.
The poet Tony Hoagland wrote the following lines in a poem entitled “Hard
Rain” that was on the Writer’s Almanac on public radio recently. He wrote,
Dear Abby,
My father is a businessman who travels.
Each time he returns from one of his trips
his shoe and trousers
are covered in blood—
but he never forgets to bring me a nice present;
Should I say something?
Signed, America.
The response “Dear Abby” gives to “America” will depend on whether the
writer of “Dear Abby” wants to keep his or her job, because many of the
newspapers of America that print “Dear Abby” are owned by businesses with
blood on their shoes and trousers. The safe answer is, “No, don’t say anything.”
That would be the prudent policy for a syndicated newspaper columnist or a
minister or a Hebrew prophet in the year 750 BCE or anyone who wants to
continue getting the nice presents that come to those who keep their mouth shut.
Maybe this is what the Prophet Amos meant when he said, “The prudent
will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time.” Maybe he was saying, “If I
were smart, I’d keep my mouth shut.”
But Amos did not follow the prudent policy. He saw a society where the
rich were getting richer and the poor poorer, an arrogant society that neglected
God’s concern for the weak and vulnerable. Amos saw this, was outraged and
cried out the truth of Israel’s guilt, and prophesied that the consequences would be
the fall and destruction of Israel. “Therefore because you trample on the poor and
take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but shall not
live in them…For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are
your sins—you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the
needy in the gate.”
History does not tell us what happened to Amos. His recorded prophecies
end after two years. We can only imagine why. History does tell us what
happened to Israel, though. Within forty years, Amos’ prophecies had come true.
Israel was destroyed and its people led away captive.
If Amos were writing a “Dear Abby” column today, what would he say to
America? Would he tell us to raise our voices about the blood on our
government’s shoes and trousers? Would he tell us to speak out against the
obscene money-grabbing of the rich and neglecting of the poor that our
government has engineered in the last several years? Would he remind us of our
past transgressions, like the genocide of Native Americans and slavery of African
Americans that our prosperity today is founded on? Would Amos say to America,
yes, you had better speak up, because a nation that does not admit the truth of its
wrongs and repent and change its ways will suffer the consequences. Maybe
Amos would remind us that every empire in history has fallen from the weight of
it own wrongs. The fire of global warming or nuclear weapons or terrorist bombs
or riots in our streets are poised to consume America as a consequence of it
actions, Amos might say.
Or maybe Amos might be as pithy as a bumper sticker and say simply, “A
clear conscience is a sure sign of a poor memory.” And, “Those who do not
remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Maybe it is hard to imagine America as a humble and repentant nation.
Maybe it seems unrealistic to imagine us having a national day of remembrance
for our wrongs, a day of atonement—say, every October 12th, the day Columbus
landed on these shores and began the original sin of our resource-grabbing
genocide. Maybe it is hard to picture a monument to those we have wronged
erected on the mall in our nation’s capital. Maybe it seems far-fetched to think of
our children learning in school not the glorious propaganda of the American
Empire, but the history of the people who were impoverished, oppressed or killed
along America’s march toward empire.
Maybe this seems impossible for America, yet just such things have
happened in other nations with every bit as much historic arrogance and guilt.
Germany and South America are models for facing the truth and accepting the
guilt for their past wrongs.
What good would this do? Much good. All good. It is as true for a nation
as for an individual that we cannot be free of our past if we do not remember and
process it. It will lurk in our unconscious and control our actions. We will repeat
its mistakes. We will feel unforgiven, and so we will act unforgiving towards
others. We will try to keep our pride propped up by denial and lies, and add to our
wrongs in order to enhance our self-image.
But if we admit those wrongs and experience our guilt, we can seek
forgiveness, we can ask how to make things right with those we have wronged.
Amos said, “Seek God and live…Seek good and not evil, that you may live. Hate
evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord the
God of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.”
