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Rev. Dr. W. Hazaiah Williams, Preaching
We have posted 21
sermons for your spiritual reading.
Click on the name of the Sermon you desire to read.
Easter
Wait On
The Lord
To Be Known by God
(A Lenten Sermon)
Be Still and
Know that I Am God
The End of the Year
Christmas
Thanksgiving
Moses at Burning Bush
Halloween
Flaunt A Red Flower
The Root of Your Character
Seek and Ye Shall Find
Labor Day
Searching the Ground of My
Intention
What is
Truth
The
Great Commandment
God is Firmly Fixed
Easter Sunday
Called by Your Name
You Are of Inestimable, Utter Worth
Almighty Affection
Easter
This Easter morning, we come to consider the most critical
question of our life. It is a question posed by Job, and it is the Easter
question: Shall we live again?
I see it as THE question of existence. Nobody escapes
interest in it. It says, "how alive is life?" It cannot be ignored.
This question grows out of a deep insistence embedded in
the human consciousness, that wants to know the why, the when, the wherefore of
Life. What does this space, this time, this fleeting moment called earthly
existence mean?
Now, there is one thing I want to try to put in
perspective. This is not an issue that begins with Christianity. It is
pre-Christian. It is pre-Judaism. The mystery-religions of ancient Egypt first
raised the question about immortality. In the pyramids we saw the issue
graphically portrayed in the way the leader was buried. They prepared the King
for a long journey. He had provisions and fabulous jewels even suggesting that
he or she was going to have to do some bargaining somewhere. He had money and
perfume. They were wrapped in linens that were specially prepared…why? So they
would have a better chance of arriving with their bodies intact. And their
portrait was painted on the winding cloth, so if their bodies were disintegrated
before they got there, those at the other end would know what the person looked
like. But this was an Eternal Life that was reserved for the gods, the kings
and the upper classes.
What is critical about Easter is not the FACT of
resurrection. The resurrection idea did not start with Christianity. But what is
critical about Easter is the peculiar content of Jesus’ resurrection – not the
fact of immortality, but the content of Jesus’ immortal life.
In the context of Jesus’ preaching, we find what is
critical to understand the power of His resurrection. He declared that what, up
to that point, had been the special province and privilege of Kings and the
upper classes belongs to everyone. He declared that in the mind of God, you
are ultimate, you are eternally precious. “Ye are the light of the
world…Ye are the salt of the earth…The Kingdom is locked up in you.” YOU are
God’s ultimate hope for this earth. Jesus robbed the elite of their exclusive
entrance to the Holy of Holies. He broke the hold on Eternity of the statused
and the upper classes. He democratized Heaven!
Jesus said the Life that had been reserved only for the
privileged is available to you; to everyone!
When this happened, human life broke through the
limitations of finitude. Jesus said: You are ultimate. Your life is forged for
more than time and space. And when people began to hear this, they began to
believe that within their finite form, there was the in dwelling of ultimacy.
There is that in you, Jesus said, that by definition, by God’s intention, is
destined to outlive your earthly time. The Kingdom, he said, is not of this
world but is locatable in you, which means that there is a part of each
created person that is larger than this world. And so in this understanding, the
idea that “dust thou art, and to dust thou returneth,” is not spoken of “all” of
you. “Dust thou art, and to dust thou returneth” is about the chemical part of
your body. It does not speak to the soul.
There is one critical idea in the four Gospels, and that
is: You are of ultimate significance to God. That was a radical idea in a world
that had all of ultimacy tied up with status and class.
Now. The people heard it, but they were indifferent. They
said, that is interesting; it would be nice if it were true. And then after they
killed him do you know what they said? They said, well, he sounded good… yeah,
he was a good preacher…
When he died, it was like a dream gone flat, and they were
wandering, hiding from friends. They didn’t want the newsmen to catch them, and
interview them. But, then it says, they had a sense of Presence, and it was real
to them. It was almost like what he said, and what he was now, was declaring
itself to be the continuing truth. For indeed, if he believed us to be
ultimate, we would expect that he, himself, would know ultimacy.
And if He was ultimate, then the Force of his person should reappear
continuously in history, if we were to believe that it could even be true for
us. And they said, there was something strange happening to them. They said, we
had better take another look at this thing. He told us we are ultimate. He told
us we are forged for claims larger than historical time, and they killed him
last week, and here he is! The Force of his person among us. He told us that
wherever two or three are gathered, there He will be, and indeed, we FEEL the
Presence, we SEE him here. It is real. But even with that, the death dealing
forces were also there.
Death dogged the people. It was like a hound of hell
gnawing at the heels of those whose sense of Divinity would surface, and would
push them to strive to walk the high places of time. Death would be there
grabbing at them, to bring them back. Death was always there to lay low and to
waste their larger-than-life claim. Death would admonish them and to prove its
case, it would take them with it, before they fulfilled their commitment. It
would take them while they were still unfulfilled, and it would make its case
against this Jesus ideology. And death was confirmed by the philosophic mind
that said, “You had better, eat, drink, and be merry now, for tomorrow you die.”
You hear a story about a few little disciples who were on
the road one day, and they had something happen to them, but they don’t tell you
about the hundreds of thousands of people who thought they had “done it” to
Jesus, who thought maybe the disciples would learn, and stop being so
ridiculous, and fanatical.
And the fear of death had the effect of paralyzing the
committed. Death evidenced its ability, as it continues to do, to cut people off
from a sense of their own destiny, and make them take low estimate of
themselves….oh, you know, I have only got a little while and I am just human and
I can’t do it all. That is what I am talking about – taking shortsighted
analysis of oneself. Death trapped, and traps people, in defining life in its
own terms, and death terms are diametrically opposed to the Jesus-conscious
terms. Death terms are what you can see. But, do you remember what Paul said?
What is real is what is invisible.
Now, today not many people are interested in carrying the
Jesus consciousness forth very much. I don’t run into too many people who are on
fire with the ultimate preciousness of their existence; who are burdened and
intentioned with the fact that though caught on this earth, they indeed, are now
a citizen of two worlds, here and heaven, here and eternity; here and that world
larger that this one; here and the Spiritual One. I don’t run into too many
people who are wasting too much time with that. I run into a lot more people who
say, this is real, and what they are busy doing is trying to secure this
illusory self that is consistent with Death’s message. And therefore, we buy a
new suit and look into the mirror and say, this is it. You get a new hair-do, a
new automobile, things to add to this illusory self, as you attempt to make it
real. And the dilemma is, you are trying to take nothing and make it be
something!
Jesus’ life was so locked up with the mystery of the
Creative One, that at one point, he said, I and my Father, (he was talking about
the Source of Life), are One. He said, I am One with God. It is no wonder then,
that a week or so after they had wiped him away on Golgotha, as the disciples
were walking down the road, something grabbed them.
The definition of life that was
fulfilled in and through Jesus was powerful. That is the reason that
Resurrection, in our tradition, is important – not the fact of it, but the
strange power of this particular Resurrection. The power of it had not been
experienced before. They knew that as he talked they listened to a revolutionary
idea about life. They sensed the possibility that if He prevailed, he would
break the boundaries of normal society; because he talked like a world-changer.
Well, they said, as they watched him, certainly he is a boundary breaker. He
died, and yet he is with us, with all of the force of his presence as we
remembered it. It is not diminished. As a matter of fact, the text goes on and
says, it not only was not diminished, they said, THIS IS THE MAN. And one said,
I will check him out, I will put my finger in his side so I will know!
What I am trying to tell you is that this Presence hit
them, and having come on the other side of death don’t you understand how you
would feel if indeed, it had happened to you? You saw the man die. So if
indeed, on down the road, someone tapped you on the shoulder and you said, IT IS
THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD! What would you think? This Presence has now been
informed by the grave. Whatever has happened, He has passed through death, and
still lays hold of me, still claims my life.
It happened. He continued to impact them, he whispered
into their consciousness…boundary breaker…and he whispers down through time.
There need not be an end. You do not have to relinquish eternity to the powerful
and the moneyed. Jesus said no, and the thought caught on; and I am told that
galley slaves on ships heard the message. Slaves looking at ruthless masters
heard Him saying, “One fold have I, only one,” “One fold and one sheep.” I am
told that the Black slaves said to their master: “Before I’d be a slave I’d be
buried in my grave, and go home to my God and be free.” And Jesus consciousness
broke the back of the onslaught of death. The slave said, “I can take death, if
you want, because I know I can be free beyond you. Jesus made clear that I am of
ultimate worth in the sight of God.” If that is not cause for revolution, I
would like to know what is. If anybody holds me back from full participation in
the beatific vision, which is God’s creation in all of its fullness, I have a
right to move on him.
