PRIVATE FACES IN PUBLIC PLACES Scripture Readings: Judges 4:1-10, Revelation 2:1-7 If you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go (Judges 4:8). For many of us who grew up in a previous generation, mother represented the virtues of home: love and intimacy, kindness, compassion, forgiveness and understanding, faith. Father, on the other hand, represented the virtues needed to navigate through the world: intelligence and ambition, mission and vision, determination and strength. The culture many of us grew up in separated these arenas of home and work and often only allowed one gender or another access to these places women at home and men at work in the world. That s why we began to think that male and female were somehow inherently different: women were more naturally loving and kind, faithful and nurturing while men were naturally strong and commanding, ambitious and intelligent. We were put into little boxes, boxes defined by gender roles and narrow moral codes appropriate to our respective arenas of influence. Women stayed at home and were loving and kind. Men stayed at work and were competent and successful. That was the fantasy, at least. But of course you can t reduce human beings to our small conceptions. And we humans don t do terribly well when we re raised in a little box. We will either bust out or collapse in sooner or later. That s why there were and are so many instances of men who had mastered their public image and were regarded as lions of the public sphere who nonetheless harbored terrible private secrets about their home life, how they treated their spouses, their children, their families, themselves. And that s why there were so many instances of women who were bastions of morality in the home sphere but withheld their gifts from the public one, were too intimidated to share those gifts with others outside 1
the family. They became nonentities outside their small little box, their comfort zone. And that s how it came to be that there were two neat little boxes that we called private and public morality. And which one you upheld depended on who you were and where you were. And that s how our culture harbored a giant hypocrisy, a hypocrisy that continues to surface again and again and again. In fact, it surfaces in our Old Testament reading for the morning. In our reading we meet Deborah, the only female judge of ancient tribal Israel, taking her place alongside such male judges as Moses and Joshua, Gideon and Samson. Deborah could have told us a thing or two about breaking out of a little box, being a woman in what was thought of as a man s role. One can only imagine the resistance she faced, the battles she was forced to fight, both private and public, to follow the calling God issued for her to be the judge of the 12 tribes of Israel. Part of that calling had to do with protecting the safety of the tribe which is what moves her to call for Barak, a tribal chieftain and military commander, to go fight those who were threatening Israel. Barak receives his commission from her but says a curious thing in response: If you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go. If you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go. What do you think that means? What do you think is the source of Barak s insistence that Deborah go with him? I wonder if Barak is seeking to avoid the kind of giant hypocrisy that often lies behind civilian leaders asking the military to carry on the dirty business of fighting while not going themselves. It s as if those civilians were saying that war might be a necessary evil but not necessary enough for them to dirty their hands with it. They ll stay home, thank you, while the soldiers are sent away. 2
But Barak won t be relegated to do the dirty work of Israel. If Israel is to fight, then all Israel, Deborah especially, must join in that work. If you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go. Of course this is a very topical subject. Think of how we have carried on our most recent wars. These last two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are unique in American history in that they are the first wars that we as a country haven t paid for not through raised taxes or war bonds. And you know why we haven t paid for them because a political calculation was made that the wars were not popular enough to survive a debate over how to pay for them. And this lack of financial responsibility for war, it seems to me, represents a larger lack of responsibility for the dirty business of war. We don t mind that war is being carried on in our name as long we aren t responsible for it. I mean, we ll watch the wars on T.V. as long as other people s children fight them and other people s grandchildren pay for them. Wouldn t you call that a giant hypocrisy? It s another example, it seems to me, of how we keep the private virtues of love and kindness from the public virtues of justice and mission. When we don t carry our private virtues into public action, that means we end up with a justice that has no love and thus is no justice at all. When we have a private morality with no concern for others, for our public moral calling, that means that we may have love but there is no justice. And love without justice is no love at all. Let me put a more private face on such maddening hypocrisy. William P. Moore was a blacksmith from Black River Falls and served as Captain of Company G, 10 th Wisconsin Infantry during the Civil War. His company left Wisconsin for Louisville, Kentucky on October 8, 1861. Near Leesville, KY he wrote the following on December 18: Here I learned from a citizen the history of a family who present a sad picture of the deplorable effects of civil war. The Father and two sons, each feeling a desire to do something for their country according to 3
