"Where Your Hopes Are Realized"
The antidote to cynicism
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Text: Psalm 72:1-20; Psalm 73:1-17
It was a dark, foggy and chilly November night in the late 1980s, when one of my best friends observed an old woman walking up one of the steep hills for which St. John's, Newfoundland is noted. It was a Sunday evening, and she was wearing a heavy coat and a warm hat, and had a cane in her right hand. As she walked up the hill, my friend who was a few feet behind her, realized that he was probably going to the same place she was, for at the top of the hill was a well-known St. John's church. She climbed up the hill and finally reached the stairs, which were long and hard, and she climbed up them, too, slowly. Finally, she opened the front door of the church and walked into the sanctuary, where she sat down. My friend sat one pew behind her. There were about 50 people in attendance, who had come to hear a well-known speaker from Toronto address concerns about Nicaragua and Guatemala, countries that during the 1980s were torn with civil war and strife, and were almost toys to be played with by the super powers.
They began to sing hymns and said a few prayers, and then the speaker rose to address the congregation. He gave an emotional description of the horrors he had seen in Guatemala and Nicaragua, and my friend was impressed by the clarity of his thought and the sincerity of his assessment. But then, there was a telling moment that upset my friend to the very depth of his being; he could not imagine he was hearing it. In the midst of this speech, the man pointed at the congregation, and to the little old lady sitting in the pew in front of him, and declared in a prophetic and loud voice, “You, too, are responsible for all the oppressions in Latin America. You are the beneficiaries of all that is happening down there! You are guilty of the death of people! You have blood on your hands!” Then he went on and finished his speech. When he sat down, they said a prayer and sang another hymn, and my friend watched the lady, stiff with arthritis, get up from her pew, walk down the aisle, through the front door and down the steps, into a foggy and cold St. John's November night.
My friend said he had never been so upset in his whole life, not because the man had spoken with passion about something he had seen that had troubled him, but rather because there was absolutely no word of redemption - no good news - no word of hope. The little old lady walked out into the cold and foggy night, and his heart just ached for her, for she had been blamed for the oppressions of the world.
All too often, the church makes that very same mistake. At times, it seems that there is little redemptive or good news, and often there is a paucity of hope in our words of judgment or criticism. You can understand why one day Nietzsche said simply, “One does not go to the church to breathe fresh air.” Mencken put it even more cynically: “A church is a place where gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.” Ooh, that hurts!
I am not that cynical, but I realize that the world can cause us to be cynical at times. It seems to me that the role of worship is not to support that cynicism or to point erroneous fingers of blame, but rather to lift us to a knowledge of the kingdom of heaven; to have a vision of the world from God's eyes. In Psalm 73, a Levite called Asaph writes about a problem he sees: The evil and the oppressive, the unrighteous and the arrogant seem to be the victors in the world. He talks about their pride; he talks about their prosperity; he talks about their pretentiousness. He looks at them, and he sees them being victorious, and he cannot understand why the evil and oppressors seem to be the victors. It bothers him so greatly it almost becomes a crisis of faith. I have often shared that very same conviction. What has bothered me in life is not so much why bad things happen to good people; that I can deal with. What really gets my goat is when good things happen to bad people - that's when I get upset! When I see injustice in the world and when I see what seems to be the rise of the oppressor into a state of glory and power, it causes me to ask, like the psalmist: What on earth is all this about?
It can make you cynical, especially compared to Psalm 72, where the king supports the weak, lifts up the oppressed, gives hope, anoints those who are the weakest. This gives a vision of the world coming to God, of the triumphal nature of justice, and the monarch's role in being the arbiter of that justice.
When one compares these two psalms, they seem like night and day. But are they? The psalmist in Psalm 73, Asaph, is definitely dejected, but then he reaches a high point when he says, “I was dejected, I was upset, until I came into the sanctuary of the Lord, and then I saw what would happen to the unrighteous, to the evil men.” In other words, coming into the sanctuary of the Lord gives him a whole new perspective, a whole new vision of the world. But what we need to ask ourselves this day is precisely how and why this happens. For, if we are mired in cynicism, if the pessimism of the world around us is causing us to have a crisis of faith, how does this psalm help us this Christmas?
First of all, there is no doubt that the psalmist sees the cure to his cynicism as having an intimacy and fellowship with God. Everything changes for the psalmist. He says: “I now feel the Lord has me in his right hand.” That is the Hebrew way of describing the support and the love that God gives. When he comes into the Temple, when he comes into the sanctuary, all of a sudden, his perspective alters and changes. No longer is he looking at the world through the eyes of cynicism; he is looking at the world through the eyes of faith. He believes once again in God and in God's righteousness and justice. Worshipping God is a reminder of God's ultimate victory, of the truth of God's justice, of the temporary nature of the victory of the wicked or of the oppression of the poor. When the psalmist comes into God's house, he sees things in a whole new, positive and hopeful light. We need to do the same.
When I read Psalm 73, I am reminded of a visit I made to a gentleman farmer who had been in one of my congregations in Nova Scotia. He was nicknamed “Crusty George” by everyone in the church, because he had this hard veneer, this hard external, negative approach to everything. It was suggested to me by the elders that I visit Crusty George - so I did. One day, I went to his farm. I said, “Hello, and continued that I was pleased to see him and that he had a lovely farm.
He said, “You think so, do you?”
I replied, “Absolutely! It is beautiful.”
He said, “Well, you don't have to put in the crops every year. Last year, I put in the crops and they got frostbite and nearly everything died - it was terrible! And then, there are the insurance costs. I can't afford them anymore. It's terrible! I can't afford to keep the farm going.” Then he said, “My combine harvester hasn't worked for two years. It's terrible! I have to take everything down myself.”
