May 06 2010
Everything is Holy?
Preached by Winton Boyd on April 25, 2010
Philippians 4
Celebrate God all day, every day. Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
Holy as the Day is Spent – by Carrie Newcomer
Holy is the dish and drain
The soap and sink, the cup and plate
And the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile
Showerheads and good dry towels
And frying eggs sound like psalms
With a bit of salt measured in my palm
It’s all a part of a sacrament
As holy as a day is spent
Holy is the busy street
And cars that boom with passion’s beat
And the check out girl, Counting change
And the hands that shook my hands today
Hymns of geese fly overhead
And stretch their wings like their parents did
Blessed be the dog
That runs in her sleep
The catch that wild and elusive thing
Holy is a familiar room and the quiet moments in the afternoon
And folding sheets like folding hands
To pray as only laundry can?
I loved our two gatherings last weekend with folk singer Carrie Newcomer; and her ability to help us find the sacred in the ordinary through songs that wove their way into our hearts. I’ve heard from many of you how one or two of the songs touched you in a particular way. Like many of you, I felt on the verge of laughter and tears the whole time I was in her presence. I say that not just as some groupie, but as one who realized that she, as a poet and songwriter, was tapping into some deep and real human emotions and experiences.
I love the sentiment in today’s “sacred text” from her song – “holy is the dish drain – it’s all part of a sacrament…hymns of geese fly overhead and stretch their wings like their parents did. ..Holy is a familiar room …and folding sheets like folding hands to pray as only laundry can…”
I love being reminded of a deep and ancient truth – that the spirit of God is with us and in us in EVERYTHING we do. In our reading for Java and Jesus this morning, Barbara Brown Taylor aptly wrote that we, as “human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish-separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two. Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on (the sacred).
I watch that UCC commercial and know that as each of us sees ourselves in one of the pictures; reminding each of us that our lives are part of the “language of God.”
And yet, each and every day this sentiment that ‘everything is holy now’ (to use a Peter Mayer lyric) is challenged by the question – really? If there is any consistent theme to what I hear as a pastor, or what we discuss in various settings in this community of faith – it is “how is THIS holy?”
• Maybe we felt the holiness of God in our interactions with the family we were building a home for in El Salvador, but what was so holy about generation after generation living in tin shacks on hillsides, cut off from roads and water and electricity – a sight we saw repeatedly in our driving through the country?
• Maybe we know a loved one who has been healed in ways we find deeply moving – but we also have others whose illness or slow decline ravages their body, their minds, their spirits – and we can honestly ask – what is so sacred about that?
• We see the numerous children involved in our programs and give thanks to God. Yet, repeatedly in the last month we have read of horrific abuse, trafficking and neglect of children worldwide; from adopted children being sent home, children being sold as slaves, children sexually abused or living homeless in Haiti. In light of this we ask, appropriately, if our sense of holiness is a bit naïve?
• We embrace the ancient theology of “welcoming the stranger” and then look at immigration policies being proposed and passed and wonder, how is this sacred?
You can fill in the blanks of this equation as you experience them. If we don’t believe God is a grand puppeteer in the sky, if we believe the Scripture which says the rain falls on the just and the unjust all the same, that God shows no favorites – then we have the legitimate question ‘where’s God in this?’
If the answers to these questions were easy, they wouldn’t have perplexed people of faith for so long, or equally as likely, driven people from organized religion.
Let’s start by stating what we don’t mean when we say “everything is holy now.” We don’t mean that God wills suffering. We are not saying God causes suffering or that God allows suffering for some greater purpose. To see something sacred in all things does not condone, support, or belittle suffering; it does not call suffering anything other than what it is – painful, destructive, and quite often very unjust. While some people live with a theology that God causes all this suffering for God’s greater purpose, such a theology leads ultimately to a very arbitrary God who chooses suffering for me and not for you, or vis versa.
Equally important, and often overlooked in our language and ‘default’ religious talk is the reverse. If God doesn’t cause suffering, God also doesn’t single us out for good. Because if God blesses me with good health, a good job and a large income and doesn’t bless you with the same – we still have a very arbitrary image of God.
So, if the dish drainer is holy and folding sheets is a form of prayer it may be that the question is not about God but about us. Maybe the question is less ‘where is God’ and more ‘who are we and how are we showing up to our lives?’
I’d like to ponder a few questions about how we show up in the world, how we bring ourselves to awareness and faith; and in so doing, to tease out a few possible angles for knowing God in all things, for finding sacredness everywhere.
I.
One question to ask might be, “Is it necessary for us to understand God’s presence in a situation for God to actually be present?” When we ask, ‘where is God in THIS?’ are we really asking? Or, are we making a statement that because WE can’t see or feel God in this moment, God most certainly is not there?
