Holy Ground

Today I finally got around to leading worship again at our beloved little UCC community. This is the sermon. Lectionary readings came from Samuel, Psalm 23, the letter to the Ephesians, and the Gospel of John.

When I came to the States, my first impression was that this country is falling apart. It was really a shock. I came the year Obama was elected for the first time, and the frenzy was overwhelming. The left hailed him as a savior, the right braced for the coming of the Antichrist. And as we all know, that hasn't really changed.

And compared with Germany, the left and the right in this country are literally different cultures, different ways of life, completely different outlooks on how things should be done. Add to that the incredible religious and ethnic diversity, the differences between city and countryside, the wealth gap, and it is easy to think that our social fabric is coming apart.

And yes, there are worrisome trends. As progressive followers of Jesus, we are concerned about poverty, income disparity, and about the way conservative Christians read the Gospel. But today I want to talk about a trend that we tend to overlook. And that's the trend to split up society by drawing lines between ourselves and our neighbors. By rejecting those who are not like us.

We all do that. You don't think like me politically? I don't want to be around you. Your Christianity creeps me out? I'm not going to worship with you. And these natural human tendencies are now having consequences on all levels in society. The rich only socialize with the rich. Democrats and Republicans cluster in separate neighborhoods. You could almost say there's a new segregation. And in the depths of the internet, I have come across people who felt excluded from UCC congregations. For not being progressive enough.

There's nothing wrong with seeking out people who are like us. But when it gets to the point where community gets fragmented, that's when it gets problematic. And as Christians, I don't think our main task is to create groups of "true believers". As Pastor Kate repeatedly told us, being a Christian is about healing community. And sometimes, that doesn't only mean reaching out to those in need. It also means reaching out to those we disagree with.

The main reason I want to talk about this today is because I myself have the hardest time with doing that. We once had a discussion about acceptance that turned into a group rant about our local representative, Randy Neugebauer. And when someone asked me, so how do we accept Rep. Neugebauer, the best I could come up with was, “Well, tell him he's a #$%^—but in a nice way…”

That has been irking me ever since. For I don't think that's what Christ had in mind when he said to love our enemies.

So I've been thinking about it. What can we do to keep our circle of love open, even if someone comes dashing in and pushes our buttons?

And then I saw our Scripture readings for today. And I realized the remedy is right here. All the insights we need to soften up are in the Bible. We just need to put them to use, to take them as reminders when we're about to exclude someone from our hearts.

So the first reminder we're getting today is this: Only God knows it all. That's the message of our Old Testament passage. One by one, the supposed new kings were paraded past Samuel, and one by one, they got rejected by God. Nope—that's not him. You think this one is, but you're wrong. And so on. And it turned out to be the one that no one had thought of. They had to bring him from the fields because he was not on their list at all.

And the same is true for any area of life. Whatever we're talking about—the economy, inequality, justice, faith—the answer may not be what we think it is.

That point is driven home with force every time we vote. So many of us thought Obama was the answer. As it turned out, he's really a continuation of Bush in many ways, except for a somewhat crummy attempt at health care reform.

So we don't have all the answers. We have values, and I do believe we got those right, but we can't claim that we know the best ways to put them into practice. A look at the past can teach us that. You may know that there was a progressive era in American politics, about 100 years ago. It saw great achievements: Workers' rights, women's rights, child labor laws, workplace protection laws, and so on.

It also saw tremendous failures. Probably the biggest one was prohibition, pushed through, among others, by our own Congregationalist forebears. Not only did it fail, it actually gave rise to organized crime. It opened up huge markets for illegal activities. I'm sure those who worked for it couldn't imagine that might happen.

This brings us to our second reminder. The reminder is: We don't have all the answers. And that insight is a road to liberation. As Jesus puts it: if we admit that we're blind, we become seeing. If we claim that we see, we remain blind.

'Blindness' is a precise description of our human condition. We are limited in our knowledge. Our actions have unintended consequences. We can never be entirely sure that what we're doing is the right thing to do. And of course, that is true for everybody. And everybody clings to their answers the way we cling to our own.

This is why the world seems so dark to us. Just like the Pharisees, we all work very hard at being blind.

Now this is the point where you may ask, well, then how do we work for what is important? How do we bring about justice and peace if we don't have any answers?

This is where our third reminder comes in. It comes from the letter to the Ephesians, and it is this: Just let your light shine. No drawing of lines between "us" and "them". No self-righteous claim that we know it all. All we are asked to do is to let our light be seen. That's how we work for the Kingdom. 

The key sentence here is: "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them." At first, this looks like a call to judge others. But there’s more. We're not called to finger-pointing here. The text goes on: "For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light."

Savor this for a moment. It is shameful to mention others' transgressions. Of course, the passage talks about sexual morals, but there is a deeper wisdom there. If we are too quick to point our fingers, we're not bringing light into the world. We're just taking part in a ritual of shaming. Jesus has a remedy for that: he recommends finding the log in our own eye first. And the author of Ephesians seems to make a similar point.

Instead of finger-pointing, we are asked to shine the light of our love. This light by itself changes hearts.

Now that is probably the hardest thing to do. Usually, when we come across injustice, our emotions kick in, and we start perceiving the other side as a threat. We think that if we don't fight them, and win the fight, then everything is lost and so are we. In no time, the fight becomes a fight not for the cause, but for ourselves. But there is an alternative.

My wife told me this story about her Dad. He was a labor organizer all his life, and so he went to a lot of protests, and when she saw those as a kid, she was afraid: there was a lot of shouting of slogans, shaking of fists, there seemed to be a lot of anger. But then her Dad came home and he was not angry. And one day she asked him: how come you're not angry after all that? And he said, you know, all that shouting and fist-shaking, that's simply what we do.

He didn't get caught up in the emotional upheaval. He fought for the cause, not for himself. He knew that fights come with rituals, but he didn't take the rituals too seriously. He simply let his light shine.

The key is stillness. My wife's Dad was able to be still at heart even while shouting and shaking fists. Darkness is overcome when we let our light shine quietly. When we wield our light like a club to hit our enemies, all we get is flickering shadows that make us more afraid. But when we are still, fear does not arise. Our souls are restored, and we are led in the right path for God's sake.

This bring us to the fourth and last reminder. Be still and let God guide you. The green pastures, the still waters of the Psalm, the table prepared in the presence of the enemy—this talks about a state of mind in which we can work for a better world without getting caught up in our own emotions. A state of mind that arises when we stop wielding our ideas with fear and anger.

Jesus told us not to judge but to love our enemies. And I think that's not just because it's the right thing to do. It's actually a way to God. When we open up to the vulnerability of saying "yes, I may be wrong", we leave ordinary ground and start treading holy ground. That's when we taste communion. That's when we make baby steps into the Kingdom. And that's when God takes our hand and guides us to the still waters.

So these are the four reminders. Only God knows it all. We don't have all the answers. Let your light shine quietly and let God guide you.

That's what I would say now if you asked me how to deal with Rep. Neugebauer.

The house of the Lord is the house where all are welcome, and if we wish to enter it, we cannot try to keep others out. That includes fundamentalists. That includes Republicans. That includes anyone who disagrees with us. If we realize that none of us has ultimate answers, the ground we all stand on becomes holy: our rock and our redeemer. It is the same ground, after all.