When one touches the sense
of ultimacy in their own existence, in a sense they are already beyond the
social control of the time. They are already participating beyond history. The
life of Jesus makes it clear that this is not something that happens totally as
a gift from God; nor does it happen as an achievement of your own religiosity.
Jesus makes it clear by example that you do not arrive at this freedom that he
talks about and this ultimacy that he preached about from your own little
regularities, praying, fasting, paying dues and being nice. It may have
something to do with it, but not much. Nor do you sit around and wait for it to
drop out of the sky. But what happens is a part of the mystery of rendezvous –
of joint venturing. It is a divine/human encounter, and your life on this earth
becomes the nexus, the meeting place, and the trysting place, where divinity and
humanity are fused.
And in the life of Jesus, God unleashed an unrelenting,
agonizing love, first visited on history in his own agony and love on Calvary.
And the power and the force of His Life, exhibited in the focusing of his will
on God’s desire, forged a personality of such potency that through Him his own
disciples, and thousands of people since, have discovered the basic ultimacy of
themselves. And so He is a continuing Presence, breaking through the jaws of
death, and moving with fierce aggressiveness, and with a frightening patience;
moving with a bewildering attractiveness – moving on to lay hold of people, to
seize them, and save them from self-defined illusion and destruction and sin.
It is the power of the Resurrection of Jesus that makes
Easter a peculiar event in history. Not the fact of it. There had been others.
But the Power, that is related to the fusion that took place in His own life,
between God’s will and His own action. It became a saving power. As he made
contact with the Creator, the Creator laid on that Life, all of its agonized
concern, care and longing, for the creature that it had participated in making.
He laid that concern, that undying Love, on the person of Jesus, and Jesus
brought that agonized love back into the world and it is so powerful that death
itself is confounded by it. Death is confounded by God’s intention and God’s
insistence that we become aware of the magnificence of our own creation – that
we become aware of the awesome hand that is laid on the intricacy of our very
form.
The poet says: “Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,
Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save.”
It is a saving mission…not search and destroy. A search
and save mission. “I sought the Lord, and afterwards I knew, he moved my soul to
seek him, seeking me. It was not I that found, O Savior true, no, I was found of
Thee.”
I have preached to you today about the awesome power of
the Continuing Presence of Jesus in history. To those of you who ache, who know
the message has truth in it, I want to tell you that he is the author of
salvation. He is the way for you to deal with the injustice, the mercilessness,
the unrighteousness, the corruption, the mediocrity, the dullness, the
blandness, the agony, and the ache of your own life.
The author of salvation continues to confound the author
of destruction. I entreat you, if you think, in your consciousness, that you
encounter the continuing Presence; stop awhile.
I know that one who is capable of saving me – the Force
and Presence in history that is capable of infusing my life with grandeur – I
know He is alive. The text says: “I know that my Redeemer liveth”. And a good
translation of the redeemer word is “avenger.” What does an avenger do? The
avenger goes to court and argues for you when the accuser shows up, and we have
translated that into redeemer. I know that my avenger is alive! And to use the
Psalmist understanding: I know that I have surety, standing at the Bar of Life,
pleading my case for me. I know that my Redeemer liveth! And though worms
destroy this body, yet without flesh, shall I see God!

Wait on the Lord
Every Sunday, we gather
around the Great Secrets of life. We call it “worship.” But we don’t spend much
time agonizing about why we don’t experience the joy and the fruit of those
Great Secrets in our daily lives. I contend that this is because we have no
discipline with reference to them.
How do we uncover a sense
of discontent in the spirit? How do we become aware of the poverty of the spirit
in our own lives? How do we wait upon Life with all of the expectancy that comes
from waiting outside a door or listening for a car to arrive? How do we add that
excitement as an ongoing expectancy that undergirds all of our activity, that
adds a new dimension to what we do and plan? Until we discover the answers to
those questions, we should not expect much growth in the spirit, sufficient
strength for the battle, or depth of fulfillment in our religious life.
Jesus said, “Blessed are
those who understand the poverty of the Spirit, for they are the ones who will
receive the joy of the Kingdom.” The Beatitudes suggest that those who know, and
whose lives are shot through with an awareness of what they do not have, and are
waiting on Life for it, will receive it.
Most of the time we are
running – keeping up with our schedules and the agendas that must be met – and
it becomes difficult to talk about waiting. When the agenda is already made up,
then what you are waiting for is the next item that you have already planned.
And so when you pick up the Bible and read the words, “Wait upon the Lord,” you
don’t really know what they mean. The kind of waiting that you have been doing
is devoid of expectancy. It is just the space between now and the next thing you
have on your program. And thus, there is no risk in it. As a matter of fact,
none of us are prepared to do much waiting around that which we think we do not
have any control. So much of the waiting we do is empty waiting.
The flower waits upon the
rain and the sun, and there it is. The waiting is a natural part of its
fulfillment. When we translate that to our own religious consciousness, waiting
is a quality of spirit. It is a quality of the spirit that might be called
unhurried, unperturbed, watching. Just in case some of you feel that waiting is
meaningless or inactive, the word “watching” is very important. And the kind of
waiting that is implied in the language of our faith is waiting that is
watching. The idea is that no matter what you are doing at the moment, there is
a part of you that is waiting at the edge of your insight, of the breaking
through of things you have never known before that supports all that you do. You
have an idea or two, and it is together in your brain, but you don’t move too
quickly because there is a waiting principle in the spirit that is always
literally looking and watching. For it knows that much that it ought to know,
much that it could know, much that would be known, has been lost in the process
of living.
As T.S. Eliot said,
“Where is the life we have lost in living?” Waiting is interested in that life.
And it only takes a flower to remind me of this quality of the spirit –
unperturbed, steady, unrelenting, watching. And then I realize that life has
been too expensive for me, and occasionally I must go looking for that which I
once knew as utter, unrestricted hope and expectancy.
The amazing thing about
the spirit of waiting is that it is a depth experience. It probes beyond the
present. That may be the problem we have with it. I have watched in airport
lounges what happens when we have ten or fifteen minutes to wait for the plane.
Many people read a book or work with their computer. You have ten minutes when
you could wait, and probe some of the reality that you don’t find time for in
your scheduled life. And then occasionally I go around and look over shoulders
to see what in the world is being read. When you discover that, then you know
what is happening. We are making sure that every space is programmed.
You have had experiences in waiting for people.
Waiting, in other words, is one of the great experiences. Isn’t that amazing?
Have you have forgotten it. We used to sit on the porch in the summertime
waiting for someone to come visit us. Those were some great moments.
As I try to reflect on those moments when I have been waiting for someone
to arrive, I realize that waiting is always full of the past. This is
potentially what makes it an experience full of content. If you say inchurch,
let us now wait upon the Lord, and then you sit down and bow your heads, some of
you will recall doing it before without result. Others will recall times when
certain things were communicated that they weren’t prepared for. Memory moves in
upon the waiting moment to reflect upon the past. And the past floods in and
memory goes to work, and the waiting moment allows you to own as living
enrichment, the ground over which you have walked. That is foundational to
religious living.
But the experience of
waiting is a very focused moment. For a scattered people, it becomes an
experience of intentionality. If you are going to wait for someone at the
station, you don’t run all over the city. You go to the station and sit down or
go somewhere close to the place you expect them to arrive. And that itself is a
religious experience for us. Then there are a few moments where nothing else
matters. And you understand what Jesus meant when he talked about the necessity
for a singleness of eye. There are a few moments when people start coming
through the gate when you forget how focused you are. You, who claim you cannot
have singleness of purpose, have experienced it. The intention of the moment
defines even your body’s space and its responses. In the present waiting is
literally full of presence – both yours and the anticipated one.
There is a searching
quality to the waiting moment, and so it is in searching that all of your
awareness system comes alive. You are looking for somebody, and they haven’t
shown up. There is the noise of a car door; you hear it. Some footsteps mean
different things now. Literally, all of your awareness is peaked by the
experience of waiting.
If the waiting experience is full of the past and defining to the
present, probably its most exciting principle is that it has a way of
catapulting you into the future. The experience for which you are waiting is a
literal claim against a coming time. Waiting is hope being lived. But it is not
only a claim against a coming time. That time is already present in the act of
waiting. Waiting owns the future in a very strange way. It pulls and tugs at the
future and literally drags it into the present by active participation.
What if you so owned the
future and so anticipated anything, any event, any change, with such
comprehensive anticipation that it almost breathed in the now? Talk about
personal growth, spiritual depth, and social change. That is the secret of
growth itself. Show me a man, woman or child, living in absolute anticipation,
and you will show me a claim upon my own life.
