Reason to Believe Lamentations 3 September 18, 2016 I. Reason to Believe Springsteen Seen a man standin' over a dead dog lyin' by the highway in a ditch He's lookin' down kinda puzzled pokin' that dog with a stick Got his car door flung open he's standin' out on highway 31 Like if he stood there long enough that dog'd get up and run Struck me kinda funny seem kinda funny sir to me Still at the end of every hard day people find some reason to believe Now Mary Lou loved Johnny with a love mean and true She said baby I'll work for you everyday and bring my money home to you One day he up and left her and ever since that She waits down at the end of that dirt road for young Johnny to come back Struck me kinda funny funny yea indeed how at the end of every hard earned day you can find some reason to believe Take the baby to the river, Kyle William they called him Wash the baby in the water take away little Kyle's sin In a whitewash shotgun shack an old man passes away take the body to the graveyard and over him they pray Lord won't you tell us, tell us what does it mean At the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe Congregation gathers down by the riverside Preacher stands with his bible, groom stands waitin' for his bride Congregation gone and the sun sets behind a weepin' willow tree Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly Wonderin' where can his baby be still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe
A. So Bruce Springsteen reminds us that there are lots of good reasons to lose hope and to lose your faith. 1. He reminds us of lost pets or tragic meaningless death. 2. He shows the absurd juxtaposition of death and new birth. 3. There is the pain of lost relationships, abandonment, betrayal, rejection and denial. 4. And the pain that comes with lost love and the abyss that comes with the meaning of your life not showing up. B. But then he recognizes that in spite of that pain and loss, people still find some reason to believe. C. Then there s the poor guy in our scripture from Lamentations whose life really, REALLY sucks. I can t imagine life being much worse than his; but he still finds some reason to believe. D. Why is that? When it feels like God and all the cosmos is out to get you, how do people still find a reason to believe? 2 2
II. Well the first answer may come in the author of Lamentation s revelation at the end of the passage where he proclaims that, Although God causes grief, God will have compassion according to the abundance of God s steadfast love; [here s the real cincher] for God does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone. A. Yeah, so after verse after verse after verse describing the horrible suffering that God has brought him, suddenly at the end he has this revelation that God is not the cause of his suffering for God does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone. B. Suffering is not God s will. C. Suffering and affliction is never part of some plan of God s. D. God will have compassion according to the abundance of God s steadfast love and God is there with us to redeem us from suffering; not to cause it. 3 3
E. So believing that God is Love and is with us to help us and redeem us from the suffering that oft times comes in life; that s our first reason to believe. III. Next on our list is one that scientists and philosophers are beginning to consider; namely, that believing makes us more fit for survival. That s a good reason. A. Some evolutionary scientists, among others, are starting to see how our beliefs may make us more fit for survival. B. Those who have constructed a belief system that fortifies them in the face of tragedy and suffering may have a survival advantage over those whose faith is overcome by doubt, fear, anxiety and despair. 1. Simply put, those who faith keeps them from sinking into despair and hopelessness, they are more likely to engage a threat with courage and vitality; which in turn improves their chances of survival. 4 4
2. While those without such a faith, they sink into despair and give up hope and succumb to the threat; which of course, leads to their demise. C. More than an attitudinal thing, let me give you another kind of example. 1. I think most people would agree that being literate has greatly increased our ability to survive. 2. Without literacy we d probably still only have a lifespan around 30 years. Our medical and scientific advancement would be greatly stifled. 3. So how did faith and belief affect this? 4. Well, before the printing press only a very, very small portion of the population could read. There was no reason. 5. But with the printing press, books could be made much more quickly and cheaply; and what was the first book to be produced in mass quantities because of the already existing demand for it? The Bible. 5 5
6. With the Bible being available for the common person to read, more people learned to read, which lead to more Bibles and more literacy. 7. I don t know what would have happened without the Bible, but clearly it was people beliefs that made them want to read the Bible and thus that belief led to the wide literacy that we have today and our improved survival rate. IV. The next reason to believe is that sometimes tragedy and suffering themselves give us a reason to believe. A. Just as fear may cause an adrenaline rush. B. Sometimes tragedy helps us to formulate belief and brings out the best of people. C. Author, Rebecca Solnit, who has written extensively about how people respond to huge tragedies like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina writes that there s a way a disaster throws people into the present and sort of gives them this supersaturated immediacy that also includes a deep sense of connection. 6 6
It s as though in some violent gift you ve been given a kind of spiritual awakening where you re close to mortality in a way that makes you feel more alive, you re deeply in the present, and can let go of past and future, and your personal narrative, in some ways. 1. She finds that, in an odd way, tragedy, rather than defeating hope and faith, actually turns it on. 2. Additionally, while crisis often is scary in the moment, upon reflection these are times when creativity and connectivity is most active. 3. That might be a way of saying that in times of crisis that is where you will find God most active. V. The next reason to believe is found in examining the option A. What happens when you take a loving God out of the equation? B. You end up with a Grand Machine. 7 7
C. The underlying intellectual frame of the Grand Machine cosmology strips our existence of meaning and purpose and undermines our sense of moral responsibility for one another and nature We are left in a state of existential despair searching for sources of distraction from the terrifying loneliness of a meaningless existence in a hostile universe. [p.39 Change the Story, Change the Future, A living Economy for a Living Earth, by David C. Korten] D. Some of it is just a matter of which basket do you want to put you eggs in? 1. Do you want to believe that we live in a meaningless, purposeless, temporary mistake where love and goodness are just transitory conventions; where consciousness is an accident of matter and there is no salvation? Or? 2. Do you want to believe that there is a conscious matrix of connectivity that seeks to create through a principle of love that enhances the value of all things luring us with love into the future and saving our past with in its being thus giving us meaning and purpose and salvation? 8 8
VI. There is another option that was stated on a bumper sticker that read I believe in Good. A. This may be taken to simply say that the universe may not be good but I believe it should be. That is still something to believe in and a reason to believe. B. It may also be a way of saying that one believes that the creation is Good. C. Unitarian minister Theo Parker in the 1800s predicted the inevitable success of the abolitionist cause this way, he writes: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. 9 9
D. A century later, Martin Luther King, Jr. paraphrased these words when he said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." E. And, as our disaster expert Rebecca Solnit puts it, Sometimes cause and effect are centuries apart, sometimes Martin Luther King s arc of the moral universe that bends towards justice is so long, if you see its curve, sometimes hope lies not in the looking forward, but backward, to study the line of that arc. [Rebecca Solnit] VII. For me one of the best reasons to believe is to go back to the work of Rebecca Solnit where she found that in the midst of tragedy, while there is some looting and inhumanity, one also finds a huge amount of compassion and discovers that tragedy has brought out the best in most people. I believe in LOVE, because I ve seen it and I really don t want to live in a world without it. 10 10
Or, in the immortal words of Paul McCartney, Please lock me away and don t allow the day, here inside, where I hide/ with my loneliness, I don t care what they say, I won t stay in a world without love. So, I believe. AMEN. 11 11