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January 11, 2009 ~ Revival: Day 1
“The Wisdom To Wonder”
Genesis 1:1-5 & 31a; Job 28 (selections); Hebrews 11:1-3

I need a light. We need a light.

No, I’m not taking up smoking. I need a light in the figurative, spiritual sense.

It’s the middle of winter, in a northern industrial city that has yet to refashion itself for the 21st century, in a country in the midst of the worst economic decline since the Great Depression, in a world where ancient tribal and religious grievances are at war with each other in Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Israel, Nigeria, Somalia, Haiti – as we speak.

I need a light.

The situation in this country is unthinkable. Banks are on edge, and those that are surviving are forced to shore themselves up by a huge federal loan, the likes of which would make Alexander Hamilton roll over in his grave. Our own precious hometown bank, National City, is now owned by the hometown bank of our rival city, Pittsburg. The glee that came with the home ownership buying spree of just a few years ago has tragically transformed into weeping and gnashing of teeth in the largest mortgage meltdown of America’s history. Corporate America is imploding, and even top executives are struggling to get their golden parachutes ready in case their company takes a nose-dive. Pension plans that were once thought to be immoveable pillars of certainty for our retirement years are being renegotiated and refashioned beyond recognition… that is, unless they are being terminated completely. Health care is more expensive than ever, and becoming more and more a luxury rather than an essential benefit to employment. Speaking of which, the nation’s jobless rate hit 7.2% last month, the highest in 16 years, with no real ceiling in sight. And don’t EVEN get me started on the Browns…

I need a light. WE need a light.

And as much as I am excited about the possibilities of a new President in the White House, and as much as I admire Barak Obama’s serious tone and hard work to fashion an Administration that will turn this country around and worry more about real hope and less about glitzy hype, I know he can’t do it alone. I’ve always believed that government is a critical and necessary part of the equation of a healthy and happy society, but it is only one part of the picture.

But what concerns me most is not what happens out there, in the marketplace or in the halls of Congress, but what happens here, in the human heart, when the foundations of our world are shaken. When times are tough and people call for the light, it can either be a beam of hope or a fire of rage. And the difference in what we choose depends upon how we seek security during such times. To what do we hold close when all around us seems to be falling?

Homeland Security is not a new concept. We human beings have always yearned for security. We instinctively need to feel that there is something firm upon which to set our feet and solid upon which to base our lives. “Certainty” is extolled as a virtue for all human beings, but it is most evident for people of faith:
“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!”
And especially when life’s difficulties increase, this need for certainty and security escalates…
“In every condition, in sickness, in health,
In poverty’s vale, or abounding in wealth,
At home and abroad, on the land, on the sea,
The Lord, the Almighty, thy strength e’er shall be.”

As you know from previous sermons and my newsletter articles, I am not only aware of, but deeply disheartened by the economic crisis of our nation and of how it is directly affecting individuals within and around this congregation. While my partner and I are certainly anxious and are tightening our household’s belt, we have not directly felt the sting of the recession in the same way that some of you have. But that doesn’t mean that, through our sense of solidarity and compassion, we don’t feel the struggle; we do, and that our hearts don’t ache profoundly; they do.

But recognizing this deep need for certainty, especially during hard times, and giving into the feelings of rigidity and narrow-mindedness that often come with it are two very different things. In fact, I think as people of faith we must always be wary of the easy and obvious choices to hunker down and fortify – particularly when the world around is clamoring for us to give in to those inflexible emotions and unyielding tendencies. And certainly, since 9/11, we’ve had everyone from teachers and preachers to politicians and entertainers, tell us that we should regard security above everything else and certainty more highly than any other value.

I stand here today to tell you there is another way. It is a way that will truly revive your soul, give you the peace that passes all understanding, and will carry you, indeed all of us, through these difficult times. Through scripture, the very best of our Christian tradition, and a thoughtful faith, we must have the wisdom to wonder; we must trust our ability to be creative, to imagine, to be curious, and to explore… even those most cherished beliefs and most trusted facts… in order to allow God’s will to be done and our renewal to be made real.

And it with this in mind that I share my fascination with the strange contradictions of the book of Hebrews in the 11th chapter:
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
I’m impressed that the concept of faith is so confidently linked to “assurances” and “convictions,” strong words, especially when linked with “hope” and “things not seen.” What a paradoxical equation… of assurance with hope and certainty with things not seen. Almost as if the writer knew we would forever be living between two worlds: the world of certainty and the world of uncertainty, the world of faith and the world of doubt, the world of convictions and the world of ambiguities.

The topic of doubt has made headlines recently as the outstanding movie by the same name has come out, starring two popular actors, Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Set in 1964 at a Catholic Church and school in the Bronx, New York, the film “Doubt” opens with Father Flynn giving a sermon on the nature of doubt, noting that, like faith, it can be a unifying force among people. He opens by asking us, “What do you do when you are not sure?” and then proclaims, rather boldly, that “doubt can be a bond as powerful as certainty.”

Doubt as a positive and powerful bond, to draw us together within, spiritually, and beyond, as a community… that’s provocative and powerful… and rarely what we talk about during times of economic strife and definitely not what we advise when someone has been laid off from work or someone’s pension fund has been decimated. Our instinct is instead to shore up that person’s certainty, we want to rid them of doubt, we want to insure they will stand strong. But is that the gift they need at that difficult time?