Now as you hope and work under the burden of that
hope, and as you expect, because of that hope, to see something new, then what
you do is move beyond the surface level of the world, and in your lived hope,
expressed in your work and in your action, you literally pay tribute to a world
that is not yet.
One of our problems is that because we do not
nurture within ourselves the quality of waiting, we lose the depth that could be
ours. For if waiting was alive in our life – body and spirit – it would move the
life beyond its entrapment in the historical-event-sequence reality, and the
life would at least have peaks and glimpses of that for which it waited. And
that would inform the life always with that which threatened the arrangement
that had your name upon it now.
I believe that we haven’t begun to touch the
resources that are ours. The joy of my day, day after day, is that I have
discovered and am discovering daily, more fabulous resources of mind, and body
and spirit, than I ever knew I had. The mind is sharper, the spirit is more
buoyant than I ever have experienced, and it hasn’t just happened. I didn’t just
wake up one day and have it happen. It was a result of agony, struggle, waiting,
learning, discipline, trying to find ways in the midst of a busy day to wait, to
anticipate, to expect.
Your whole identity, and your dignity is locked up
with this experience of waiting. I sit in that station. I hear the train. It is
already in the station, but I haven’t seen it yet. But there is the clear
awareness that what I am going to encounter, the person who is coming, for whom
I am waiting, is him or herself full of waiting. And all of a sudden I am joyed
by the fact that the watcher is also the watched for. And in that fact, I
discover anew the literal aliveness and the concern-ridden, love-ridden,
universe. And I meet one who has also been waiting to meet me.
They that wait upon the Lord will have an amazingly exciting time. They
that wait upon the Lord will discover that there are sources of strength and
renewal that they have never known before. They that wait upon the Lord will
discover in the moment of embrace that they have been waited for, and oh, if
that will not do it . . . They that wait upon the Lord will find their strength
renewed, their imagination fired, their commitment confirmed.

“To Be Known By
God”
(A Lenten Sermon)
It is suggested that the reader first read Psalm 139 as a part of your reading
of this sermon.
Rabindranath Tagore from “Gitanjali”
My king was unknown to
me, therefore when he claimed his tribute I was bold to think I would hide
myself, leaving my debts unpaid.
I fled and fled behind
my day’s work and my night’s dreams.
But his claim followed me at every
breath I drew. This I came to know that I am known to him and no place left
which is mine.
Now I wish to lay my
all before his feet, and gain the right to my place in his kingdom.
“Am I a God
close by,” says the Lord, “And not a God afar off? Can a person hide himself in
secret places and I shall not see him?” says the Lord. “Do I not fill heaven and
earth?” says the Lord.
It seems
appropriate, at the beginning of Lent, to understand that we are known. And not
only are we known, but we are exposed. Much of our energy is spent trying to
hide – trying to find anonymity. “Thou knowest my down sitting and my up rising.
Thou art acquainted with all, all my ways.” That is itself a religious
experience. One of the most freeing things in life is not anonymity, but being
known. Being known allows us to own ourselves in a new way. When you begin to
realize that every thought, every action, every feeling is known by God; when
you realize that there is no way for you to hide; when the consciousness dawns
on you that the urgency that moves through life, in living concern about you,
will never give you a place of hiding, then you have made a significant step
toward understanding Life’s insistence on exposure. For all of Life knows you,
and you are all of life’s urgings. You are not a disconnected phenomenon.
Kahlil Gibran says it this way, “I went in my thirst to the fountain and I found
that, as I began to drink the water, the water itself was thirsting and it drew
me. It drank me while I drank it.” The Black Spiritual says it yet another way:
“There is no hiding place down here; I went to the rock to hide my face; the
rock cried out, no hiding place; the rock cried out, ‘I’m burning, too.’”
If you
recognize that all of your devious ways are known, that the poverty of your
spirit is known, that the emptiness of your life is known, that even the quiet
aches of your soul are known by God, then you might almost be prepared to speak
a word of truth.
The
consciousness that you are known is the primary ground of preparation for you to
be able to speak the unpolluted Word. To understand that, “I’m not just loose
here on my own, doing my own thing.” That is the essential primary ground of
preparation to speak the unpolluted word. The Psalmist says, “If I ascend into
heaven, Thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, Thou art there.” If I have a
moment of free joy, call it heaven if you want to, God is there asking me: “What
does this mean? What do you do about it?” If I attempt to get away by doing my
‘own thing’ and find the hellishness of the emptiness of my ‘own thing,’ God is
there! When I get through fooling around in the slop of life with the swine, God
is still there. The knowledge that I am known is relieving to me.
Oh, when I
think about the incarnational mystery that brought me to this place, my arms and
my fingers that now articulate with such normalcy, a mind that works, a voice
that speaks, a body that breathes, and realize that at one time, it was an idea
in the mind of God, I am embarrassed by such purpose! What more, oh God, is
essential to get a people on the scent of Thy presence? What more is needed for
us to lay claim on such a consciousness? Every replenishing breath I breathe
tells me I am not only known, but owned. It is too much for me to think about.
Thy thoughts about me are so vast and unending. How do I know? Because some of
them float into my own consciousness, and I know they are not my thoughts alone.
I see them in the face of another person. I know when I have wronged. I know
that I am called upon to respond to oppression with an increasing sense of the
unity that is in me. How unending and unfathomable are Thy thoughts, oh God!
When I
awake, I am still with Thee! A rest did come, and I attempt to find repose in
Thee, to sleep and sleep, but the night is broken with agony. I awaken in the
middle of the night with all kinds of urgencies flooding my brain, but they are
not my thoughts. Often your best thoughts, your most critical thoughts about
yourself come when biological realities have laid your sense of arrogance to
rest for a few minutes, and you lay in that very strange zone where your body
knows that it belongs to a stream of life that is beyond that which is
controlled by your own thought process. It is in that moment, when the ego has
its weakest hold on you, that you hear the voice of Life speaking to you. That
is the Voice of God. How long shall you ignore Life’s revelations?
They are the
polluters who move without a sense of awe and wonder through this world. They
are the wicked who reduce to cultural acceptability the essential writhing,
urging surge in Life for fulfillment, for unity, for a sense of Oneness. They
are the wicked, who deny their own responsibility for the Brokenness of the
time. Good words, clever talk, sophistication devoid of commitment are therefore
empty of Spirit. And our talk betrays the depth of our own experience! We know
more than we tell!
“Do I not
hate them who hate Thee?” Then the grand and climactic line: “I hate them with a
perfect hatred.” Perfect hatred, what in the world is that? I hate them because
they did such and such. That is not what the Psalmist is talking about. So many
people have taken that text and said, “I have a right to hate. It says so right
here in the Bible.” What is the difference between perfect hatred and imperfect
hatred?
Imperfect
hatred is a response to the negation of your own little scheme. It is a response
to the interference of your little plan. “I hate you because you did something
to me.” Well, so what? He or she who does something to Life’s own will not be
forgotten. Life knows it. It is not really my responsibility to get everything
straightened out with everybody who has wronged me. I must be so caught up with
trying to do the will of Life, fighting for justice and mercy, that I am not
retarded by what happens to me. What happens to me, in the last analysis, is not
critical. What I do for Life is critical. As you struggle for a new world, give
your body, your mind, your energy, your money, whatever you have; give it to see
that Life has a chance. You will find that the little scheme that comes out of
your brain is not the ultimate answer. It does not solve the whole problem. If
you find out that somebody has moved against you and has thwarted your plans,
don’t get upset. That is the way the demonic moves in on you, trying to
frustrate your understanding of Life’s claim on your life and energy. Try to
find another way to keep moving. Don’t waste too much time arguing with that
force.
Job helps me in my
understanding here. I don’t have to fight
every little battle
all the way through, because I know that if I have been on the case for God, for
justice, for mercy, for love, for beauty, I have an avenger, an avenger who
lives. “I know,” says Job,” that my redeemer is alive.” Do you believe it? Stop
wasting your own little energy; get on, press on. Nothing happens outside of
God’s overarching concern.
Perfect hatred is hatred
that understands that it is not its job to do the ultimate setting straight of
the record with every little event and person. Perfect hatred releases the
‘hatred’ to the care of God’s unending justice, mercy and love. Perfect hatred
is a momentary response which gives way to the larger knowledge of God’s
ultimate governance.
Now, a little bit of awareness
that God is intimately involved with me, could be a dangerous thought. Even
though it might be the beginning of a step toward a new consciousness, it is
such a powerful insight that it always runs the risk of becoming a new
arrogance. That is the arrogance of the oppressor who says that he has God with
him. The arrogance of the oppressor says, “I’m going to do what I’m going to do
because I want to, and I know I am right.”