I thought, “Oh, crikee!”
He continued, “And over there, on that hill…”
And I said, “Isn't that a beautiful sight! It's gorgeous! I was thinking what a beautiful hill that was.”
He said, “Yes, that is where they are going to bury me. That is where you are going to bury me, Padre.”
I thought, “The sooner, the better, actually, George.” However, I didn't say it. Anyway, after this delightful tour of the farm, I said to him, “Some day I hope to see you in church.”
He said, “I am so busy taking care of this place I doubt I will ever be able to get there.”
So, I thought, “Okay, that's fine with me,” and I left.
Six months later his daughter gave birth to a beautiful little girl. This little girl was brought to the church and presented for baptism. Lo and behold, who showed up in church but Crusty George! There he was in a suit that was probably 40 years old, and he sat there and experienced the worship service as we baptized the baby. I went over to him afterwards and asked if he had enjoyed the service. He replied that he hadn't and, silly me, I asked why.
He said, “Well, I think the water was too cold and it made her cry.”
I said, “Is there anything you liked about the service?”
He said, “Yes, it didn't go on for very long.”
So anyway, I said, “Thank you, George. Lovely to have you here. I hope you will come back.”
“Oh,” he said. “This will probably be the last time you will see me here.”
I paused, and then I said, “No, George, it will be the second-to-last time I see you here. Remember the hill?”
George did come back to church. I worked on him for three years. You know what brought him back to church? It was the Christmas concert, when his little granddaughter was playing one of the angels. You know what brought him back? It was when she started to sing in the choir. You know what brought him back? It was when she was in Sunday school performances. Crusty George couldn't stay away, because the child had led him back to church.
My friends, I think this is the symbol of Christmas. When we are cynical, when we are pessimistic, when the oppressors are victorious, when the poor are subjugated, when it seems that there is the victory in the proud and the prosperous and the pretentious, a child leads us back onto our knees. A child reveals to us the love of God; a child reminds us that it is not the world and those who propagate injustice that have the last word, but the Child of Bethlehem. We feel cynical until we come into the sanctuary of the Lord. When people come to worship at Christmas (and I would wish they would come every Sunday, because they miss so much the rest of the year). I pray that even one person's crusty heart will be changed when he or she looks into the manger and hears the message of Christ, when he or she kneels like the wise men, because when people come into the House of the Lord, they see life differently.
This also brings us into fellowship with our neighbour, and with the Other. Very often, my friends, I am asked, “Why do I need fellowship? Why do I need the church? After all, I can find fellowship in a pub. I can find fellowship in a bar. I can find fellowship in a hockey arena or in a club. I can find fellowship at a hockey game.” (Although if you had gone to the Air Canada Centre last night it would have been a depressing fellowship!) You could talk about a whole slew of places and say that you meet people there who care for you and for whom you care, people who share your sorrows and to whom you can express your grief.
John Stark, the great Anglican, makes this distinction: He says that those types of fellowships are “aggregations,” whereas the worship of God is a “congregation.” An “aggregation” is a group of individuals who for one reason or another may come together for one time. But they still leave as individuals, just as they arrive as individuals, and there is no real commitment beyond being individuals with a common theme. However, a “congregation” starts with a common theme, with something that unites them, and does not leave as individuals, but as people who have communed with others in the presence of God.
If you look at the Christmas story, my friends, you can see it. It is the coming together of the world in a congregation. The manger, the Christ Child, the coming together of the Magi from the East, who were Gentiles, with the shepherds, who were Jews. It was the coming together of the male and female in Joseph and Mary. And in Mary, it was the coming together of the poor with the wealthy. It was the coming together of the lost and the oppressed with the mighty. The story of Christmas, as Mary says in her Magnificat, is about the powerful being brought down, the meek being raised up, and the Kingdom of God being glorified. The worship of God and the worship of Christ and the fellowship of the church is the coming together that makes us one, and we do not leave this place alone.
It also, I believe, changes our view of the world. It gives us a new fellowship with the world when we come into the sanctuary of the Lord. I was thinking as I read Psalm 73 that every day I picked up the newspaper this week there was plenty of ground for cynicism. Look at the way Saddam Hussein arrogantly dismisses the court that is bringing him to trial. You can become cynical when you see that people are taken hostages; you can become cynical when you see people dying and all you can do is count the number; you can become cynical when you hear of a dismembered woman's body discovered in Toronto. There are many reasons to become pessimistic; many reasons to see the world in all its darkness and gloom. I understand that. But I believe that by worshipping, by coming into the House of the Lord, by hearing the word of God, our pessimistic attitude changes. What changes us is a passion to change that world; to be the advocate for God's justice; to speak the word of truth. After all, the Christmas message is that of God coming into the world as a child in order to transform it and change it. The message of Christmas is not to take the world as it is and to baptize it, but to baptize it in order that it might be changed.
The message of Christmas is that this world, with all its cynicism, is still a world that is worth dying for - just ask the Babe of Bethlehem! So, when that spirit of cynicism and pessimism rises within your heart and you look at the world and say, “To hell with it!” think of the Christ Child who did not say, “To hell with it!” But, “Bring heaven to it!”
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem that is sometimes ascribed to somebody else, and while I might have a few differences with him on theological matters, on this I agree wholeheartedly. It was sent to me by a friend a couple of weeks ago. He said this is what we should be doing at Christmas:
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
My friends, this is the antidote to cynicism. That is the reason why Christ came. Let us remember that it is in him that our hopes are realized. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.