July 17 - Proper 11, Year A (RCL)
This week,
I'm going to see my favorite band, U2. They're playing at the Meadowlands, and I’m looking forward
not just to the music,
but to their passion, their passion for entertainment, their passion for this world,
their passion for God.
In other concerts
we’ve seen the declaration of human rights scrolling on a screen above the stage;
we’ve heard a message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu;
we’ve found ourselves praying
in lyrics drawn from the psalms and addressed to God.
One of their songs
on the album, “All that you can’t leave behind”
written ten or so years ago
asks a question
which seems to be at the heart of our reading from Romans today.
They sing,
“When you look at the world
What is it that you see?
People find all kinds of things
That bring them to their knees”-U2, “When I look at the world”
When you look at the world
what do you see?
The front page of the newspaper yesterday morning:
Talks on the national budget stalled, and the threat of another recession. Somali refugees
dying of hunger.
Drought sweeping across the southwest.
Closer to home, mourning for an 8 year old boy abducted on his way home from day camp,
and someone drowns on Fire Island,
and the usual run of traffic accidents and DWIs.
When we look at the world
through the eyes of the newspapers,
its clear
that not everything
is going well.
And even when we ignore the newspapers
we can't escape the feeling
that something,
somewhere
has gone drastically wrong.
weather patterns, snow and sun and rain
all seem to be different,
as if the climate had changed
while we weren't looking.
Friends and family
struggle with cancer and disease,
and for all that we live longer, and on the whole, better,
than our forebears did, if we're honest, life is more luxurious
but not necessarily
better.
When you look at the world
what do you see?
There are times when it feels like
the whole of our world
is weighed down,
by some great burden. All around us
we see suffering and struggle,
not only human, but in the whole of creation.
You can almost hear the groans of the earth
as day by day,
the balance between good and evil, health and disease, growth and destruction,
is disrupted.
Sometimes
it seems
like God has walked out
and left us
to our own devices,
has abandoned us
to the uncertainties
of luck and fate, as if, no matter
how much we pray,
things will never get
any better.
But this isn't
anything new. It's not just a problem
of the twenty-first century, not just something
which suddenly happened
along with the coming of TV.
The apostle Paul wrote about it
almost 2000 years ago.
When he looked at the world,
he saw something
pretty much like ours, although perhaps it seems more intense for us
because thank to TV and the internet we can see
just what is happening
all cross this struggling world of ours.
But even in the time of Paul, back in the first century,
Paul could see enough to write:
“Creation has been groaning in labor pains until now
and not only the creation,
but we ourselves groan inwardly
while we wait.”
Creation has been groaning, as if in labor pains
and us with it, for as long as human beings have recorded. Life
is a struggle, to a greater or lesser degree, and I don't think there are any of us
who don't wish it were otherwise.
But from the perspective of Paul in his letter, this struggle
is part of a much bigger battle, a battle on a cosmic scale,
and we and the whole of creation
are just unlucky enough
to be caught up in it.
It's kind of out of fashion
unless you go to certain fundamentalist churches
to talk about things
on a cosmic scale,
especially to talk about
any sort of battle
between good and evil.
We've retreated from the simplistic world
of God the old man with a snowy beard
battling Satan
in a red wetsuit and pitchfork,
but at least that picture
helped us get some sort of handle, some sort of perspective
which helped us live
with the struggle. It gave us some sense
that both the problem
and the solution
were bigger than we are,
and that even when we can't see a way forward
one might be there
in the grand scheme of things.
Of course, there were other problems
with that picture of old man God and the fiery devil,
not least of which
was a tendency
to become fatalistic, resigned to a world of unfairness
where ordinary people
absolutely no control
and can do nothing to change things.
But there were helpful things, too, elements of truth
which we have tended to throw out along with the simplistic pictures,
and they are elements of truth
which we need to reclaim for today.
One of those elements of truth
is the reality
of evil.
Whether or not
you buy into the creation and fall story of Genesis,
either literally
or figuratively,
it tells us some important truths,
truths about a God who created us and loves us,
and leaves us free
to make our own decisions,
and about a force which will work destruction in our world
with
or without
our help.
Creation
is caught up
in futility, writes Paul, in that evil and destructive force
and we are caught up in it too.
But – and this is a big but –
for all that God
leaves us to deal with the consequences
of our own actions,
God has not abandoned us.
God has not abandoned us
but has promised
that there will be a time
when those destructive forces
are overpowered
but God's love, and God's justice,
when all tears will be wiped away, and sorrow and dying will be no more, to use the language of the book of Revelation, when
the glorious life
which we see in the resurrection of Jesus Christ
will be our life as well, and we'll be caught up into the glory of God
forever more.
And meanwhile, we wait.
We wait, along with creation, wait, and groan with longing
for that day, when we shall live in the glorious freedom
of God. It sounds
too good
to be true. It's nothing
like we've
ever seen.
And that's Paul's point, in our reading today. Because that's precisely
the character
of hope.
Hope
is believing
in what we can't yet see,
trusting in what
is just beyond our grasp.
But in spite of all of that, hope isn't just plain craziness, though it may look like it
sometimes. Hope isn’t just
blind faith, though sometimes
it comes close.
Hope is about
taking what we know about God
the love which is so evident
in creation,
the passion
of a God who would give up life for our sake,
the example of a resurrected life
which can be ours
someday,
hope is about taking all of these,
and living out their promise
in our lives.
And it means
always
being open
to the possibility
that God might act
to relieve suffering,
that God might act, even
through us,
to make things better.
All the time I've been writing this sermon,
two things
have been running through my head.
The first
is Louis Armstrong
singing “What a wonderful world”
and as he looks around
at the sky of blue
and clouds of white,
he thinks to himself,
“What a wonderful world.”
His hope
is built
on what he sees,
and what he chooses to see
is the evidence of creation ― a wonderful world.
Yet Louis Armstrong's vision
doesn't seem to extend
to the struggles we face
in our lives and our world.
And its here
that I keep remembering
the words of Martin Luther King
in his speech,
“I have a dream.”
You all
probably know it better than I do.
He ends his dream, not just with a vision
of racial equality
but the vision of a world
which is no longer groaning, waiting
for the coming of God,
but has seen God's glory
in all
its fullness.
Here are some of his words:
“I have a dream today.” He says, quoting from the prophets, “I have a dream
that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain
shall be made low,
the rough places
will be made plane, and the crooked places
will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord
shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together. This
is our hope . . . . With this faith
we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair
a stone of hope. . . . With this faith
we will be able to work together
to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be
free one day. . .
[that] we will be able to join hands and sing
in the words of that old Negro spiritual
“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty
we are free
at last.”
Our situation is different, our struggles are different.
But our hope is the same, the hope of a God
whose love
leads us into hope
and resurrected life
and freedom.
“When you look at the world
What is it that you see?
People find all kinds of things
That bring them to their knees.”
When you look at the world,
see the struggle
and the groaning
and the pain, but see too
the promise
and the love
and the hope,
and give thanks to God
while we wait.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010