I cannot say
that. I say I think I see something. It becomes clearer to me that it is
not enough to know that we are known. There is also the fact that I have the
freedom to thumb my nose at God. The very hallmark of my integrity is the
freedom I have to choose to work for God’s cause. The 139th Psalm opens
with, “Thou hast searched me and known me.” The end of the Psalm underscores the
basic integrity of every person, when the Psalmist says, “Search me, oh God, and
try me.” There is a part of your searching and your need that cannot be complete
until you release the hold on the hidden fortresses of your own self-interest.
Until you harmonize with God’s searching, you prevent the possibility of a fully
resonant expression taking place. Search me, oh God, search me, oh God, and look
at my heart, not my words. Try me after I have made my easy commitment
statement. Try me, after I’ve said that I was going to do this or that. Try me
and let all hell rain down on me; let people desert me; let friends and loved
ones go astray; try me, oh Lord, and see my thoughts. Check me out and see
whether I’m jiving. When you are tried, will you not think, “Oh Lord, why did
this happen to me?” Try me and see if my thoughts are grand enough.
A whole
society of people, trapped in their oppression, must be reminded that the evil
is working to destroy their sense of grandeur about their purpose of being in
the world: poor people, oppressed people around the world must understand that
even under the burden of the struggle, they must not change their thoughts about
the ultimate significance of their own creation.
Try me, oh
God, and see what I’m thinking, and see if, perhaps some of the wrong in the
world is hidden in me – reflected through me. See if there be any wicked way in
me. But lead me also into the way that is everlasting.

“Be still, and know that I am God.
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth!”
Psalm 46:10
The struggle to believe that God
lives in this world becomes increasingly arduous, and our lack of devotion and
the unsteady commitment is probably not without cause. The sheer pace of our
lives is sufficient to justify their shallowness. Also, if we add to the
confusion and sense of detachment, the tension that has become normal, we can
explain our duplicity, our waywardness, and our emptiness. There is so much
going on, why shouldn’t everything compete? And if God be God, then let God
compete, too.
Of course, God IS
competing, if we would just open our eyes. But by the time we stop to look,
we’re on our way to another meeting, another diversion. T.S. Eliot used an
interesting phrase when he said, ‘We are distracted from distraction by
distraction.” To sophisticate that understanding, let me suggest that we are
children of an age that has an interesting understanding of relativity. We go to
a movie and pay, not just to see, but also to experience an earthquake, and then
we move on from the earthquake to a climax. Now how are we to discover God in a
world that starts with an earthquake and looks for something more climactic?
And if you add to that the
swirling sense of rip tide about all values, or the things we thought valuable,
the erosion of psyche and spirit, the rampant injustice and oppression, and the
seeming impotence of people like you and me in the face of it all, it is not so
strange.
And to this mood, the
scripture adds a very interesting idea. We find it in the Psalms. It is the same
Psalm that suggests that in the midst of all that is wrong, there is a river
that flows to gladden the City of God. But the phrase that follows is critical
– “Be still and know that I am God.” Be still and know that I am God. Find some
center of focus in the midst of all the motion and know that God is not confused
about God’s being. The great “I AM” is not threatened by the events, and if we
would center down, we would discover that indeed God is still God. Be still and
not wonder, but KNOW.
And immediately, my
mind goes to an experience that Elijah had which was, in many ways, in a mood
similar to ours. He had to deal with the absence of the Presence of God. This is
the scene where there is to be a test between God and Baal on Mount Carmel. That
test took place and people were crying for Baal. The scripture says Baal never
answered. And Elijah cried out and said to them, “Holler louder! Either he is
musing, or he has gone aside, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and
must be awakened.” Now Elijah then gets his turn, and he calls on God, and this
passage says that when God showed up, he showed up in fire and he consumed the
burnt offering, he consumed the wood and the stones of the altar, licked up the
water that was in the trenches, and consumed even the dust. And they knew God
had been there!
Then Elijah had all the prophets
of Baal killed because he was victorious. And Jezebel, the ruler’s wife and a
priestess in the Baal tradition, sent word that she was getting ready to kill
Elijah for his unmerciful acts against the priests and prophets of Baal. Elijah
moved away to the wilderness to protect himself. He took a nap and woke up
hungry and a little food was provided, not much. And some miracles took place.
But the thing that is amazing is that for forty days, on the strength of that
little supper, he wandered on toward Mount Horab from Mount Sinai. And there he
entered a cave to protect himself from the troops he thought had been sent for
him. Listen.
“And behold, the Lord
passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces
the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind
an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake
a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small
voice. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out
and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him,
and said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ Elijah said, ‘I have been very
jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken
thy covenant, thrown down thy altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and
I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.’ And the Lord
said to him, ‘Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when you
arrive, you shall appoint a king over Syria, and you shall anoint a king over
Israel; and you shall anoint a prophet in your place.’ And then the Lord said,
‘Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to
Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.’
Now, God had moved in the experience of
Mount Carmel forty some odd days before, but everything that had happened
between had been enough, it seems, to confuse the mind of Elijah. There is
evidence that he was forlorn and despairing when he went to the mountain. It was
not a triumphant march. As a matter of fact, he prayed that he might die, and he
expressed his fear of Jezebel’s promise being fulfilled.
It is an interesting insight here.
Elijah’s understanding of God was totally different from the nature deities that
were rampant in Baalism. Had God been totally revealed in nature, and understood
as an expression or an extension of nature, he would have been likened to and
reflective of the gods of Baal. And so, Elijah’s encounter with God underscored
the fact that this was something qualitatively, totally different – too great to
be contained in nature; too great to be contained in the wind and the earthquake
and the fire. Only the gentle stillness could express His vastness.
And it says that in the quietness,
the stillness was so full of majesty that Elijah covered his face with his
mantle. The stillness revealed a Presence that no cataclysmic event had
disclosed – a Presence more searing and more arresting than even the Presence
that had destroyed the altars – more arresting than demonstrated power. And
Elijah discovered something that the Psalmist talks about – ‘Be still and know
that I am God.’ Know that God is, in fact, the silence that broods over, around
and under the chaos. It is the silence that is not consumed in the chaos – the
arena of life wherein the chaos exists. And we experience God at once
dramatically ultimate, intensely intimate.
Be still. In times like these God
speaks the personal language of quietness to our waiting spirit. And one knows
that God has not absented himself. Spirit speaks to spirit. Elijah heard a
voice, and in the midst of such Presence, he did what we probably would have
done – he began to pity himself, to whimper and cry. But he also patted himself
on the back: “I am the only one who is left, Lord, and they are after me. I have
been faithful when no other people around have been, and the reason I am up here
is that they are after me because I have been so good.” Now you see, you get the
root of what we do with stillness. Here is an attempt to reduce the stillness to
something petty. “Let me just be up here with you in retreat and let me die.” To
the ending glory of the spirit comes the insight that this intimate moment of
ultimacy was not to be tucked away as something insipidly personal and private
and removed from the world, because, in this instance, God demanded something.
Elijah says the stillness, the silence, was demanding. It was defining. It says,
in the silence he hears that God had a plan. Elijah says, “Let me just stay
here,” and God said, “No, go return, I have a plan for you.” God, in the
stillness, has things on His mind. God is about to do something, and so the
quality of silence has been changed. The stillness was informed – full of
meaning and would not allow the self-pity to take over. In the middle of
silence, the silence corrected the false understanding of reality. Elijah said,
‘Lord, I am the only one here. Nobody else survived.’ If that were true, God
would not be God. The arrogance of people who retreat to their silence and say,
‘Lord, you know I am the only one. They are beating on me, and I am trying to do
good, but it looks like I am the only one around.’ The Lord said, “No, no,
Elijah. I have seven thousand more whose mouths have not kissed and whose knees
have not bowed to Baal. You are not by yourself. You may not be able to find
them right away, but they are around. So get yourself together and be still, and
know ME!”
It happens, you know,
if you take the religious life seriously. There comes a time when you wonder.
You say, ‘I am weary Lord, tired, and it looks like I am the only one around,
you know.’ But calm down and know Me. Even though the chaos seems to be
threatening everything, and the sense of brokenness is incredible – swirling
torrents seem to be ruling the day – you listen to silence as it broods over the
noise.
God says: “I am God,” even when it
appears that everybody has forgotten. The mystery of earth and death and love
and hate and commitment remains. God is present. And it seems to me that our
problem then is to search through the debris of the moment to try to discover
the Presence of God and, in discovering it, listen to it. To discern God in the
midst of the turmoil – the holy dimension of it calls for a more profound
humanity than we presently know. It calls for a level of awareness and
sensitivity that we have forgotten. But in this kind of world, it becomes
important somewhere, sometime, to sit and wait and listen. And know that such
stillness is not uninformed by Life and Life’s urgency and Life’s design. It
does not usher forth in a piety that knows no commitment to the world, but
ushers forth in a new consciousness of a God that plans and wills to work in the
world that He has created.
