Sermon

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (RCL, Year A, Proper 9)
July 6, 2008

The Reverend Kay Johnson

Today’s readings, taken together, form a sort of point, counter-point that is the rythym of my life.

What Paul’s outburst of pain and frustration in Romans calls up in me is the pain and frustration I feel about all the agonies of the world, and all my seeming helplessness in the face of them.

I spent Wednesday night here at St. Mark’s, helping to host the two families -- two mothers and two children -- who are staying here with us this month. Two beautiful mothers, two beautiful children. Two strong women trying to make their way in the world. One goes to school full time, comes home to a rambunctious two-year-old, and stays up half the night studying. The other, who is a veteran, is looking for an entry-level job in a tight job market, which is tighter in the summer because of students who are working for lower pay than a mother with a child can live on. Even though what we’re doing here is a good thing -- an act of generosity for us -- and it *is* helpful for them -- how can it be OK in the great scheme of things for these two women to have to cope also with the added stress of a different home every month and different people to welcome them every night -- while I go home, on Thursday, to my own home, my familiar surroundings, my very good life?

And of course the agonies of the world stretch way beyond these two womens, who are icons of those agonies. "Too many people in jail, too many children left behind," someone cried out during talk time at the Susan Warner concert in Paul’s honor. Too much war, too much human trafficking, too many mutilated girls, too many child soldiers, too many veterans wounded in body and mind, too many, too many, too much, too much of the horrors that leap into our lives every time we pick up a newspaper, every day when we go to the jobs or volunteer work that we do our very best at...for the sake of the world...for the saving of creation...

It’s never enough. Paul’s ruminations seem personal -- I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand -- but my frustration feels personal too. There’s always more to do, more suffering and injustice to encounter. I am trapped in my middle-class American life. I am trapped in my color, my class, my age, my nationality. Now you could tell me that if I feel that way why don’t I just get out of it. Join the Peace Corps, as some of you have done, or Vista, or move to Anacostia and just get down and dirty and do the work. And I could give you some answers, but the simplest one is that I don’t want to. (To be fair to myself, I also don’t think that those places are where I’m called right now.) I like my middle-class American life, and I try to live it as simply and honorably as I can, and I try to do the good work that I am called to do -- from giving money to changing my light bulbs, to phoning my Congressal representatives, to standing up in the streets, to doing my own particular work...but it’s never enough...and I think I’m stuck with my pain.

So that’s the point. Here’s the counterpoint. From Zechariah: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!...I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope..."

Prisoners of hope. That’s what we are. Prisoners of hope. We are allowed to be in pain. We have to be in pain. But we are not allowed to despair. We are not allowed to give up. It is our work, as God’s people in Christ, to pay attention to the good stuff and to allow it to work its grace.

And there’s plenty of good stuff. The immediate joyful stuff just about being alive. Trees, flowers, sunshine, water, bicycles. On Wednesday night the two-year-old and his mother and I played soccer, and we laughed a lot. It was huge fun just to laugh myself and to see the child laughing. It was a miracle of grace to see his mother laughing, and to see her playing with her son.

The good stuff about people, and what they can do. The weekend of Paul’s celebration my friend Nancy came to visit from Massachusetts. We had this amazing series of deeply moving experiences -- we laughed..about how often we were moved to tears that weekend.

The first thing that happened was on Thursday afternoon when we went to see my new Congresswoman being sworn in in the House of Representatives. It was the culmination of a four year battle in which the people of the 4th district of Maryland challenged a kind of worn-out, sold-out representative with an idealistic, energetic, hard-working, very capable new person. When she stood there in her lavendar suit, in the midst of the sea of dark colors, and lifted her hand to take the oath -- and all the many many people from her district who had worked hard for her stood up in the balconies -- I got quite teary. It was as though a page of my 4th grade civics textbook was coming to life. We the people really can elect good representatives, and those representatives -- most of whom work hard, and care a lot -- really can work for people’s lives and make things better.

Then Nancy and I went to the documentary film festival at the AFI in Silver Spring and saw a film called “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” about the women’s peace movement in Liberia that in the end really did bring to a close the recent terrible wars there. The film documented the years of the war and the advent of the peace movement. But the climax came during the peace talks that were finally held in Ghana, negotiated by leaders of surrounding African nations. The peace talks dragged on and on. Many of the people at the table weren’t taking them seriously -- they were more interested in having a good time at their nice hotel in Accra.

The women were staging a sit-in outside the hotel. And when the peace talks were declared just deadlocked and over...the women...and I don’t remember if this was planned or instinctive...they simply refused to let the men out. They were sitting four or five deep around the doors, and they just...lifted their arms...and forced the men back inside. They just literally lifted the men back in. Watching the scene, you didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry -- so you did both.

And the peace talks resumed and an accord was reached. Charles Taylor, the strong man at the center of the conflict, was exiled and is currently on trial in The Hague.

Then that Friday night, Nancy and I came here, to the concert in Paul’s honor. If you were here that night, you remember that Paul was persuaded to sing a solo -- so first, there was Paul singing Amazing Grace, his very good voice, and it’s being him, those two things -- holding us...and then, on the 3rd verse, without a signal, you realized that everyone was joining in...and you did too...and there we all were...singing together. When I think about that, it seems to connect with those other two events...Donna Edwards in the Congress, the Liberian women in Accra -- literally or metaphorically -- people singing together.

Point, counterpoint. Do they balance? Maybe not. Does one new Congresswoman cancel out a million underfed children? No. Does one peace agreement undo the horrors of ongoing war? No. (Although there *are* fewer wars now than there were 10 and 20 years ago. And that’s one of those facts of hope that we are called to remember. Not to make us complacent, but to help us keep going.)

Point, counterpoint. But there’s a third term. Look at the gospel...Jesus is both a dancer and a mourner. Jesus is present in all the joy and in all the sorrow. And then ...“Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heaven burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

If to take on the yoke of Jesus is to be joined with him in the hard daily work of love and justice, to rest in Jesus, is to remember that it is, after all, His work. We are part of something that is larger than we are, and that something is real. And we are welcomed into it -- as the gospel hymn goes -- just as we are, and just where we are.

Once, when I had a parish in Providence, I had to make an emergency trip to Boston, where one of my parishioners was involved in a complicated, fightening, seemingly intractable, very sad situation. As I was driving home in the evening on the beltway around Boston, I was very tense, worried, confused, frustrated, conflicted. And I passed a car that had exactly the kind of bumper sticker that usually makes me crazy, because it sounds so simplistic and literal minded. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.

Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.

This time it spoke to me in a language I knew, and suddenly everything just dropped away. All the tension just drained out of me, and I remembered -- Jesus, God, Mystery, Holiness, -- is there. It’s something like Dame Julian of Norwich saying, “All will be well, and all manner of thing will be well.” Deep down at the heart of life is some kind of wonder, some kind of grace, some kind of indestructible beauty -- a truth that is the end and the hope and the promise of all that is. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Rest for your soul.

And this week, thinking about this passage, I remembered the first Sunday I served at St. Mark’s. Paul lifted the loaf of braided Hallah bread up high, and I don’t remember which words he used, but in that loaf lifted up was food, hope, love, strength, abundance, victory. The community gathered. All of us together, and all of us bound to the promise, that we are not alone, and that whatever happens, love is both the first word and the last word, and that to be a prisoner of hope is to be held, held firm.