Now, though the hour is night and many are deep in the sleeps of denial and cynicism, of fear and self-betrayal, know this: Beneath the last garment that covers our life with kindness and community; at the base of bereavement; in the basement beneath the broken beams of all a person built or dreamed, there yet a mystery awaits: Your being, your eye, You absolute: irreducible, precious without price: being.
But we are going there, to a place so far from the mere troubles of institution and organization which have vexed us. Hungering after our own experience of God, we will make the last appeal on behalf of the littlest and lost, the deceived and the dead, and thus we shall meet God anew on holy ground in the faith of the future.
If we would be strong in faith and mature in seeing; if we will not pretend that God is safely in control of all our evil; if we will affirm that neither is any good man at the top of power able to solve our nation’s sorrows, though a greedy man can make them sorer; then we may begin to feel after God truly, who is moving deeper down and deeper in than we ever thought
Throughout my ministry, I have worked to help people dismantle weak and unstable terms for faith. Faith need not mean believing that God breaks the laws of nature to rescue the beloved. That branch can break; let it break. Faith need not mean believing that Bible stories record what a video camera might have seen. That branch can break; let it break. . . Faith is not a magic shield. That word will break. Let it break.
Don’t you sometimes feel that religion, the way we do it, is no match for the way the world does wrong? Every day in this city, police stop and frisk–violate–two thousand mostly black and brown men doing nothing wrong–and what has church to say to that sorrow? A few weeks ago, an eighteen year old Bronx boy was shot and killed by a policeman in the bathroom of his own home. He was unarmed, scared, dumping something in the toilet bowl. What is old time religion for that boy, that family, for any citizen whose heart cries out at the dawning of another day of evil?
Some Christians believe that after death, they, like all who die, will be subject to the judgment of God. Some do not. Some Christians believe that by suffering a cruel punishment which ought to be visited on all humans for their sins, Jesus saves Christians from hell. Some do not believe the crucifixion works like that at all. . . I do not recommend any of these positions. In the n name of Christ Jesus, I recommend the book of Job to help us feel the depth of our own calling.
or many Sundays to come, we are going to tune our hearts to hear through the book of Job a word of promise and power for the church of God, for this church, and for any people bereft of what belongs to them; any people kept from sharing in what is good by powers that bind them. When we are done, you will never forget God’s word to you through Job.
“There is a place in your soul that neither time, nor space, nor no created thing can touch” (Meister Eckhart). There is a part of you you do not need to put behind a hard shell–a part of you that is not wounded and cannot be harmed; a part of you that can love, no matter what happens.
n this day of honor for our prophet Martin Luther King, it is well that we remember that no individual, no matter how skilled or gifted, ever simply leads a people out of the valley of the shadow of sleep. No, the rising of a people is a work far more complex. It resists all science and prediction. But this much is sure. The greatness of a leader hangs on the people’s awakening to the severity of their crisis.
Recent Comments