AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Proper 28, Year B

I profited from an afternoon at Peet’s drinking coffee (Margaret hangs out there drinking tea — it’s her office-hours location), and the sermon came together without excessive agony. I didn’t have the opportunity to blog it in process, since Peet’s is wireless-less, but it held up well this morning, so I’ll post it below in the “extended” area. The only glitch turned out to be that the reader was assigned only the first half of the reading from Daniel, so the concluding reference to the 1290 or 1335 days (a somewhat odd feature of Daniel 12:11-12) didn’t make any sense. I skipped it at the second service.

Proper 28, Year B
St. Luke’s Evanston
Dan 12:1-4a, 5-13/Ps 16:5-11/Heb 10:31-39/Mark 13:14-23
November 16, 2003

There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence.

+ In the Name of God Almighty, the eternal Blessed Trinity – Amen.

Well, there’s nothing like the end of the world, the abomination of desolation, and suffering such as has not been from the beginning of creation, to put our problems at St. Luke’s Parish in Evanston into perspective. Or, perhaps more to the point, there may be nothing like these cosmic tribulations to drive home to us the fact that the problems of one little parish don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. “Someday,” says Daniel, “someday you’ll understand that.”

The problems of one little parish don’t amount to a hill of beans; we don’t matter that much. The outcome of any particular issue, any flare-up of a long, weary parish conflict, this election or that vote of the vestry, just don’t make such a big difference in a vast, lonely, impoverished world of tyranny, genocide, disease, and famine. I hate to be so blunt — you know I love St. Luke’s — but if this lovely edifice of wood, stone and steel were to collapse in some unthinkable catastrophic accident, if we who gather here were dispersed to the various calmer and stronger congregations closer to our homes, then despite the painful loss of history and memory, God’s work in our community and the world would roll forward unhindered by the of this troubled congregation. The Spirit itself would continue to cut loose in new, exhilarating, astounding ways. Our lessons remind us this morning that the whole cosmos hangs in the balance, awaiting on God’s judgment; what can justify us taking ourselves, our wounds and our feuds and our vindication, so very seriously?

Everybody has a different idea about the parish, and often enough those ideas suggest that they ought to be more cooperative, more honest, less manipulative, and less obstinate. If we could only agree on who they are, find them and work them out of the congregation, our work might be simpler; but the longer I live at St. Luke’s, the more it looks as though they are us. The very contentiousness and partisanship that we need so desperately to escape has seeped into us, has altered our sense of taste and of hearing, our vision and touch, so that as a congregational body we don’t encounter an idea, a prospect, an opportunity or an obstacle, without assimilating that new element to a texture of fear and mistrust that have so forcefully defined our interactions with one another. If we do this, they’ll win; if that happens, we lose. And with the elegant, subtle, damnable logic of perdition, no matter how hard any one of us tries to make something good happen, to make some blessing arise from the ashes of the curse under which we’ve labored, still the interlocking patterns of wounding and betrayal ensure that our striving is but losing. So let’s open our eyes, sisters and brothers: we already lost. You lost, and you lost, and you lost, and every single one of us lost, and we all together lost. That’s bad news, and we live in it, and we will only perpetuate and aggravate our troubles if we don’t come out and admit it. Fact of life: right now, we’re hurtling down the mountainside propelled by an avalanche of history and habits and hellbound good intentions. And we haven’t hit the bottom yet.

So that’s the precipice we’re falling down. It’s familiar, it’s how we’ve grown accustomed to dealing with one another, and it’s fatal; but darn it, it’s our precipice, and we’ve gotten good at falling. At this point, I’m not foolhardy enough to suggest that we won’t just stick with what we’re good at until we smash ourselves and one another to bits on the jagged rocks below. But neither am I so short-sighted or so heartless as simply scold and chastise; in this pulpit, our Lord looks down from over my shoulder to remind me and to remind you that no matter how obvious the bad news may be, no matter how powerful the forces that impel us toward devastation, that no matter how deeply-ingrained the demonic habits that set one child of God against another, we have been set free from the powers that would consume and devour us, and we are not bound by any so-called “inevitable” outcome of our trials. It hurts me to rehearse this promise of hope again, beloved friends, since I see nothing that heralds the advent of that hoped-for renewal, that restoration, that resurrection among us — but I am under a compulsion to preach the good news no matter what I see, and that good news promises us that God has not abandoned us.