We cannot make progress in the spiritual life unless we first face and then
let go of the wrongs of our past. Both steps are essential, owning and letting go.
We cannot become wiser, better people unless we first confess and then accept the
pardon of an all-forgiving God. Once we have humbled ourselves to experience
the grace of forgiveness, we are free to move on, and we are far less likely to
repeat our wrongs than those who hold onto their guilt or hide it away in denial.
Those who know themselves to be guilty and yet forgiven are capable of doing
extraordinary things, including refraining from judging those who hurt them and
being as all-forgiving as Christ.
We have just seen this kind of miracle in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. A
man shot ten girls in a schoolhouse there, many of whom have died. He then took
his own life. The Amish were as devastated as any family or community would
be. The easy and natural thing for them to have done would have been to respond
with hate and anger toward the violent American society that so often has hurt
them, or to retreat into deeper isolation.
Instead, the night of the shooting, an Amish man knocked at the door of the
family of the killer. He came in and said, “We forgive this. We are saddened by
your suffering.” And he hugged them and stayed with them for an hour comforting
them. The Amish set up two accounts to collect money—one for the families of
the girls, the other for the family of the killer.
The story of this extreme forgiveness hit America with the force of shock.
It is so foreign to our ways. But imagine if we could attain such Christ-like
wisdom as a society. Imagine America without hate, resentment or revenge.
Imagine if our response to the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 had been to
reach out with forgiveness and lovingkindness and to establish funds not just for
the families of the American dead, but for the families and communities of the
terrorists. Imagine if we were that aware of the forgiveness of God for our
wrongs, if we were that trusting in God’s infinite mercy. Imagine if we had
confessed and made reparations and felt forgiven by Native Americans and
African Americans and all the others we have wronged.
Imagine if we had been so aware of our guilt and our own forgiveness that
we restrained our judgment and restrained our hand from the violence we
unleashed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Imagine if we had sought other good,
nonviolent ways to respond instead. Thousands of American soldiers would still
be alive. Tens of thousands would still have all their limbs. Hundreds of billions
of dollars would be available to make us a stronger and safer nation, and to help
the poor and to help the world’s troubled places where terrorism breeds. And
according to a Johns Hopkins report that came out this week, 650,000 Iraqis would
still be alive. All those families would have been spared the grief of being left
orphaned or childless or of losing a beloved brother or sister.
There is a spiritual formula here, similar to the one I talked about last week.
It begins with admitting the truth and experiencing the guilt of the wrongs we have
done. It moves through the act of confession to the making of amends, repairing
our wrong or balancing it by seeking some way of doing good, and changing our
old ways. The path then leads us to experience forgiveness, and to the humility
that comes from knowing that we have been forgiven. Having felt that, we come
to a reluctance to judge others and an eagerness to forgive as we have been
forgiven. And that leads to joy.
The sacred way that begins by facing the truth of our wrongs ends in three
kinds of joy: the joy of forgiveness—both being forgiven and forgiving others; the
joy of freedom—free from the past, free from negativity, free to live a better
future; and the joy of love—able to love ourselves and so finally able to love our
neighbor as our self, a love grounded in God’s unconditional love of us.
All that joy awaits us, but like the rich man in today’s gospel story, we have
to be willing to let go of something first. We have to be willing to let go of our
pride and admit the truth and experience guilt. And we have to be willing to let go
of our old ways, our habits of wealth and privilege and power that lead us to the
wrongs that make us guilty and in need of forgiveness.
Jesus knows how hard that is—as hard as putting a camel through a
needle’s eye. He said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all
things are possible.” Let us work, then, on God’s side. Let us raise our voice like
Amos or Jesus or any of the great prophets. Let us speak the hard truth to our
society, knowing the consequences we may suffer for it, but knowing also that it
could make the difference between the catastrophic end of our society or the
miraculous beginning of God’s realm of forgiveness and freedom, love and joy,
here on earth.
Let us pray in silence….
Sermon 10/15/2006