All Things New

The following is a transcript of a sermon delivered yesterday at the Brookline Church of Christ, and an attempt to respond both theologically and pastorally to the recent Boston Marathon bombings.

“All Things New”

Rev. Chad Smith

Brookline Church of Christ

28 April 2013

Text: Revelation 21:1-6 

I’ve been thinking about you all over these past two weeks, praying for your safety, your healing, your sense of normalcy. I’ve been thinking about the streets where you live, where you were locked-down, where you returned to work and to school. I’ve been meditating on the questions your children, and parents, and friends have all been asking you, and reflecting on what you’ve told them about the bombings, about your experiences, about how you’re holding up. And I’ve been doing all this thinking about your trials of the past two weeks through the filter of today’s text from Revelation, trying to see what you’ve endured through this vision of a new heaven and a new earth and the end of mourning, crying, pain, and death. And I’m wondering how that vision may make a difference for us, in how we live, how we love, how we be this strange, sometimes awkward body we call “church.” In our class following service today we can talk about specific action points, but here in this sermon I want to offer a series of images, a kind of sketch that will hopefully put some contours and color to a vision that might seem, well, a bit far-off and unrealistic given the world as we usually see it.

See if you can follow me into the first image. I don’t know where you were on April 15, at about 2:50 p.m. As for me, I was sitting at the table in 7^th period, with eight curious, sharp, insightful students gathered there as well, and we were all engaged in an animated conversation about the possibility of nonviolence. Somewhat ironic, I suppose. The text we were considering was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” We had spent the past two weeks mining philosophical and religious traditions for help in answering the question of what it means to be a human being. All of them had read snippets of this letter in their history classes when learning about the civil rights movement. None of them had read the full letter, nor did they have any conception that King’s remarks were addressed to white clergypersons, whom he viewed as his brothers in the Christian faith. And none of them had yet made the connection that King’s campaign of nonviolence for the civil rights of African-Americans, and his dream of one beloved community, was impossible to conceive apart from his understanding that something new had broken into human history in the gospel. Were it not for that conviction, there is no reason for him to sit in jail, no reason to suffer violence to achieve a noble end, no reason to be assassinated 45 years ago this month. I picture Martin sitting in that jail, and wondering if this was even worth it. Is it possible that in that jail cell, the vision of all things being made new, of new relations between black and white, and no more tears – did that vision help him choose to keep going? I see him there in my mind, and I wonder. That’s the first image.

Hold that image in your mind, and for the second image travel back with me about 2,500 years. A prophet is standing in the midst of ruin. His face is lined with grief as his sandals kick up the dust of the rubble around him. Broken stones litter what once was a great courtyard, and as he looks up he sees the shell of what used to be a temple to the Most High God, looking now like some abandoned archaeological dig. There used to be commerce, and sacrifice, and worship here. And now, nothing, not even the sound of a bird. Were you able to see the prophet’s face, you’d see his eyes well up with tears, leaving trails as they roll down his cheeks. He is among those left behind, left with those too unimportant to be taken into captivity, left without leaders and without protection. Who will lead them now, now that their king is gone? Where will the Law be read and sacrifice performed now? Where will God be worshipped, if not in His House? When will these stones be rebuilt, and the streets of his beloved city be restored, and cleansed of the blood spilled when the city was sacked? I see him there in the midst of desolation, and I wonder if it wasn’t then that this word came to him: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.  It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Can you see him there, surrounded by all the evidence to the contrary, and yet convicted with this new vision? I see him there, and I wonder if he knew he might never witness the day he longed for, and yet he dared to speak the word for those who came after. That’s the second image.

