Sermon:
Every
week the Revised Common Lectionary offers four readings for use in worship –
Old Testament, Psalm, Gospel and New Testament letter. The psalm this week is Psalm 80 – a lament, and
when I read it I was caught by two things in it.
One
is its honesty about the mess God’s people and the kingdom of Israel are in;
the other is the openness and simplicity with which the psalmist and all who
pray this psalm ask for help from God and God alone. Three times – in verses 3, 7 and 19 this plea
of longing rises to heaven, “Restore
us, O God; / Let your face shine, that we may be saved.” It reminds us that from beginning to end and
right at the heart of all our life, including our biggest messes, our true and
best hope is in God and in how God looks at us.
My father-in-law at the end of his life seemed
to boil his faith down to a few essentials, and one of those was an old Hebrew
blessing from the Book of Numbers that Moses is said to have learned directly
from God, and passed on to Aaron and his sons:
The
Lord bless you and keep you;
the
Lord make his face to shine upon you,
and be gracious to you;
the
Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
and give you peace.
Everywhere he went – to Walmart, Tim Horton’s,
church, on the street, Bill Newell would stop people, put his hand on their
shoulder, look them in the face, and just offer them this blessing. I wonder what it felt like – to be offered
the hope of God looking upon you face to face with loving kindness.
Last week we celebrated the baptism of Ethan
Beattie. It was also Reign of Christ
Sunday, and we had a great time. The liturgy
was full and helpful in opening us to God.
Ethan charmed us all. Our spirits
were high. Karen was struck by the
amount of laughter in the service. The
music was robust and joyful, especially the final hymn – “Rejoice, the Lord is
King.” All went well, just as we had
planned and hoped for.
Then something happened and something was
done that no one, not even the people involved, had planned on. While we were standing and singing the final hymn,
Vera Bailey quietly stepped out from her pew near the back. Leonard had to step aside to let her move
into the aisle. In the aisle she made
her way up to the third row from the front where Stew Beattie was standing and
cradling Ethan – contentedly asleep, in his arms. As Vera stood in the aisle and looked at
Ethan, her face beamed. Stew looked at
her, at Ethan, and back at Vera. He and she
together became one in their adoration of the baby. I wished I had a camera at that moment, but
maybe I’m glad I didn’t. After maybe a
whole minute, Vera nodded to Stew and moved back to her place with Len in their
pew near the back.
We don’t do that kind of thing here normally,
do we? And I wonder.
Vera said later she just felt she had
to. There was no way not to go up and
just look at the baby.
And was that event – that unplanned obedience
to an inner urging of Spirit, the willingness to step outside the box of our liturgy
– was that an unveiling of God’s face shining upon us? I know what came to mind for me as I watched
this unfold was the Gospel story of Anna – an elderly female prophet in the
temple of Jerusalem, bursting into praise when she sees the baby Jesus brought
by Mary and Joseph for his dedication.
Somehow at that moment we as a congregation in Winona seemed to be caught
up in, and to become part of God’s unfolding story – the story we read in the
Bible.
And maybe that’s what it is – what we hope
for – that somehow and in some way we find ourselves living in the way of God, living
out God’s good will, spontaneously living out of the knowledge of God’s kindly
and loving gaze upon us all.
“Restore us, O God; / Let your face shine,
that we may be saved.”
This psalm comes from a time of national
crisis and distress. Generations of morally
bankrupt and politically misleading leadership have led to such a state of
collapse that no amount of political or economic tinkering, no amount of
military re-armament no amount of restructuring or rebranding, , amount of
political spin or even change of leadership will be able to undo the harm that
has been done to the kingdom, nor to stop its coming-to-an-end as a power for
good in the world.
In their distress and sense of loss the psalmist
and whatever part of the people may have joined in reciting this psalm remember
that their only real hope of being restored as a people of God for the good of
the world is God’s covenant with them – God’s promise to show them the way of
right relations in all things, and their willingness to listen and follow
regardless of where it may take them or what it might require of them.
