Preached by Winton Boyd on September 9, 2007
Several years ago, I was visiting a retired pastor who was dying in the hospital. He was a sweet, generous, and caring man. For a number of years, we both had shared the struggle of Alzheimer’s – he with his wife, and me with my mother. In fact, his wife had died only a few months earlier.
Over the course of a couple of days, his children made their way to his bedside from other parts of California. I learned many things about the family, among them that one of his daughters had a female partner. I sensed very quickly that this was still a tender subject in the family. While the father was accepting, the daughter had never told her mom, thinking it would be too confusing for her in her forgetful state. It was also apparent that her hometown of Fresno conjured up painful memories and was a difficult place to visit.
It was only after she returned to the Bay Area that her father confided that he indeed had been too slow to accept the fullness of his daughter’s life. He had appreciated our church’s long process to become Open and Affirming, even if from a distance and had come to hope for the day when her relationship would be seen as legitimate, and blessed. He had hoped to see the day she would no longer live in fear in the school district where she taught and coached.
While I didn’t understand fully the dynamics of the family and the daughter in particular, what I did understand was the pain of an unfulfilled hope in the father. He knew he would die unable to see her experience a full welcome in all areas of her life.
On the one hand, I felt sad that this father would not live to realize his dream for his daughter. On the other hand, I realized what an act of faith and courage it was for both he and his daughter to live in that space between was is and what could be.
Moses, the character in today’s text, shared a similar fate.
Our childhood image of the Old Testament Moses is one parting the Red Sea, watching a burning bush, receiving the 10 commandments. He usually appears in pictures and movies, and thus our minds, as a somewhat gruff or wild-eyed character – but a giant among men nonetheless. The whole journey of his life, we vaguely remember, is to lead the people out of Egypt, where they are oppressed slaves, to the “promised land,†the land of “milk and honey.â€
However, in a little known passage at the end of Deuteronomy, chapter 34, we read,
Then Moses went up from the plains … opposite Jericho, and the LORD showed him the whole land…all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea… “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab…
A few verses later, at the beginning of the book of Joshua, we continue with these words:
After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, saying, “My servant Moses is dead. Now proceed to cross the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the Israelites. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, as I promised to Moses.
When I discovered this seldom told ending of Moses’ life, my first thought was, “this is a raw deal!”
But the more I reflect on the person of Moses and the Old Testament in general, the more I come back to the basic interpretative principal that what we have in the OT are reflections on real life. People wrote stories like these not as the words of God dropped from heaven, but as individuals and communities reflecting on the lives they were living and had lived. These words are faith filled and sacred attempts to wrestle with the tough questions and confusing histories of their communities. So, whether this story is based in history or not – and there are some who question whether it is – the truth is that it speaks to the a very true, very real situation.
They are eternal stories precisely because they name our experiences much as they name their own. And the core truth of this story is one we know – that often times we too live in that wilderness between what is and what could be, what the Bible calls “the promised land.â€
Over the past year I have been involved with a Clergy development program called “Courage to Lead.†Run by the Center for Courage and Renewal, it is closely related to a Teacher development program called “The Courage to Teach,†which a number in our congregation have attended over the past few years.
One of the images that is foundational to this program is one I would like to share with you because I see it as so very common, so very real, so very Moses like. The language for describing this universal reality comes from Parker Palmer, educator and author, and one of the huge inspirations for the Courage to Lead program.
It is obvious, Palmer says, that we live a world that is broken. But within our brokenness is a gap, a tragic gap, between what we experience and what we know is possible.
• We live with war, on the one hand –– but we know peace is possible
• Health care is not available to those who need it most –– but we know it is humanely possible to make available.
• We might have experience a committed relationship falling apart –– but we know that it was, and still could be, one of harmony and love.
On the one side of this gap are our deepest hopes and our fondest dreams; all of those things that we know to be possible. These are things that are not wishful thinking, but very real possibilities.
On the other side are the current, and often harsh or challenging realities, the difficult circumstances of our lives (personal and institutional and social).
[see pdf file that illustrates the tragic gap]
One of the most important qualities of people of faith trying to make the world a better place is the ability to first, recognize and secondly, stand in these gaps. The journey of faith is the ability to access our own inner ground to hold these “radical opposites†in tension – in order to find a new way forward. We know that the gaps won’t go away, but as we find our own deep grounding, and as we share that deep grounding with others in our communities, as we hold the tension creatively and compassionately – we all move forward, if only a little bit.
It is important to hold the tension and stand in the gap – because the very real danger is to “flip out†as Palmer says – to one side or the other.
“Flipping out†on the side of current and harsh realities becomes cynicism, bitterness, despair and a fatalistic attitude that in fact contributes even more to the hardness of life.
“Flipping out†on the side of our hopes and dreams can easily become “irrelevant idealism†in which we fly above the battle, not engaging life as it really is. While personally satisfying, this too contributes to the lack of overall compassion and possibility because it is so removed from real life.
The way to stand in the gap, and to hold the tension, Palmer says, is to let our hearts be broken. He suggests there are two ways hearts can be broken.
1. The first way is for the heart to shatter into a million pieces – resulting in anger, depression, disillusionment and despair.
2. The second way is for the heart to “break open†into a larger capacity to hold suffering and joy. It allows suffering to make us larger people, more trustworthy, more sought after, more compassionate, less judgmental.
I suspect in each of our lives there are people we know and love who have had their hearts shattered into a million pieces – loved ones whose lives have descended into depression, despair, anger, and smallness.
But, likewise, I suspect each of us knows someone whose heart was “broken open†in a way that allowed them to become a larger, more compassionate, more loving person.
Over the next few weeks, we will look at a number of the gaps we stand in as people of faith. We do this…
1. To be honest. We do ourselves a disservice if we don’t name these gaps – especially those caused by the pressures and cultural trends that weigh on our work, our relationships, our hopes and our dreams.
2. To be a community. We experience this life together and it is imperative that we find language and opportunity to share our common search for inner grounding. One of the greatest contributors to cynicism is loneliness and being cut off from others.
3. To growth in our faith. We root our spiritual journey in the liturgy of our lives. Our hope as we work through these “gaps†is not just to talk about God’s presence, but to invoke God’s presence in our very current, very real gaps.
The fact that so many of the biblical characters, so many of the faithful leaders in our tradition spent their lives living in these gaps – living with hearts breaking open with compassion and tenderness – is a reminder that these gaps may be the burden of our days – our standing together with honesty and faith can then be our gift to one another, and to a hurting and waiting world.
I would like to close with a poem titled, The Ferryman, from Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
I am only a ferryman and it is my task to take people across and to all of them my river is not but a hindrance on their journey.
They have traveled for money and business, to weddings and on pilgrimages; the river has been in their way and the ferryman was there to take them quickly across the obstacle.
However, amongst the thousands there have been a few, four or five, to whom the river was not an obstacle.
They heard its voice and listened to it, and the river has become holy to them, as it has to me.
The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it too. The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it.
Amen.
Resources of Parker Palmer’s used for this sermon
A Hidden Wholeness, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2004
The Politics of the Brokenhearted, from Deepening the American Dream: Reflections on the Inner Life and Spirit of Democracy, The Fetzer Institute, 2005. Copies of this essay are available upon request.