And finally, with Martin in his cell, and Jeremiah in the temple ruin, hold them there in your mind, and go back with me even further to the third image – back before history, back before time, back to the beginning. The grass is greener than we know it in springtime, and the air is fragrant with blooms and buds. A river runs through the garden, the sound gentle, and calming. The squirrels are chattering in the trees, and the birds are calling to one another. And in the middle of it all, there is a tree, so tall and strong and ancient, with fruit so delicious that, when you take a bite, you get a taste of life itself. It’s the perfect place to spend a Sunday morning. Except the man and the woman are on the outside, peering through the hedge, and that taste of life seems nothing more than a faded memory. What would it mean for them to return to the garden? What would it mean for them to once more commune in the evening breeze with the Power that brought all this into being? How would it even be possible for them to be restored to their intended destiny? I see them there, looking with longing for their home, and wondering if they will ever get back. That’s the third image.

Martin in his cell, Jeremiah in his ruined temple, and the first man and woman on the outside of the garden. I offer these images to you for the same reason the writer of Revelation offered readers a new vision: to remind us that we are not alone in our sufferings, regardless of what they are. What are you longing for today? Are you longing for work that isn’t drudgery? Are you longing for a relationship with a parent or spouse or friend to mend? Are you longing to see God’s church be something more than a self-help club? Are you longing for there to be real peace and an end to needless violence in our world? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then you need to know that you are not alone, and you are in good company. Like Martin, like Jeremiah, like our human parents whose experience is an archetype for every human experience, we have all suffered greatly, and we all long for something new to be born into this less-than-perfect, less-than-good mess we know now. 

Revelation’s vision reminds us that we do not struggle alone. We struggle with the saints. And we have One who struggles on our behalf and who will complete the work begun in creation. The new heaven and the new earth will come. All things will be made new. But something has to happen for that day to arrive. And you so you aren’t under the impressions that we preachers never learn anything new, this text struck me in a new way this week. In Revelation’s vision, something crucial has to happen before the new heaven and new earth make their appearance, and before the sea of chaos is wiped away forever. And that crucial event happens just a few verses earlier than our text. Back up into chapter 20, verse 11. Satan, the deceiver and father of lies has just been defeated permanently. And the seer has a vision of a great white throne with One sitting on it. And here’s the crucial part: the old heaven and the old earth flee from the presence of the One who will make all things new. And the text says this: “no place was found for them.” The new heaven and earth cannot make their appearance until the old heaven and earth have left. Why do we expect anything new to emerge on this planet, in this church, in our own lives, when we are still fundamentally committed to preserving all the old habits, and patterns, and violence and dysfunction of everyday, normal human life? Why would we expect that? Why do we think we can maintain a place for the old heaven and earth?

Friends, I believe with all my heart that God wants to make our world new, and indeed is making our world new, if we have eyes to see where that work is happening. I also believe that God’s preferred way of working in our world is through us. And each of us individually, and we as a church body, have to examine what parts of the old heaven and earth we are still committed to. Otherwise, the new heaven and new earth will remain far-off, and we will peer at our true home and destiny like our ancestors peering through the hedge on the outside of the garden of Eden. It doesn’t have to be that way. God wants to do a new thing – in you, in me, in us, and in our world. Do you believe it? Do you believe this vision: “See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the old things have passed away.” Amen.

Looking for Life

The following is a transcript of a sermon given on Easter Sunday, 2013, at the Brookline Church of Christ. The sermon drew especially from the lectionary texts from Luke 24 and Isaiah 65.

 

If you were to risk the one life you live on anything, what would it be? What would you bet on? I suspect you wouldn’t bet your life on your NCAA bracket, or on Pucksutawney Phil’s weather predictions, especially not this year. If we were to risk it all, all we have, it would be for something important, would it not? Something with meaning? Something with purpose? Our lives are too valuable to just throw away.

 

But maybe there would be something worth a big ol’ risky gamble. Perhaps, if we use our imaginations, we can see a scenario in our minds. Maybe it’s just a coffee-shop daydream, but we can see ourselves as heroes and heroines, risking our lives, betting that our courage and our strength will overcome impossible odds. No risk, no reward, right? And the greater the risk, oh, the greater the reward! Can you see yourself finding the cure for some terrible disease? Writing the book that hits the bestseller list and wows the critics for its insight into human experience? Can you see yourself advancing human knowledge in biology, or chemistry, or biblical studies, and being recognized by your peers? Can you see yourself creating the next piece of art that may one day be on display at the MFA, or singing down at Symphony Hall with the BSO? What would you risk to make that happen? What would you risk for that kind of immortality?