their individual notions of right, enlisted; the two sons in the Union army, and the Father in the Rebel army. The two sons expostulated with the Father, but to no purpose, when one of the sons addressed his father in the following language: " Father, if we meet in battle and you get your gun to your face to shoot, and find that you got sight on one [of us], don't take it down until you have pulled the trigger. For as I live, I shall know no man as a friend who is an enemy to my country, and the cause I am fighting for. Do you hear the craziness behind those words? He s asking his father to shoot him and pledging to do the same if given the chance. Do you hear the deplorable way in which private and public morality have been torn apart from one another? These are the kind of crazy moral abstractions that blind patriotism or any other kind of absolute ideology demands of us. We will kill our father for the greater good or urge him to kill us. Apparently, in certain ideologies, not only are collateral damages an acceptable loss but also it s acceptable to lose one s soul. For surely that is what we lose when we separate private from public morality, love from justice, kindness from mission. And that separation happens again and again. What does it matter if someone has a fling with an intern as long as he keeps the economy in good shape? What does it matter if a few women are sexually harassed as long as the candidate is electable? What does it matter if we trample on the rights of a minority as long as it might save a few dollars? What does it matter if hundreds of civilian children are killed as long as the politician agrees with us on abortion? What does it matter if an institution of higher learning covers-up child sex abuse as long as the football team s won-loss record is good? 4
What does it matter if a marriage is discarded as long as it makes for good reality T.V.? Again and again and again we see the craziness, the giant hypocrisy that crouches like a beast in the hidden places of this culture. For my generation, such craziness has its origins in the way we boxed up the genders, boxed up the virtues, boxed up the moral codes, and kept them carefully separated: private here and public over there. Christian Smith, in his recent book, Souls in Transitions, sees a younger generation having a different struggle. He sees them stranded in hyperindividualism, believing that whatever seems right to each person is moral. In other words, to some in the younger generation, there is no such thing as public morality. Judging another s individual choice or action would impinge on their private moral realm. In fact, judging another is the only thing that IS absolutely wrong, according to that generation. Now there aren t two separate little boxes of private and public but each one of us is a little box, incapable of ever really finding common moral ground, ever really acting in concert for the greater good, ever really sharing a loving concern for justice. I wonder if Smith is right that this is really a generational issue. When I ve dropped by some of the Occupy Appleton events, there have been plenty of those of a younger generation breaking out of their box and making a bold statement for public morality. But none of us would deny that there are strong and powerful voices in this culture asking us to crawl inside of ourselves and stop worrying about all this justice nonsense. Just keep ourselves busy updating our Facebook profiles and, when something in the world really upsets us, we can press extra hard on that DISLIKE button. But there must be and there is another way. There IS a way revealed by Deborah and Barak, embodied by Jesus, pursued by the apostles of finding wholeness, of seeking integrity; in living a life of harmony between home and world, faith and works, love and justice. 5
There is a way, when we say to God at home and in the world, If you go with me, I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go. Years ago W. H. Auden, the British poet who knew something about keeping private secrets, first his sexuality and later his spirituality, wrote an intriguing little verse: Private faces in public places Are much kinder and nicer Than public faces in private places Private faces in public places Are much kinder and nicer Than public faces in private places His words are a plea for integration, for a soulful moral life, for a loving spirit carrying on acts of justice, for breaking out of the boxes our culture would force us to live in. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. This is what John the Seer says to the church at Ephesus. For the last five weeks we have been meditating on this, the love we had at first. And now, at the last, I want to remind you that this love cannot be boxed in, cannot be held hostage, and cannot be stopped from spreading throughout our lives. This Sunday of our Alternative Christmas Market is about breaking out of our little boxes, resisting those cultural messages of what we can or cannot be and do, that demands that we separating our private hopes and faith aspirations and our public ministry and witness. First Congo is not a Sunday morning worship club but a 365 days a year commitment to living out God s desperate love for the world. First Congo is not about just living out our faith in our homes but in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in our state, nation, and world. 6
Downstairs you will see opportunities for local mission giving and volunteering through LEAVEN and Habitat for Humanity. You will see opportunities to engage in political action through our denominational Justice and Witness ministries. You will see opportunities to have your love travel down to Biloxi, out to South Dakota, half-way across the globe You will see countless chances to break out of your box and live a life of integrity Are you ready to make that journey? And let me assure you of something. If you go, I will go with you. Amen. Sermon preached by Reverend Stephen Savides at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on November 13, 2011. 7