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May
16, 2004 (David Hyers) Psalm 67 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah, that your way may be known upon earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Selah. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, has blessed us. May God continue to bless us; let all the ends of the earth revere him. --------------------------------------------------------------------- John 14:23-29 Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe. ------------------------------------------------------------------ As you may know, I have recently returned from my vacation. I traveled by car from Waco to Tennessee, visiting North Carolina and Georgia as well. It was a mad dash to make all the rounds to see friends and family. It was one of those weeks where I spent more time in the car than in any one place. Overall, it was a wonderful time of rest and recuperation. During the 3500 miles, two gallons of coffee, two dozen candy bars, copious amounts of beef jerky, and a rather large bag of rock candy, any pretense of a healthy diet was gone, and many of my old college addictions had resurfaced. Out of the mostly dietary addictions, one additional addiction reached a new peak. Several of you probably suspect my fondness for NPR and public radio. After 20 some hours in the car, let’s just say that now I am more fully aware of my NPR habit. It’s not hard to pick out NPR addicts. You will often see them sitting in parked cars, staring intently upon the dashboard, caught up in a driveway moment. At other times they might fidget absentmindedly, unconsciously reaching for an imaginary radio knob, or after a trip such as mine, they might cradle a wrist having sprained it from compulsive channel hopping, trying to find that clear signal. And honestly, my wrist does hurt a bit these days! The addicts might even be speaking in some strange language: “Click and Clack,” Dewe Cheatem,” and “Guy Noir.” It’s not hard to see the signs. I suppose my addiction began with my love of storytelling, that desire to inhabit the imaginative place you go when seeing something with your mind’s eye. It’s an appreciation of the difference that hearing can make over seeing, not better or worse, just different. Maybe it’s that I can be busy around the house while listening to the news when television acts like an anchor to the couch. Admittedly I am a news junky, yet until this last trip I didn’t fully understand the addiction I have developed. Now I rarely watch the news, yet I religiously tune into the radio--BBC, NPR, Radio Ireland, Pacifica, and the list could go on. Perhaps it is telling that I have only one station programmed into each of the five radios I own. One would think that after driving 3500 miles halfway across the nation and back, I would be tired of NPR, that my instinctual need to seek out the local public radio station would be lessened after 13 hours of non-stop satellite-fed NPR. NPR ends each of my days and begins each of my mornings. I’ve spent many sleepless nights in the company of the BBC World Service. In my rather neurotic attempts at self improvement, I decided to branch out a bit, to rest my clenched radio hand, and to begin reading my news again. So I bought a news magazine and sat down like a good Presbyterian, the news in one hand and the Bible in the other. The cover page featured a man bound to a cage, his covered head hanging low and his body slumped. In a play on words, the title read “Shocked and Appalled,” an appropriate title, given the contents of the interior article. When I opened the cover of the magazine, part of me felt smacked. As the week progressed and news of abuses continued to surface, I became numb. And as the news returned of the beheaded American, you could have written the title on my chest: “shocked and appalled.” My reaction was not one of anger with our friend in Crawford or our fellow Presbyterian, Dr. Rice. It was not a political reaction. Rather, I became aware again of how very grateful I am to be an American. I am thankful to live where such abuses can be brought into the light of day and where, more than many other places in the world, a measure of justice can be worked out. I think my reaction was one of weariness, sadness, and even a healthy re-sensitization to the violence that so plagues our world. I became aware again of humanity’s great ability to dehumanize our brothers and sisters, the continued use of violence in so many areas of our lives, not just physical violence but mental and spiritual violence. So, in one hand I held the shock and awe of world news, and in the other hand I held these words of Jesus, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives.” But I had trouble hearing the words of Jesus; it was as if there were a haze or a buzzing noise separating me from the comfort and the assurance of Christ’s wonder words. Now I love this verse of scripture. Time and again I used this scripture at the graveside or crematorium while in Scotland. A few year ago, during my beloved aunt’s death, Christ’s words came to me as a great comfort. “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” Yet as I read these words, my heart was troubled; I was afraid. The good news of this text seemed to fall silently through the haze before me. A passage from Jeremiah filled my head: “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” Peace, peace, they say, when there is no peace. So much to my dismay and lack of sleep, the sermon did not come. The words fell silently off the page through the buzz, lost in the haze. Early in the morning, long before the sun was up with the BBC on the radio, providing little comfort, Molly the dog began to stir, claw scraping against crate and Nyla Bone clattering on the floor. I rolled over in bed and began again to go over the text in my mind. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives”—the words kept repeating in my head. The sermon, as much a prayer as proclamation, began to come. Amidst the fear and troubled heart, my mind turned to this congregation, to the love that we see shown each other often in the face of the silencing power of death. And you began to proclaim to me through our lives together the caring you do for one another. At that moment I knew again and anew that we, as the people of God, are so often the instruments of God’s spirit, for each other. We through God’s love become the advocates, the comforters--perhaps the very peace of Christ--for each other even when one of us cannot hear it, cannot see it. We can hold the good news for one another, carrying the light of Life for each other as you unknowingly did for me this week. And so, as Molly the dog continued to stir and the sun began to poke its head over the horizon, I turned off the BBC, got out of bed, bundling up my restlessness, my faithlessness, my hope, and my longing. Bundling them all together all at once, I imagined myself standing before this text, surrounded by those who will carry me when I need it, with my arms outstretched, reaching, praying, hoping, proclaiming, looking and living for the peace of Christ. For even now, it is in our midst. Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. |
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