 

Many of us would make, and indeed have made great sacrifices to achieve our goals. We’ve put relationships with spouses and children on the line to move ahead in our careers. We’ve risked a lot for our education in terms of financial burdens and social capital. We’ve stepped out into the wide blue yonder pulling up roots, by setting forth to brave new worlds – like Boston – all to pursue our dreams and livelihood. And yet whatever we’ve risked in these cases have been manageable risks – nonetheless challenging, to be sure, but not quite as risky as going all in with everything we’ve got.

 

What would a real gamble with your life be? Wouldn’t it be something that a good number of us would describe as foolhardy? I like to pose scenarios like this in my ethics classes to try to help students think about their moral obligations and responses to particular situations. Suppose, for example, we are sitting here peacefully enjoying a lovely Easter morning, and we look outside into the backyard and witness an assault taking place out there. We size the situation up, and the attacker is huge, 6’8, 250 lbs, all muscle. He’s a got a gun of some kind, too. Now, as your minister, I’m willing to put my life on the line for my friends and for strangers. So I run out there before anyone can stop me to try to prevent the assault from going any further. I’m 5’6, the attacker’s got over a 100 lbs on me, plus a gun, so what do you think is going to happen? Unless I magically turn into Superman on my way out the door…this is going to turn out to be a foolish gamble, and the next time you all are sitting in these pews it might be for my funeral.

 

My life might be a foolish thing to risk for a stranger, especially if there are less risky options available, like calling the police and getting others out of harm’s way. But if that person out there in duress were my wife, if that were Christi out there – that changes everything. If something were happening to Laurie, and Allie, and Morgan, I bet Dale would be all in and risk everything for them. If something were happening to Abi, I bet Nate would be all in. If something were happening to Kevin, I bet Suzanne would be all in. If something were happening to Sierra and Michael, I’d bet all the tea in China that Amy & Ryan would risk everything. For those whom we love, we would risk all we have, including and especially our lives, if it meant protecting them, saving them from harm. We’d hardly have to think twice about that kind of gamble. Love doesn’t make rational, sensible calculations, does it? No, love goes all in with everything.

 

But we have to ask ourselves: is such a gamble worth it, is it worth your life? Is love worth the possibility of losing everything?

 

The more I live with the Easter story, with the empty tomb, with the words “he is not here, he has risen,” the more I appreciate just what a huge, utterly risky gamble this whole business was from the very start. Everyone knows how the story of every reformist figure turns out: they wind up as tragedies. Especially in the ancient world. You can’t challenge and defeat Rome. We are not Spartacus. Remember, this is the people that perfected the use of crucifixion as their preferred method of execution. We would call that cruel and inhuman punishment, even for our worst criminals. Rome was paranoid about gatherings like ours this morning because you never could quite know what kind of nasty, secret business the rabble were up to. For Rome, you could worship whatever god you like so long as you acknowledged the true power that moved the universe – the will of Divine Caesar.

 

Jesus takes the biggest gamble I can imagine: he takes everything he’s got, and he bets it on an unseen reality, on a power at work in the cosmos that affirms the will-to-life and which might reverse the will-to-death embodied by Rome and every death-dealing, humanity-destroying regime from the pages of history.

 

When he started this business out in Galilee, he could remain off the radar, testing this power. But the stakes keep being raised the closer he gets to Jerusalem. And when he clears the temple, putting all his chips on the table, he calls Rome’s hand. Are they bluffing? Or has this whole kingdom of God, this prophetic ministry, this humanity-centered will-to-life business been one huge, tragic gamble?

