Peace in Troubled Times 6

I will admit that I often find it hard to trust God, and let go of my own anxieties.  In the midst of global and national tragedies, and problems closer to home, and all of the things I need to help with but can’t fully control, I find it hard to trust God.  I know I am not alone in this.  We all live in a world now where the volume of news coming at us is overwhelming; it is impossible to take it all in, let alone decide what you really think about all of the issues, or what you might do in response.   Many of you may find it additionally challenging, as I do, to wonder what Jesus is asking of us—even though all Jesus really wants to do is help!  But it’s easy to forget that.  With all of this in mind, each week, I must decide which of the world’s countless problems belong in this week’s sermon.  I know that many things I say up here will please some of you only to displease others.  And I know that saying nothing has its own set of costs.  And I am not complaining but rather commiserating—for I know that most of you face some version of this same challenge everyday with coworkers, neighbors, and family.

Our guest Jim Wallis who joined us last week is a great case-in-point.  There was some significant disagreement about what he had to say.  Some of you loved it and told me so quickly; others of you did not like it, and voiced your displeasure.  I’m going to talk about that for a minute because it has to do with what we’re praying about today.

Jim Wallis has been an important voice in American Christianity for 40 years, and I told you as much in introducing him.  I did not take the time to tell you why.  Jim grew up as part of a deeply religious evangelical community, but he fell away from the church when he came of age during the Civil Rights Movement.  He saw his church completely ignoring the plight of the poor and the division between the races, and inviting him to do the same.  So he left church, and started working in close proximity with people who were different from him.  Over time his ongoing study of Scripture showed him that Jesus indeed cares deeply about the poor and the powerless.  He then spent a career trying to change things for the better, in writing and preaching, coaching little league and working closely with friends and neighbors, and in political activism with politicians from both major parties.  He has an incredible story.  Regrettably, he didn’t tell you any of that personal history last week.  I don’t know if there wasn’t enough time, or if he assumed you had read it in his book.

Instead, he skipped straight to the news that is most pressing for him today.  Jim cares deeply about the plight of immigrants and refugees in our country.  He also cares for struggling poor people who have lived here for a long time, so he spoke about both of them, reminding us that they are our neighbors.  What he said is true.  But his message did not deal with another challenge—that the person who may be voting differently than you are is also your neighbor..  I suspect Jim’s neglect of that idea meant that his message about the poor didn’t change any minds.

Even if Jim’s visit was a bit divisive, I’m still grateful for his visit, because it did do something really important:  it got some of us talking.  Not all of us, but at least some of you, talked to each other, or to me.  All around us, people of different points of view have lost the ability to talk to one another, and those divisions are tearing us apart.  Here in our church community, because Jim Wallis’ paid a visit, we are left with the challenge of being different and better.  If you were disappointed with what you heard last week, good for you if you spoke up, and if you haven’t yet, I hope you will.  If you loved what you heard last week, yours is a different challenge; we need you to ask around to find out how other people felt about it; and when someone voices an opinion different than yours, your job is to lean in and listen.  If you know you want to be in conversation about this, please contact me directly; I want to hear from you regardless of what opinion you will be sharing; we have tools we can give you for these conversations.

Another way to work toward healing our world is what we are doing together today:  praying together, and admitting that these burdens we carry often feel like too much.  So we must place our trust in God, and hope that God will keep us on the right track.

The matter of living together in this culture and country is not yet an achievement, it is a journey.  Many of the best things we can say about our nation are not about its accomplishments but about its aspirations—the things we hope for but haven’t accomplished just yet.  That made me think of a song.  At the end of today’s service, we’ll close by singing America the Beautiful.  It has often been called America’s hymn—and it is deeply aspirational.  Katherine Lee Bates was the author of the text, originally in 1893.  She was the daughter of a minister, and grew up in church, though her father died when she was a child.  Bates grew up in poverty, her widowed mother sustained the family through the kindness and cooperation that existed among her neighbors, and she came of age with a great appreciation for the value of helping one another to make ends meet.  So she wrote of aspirations—hopes she had for her life and our country.  She wrote of “purple mountain majesties,” knowing that many Americans never got to travel to see them.  She wrote the truth that “alabaster cities gleamed,” but knew that happened alongside an urban grit “undimmed by human tears.”  The song is full, not of accomplishments, but aspirations, and so over and over she wrote the plea, “God shed his grace on thee…”  She hoped that as time went on, we would become more and more of the nation we were founded to be, with opportunity for all, enough to go around, and trust in God to bless us.

We are still a people who aspire for better days, and who must commit to working for them, and our church communities are a place to start.  I read somewhere once, that church is supposed to be a training ground for the rest of life.  We practice behaviors here among friends that we hope to be able to take out into God’s world.  In the days before us, we will continue to be confronted by a world that confounds us with global turmoil, political strife, and personal stresses that can lay us quite low.  These are things we can never entirely conquer, but we can practice here at being more honest about our struggles as we aspire for a better tomorrow.

As we continue in this service of prayer, we will turn as we always do toward the idea of offering—what we will give in response to God’s Word?  What will you pray for in these days?  And how might your prayers cause you to behave differently?  The last verse of today’s Psalm states, “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”  We will only get to goodness on this side of the grave if we are willing to do something to contribute to the good.  That’s true even if it is something so little as to risk a difficult conversation with one who might disagree.  We as a people can reach for better days.  We begin with our prayers.  Amen.