But then, I spoke out of turn a moment ago. I do see signs of the promise. Through all our hard traveling and infighting, St. Luke’s has not ceased to feed the hungry, to teach and befriend the neglected, to stand firm in solidarity with lesbian and gay Christians, to welcome and amply to support refugees without asking anything in return, all out of the radical faith that God calls us to such practices when there’s no specific profit in it for us. I dare say this morning that we could not survive the malignancies we’ve endured had we not been so committed, and any time we’re tempted to give up on the project of working together, together, as St. Luke’s Parish in Evanston, we should pause for a moment, kneel down and give thanks to God for the privilege of serving thousands of sojourners whose lives have been delivered from the predations of torment and oppression. You showed compassion for those who were fleeing persecution, you cheerfully accepted the opportunity to share your possessions, knowing that you yourselves already possessed something better and more lasting. Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours. For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what has been promised.

Endurance comes harder and harder with every week that passes, with every disappointment, every sting, every sour surprise. God knows that — and in Jesus, God has participated fully in the agony of false friends, of misguided authority figures, of hasty judgments and cruel consequences. Yet Jesus, the Righteous One, lived by his faith as he endured tribulation; and in him, we ourselves may find faith to continue. Through our continuing life in Christ, God has not left us to our own devices and desires, has not dumped into our laps the responsibility for ensuring that those who are wise shine like the brightness of the sky. That’s not our job, it’s God’s job, and God has promised to bring that consummation to pass with a wisdom and a glory that far transcend our fondest wishes.

In the next few weeks, we will learn what our bishop plans for St. Luke’s clergy leadership; we will face planning about various aspects of our congregation’s future; we will elect vestry members and a warden; we will struggle with the aftermath of the convulsive changes we’ve wrought, and the embittering aftertaste of heartfelt disagreement. In all these things, I beg you to remember the service to which St. Luke’s has been called, in which St. Luke’s has persisted on behalf of neighbors we didn’t know we had, neighbors who ate sandwiches and found jobs and did homework and escaped tyranny and heard angel’s voices raised in song, neighbors whose lives have been enriched, perhaps even saved, through the intercession of this congregation. Remember them, and forget the temptation to think that we should make right prevail. Instead, please lose. Deliberately lose. Persistently lose. Say your piece, plainly and openly, then gracefully lose. Because it’s not up to you, it’s not up to me, it’s not up to the rector or the wardens or the vestry, it’s not up to Virgil or Richard or Larry or Bishop Persell, not up to a self-appointed messiah or to any one of us to bring about justice. The brand of victory that we work up on our own steam isn’t worth getting anyway, especially not at the cost of injuring our sisters and brothers. The grass withers, the flower fades, the political triumphs of one party or another pass away or, worse still, metastasize and return to eat us alive from our heart outwards. Our parish struggles are not worth that spiritual gangrene. Let go.

Instead, through all our trials and distress, join with one another, join with the brother who disappointed you and the sister who won’t listen to reason, and see if together we can figure out some way to get another refugee family settled here in safety. Together we can make some lunches for Movable Feast. Together we can devise some fund-raising plan to shore up and strengthen this home base of our many ministries. Together we can let go of the longing to win, confess our sins, and like other losers the world around, together receive the holy food and drink of new and unending life that binds us, together, in Christ Jesus.

For we do no credit to our faith if we just cry on the curbside and ask “How long?” if we try to figure out exactly when the parish’s 1290 days began, or was it 1335, or has the Lord shortened the days for the sake of the elect? Go your way, and rest – rest, so that we can get back to work in the kitchen, on the streets, down at Family Matters. Rest, the better and more sweetly to sing anthems of joy. Rest, to build up the patience that strengthens losers on Chicago’s North Side endlessly to wait for next year. Give over to God the labor of wrangling, and rest. There shall indeed be a time of suffering — but Michael will protect us, and Jesus the Righteous One will enliven us by his faith, and Lord will show us the path of life, in whose presence we will know the fullness of joy, and in whose right hand we will together rejoice in pleasures for evermore.

Amen

Posted by AKMA at November 16, 2003 02:36 PM | TrackBack