 

When the women get to the tomb on that morning so long ago, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and another Mary, they come looking for death. That’s what they expect to find. A dead body. A dead dream. A dead hope. A dead love. And when they look into the tomb, what they discover is a question: why do you do you look for the living among the dead? They don’t find what they expect. Instead of death, they discover something incredibly perplexing and disturbing. As Annie Dillard observed, “This looking business is risky.”[1]

 

So I want to ask you all again: what would you risk your life for? It would depend on what you see. Were you to see your loved ones, your children and family subjected to brutality, subjected to death-dealing, humanity-destroying powers, you would want to intervene, wouldn’t you? Of course you would; love would compel you. But if death were all you could see, you would have no hope of success. Death can only be overcome by looking for life. You would have to see like Isaiah saw: a vision of world that is new, a new heavens and a new earth, a vision of rejoicing and delight, a vision of gladness, a vision of joy! A vision where children don’t die before their time and old persons enjoy vitality. A vision of building and dwelling, of eating and drinking. A vision without tears, without alienation, without calamity, without depression, without cancer and disease, without despair. A vision with blessing, with peace, with harmony, and with wholeness. A vision that sees that love is the power that holds the universe together, that moves life forward and raises the dead!

 

Seeing that vision clearly, Jesus risked it all, for you, for me, for every human being to come, so that we too might see and look for life. And in a world that continually sees and creates death, this is the vision we need, my friends, and it is good news indeed. Amen.

---

[1] Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Forgive Us Our Debts

The drama over the national debt ceiling in recent days has, somewhat strangely, had me thinking about the Lord’s Prayer of all things. And not the “deliver us from evil” part, though that certainly has its relevance here.

No, I’ve been thinking about the line asking for forgiveness, which comes right after the request for “daily bread.” Only in churches we don’t usually pray the line found in most recent translations – “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” We usually say something like, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” or use “sins” and “sin against us”.

However you translate it, there is a clear resonance of what is owed by you or to you. And “trespasses” and “sins” don’t quite, in my view, convey that sense of obligation that Jesus has in mind. I think they spiritualize the prayer too much.

What would happen if we started praying in that way: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.“

For one, I think we’d be more aware of how deeply our economic life is connected to our spiritual life. I mean, Jesus talks more about money than he does about God! Could it be that how we think and use money and conduct our affairs says more about where we are spiritually than our professed theological beliefs?

It’s something to ponder. What if America’s debtors simply forgave our national debt? What if America simply forgave the debt it is owed by many developing nations?

That, I think, might be called Jubilee.

The Shape of History, Part 1

Over the last several weeks I’ve been slowly making my way through Ian Morris’ Why the West Rules–For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. Morris is a classicist and archaeologist at Stanford, and his book is hugely ambitious. The last generation or two of historians has largely abandoned this type of wide-ranging, broad argument about whether history has any discernible shape. The preference has been for smaller-scale, micro-histories and from that vantage to extrapolate on broader trends. Big books like Morris’ have often been greeted with suspicion, which is often part of the larger intellectual trend of incredulity toward grand narratives.

Morris, of course, is aware of this climate of historical opinion and nevertheless has made an important and, to my mind, courageous intervention into it. And he brings an interesting background as an ancient historian to both the general question of history’s shape and the more specific question of why the West – especially since around 1750 – has dominated the world stage, and how that could be changing.

At the heart of the book is Morris’ understanding and tracking of how “social development” – or more generally, “historical change” – actually happens. He has even attempted to quantify this on a development scale in order to provide some sense of development looks like. This allows him to do what historians do best: to describe how social change actually happens. And this, I think, is overdue from our historians.

I’ll have more to say about whether his argument succeeds in future posts. But what I like so far is that he has a nice balance of attention to the details of the past in light of conversations in the present. We study the past not merely for its own sake or curiosity, but because it helps us know and understand our own circumstances better.