Isn’t part of the truth of the ancient book of Hebrews – faith is the belief in things unseen – a statement that suggests faith goes beyond our emotions and our perceptions. Isn’t it an invitation to some humility in acknowledging that while we may not see, feel, or know the Spirit’s presence in this moment – maybe we need to keep looking, maybe we need to patiently wait for that to be made known to us, maybe we need to live with a tad bit of mystery in our life?
While we all want faith to be tangible; while we want demonstrable ways in which God is known in our lives, it is rarely that way. Faith, as it has been passed down to us from our loved ones and our forebears, often involves a trust that transcends what we are feeling in a given situation. How many people have continued to trust when the situation in which they find themselves offers no easy way to trust?
II.
Another persistent question revolves around some form of the question, “why?” Why did this happen, why did God cause/allow/will that to happen? Why me and my loved ones?
A growing faith still asks the question ‘Why?’, but also recognizes the limits of that question. The ‘why?’ could just as easily be ‘why not?’
Someone recently told me that while they were grieving the death of their mother, they had had a mother for 70 years, while their good friend had a mother for only 14 years. In her own grief, she was able to see a wider context; which didn’t deny her own grief but also recognized a blessing in the midst.
The gift of being fully human and open to the movement of the Spirit is our ability and willingness to experience and share life to its fullest; and what life has not been exposed to tragedy and pain, injustice and oppression? What life is devoid of darkness or despair; be it in ourselves or in those who we love deeply? To say everything is holy isn’t to endorse all the evil or pain or despair, but to acknowledge that the ability to be present to ourselves and one another is a holy gift. Likewise, to be fully human is to hold our hearts open to the tragedies that are all around us.
III.
Which leads to another question, “what is the role of community in these questions?” In Paul’s letter to Philippians, he gives several words of advice. What’s important to acknowledge, however, is that all of this, for Paul, is a part of a larger commitment and experience of community. Our ability to “celebrate God all day, every day” or to let “petitions and prayers shape your worries into prayers” or our ability to have “a sense of God’s wholeness” and to realize that “everything is coming together for good” is possible, in part, because faith is lived in community.
One of the great dangers of our faith life – especially in this country – is we often view it in such private and personal ways. This not only contradicts the experience of the faithful in the Bible, it contradicts the experience of so many who live with deep struggle and yet remain hopeful and grateful about their lives. I don’t know how some of the people we met in El Salvador remain faithful and hopeful in the wake of the violence perpetrated against them. I don’t pretend to fully understand how they keep going after the brutal death or disappearance of loved ones. But one thing that was evident is that their way through and with poverty, their celebration in the face of limited vocational options and financial possibilities involves a deep connection to others, a deep dependence on and support of others. While I don’t want, for a minute, to romanticize their lives, I also have a sense that for them being with others changes the nature of so many questions. Loving each other, sharing with one another, depending on each other – these are tangible ways that communities of faith for centuries have come to know God in their midst. In many cases, this community involves both the living and the dead, as was evidenced by the great role Oscar Romero, the assassinated Archbishop still plays in their lives.
In our circles, we may call this the “community of saints” or the “cloud of witnesses” or we may call it our extended family or our family heritage. The point is that attending to that community – whether it is a natural one we were born into or a chosen one we have helped create – mitigates all kinds of perplexing questions. The questions may not go away, but in the context of community where we are loved and where we love others, where we see mysteries and joys and pains of all kinds, those questions don’t have the hold on us that they might if we live an isolated life.
IV.
But, in the end, when we ask “what’s sacred about that?” we must also face our own need for action and response to the difficulties of the world.
In the face of suffering, we are not silent.
In the face of injustice, we are not passive.
As people of faith who show up to our lives, who live open hearted towards others we are capable of rage at the oppression we see;
we are capable of compassion in the face of others’ pain,
we are able to confront those in power or those abusing others.
As we understand ourselves as the embodiment of the Spirit of God in the world – we take responsibility in the best way we can.
There are all kinds of religious faith that encourage detachment from the realities of our world – by focusing only on the life ever after, or crafting a purely metaphysical faith, or encouraging a overly personalized faith in which all that matters is what happens in my life. The Christ of Easter, the Resurrected Jesus who inspired and ignited the disciples was himself fully engaged in his world – as were his disciples.
“Hymns of geese fly overhead – and stretch their wings like their parents did,” sang Newcomer. It’s a reminder that this path we take in our lives is not new, but ancient; it is not solitary, but communal. We know just a little of what lies ahead, but trust the wisdom and experience of those who’ve gone before us and one another.
Some of the journey is instinctual, some of it is learned. Sometimes God shows us the way forward, and sometimes we must depend on one another to embody God for each other.
She sang that line as a reminder to wake up, to open our eyes, to notice the sacredness. May it be so for each of us, today and every day. Amen.