Be still and know that I am God.
It will not be easy for us, for the times are fearsome. Indeed the very demand
of staying alive, abreast of things, is such that it seems strange to be talking
about being still. And if we attempt to listen and lose some ground, these are
the kind of times when it will be very easy to desert the voice. Memories,
nostalgia, hopes, fears, all of this will tempt the weary spirit. But I say to
you – Wait – and if in the break-up and the drama of the moment, God is not
there, Wait, for God may appear with a message and a plan in the quietness that
surrounds the noise of the hour.
Be still,
therefore, and know that I am God. Be still and know that if I be God, I am
still in control. Be still and know, therefore, that your quick righteousness
may indeed be too selfish. Be still and know that I am alive – not just in you.
And if you are faithful, thousands more are around to join you. Life is
literally full of my Presence. Be still and know that your strength lies in this
quietness and confidence.

The End of the Year
Before you,
There is a clear road laid:
To you,
A new sky has been opened:
The timepiece of history
Has just tolled out a memorable hour!
Go off, off, master of your fate
Over the twilight pathways
Over the humble pathways of the
Ancients.
A poem from Negritude
There is something very stark about the end of the
year. You know you are undeniably one year older and you are one year closer to
the end of your earthly existence. That is an interesting idea and it does have
significance. However, the significance it has may be confusing to us. For we
have no real philosophy of time even though we have been trying all year, all of
our lives to create one. Two major ways of interpreting time continue to add to
our confusion, and a third understanding does not get listened to very much. The
first two ways of interpreting time you learned in school, but the third
interpretation you did not.
The first way of understanding time is the
Hellenistic/Greek way known as the cyclical interpretation of history or often
referred to as the “wheel of time”. It is the understanding that we move from
birth, to growth, to decay and death and the process
repeats itself over and over again. There is a springtime of wild and unbridled
dreams; a summer testing period; a fall time of repose; and the death in winter.
That is the cycle. It is a death dealing idea of time.
It really does not make much of a place for you as a
person. The race is saved, but you as an individual are not. For instance, your
mother and father raise and support you and they die. It is rather theoretical
to suspect that you know they are literally alive in you. It makes of time an
unfulfilling reality and a frustrating cycle. If you press this, you will find
that there are other thinkers who used other words, one of which is “cosmic
time”. This is what you learn if we look at the universe and what you learn if
you look at nature. However, it is looking at nature with an
undiscerning eye. This time never supposes that there is any ultimate
significance to what you would call the aroma of a flower. All we see are the
stems that are beautiful and dropped, turned to dust. We see the cycle only.
What happened to the flavor --- the scent? Does that mean anything? You can’t
account for it here. As a matter of fact it is an interesting understanding
because it puts us in a kind of relationship where we look at time. Time
bespeaks the malady of us, and, therefore, maybe is a projection of our problem
as developed in the Greek mind. We cannot own the present because in order to do
so we annihilate the past. In this perspective the present must kill the past
and then as soon as it is established it must be annihilated by the future. Does
this mean anything to you?
Let us turn to the Bible for an illustration. In
Ecclesiastes it says, “there is nothing new under the sun. What has been is what
will be.” How many of you find comfort in that? If that is true, there is no
need to struggle unduly. What if a Beethoven had taken that seriously? What if
Malcolm and King had taken that seriously? That is one understanding of time.
The second understanding of time is what we call
historical or linear time. It is that realm wherein we are on the pursuit of
something and new things break into history, new ways of doing things. It is
very conscious, unlike the other of the past and of the future, and always runs
the risk of illusion as it attempts to live in one or the other. You know the
people who always hearken back to the “golden years” when things were better?
This understanding of time does help us at the point that it creates a sense of
history. We are not just going around in circles. Time is moving along because
there is a past, present and a future. This helps to give meaning to this
understanding of time.
Now it is to this understanding of time that we have
added a new dimension. I believe that it was Merton who called it “collective
obsession”. This may be peculiar to mass man –
man whose linear motion through history is bombarded by mass delusions and
obsessions, so much so, that he begins to believe that there is really nothing
meaningful and the linear motion through this life and through history is simply
a flight away from the awfulness and the absurdity of our world. Many people
that I encounter are living in the historical time perspective as they attempt
to flee from the absurdity that is their own existence. They think it is
possible because collectively we all act like we can move away from the awful
reality which our lives have engendered. That may just make life a farce.
It is around these two ideas of time that I think most
of us spend our days. Also, there is something about them that is a part of most
of our lives during this time of the year. It is a time of year where there
seems to be a futility of life. We don’t make resolutions anymore. Why? Because
we made some last year and we did not keep them. It comes from what will be is
what has been, so it is no use. In addition, we feel we are trapped by the
facts. Many people have used the past to serve their own spurious purposes. They
lock into their memory all that has been done to them over the past 12 months
and “vow” to get even. If you encounter them during the year, they will spew out
all of the venom which has built up as they remember what has happened to them.
Many of us have allowed this kind of thinking about
time to categorize or conceptualize us. We look at our past failures and begin
to think they are indicators of what is really possible for us. If we have had
successive failures, we then begin to take stock of ourselves within the context
of that failure pattern and decide perhaps we should not get too carried away
with this linear stuff because the cyclical thing is still turning. It is
written in our fingers there is a limitation in our lives. So, we do not try
anything too different or dare anything new. We design our life on the basis of
what we have not been able to do. In so doing we never deal with the dimension
of what might be, of what could be, or what shall be. And all of the time the
Gospel stands over and against this reading of history as it talks about the
infinite expandability and possibility for every human spirit.
Equally as dangerous is another great temptation to
stake ourselves upon our successes. Some of us may have had a good year and we
are proud of it. Have you ever run into someone who is living on his or her
successes? It is perhaps more tragic to run into
this type of person. For this person is locked between these two conceptions of
time because they really do not believe nor do they dare believe that maybe
yesterday’s success pales in contrast to what could be today’s success. Someone
once said that there is no defeat quite as defeating as the defeat of success
that forgets the dream that gave its birth.
Most of us are within one of these places. Either I
have had a good year and I’ll live on that for another year or had a bad year
and I’m really not going to put myself out too much this coming year. I am more
mature now. We say, “I know what I can do and I am not going to let even you get
to me to do something I can’t do. I have it all figured out.”
But do you know what you can do? Are you sure you
know who you are in terms of what you can do? The very notion of “passing”
suggests to us something that is very awesome and that is whatever we are going
to do, we ought to get to doing it. It may be a simple idea, but it allows for a
basic integrity to be built into life. The minute we have a tomorrow, a
yesterday, and a next week, we get caught within the frame from which some
character can be built.
My father gave the commencement address at my high
school graduation and the title was “Tomorrow and the Next Day”. I now recognize
the importance of that theme. He was saying this was your opportunity to do
something in time. It is the basis out of which integrity is built. You actually
do have a judgment based in the motion and if you don’t do it, it may be too
late. “The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on…” and all your tears
can’t erase a line of it. We have an opportunity and then it is gone. Sometimes
we act as if we have continuous, unending opportunities, but the passage of time
suggest that there is a judgment in your dilly-dallying around. That judgment is
based in life as it reflects itself in our own erosion.
The apostle Paul tried to deal with this as he sat as
an old man of 70 in a prison. He said, “This one thing I do, forgetting what was
past, I press on to the mark for the prize.” He was trying to suggest a break
with some of the models that have us caught. He is saying we must act and not
just dream. Over and against all of this, there is another kind of time that
needs to be added. I refer to it as the scripture calls it, “the fullness of
time”. Tillich calls it “Kyros”. Berdyaev calls it existential time. For me it
is easier to call it the “mystery of eternity in time”. All religions posit that
there is a norm of time that also judges us that is neither cyclical nor linear.
It is an understanding that the eternal is available now. This understanding
posits there is an order of existence that we don’t live in.
Oppenheimer used to talk that when he was in the
laboratory he became sensitive to a world backing up into his world. And it was
over in that world that he went for his insight. He talked about a time that is
neither on a wheel nor on a line. It is best characterized by that which breaks
through upon our present involvements and opens them up to the possible deeper
meanings. It is to participate in a fleeting moment of the old world about what
is human, what is beautiful and what is good. Some of you may have had moments
during which you said, “Time stood still”. What you meant was that for an
instance all the cyclical/linear time was suspended and something different in
character and tone was real to you. That is the other time that breaks through
to inform you and in the break through gives you a glimpse of what possibly
could be. It is the realm of all prophets and seers. It is the realm of all
aspiration, of all promise, and of all life which then puts death in its place.