Lara Logan, Osama bin Laden, & the Reality of Evil

Last night I watched the 60 Minutes segment in which Lara Logan, CBS’s chief foreign correspondant, courageously recounted the brutal sexual assault she suffered in Egypt on February 11, the night Hozni Mubarak was finally ousted.  Two moments of the interview stood out to me. One was quite personal: Ms. Logan’s struggle, in the midst of the attack, to remember her children, to try to stay alive for them, and the despair she experienced over what she perceived during the attack to be her failure to fight hard enough so she might see them again. The other, perhaps more troubling, was when she recounted someone in the crowd identifying her as a Jew — which she is not — and the fury and madness that unleashed in the mob.

Then, this morning, I awoke to the news that Osama bin Laden is dead.

I found these two news stories to be a fascinating juxtaposition. On the one hand, President Obama announced to the nation that, with bin Laden dead, “justice has been done.” An eye for an eye, a life for a life, no doubt. On the other hand, Lara Logan’s attackers will likely never be revealed or known. What is justice for her? And what is justice for the families of the 9/11 victims, many of whom have been expressing mixed emotions at the news today?

It’s a sobering reminder that evil doesn’t cease even when “the bad guy” meets what may be his deserved fate. The fact that a crowd may be so easily incited to violence against women, or to antisemitic rage, shows we still have a long way to go in our world. And it begs the question: what are the conditions that drive people into murderous action? Into murderous justice?

Or to put it slightly differently, is the old eye-for-eye framework of justice the best we can do?

Can Superman Save Us? – Part 2

I finally saw Waiting for Superman over the weekend. It was emotionally powerful, disturbing, and challenging – all characteristics of a good documentary, regardless of whether you support its point of view. I can see why it has generated so much conversation.

What stood out most to me were the stories of the kids – their goals, their hopes for achievement, their families. So many factors overlapped: economy, demographics, race/ethnicity, politics. Yet they all crystalized in these kids, in their very personal question of whether or not an education could  be the promise our society claims it is.

I was also struck that the really tragic figures in the documentary are the adults. Teachers frustrated by bureaucratic and mindless systems. Parents feeling overwhelmed and powerless and like they have failed their children. Administrators wanting to change the system yet feeling their hands tied by lack of political support or social will.

The film paints a rather bleak portrait of what happens in public school systems, even ones with money. I suspect it will resonate with many families’ experience of their school system.

But it does point the way forward. We do know what works. Some of the charter schools depicted are using methods that other educators have been calling for for years: smaller classroom size, individual attention and mentoring, extended school-day hours, and such. (All of which, I might add, have long been successfully utilized by independent schools, if you can afford one.)

The problem, as I see it, is essentially political and spiritual. We say we value education. But that’s not where the money goes. It’s not where the incentives go. Yes, we have some really wonderful teachers and administrators, and some really terrible ones. Overall, though, do we really value education? Is it a fundamental right for all?

What, after all, will ultimately save our schools?

This Time I Dance

I spent the past week on retreat out in the Berkshires at the Kripalu Center. My wife Christi and I have vacationed in those dream-like hills every summer we’ve been together, so I’ve driven past Kripalu a number of times. But this was the first time I’ve actually been. And in the middle of peak foliage!

The program I was attending was called “Unleashing Your Calling” and was led by Tama Kieves, author of This Time I Dance: Creating the Work You Love. Tama is one of those rare souls who combine a wicked sense of humor and sharp mind with an approachable, comforting presence. Our group – about 35 truly amazing human beings – could not have asked for a better facilitator.

It is difficult to explain what happened over the week. I have been a part of several powerful, spiritual experiences - in traditional church settings, on retreats or out in nature, at music or artistic performances. And yet the combination of what was happening for the group as a whole and for me individually took this experience into another dimension. Kripalu’s location, on a hill in the Stockbridge Bowl, has been the site for many spiritually-minded groups:  a place for Native American rituals, a former Jesuit worship and retreat center, and now the largest yoga training facility in the world. I wonder if one can’t help but catch the spirit here if one is open to such things.

I came out of the week with a profound sense of gratitude, for the people I met, for the insights I gained into self and my work in the world, and for the sometimes meandering path that has brought me thus far on my journey.

If at times I’ve plodded along this path, no more! This time, I’ve got my dancing shoes on.