Growing in Change John Wilkinson Third Presbyterian Church December 8, 2013 (Second Sunday of Advent) Isaiah 11:1-10 Romans 15:4-13 Matthew 3:1-12 *** Agnes Wambaa, a member of the Kihumo Presbyterian Parish in Kenya, our partner congregation there, died this past week after a long battle with cancer. Several of us experienced Agnes faithful hospitality, and we are both saddened by her death and grateful for her faith and her life. We continue to hold her husband Donald in our prayers, thankful for the good news that nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. *** We continue looking at brief, contemporary poems this Advent season. If you haven t seen the gallery exhibit of these poems in the Third Church gallery, you really should. They are a visual and verbal reminder of the power of verse. This morning the theme is change, both its difficulty and necessity. With that in mind, hear this poem from Elizabeth Bishop. Elizabeth Bishop, One Art The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. 1
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. Are there things that we must lose, give up, turn away from, in order to embrace at a deeper level our best and most authentic humanity? The traditional word is repentance. I often think of the history of this congregation. Perhaps you know the name Charles Finney. Finney was the pre-eminent evangelist of the early nineteenth century, in what was called in American history the Second Great Awakening. Finney was not a Presbyterian, but he served as this congregation s temporary preacher for six months in the 1820 s, using Rochester as a kind of base for revivals and travels and writing. In fact, religious revival was so prevalent in Rochester and western New York that we were called the Burned Over District, the notion being that the Holy Spirit came with such intensity and fire that we were burnt over with the flames and power of the Spirit. And Finney was at the lead. The large rock on our East Avenue lawn commemorates Finney s time at Third Church. Scholars still study him and every so often come here to do research. They are inevitably disappointed when I tell them that we have moved twice as a congregation since Finney s time. Sometimes the disappointment is so great that I want to make up a story about Finney just to satisfy their curiosity, (yes, this was the pulpit Finney preached form!) but that would just give me one more thing to repent of. Finney would have been considered progressive by our standards on many things, including being an early foe of slavery. But he would have also been considered conservative by our standards. A Finney revival sermon would work hard to convince an attendee that he or she was living a sinful, lost, misguided life. One needed to repent, of drinking, or smoking, or gambling, or questionable business practices, in order to be saved, in order to be assured of eternal salvation, in order to make the right choice between heaven and hell. Perhaps that s what you think of when you hear the word repentance. And I must say it s worth thinking of in those terms. Or at least in part. I do not believe the eternal plight of our souls is determined by what we consume or don t, our behavior per se. But I do believe God wants us to live lives and make choices that are good for our bodies and spirits and relationships, that what we consume, eat or drink or partake of, or even more so, our personal conduct, does matter. 2
And Finney, and the best of the evangelists, wasn t simply opposed to smoking or drinking or gambling or other personal vices. Slavery or immoral business ethics were matters of eternal consequence to him as well. But we know more than that, that living a good life, an ethical life, a moral life, a faithful life, is about more than that. How we treat our bodies matters, but what matters even more is how we treat our friends, or our enemies, or our work, or our world, or the weakest and most vulnerable among us. That s where repentance truly matters. Are there things we must lose, give up, turn away from, in order to claim at a deeper level our best and most authentic humanity? The Burned Over revivalists would try, literally, to scare the hell out of you. They had good precedent. They knew well the story of John the Baptist, who appeared in the wilderness saying repent. Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near. John was an outlier, scary and intimidating. Yet people were drawn to him because he spoke the truth about faith and culture and people s lives. John was particularly critical of the religious establishment, so focused on ritual and institutional maintenance that it ignored the deeper calling of faith and the truth it delivered. Surface level change, as hard as it is, is so much easier than the deeper change faith calls for, the deeper change into which faith invites us. True change that allows us to confess and acknowledge our faults and turn from them, our complicity, our cynicism, our inaction, turn from them and turn to action and hope. We know, do we not, when who we are does not reflect our best selves, when the words we utter, or the choices we make, or the attitudes we take, prevent us from living into the people God most intends us to be? We know as well when the words we utter, or the choices we make, or the attitudes we take, prevent our world, our city and community, our church, from being their highest and best. The Hebrew word for repentance is shuv, which means something like a literal turning from one direction to another. In what direction are you headed, am I headed, are we headed, that by turning, we might come down right and head in a new direction that would allow for health and healing and wholeness, for each of us as individuals and all of us together. Where is true and authentic repentance needed, and what would it look like? What do we need to overcome to accomplish and realize the change we need to be who God fully created us to be and calls us to be? Like Finney and his generation, like every generation in American history, I have been thinking about race a great deal these days, 150 years after the Gettysburg Address, 50 years after I Have a Dream. We are spending time on urban issues, gun violence and public education 3
particularly, and every conversation inevitably turns to poverty, and every conversation about poverty inevitably turns to race. Solve racism and we will solve poverty; solve poverty and we will solve racism. Simple as that! And yet racism is American s particular, if not exclusive burden. And it is our particular opportunity. Last night some of us attended an Advent service at which our Junior Choir sang, and sang beautifully. A small adult choir from the Antioch Baptist Church also sang, and also sang beautifully. I couldn t help but think of the old observation that America is most segregated at 11:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. That is to say, why does it take a special worship service at a Roman Catholic cathedral to bring black and white Christians together? And how can we repent, truly repent, truly and fully turn from our direction on race and turn into a new direction, a new path? I was a baby minister when Nelson Mandela was released from the Robben Island prison. I remember it clearly. It was a Sunday morning, and I watched him emerge from his captivity, tall and dignified, as I was heading to church. I was aware enough to know the evils of apartheid. I was unaware enough to have missed the details of the evils, unlearned as I was about Mandela s story. I grew up primarily in white communities, and travel mostly in them now. What do I need to turn from, what do we need to turn from, in order to repent of the sins of racism and to walk down a new road of racial reconciliation and justice and righteousness for all Americans, for all children of God, especially those who have been denied because of the color of their skin of the accent of their voice or their proximity to resources. Mandela was not a particularly religious person, in the ways that we might understand. But he understood the power of religion, and the churches of South Africa were central in breaking the death-grip of apartheid. He wrote one time that No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. That sounds like repentance to me. As does this: As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison. Change is hard; it is also necessary. The delivery system may no longer be a wild man shouting in the wilderness, or a revivalist using scare tactics. But human nature is still what it is, and whether it s each of us as individuals or all of us as a collective community, we know where we fall short. We have a vision of the right path to take. And we know God s hopes for us. Hear Theodore Roethke s poem, The Waking 4
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I learn by going where I have to go. I learn by going where I have to go. May we so learn. May we so repent. May we so change. May we go where we have to go, this Advent, as we prepare for the coming of the one who will change everything, who will be our signal, and our change, and our destination. Amen. 5