“Restore us, O God; / Let your face shine,
that we may be saved.” They want to go
back to the way things used to be – even if they never really were that way in
reality, even then. They want to move
ahead into a new way of being, better than what they are now – even if they’re
not quite sure how to get there.
And isn’t that where we are now as well?
Just last month we were all at least a little
bit shaken as a nation when in the course of one week two members of the
Canadian Armed Forces were killed in attacks in Canada. I heard the news of Nathan Cirillo’s murder
at the National War Memorial and the killer’s subsequent invasion of the House
of Parliament on the radio in my car as I was leaving the church for a
meeting.
I was driving along Fifty Road and down the
ramp onto the QEW – something I do almost daily and sometimes several times a
day without even thinking. That day, though,
I felt a strange uneasiness and an odd disquiet. The road and its traffic seemed different,
looked different, felt different. For a
few minutes I found myself thinking that any one of these cars or trucks around
me could be driven by a terrorist determined to crash into me or even blow a
bunch of us up once we were together on the Skyway Bridge.
With the shock we have felt, and the tear we
have suffered in our sense of security in our own land many people, I think,
have been looking for ways to go back to the way we used to be – even if we
never really were as good or perfect as we think we were. Others are looking for ways to move ahead to
something better, even though we don’t really know – or cannot agree, what that
should – or will be.
And
who knows? Maybe this is the way God’s
face is set. Maybe this is the way God
will bless. The way that will bring us
peace.
Others,
though, are feeling led in a different direction. At the time of the killing some national news
outlets held back from labelling it a terrorist attack, and took the time to
find out what really could be known.
They chose not to fuel the hysteria that could have developed, so much
so that a visiting American diplomat interviewed a day or two later said he
wished the American media would react to things as rationally and helpfully.
After
Nathan Cirillo’s funeral a girlfriend went public in saying she wished the
government and media would stop debating whether he was a hero or not, and seeing
terrorism as the threat, and would start to talk instead about the state of our
criminal justice and mental health systems as the real threats that have been
exposed to our well-being as a people.
At Presbytery last
month, Diane Matheson, one of our Conference staff also told us to get better
at “connect[ing] with the youth –
they’re the key! [she said]. Radicalized religious youth are being
converted en- masse because they need to belong to something. Let’s bring them into our fold before they
have a chance to be hurt by organizations that would exploit them. We don’t need them to be the future of the
church; we want them because we can help them belong to something [constructive
rather than destructive of life and community.] Helping young people to build
future stories for themselves – which may or may not involve the church – is a
way to keep them focused on behaviours that will help them be successful.”
And a Muslim imam said much the same thing in a radio interview a few
days ago. Instead of demonizing
potentially radical groups and trying to return to what we imagine we used to
be as a Christian nation, we should do what we can to strengthen our many
religious communities, so that religious leaders of all kinds can better reach
their respective flocks with the message that when they resort to violence, God
– the true God of any name, is simply not with them.
And I wonder. Is that the way God’s face is set? Is that the way of being caught up today in
God’s unfolding story? And of living out
of God’s loving gaze upon us all?
We need practice, don’t we, in seeking God’s
face. In knowing the direction God is
looking and leading, and discerning together the kinds of actions and
strategies that reflect God’s way.
Is it safe to assume, though, that as it did
for Vera and even for Stew last week, more often than not it takes us outside the box of
what we have known so far, beyond the way we usually have acted, a step away
from the same-old same-old into something we have not yet seen or been, something
still in the making, still experimental, but something that will
be the future that God wants us to start living towards right now
because it is the best hope for the well-being of all that God loves.
In
this season we remember that the God above and beyond us all, who holds all
things and all people, comes to us as a little baby, a new kind of life still
needing to grow, that we and others are called to welcome, to cradle, and to
properly adore regardless of where it may lead us and what it might require of
us.
“Restore us, O God; / Let your face shine,
that we may be saved.”
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