It is in the realm of the resurrection. The disciples did not know how to say
it, but after Jesus died they knew that the old time was thwarted and suspended
by his life. There was let loose that which defied all time and space.
One thing is clear. We have all experienced these
moments. Did you ever have a time in your life when things were so good that you
forgot what time it was? You did not check your watch? Things were so good that
you did not check the calendar? At that moment you were outside this time range.
Most of the time in this world we are checking to see what time it is.
Of course, these moments will not happen on any
meaningful level unless you are involved. You must be involved in life’s
paradoxes and contradictions to be sensitive to the broad design. When you are
involved in the struggle for life, peace, and justice you increase your
awareness of who you are. Also the struggle will open up to you new dimensions
of the dilemma of existence when your back is up against the wall. You will see
more when the break through comes. Melville says that what is grand in me, must
be plucked from the sky, dived for in the deep, and featured on the unbodied
air. You cannot understand that by sitting on the sidelines – a spectator to
life. When you get involved in some issue of justice or deal with some of the
oppression in this world, then you will know what it means to go alone at night
and leave a little of your blood behind. From a point of involvement you get a
response from life, because life knows you by name. And whether it is joy or
tragedy you will have something to report back to those who are sitting on the
sideline. You will be able to tell them not just something about the past or the
present, but you will be able to tell them you have stood on the edge of
life and had an idea bout what could be, of what will be.
Therefore, I call you to desert the illusionary
lostness in the past and the future and to give your life to the problems which
would destroy life in such a way that you will know the insight that breaks
through in transcendent awareness to those so devoted who call upon life for a
response. I call you to live not in the future, but to live
the future to celebrate the new found awareness and to be a vehicle for
the continuous celebration of the new vistas, the new time, the new norms with
renewed dedication. Allow the vision of tomorrow to walk the earth in the form
of your body. That is the opportunity. Live that the very neighborhood that
develops around your being will underscore the possibility and the potential for
a humane and just world.

Christmas – The Season
for the One Who Is Lost
“What do you think? If a man has a
hundred sheep, and one of the them has gone astray, does he not leave the
ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And
if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the
ninety-nine that never went astray.”
Matthew 18:12-13
As
we come to this Christmas season, we are aware that the facts of
disillusionment, hatred and war are really more real to most of us than any
ethereal message of the Christmas season. Joy, yes, but mostly smothered by fear
– a fear that is fed by our own guilt in what is – a fear built upon the
fact that what we have been doing we probably won’t stop doing, and what we
haven’t been doing, we probably will continue not to do. Thus it is for us, for
a lot of you this season.
You
can exit this sermon if you identify with the ninety-nine who are comfortably in
the fold, because we are not talking about the safe, nice, ninety-nine who obey
all the rules, and come in at night on time. We are talking about the one who is
wandering. We are talking about the growing concern of the shepherd who leaves
the ninety-nine to go searching for the one. It is for that one who is lost that
this season is – for the one who has, for some reason or another, lost
his or her sense of belongingness.
The
message first dawned to a people in exile – a people who had been given all the
resources and the insight essential to the fulfillment of life, and then turned
their backs upon the Giver, the Source. People whose lostness is a factor of
their own action – not in terms of some theological notion about Adam. No. We
don’t need Adam and Eve to do the thing for you. Most of us have done it and are
doing it to ourselves. It is for us, in exile: “Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel. Save
us from our captivity.” And as you think of those words, and the plaintive cry
in those words, and then as you put that over and against the prophetic vision,
it is almost as if there is some strand based in life that keeps people dreaming
dreams that are never fulfilled. And so as you hear and experience vision, you
wonder why it never happens. But what I want you to understand this morning is
that the prophecy is really for you.
Religion as you
have known it has stood between you and your ability to understand the meaning
of prophecy in your own life. Prophecy is really an illustration of God’s
ultimate hope for you, in you. When there floats over your consciousness the
language of the prophets who talk about justice and quality of life and even
dream of a remote possibility of brotherhood, what you are hearing is the dream
that life has embedded in you, for you. It is the language which talks about
the fact that you recognize that the relationships between life forms is not
right, and that the only hope that life can be life is that the wrong be
righted. And what is wrong has been articulated. Not by angels. Their glory of
music floating on the wind just reminds us that something is wrong. But what is
wrong is known by you. You can tell us what is wrong because you’re living it.
Prophecy.
Visions of a better world. “Comfort ye my people; speak comfort to Jerusalem,
tell her that God is going to give her another chance, that her iniquity is
forgiven.” And what do the people say? Here comes the classic argument: “Surely
the people are as grass.” You know what grass does. It withers and fades. The
people are just like that, so you can’t really expect anything from them. They
are people in exile.
But I hear a
trumpet blowing to awaken a nation. Surely the people are as grass, but then the
voice of God speaks: “Prepare ye the way . . . every valley shall be exalted.”
Surely the people are as grass. What are we talking about? How do they get that
kind of encouragement, that kind of power? How do they sustain it? They wither
and fade, you know. “Prepare a way in the desert.” Surely the people are as
grass. But God, the word of God, is not grass. The word of our Lord standeth
forever, and there is, in the midst of the people, a clear guide, a plumb-line
dropped in their community. They know, “You were made for this. You in fact are
prophecy’s instrument. It depends upon you – hearing it, owning it, and being
encouraged by its vision in the midst of a troubled community.”
Now this is not
easy, because I’m not talking now about a prophetic vision that develops no
reality. I’m not talking about the Word of God in some heavenly context. I’m
talking about Truth – the sense of wrong that continues to argue with your
silence and your uninvolvement. That’s the Word of God that we are talking
about.
That little
baby wallowing around there in the straw one day grew up and said, “This is my
body.” That’s the Word. That’s why we are here today. The world has never been
able to know what to do with a life that becomes an authentic instrument of
prophetic vision. Don’t think you can write it off and say, oh that was two
thousand years ago. You can live the centuries in your own lifetime. Two
thousand years becomes two hours when you are talking about eternity.
It is so easy
to get a cheap hope going at Christmas – a cheap hope that is no more than the
lure of our giddy desires. The kind of hope that I’m talking about is based on
an intelligent assessment of the situation. It is no wishful thinking, but it
is, as Doctor Chalmers said, directed and practiced desires. Don’t own any hope
this Christmas that you are not prepared to practice. Don’t slip in to anything
that you are not prepared to own. I’m talking about hope that you are prepared
to pay the price for with discipline of body, mind and spirit. I tell you this
Christmas, before you get too ethereal about it, when you look at the hellish
condition of the world, recognize that it does not have to be this way, and
remember that every time a person has caught a glimpse of this and lived it,
lived it,
through directed and practiced desire, it has been such a rare event that one of
the major religions of the world has been born.
Oh come, oh
come Emmanuel, and make us know what has to happen to us. Make us guilty that
prophecy goes so unfulfilled. Make us restless with the mess that we are feeding
by our inaction.
I close with
the wife of the Innkeeper in Benet’s “A Child is Born.”
“We are his earth, the mortal and the dying,
Led
by no star – the sullen and the slut,
The
thief, the selfish man, the barren woman,
Who
have betrayed him once and will betray him,
Forget his words, be great a moment’s space
Under the strokes of chance,
And
then sink back into our small affairs.
And
yet, unless we go, his message fails.”

Read Psalm 146
I want to talk
about Praise. Praise is the way we affirm, “I am alive!” It is the way the human
person celebrates. Celebrates what? Celebrates appreciation. Celebrates
reverence. Celebrates thanks. I read the scripture, “Praise the Lord!” What is
happening? I am celebrating the fact that I appreciate. I revere. I have awe for
the significant meaning I have discovered hidden in the moment.
But by what
process do we find that meaning? How do we find a new sense of the mystery
implicit in our own existence? The Black scholar, Nathan Scott, says to a
consuming age: You cannot consume all of human experience. If you begin to live
deeply enough in the experiences you are having, even the negative ones, you
will discover that when you get through consuming your anger and your response,
there will be meaning left over. He calls it “surplussage” and it is that
surplussage which tells you that there are depth dimensions here that you
haven’t probed. It underscores that you are more than you know. It points you
beyond the level where you normally operate to a level that seems to intrude
upon you, but that is actually grounded in you. Through it, you become
aware of the transcendent principle that connects you with Life – that is larger
than you at any given time. And therefore any event, even this event, is full of
hidden meanings the implications of which go far beyond me talking to you at the
Church For Today this morning. And it is that potential in the event that
bespeaks the eternal quality of your existence. It is the awareness of the
possibility in you which is the foundation of a deep appreciation that life is
alive and that allows you to say, “Praise the Lord! Thanks be to God!”