What if… doubt, and it’s less-suspect cousins, wonder and curiosity, were our words of wisdom given to our friends, family, and ourselves during times of great distress, trauma, fear, and wanderings? After all, as Father Flynn reminds his parish, there is always something bigger than our doubt AND our certainty. “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Cor. 1:25) There is always God, who is larger than our understanding ever will be. “When you are lost,” he gently counsels, “you are not alone.” Which reminds me of Hebrews 13:5, “be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’”

How do we trust in our doubt as the key to our peace and, quite possibly, to our salvation? Is it possible to loosen our tight death-grip around the need to have everything tied up neatly and compactly, like a mummy in a sarcophagus? Is it possible to let go of those things that we cherish the most in order to receive that which we need the most to survive? Can we let go of our certainty, which can eclipse the sun, in order to have the wisdom to wonder and thus let God’s light into our lives?

What we need is a re-enchantment of the world as God saw it at creation. We must remind ourselves again and again that ALL God created was good, and that it is our life’s work to see and appreciate and care for it as good. It is always helpful to go back to the beginning and remind ourselves who was there when it all started, which puts us into our rightful place in the scheme of things, but also puts both our fears AND our certainties into perspective.

If we truly want to know what is the foundation of our faith, what is the immoveable ground upon which we can stand, walk, and build our lives, then we must go back to the creator of it all. This puts us in our place and gives us a true sense of certainty like nothing else. No one was reminded of this more than Job. When Job, and his so-called friends, began to debate and question what was the proper way to deal with the difficulties that had befallen him, God put things into perspective:
“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:…. 4“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. 5Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? 6On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone 7when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” (Job 38:1-7)

Job had friends who were certain… and certain about how God worked in the world. They had the answers, and were quite willing to impart those certain answers to Job. Now, he wasn’t such a model person of faith – no matter how the story goes – but Job did know enough to realize their certainty was misplaced, and that maybe God just might want to have the last word on the situation at hand.

One of things that I’ve found to be truth is that the more certain someone wants to tell me they are, the less assured I should be that they are in the right. Certainty is the fuel of witch hunts, pogroms, holocausts, lynchings, and internment camps.

So it was no surprise to me when I heard of the attempts by some people of faith in our city to fight the Domestic Partner Registry passed by the Cleveland City Council in December. During difficult crisis it is a familiar human tactic to avoid dealing with our deepest fears and dialogue about our most persistent doubts, and instead try to loudly name and indignantly claim certainty in something, even if it isn’t threatened at all. So when the group of ministers claimed that the Registry, which is nothing but a piece of paper two people pay $50 to have, was a threat to marriage, I was not surprised at all. It would seem to me that the same energy could – and quite frankly should – be spent to try and solve the many legitimate issues our citizens tackle daily.

Certainty breeds contempt… of others, of self, and even of God. Bertrand Russell once said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

There that word is again: doubt. Can doubt truly be a saving grace? It seems so counterintuitive, so non-sensical, so disloyal, unfaithful… In fact, I think doubt, when it comes honestly from within oneself, and is managed with care, can, in fact, lead us back to the light, who is the creator. If we allow our doubt to lead us through such difficult but helpful tasks as “skepticism,” “uncertainty,” “questioning,” and “ambiguity” to other life-giving and light-giving graces, such as wonder, mystery, creativity, and awe, we will find the wisdom of doubt.

When I think of such life-giving graces, I think of the line from the great Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts:” “When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.” This beautiful hymn leads me to recall the poem by Robert Frost, “Birches,” in which he imagines a child playing on a birch tree…
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them…

And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

“It’s when I’m weary of considerations, and life’s too much like a pathless wood.” Doesn’t that capture our current economic and spiritual crisis amazingly well: weary of considerations and like a pathless wood? It’s a good image, a shadowy, pathless wood. Isn’t it true, that sometimes the most lost hiker in a forest is the one who was most doggedly certain about the absolute right way to go? Isn’t is also similarly true that the person who is lost that is most likely to be found, most likely to find their way out, is the one who opens her or his heart, mind, and eyes to the world around them. Awareness, openness, wonder, curiosity, and the willingness to travel by a different way, the “road less traveled,” leads one to home?

I’ve recently wondered why was it that for most of the early years of my life I only heard the first half of a famous aphorism, “Curiosity killed the cat.” It wasn’t until I was an adult that I finally heard the second half of the phrase, “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back.” Curiosity, wonder, inquisitiveness, openness, skepticism, mystery, awe… all can bring a satisfaction as fulfilling, if not more so, than certainty, conviction, and assurance.

In the midst of the book of Job, an odd little aside is placed, an ode to wisdom of sorts. “But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Mortals do not know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living… God understands the way to it, and he knows its place.” In the midst of fears within ourselves and failures around us everywhere, our gut instincts might tell us to grab hold of whatever seems sure and certain. There will be those in the midst of the storms of life who will try their best to convince others that they know what is right, what is good, what is worthy, what is best.

The disciples of Jesus stand as my role models. Even after the very resurrection of Jesus, when the light was brightest and most wondrous, that Matthew reports, “They worshiped him, but some doubted.” I think that doubt, at the very moment of resurrection, is what allowed those disciples to spread the Word, who was the light incarnate.

I shall avoid mortals who think they have God’s understanding in their hands. Instead, I shall look to the God who created me, and seek to have the wisdom to wonder. It is in the gale winds of the storm that I shall doubt with all my heart, so that my eyes and my heart and my very soul might be open – in pain, yes, but in honesty and anticipation – so that the light which comes only from God will be seen and will lead the way. And may all of our doubt be the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

Amen.


Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2009 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096