Now, in
reality, most of the time, people feel less than expectant about life – less
grand, less significant. And life which, by definition, is a series of
opportunities stretching out in front of us, has dried up, and the moments which
make up the days have gone flat. They have lost their expectancy. Our moments
are stillborn. In the book entitled The Diary of a Country Priest, the priest
comments on the people of his parish. He says there is boredom, a fierce
boredom. He says it is like, ‘useless kneading of bread in which there is
hidden no yeast.’ There is no mystery anymore. People have lost a sense of
expectancy and the moments have gone dead.
My
concern is that we are moving further and further away from experiencing moments
of expectancy. The process I see in our society de-escalates the significance of
the person, and escalates the significance of the system. What I see happening
is that, in the last analysis, we feel limited. We feel we have limitations. And
we end up feeling like we’re glad to at least have what we have. And in the end,
our sense of adventure, our sense of grandeur, is destroyed. And we are no
longer able to celebrate who we really are.
In such a
society where the sense of grandeur that people have available to their daily
moments is reduced, because the options in life that seem apparent to them are
reduced, you stab at religious consciousness at its core. If there is no awe
about your own existence, there can be no foundation for praise. How can you
have praise when you are not stricken with awe about the mystery of your own
existence? There is no foundation for anything. There is therefore no foundation
for religious life.
When the mystery about existence is stolen from you while you are just fighting
to hang on, you lose the sense of what life can be. Therefore, there is no
celebration, no praise, no thanks being given. Then in our churches and
religious establishments, there is really no belief. And where there is no
belief there can be no faith. Where there is no faith, there is no action, and
where there is no action (and I will use a religious term here) there can be no
redemption. Where there is no action, there can be no revolution. There can be
no revolutionary action in history and there can be no redemptive action in
time, if there is no faith. And that faith must be rooted in one’s sense of awe.
When awe is destroyed, the root of belief is destroyed – the foundation of faith
is destroyed and people who are under the pressure of these events draw smaller
and smaller circles of definition for themselves.
In
the Christian tradition, persons should draw larger and larger definitions of
their own significance -- even eternal definitions -- as large as being children
of God. We are meant to be open-ended, far-flung in definition, unending in
possibility, precious beyond measurement.
How then out of
this do we get Thanksgiving?
First of all, people can take hope in the fact that what they are experiencing
does not have to be. And maybe they can begin to get a new picture of the moment
and the possibilities of the next moment. We must argue with what we are looking
at. We need to find ways to become participants again in our own lives. We are
going to have to move from the beginning again, and we discover that those
opportunities to participate are opportunities to begin to celebrate once again.
That is the foundation out of which Thanksgiving comes. It is to participate at
such a level that we become awe-stricken with the Presence. It is to call forth
God, whom we are concealing, in the absence which is visible in our presence. I
can back that up another way and make it clearer. When you are present, it is
apparent that there is absence. That sense of absence in your presence tells of
something being concealed that is critical to your presence. It is the far-flung
part of you that is waiting to be born again – to free life in righteousness and
justice and merciful action.
In
this absence, God waits. And when you begin to celebrate your participation,
that absence will become transcendence – that is, transporting to persons who
touch your presence. It will become a source of living, witnessing power.
The
Psalmist says, “Praise the Lord.” I would say, praise the Lord, and praise that
which is inextricably structured into life. Praise that which the poet says
structures life intricately with his own hand. Praise God. Praise the Presence.
Praise the God, who in our own scripture, said, “I will put my life and my will
clearly in them, and if they won’t accept it on tablets, I will write it on the
fleshy part of their own hearts, so they will know it for sure.”
Praise the Lord, the Psalmist says. Praise the Lord. The Psalmist says, I will.
And I am saying, that is our call this morning: to re-articulate our
participation so that we can retouch again the well-springs of awe, which are
the foundation of celebration – which precede faith, which is necessary for
action.
The
Psalmist says, I will praise the Lord as long as I live. I will praise God as
long as I have strength, as long as there is life in me. One rendition says, as
long as I have being; the other one says, as long as I live; another one says,
as long as there is life in me; another one says as long as there is a word left
in my mouth, the world will hear His name!
Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!

Moses at Burning Bush
This church should always be searching for ways to break through everything you
have organized as your religious understanding – to try to see if, in fact, we
can build a window on your world and allow you to have a fresh encounter with
the Mystery of Life. Religion is only valid to the extent that it comments on
the Truth. And the bodies of organized religious thought must always understand
that the moment it is organized, it has hints of the Truth, leases on the Truth,
but it is always less than the Truth.
I am not really
interested in how you state your understanding of God. You as a person have to
continue to struggle to know the Presence, the Nature of God. It may mean one
thing this week; next week it ought to mean another. This place should be the
place where we attempt, not to indoctrinate you, but to free you from
indoctrination.
First of all,
when we hear the words of Jesus, we arrive at a simple conclusion that to really
understand what He was talking about, one has to be involved. Jesus wasn’t
talking to the passerby. He said there are some secrets here. One of the ways to
get on to them is to make some primary statement of commitment to searching out
the intention of life, or what we call in Christian language, the Will of God.
And to the extent that we have been attempting to do it, maybe we can understand
what the Psalmist said: “I know that you know. You have kept account of my
tossing.” I don’t think this is language for the outsider. This is language for
those who have been struggling with the doing of their perception of what is the
Will of Life. The Psalmist says, ‘I have discovered that Life has deeply
embedded in it caring, and a record of my tossing is registered there; indeed my
tears have been stored in a bottle.’
Then you
remember the other interesting text: “When I think of Thy ways …” He didn’t say,
‘When I go to church / when I feel good, that all may happen.’ He says, “When I
set my foot to do Thy bidding.”
And so, this
morning’s invitation is to figure out how your life can begin to reflect your
attempt to give witness to your perception of what God’s Will is. And when you
do that, you are struggling to give utterance and exposition to what you believe
to be the reason for your being here. That is a beginning step in religious
consciousness. For there is hidden, always, in the mind of the religious spirit,
the hope and the promise that, “If with all your heart you truly seek Me, ye
shall ever surely find Me” – the promise of encounter – of a meeting place. And
the discipline of commitment and work in this world is preparation, is the
opening place, so that if Life meets you face to face, you at least might
recognize It.
A part of every
religion that I have ever heard of is that these opening places of your life
into Life are everywhere. That is what is meant by our doctrine of Omnipresence.
The opening places, the windows, are everywhere. Why then do we seem so distant
from God? It probably has very little to do with God and a lot to do with us.
I would like to
read a familiar story from Exodus:
“Now Moses was keeping the
flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian; and he led his flock
to the west side of the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And
the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a
bush; and he looked, and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And
Moses said, ‘I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not
burnt.’ When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of
the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ Then God said, ‘Do not come
near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing
is holy.’ And He said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to
look at God. Then the Lord said, ‘I have seen the affliction of my people …’”
Let’s start with the end
of the text first. A precondition for religious experience is something that is
not popular to talk about today. It is not popular to talk about the fear of
God. This text said Moses hid his face. He was fearful.
So perhaps part
of our problem is that we have become so psychologically secure, so analytical
of all things, that there is nothing before which our little lives stand with
fear and trembling. We have become successful in reducing the whole religious
province to our own size and we have arrived at the conclusion that, indeed, if
God did look at us, we would look back and say, “Hi.” It is a mood that keeps us
from acknowledging that there is a mystery in life. We have spoken before about
the fact that awe of the Holy is a healthy psychological stance. But we are
children of an age that says you should have awe of nothing.
It seems to me
that this attitude of awe is necessary as we attempt to probe behind what
appears to be, and gain some sense of deep respect for that which we don’t yet
thoroughly understand.
And so it was
that this precondition was met by Moses in the wilderness. Moses looked and he
saw something he hadn’t seen before: a bush on fire but not being burned.
Here was a
strange contradiction. It made Moses raise questions beyond the event. Why? And
then he became arrested by the very power and force of Life, and the genius of
Life. He almost said to himself as it were, ‘You know, Life can do just about
anything it gets ready to do. Look at this. One thing becomes clear. What I
thought were the ground rules don’t appear to be the ground rules. The way that
bushes have behaved through all of history seems not to square with the way this
bush is behaving.’ That much is true. He saw that. He was just like you and me –
a person out there taking care of business, trying to make some money, and he
saw something, contradictory on its face; a paradox, a dilemma.
And it became
clear to him that he had cause for alarm. Terror. And it is not the terror of
the Holy yet, it is the terror of the unknown, of that which seems inconsistent
with Life – something that doesn’t seem to conform to the laws of nature. The
bush was burning but something beyond his own imagination, beyond his own
knowledge was going on.
Then he said to
himself, ‘I had better stop and examine this thing.’ There is no record that
when he said, ‘I think I had better stop,’ that anything happened. But the
minute he actually stopped… (You see, that is the commitment step. It is one
thing to talk about, ‘I think we had better look at this.’ The minute he
stopped. The minute you stop and look at those contradictory realities of life,
even your own, you stand in a moment of commitment, you stand in candidacy for
something new. The trouble with most of us is that we never stop around the
contradictions of our own existence long enough.)
The scripture
says, “When he turned aside,” what happened? “When he turned aside, God decided
then to talk to him.” When he made the stop, God said, ‘He is ready.’ For God
saw that he was stricken with awe and wonder and terror of the Holy. For God
knew that it was Holiness that Moses perceived. It was the Holiness of Life that
made him wonder, for wondering is a province of the Holy. It always and always
causes awe. And whenever, for any moment, tragedy or beauty or ugliness or
whatever causes you to stop a moment in awe, you are at the edge of the Holy
Place. And Life was aware that he stopped at Its threshold, and Life respected
this. Let’s translate the text. If, at the apparent contradictions of existence,
you stop in wonder, Life will respect your stopping.
What I am
trying to say is this: Just look at our own selves – the most beautiful
contradiction that Creation could issue forth – embedded with splendor and
endlessness – like timelessness itself. You are fighting like everything to keep
it in a manageable unit called ‘yourself’ – under control, so that it won’t ride
you off into anything that you haven’t decided to get involved in.
Where is the burning bush? Moses’ story is a story that affects all of us. Moses
wasn’t planning on getting involved in strange things, but Moses said, ‘I am
going to stop here. Something mysterious is happening.’
Now, what did
he hear? What did God first say? “Moses, Moses.” Moses heard his name. At the
moment when the awe-arresting phenomenon of the Presence of Life issues forth in
ways that are contradictory to what had become the normal expectation of the
culture; in the middle of that which was capable of arresting the normative
mind, there is called the name of any who would stop.
In
other words, the key to your personality is not what you put together. It is
locked in the abiding mystery of Life, and in all that that mystery would spill
upon history. That is where the key to your self is. And if around that mystery
you stop long enough, you will hear your name like you have never heard it
before. And it will not necessarily be the name your mother and father gave you.
But it will be one you know, because it will be your essence speaking to you in
most intimate terms. “Moses.” Moses heard Life speaking.
Here was Life
issuing forth in ways that were totally inconsistent with the ways it had always
been done before. The vastness of the creative energy of God was doing a new
thing because it was trying to make a new statement about its Presence. It is
always doing new things trying to make a new statement about its Presence, and
it is always searching for new statements to be made about its Presence. That,
perhaps, is the definition of beingness. It is the search of the creative energy
in Life for new possibilities of the expression of the Presence.
And here it
was. And when Moses heard his name – you talk about being accepted and
respected! You are talking about being known. There is no significance like that
which comes from understanding that in the middle of a mysterious surfacing of
the Presence of God, when you get close enough you hear your own name. That is
about being known and accepted.
What religion ought to be about is to try to get you to stop long enough at the
mysteries of existence in which you participate every day, long enough to hear
your name – sounded from the very center of Life itself – so that you might know
who you are and know that you are, indeed, known by the vast purposes of history
and Life itself. Life that goes beyond all that you can conceptualize. Life
whose purposes are printed beyond earth, even into eternity – into futures yet
undreamed of. You are known. They can fly a ship to Mars if they please, but in
the mystery of the soil of Mars, your name is registered.
Nothing has
been made in isolation. It is not the nature of Creation to create isolated
items. All of you belong to all that is, and at the core of that Creational
Intelligence, all are known by their real name.
He called
Moses. And what did God say? He didn’t say, “You know, Moses, you killed a man
and you know I let you off, but Moses I want you to serve me.” No, He didn’t say
that. After He called his name, He simply said to Moses, “You know Moses, I am
God.” That is amazing. “I am the God of your father; I am the God who brought
them over; I am the God who was with them. I am God.” He identified himself. It
is an ecstatic moment – that moment when you become aware that there is
connective tissue between you and the Creator. You are lodged in Life itself.
But God said, “Wait a minute. That is not all I want to say.” “Moses, I have
seen the affliction of my people. I have heard their groans by reason of their
taskmaster’s whips. I have come to deliver them. Whom shall I send? Who will go
for me?”
He asked Moses
for commitment to what he had experienced. I have arrived at an interesting
conclusion that most of our life is spent keeping ourselves from grand
experiences to which we might have to commit ourselves. And I think if we had
been Moses, we would have just gone on home and said we saw something out there
in the field that didn’t make any sense. It was strange and interesting but we
had to get away from it in a hurry because it had nothing to do with us.
He heard the
Voice, and then he heard his real name, and then he was told about a problem.
God said, “There is a problem.” He said, “There is slavery in Egypt and I want
somebody to help me with it.”
The great
issues of life are locked up with your identity. There was Moses standing before
a bush and because of his response to it, and his commitment in searching out
its meaning, he was there, literally stripped of everything he had brought to
that place, but knowing for the first time, his true identity.
The events are
endless. The bushes are burning and the mystery is reciting itself over and over
again. And hidden in your response is your identity, your call, your sense of
mission.
I told Jesus
it’d be all right if He changed my name. Jesus said if you change your name,
your mother, your sister, your brother, your wife, your lover won’t like it.
That’s all right. I want to change my name.
“When I think
of Thy ways, I put my feet in the way of Thy testimonies. I put my feet in the
way of Thy testimonies. I hasten, I do not delay, to do Thy commandments.”

Halloween
Masks
I
wonder how many of you know what Halloween is about? Halloween is a night when
all the restless souls that had died and hadn’t found a place outside of Hell,
wander around on the air trying to find rest. They had lived such a rugged life,
that their rest is being denied. And it is a night when those restless spirits,
cut off from Eternal fellowship with God, are roaming the earth, scaring the
likes of us. And it is said that this is a night when they are so real, when you
walk down the street you will see one coming toward you. You will see a face,
and there may not be a body attached to it. The spirits are restless.
I like
Halloween as a concept because it sends the message that you can’t raise hell on
earth all of your life, and go somewhere to heaven just because you die.
Halloween tells me that there is a whole working out of this thing that has to
take place, and a lot of Spirits are restless on the wind. And in our own time,
we still like to put on the mask and see somebody frightened.
The
case I am making this morning is very simple. Our society doesn’t need a
Halloween. We already wear a mask, so we really don’t need to buy any. If we
just study our face in the mirror and think about the journey that the face we
look at has come, we begin to see the awful onslaught of living, and the extent
to which we have had to struggle with the mask that would take over the true
countenance that would shine forth, revealing the indwelling Presence of God.
Halloween is a time of masks. Gibran said this morning in the reading that Jesus
was more searing against mask wearers than anybody else in the New Testament. He
called them hypocrites, a word that seems very out of date to us. If you look in
Matthew at the 23rd Chapter, you will find an amazing scripture that seldom gets
preached. It is what they used to call “the seven deadly woes”.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
Because you shut the kingdom of heaven against
men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow
those who would enter to go in.”
What
is he talking about? You know who the scribes and Pharisees were, they were
Church folk. He said they were not going into the kingdom and they were blocking
others. That is a strange message to the Church. This was Jesus preaching to the
people he knew about.
“Woe to
you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you traverse sea and land to make a
single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a
child of hell as yourselves.”
We
have gone all over Africa and Asia, coverting others to Christianity, to join a
hellish Church; a Church that condoned racism; a Church that condoned classism;
and a Church that condoned all of the evils of the time. We asked them to
convert and join with us. A Church that condones anesthetizing sweet niceness,
that wants nothing to do with any of the problems that confront human beings,
while people save their own little souls and feel holy. It would be better that
they would be what they were, and what do we call them – pagans. A true pagan is
much more exciting. A good sinner, much more exciting than a compromising
Christian.
“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If any one swears
by the temple, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the
gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind
fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that
has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If any one
swears by the altar, it is nothing; but if anyone swears
by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’
You blind fools! For which
is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?’’
“Woe to you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have
neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy, and faith; these
you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides,
straining out a gnat and
swallowing a camel!”
This
is Jesus. He says you ought to do tithing but you have neglected the weightier
matters after the tithe. These are the weightier matters according to Jesus:
Justice, Mercy, Faith. These should be done without neglecting the tithing.
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