Let Evening Come

Before I read the Psalm for today, I invite you to listen to a poem by Jane Kenyon that I will revisit in the sermon. The poem is called: “Let Evening Come.”

Let the light of late afternoon 

shine through chinks in the barn, moving   

up the bales as the sun moves down. 

Let the cricket take up chafing   

as a woman takes up her needles   

and her yarn. Let evening come. 

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned   

in long grass. Let the stars appear 

and the moon disclose her silver horn. 

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.   

Let the wind die down. Let the shed   

go black inside. Let evening come. 

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop   

in the oats, to air in the lung   

let evening come. 

Let it come, as it will, and don’t   

be afraid. God does not leave us   

comfortless, so let evening come. 

Listen now to the poet who penned Psalm 71:

Psalm 71:1 In you, O LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame.

 ² In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me.

 ³ Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.

 ⁴ Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel.

 ⁵ For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth.

 ⁶ Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother's womb. My praise is continually of you.

 ⁷ I have been like a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge.

 ⁸ My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all day long.

Let Evening Come

Text: Psalm 71:1-6

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 8-21-16)

Just over twenty years ago, at age of 48, the poet laureate, Jane Kenyon, died of leukemia. Terry Gross interviewed Donald Hall, Kenyon’s husband and a poet laureate himself, and asked, “Did your wife maintain a faith in God throughout her illness and death?” He responded with one word: “yes.” He did not need to say more, because Kenyon’s poetry is a running conversation about matters of faith.  

I realize that the very mention of “poetry” causes some people to break out in hives. It brings back miserable memories of digesting the syntax of John Donne or sifting through the sonnets of William Shakespeare. It conjures up the “know it all” student on the front row, always waving his hand and insisting:  “Oh, I know, I know, what that poem means.” Poetry gives some people a literary headache wishing that the poet would stop speaking in metaphors and just say what she means.  

So, why do we have to listen to poetry in church? The answer to that question is clear. Whenever we listen to significant parts of Scripture, we are listening to poetry, or at least, the poetic. From the magnificent first creation story in Genesis to the soothing image of the Shepherd in the 23^rd psalm to the mysterious incarnation story at the opening of John’s Gospel, poetry, the Bible, and faith dance on the same ballroom floor.

Jane Kenyon knew that truth. In Terry Gross’s interview with Donald Hall, soon after Jane’s death, he explained: “Faith did not keep her from suffering. Often there were long hours of the night when there was no grace present, and there was suffering and despair." I am grateful for Hall’s honesty. I can pay attention to a poet who holds faith and suffering together and does not insist on the spiritual nonsense that real faith somehow eliminates suffering.  

Hall explains that when he and Kenyon moved to Eagle Pond Farm, they "got into the habit of going to church" because that is what the neighbors expected of them. In an interview with Bill Moyers, Kenyon observed: "Before I knew what had happened to me, I'd become a believer”—not in the frightening God of her childhood, but in "a God who, if you ask, forgives you no matter how far down in the well you are. If I didn't believe that I couldn't live."

Kenyon’s faith is expressed with sheer elegance and beauty in her poem, “Let Evening Come.” The closing stanza invites evening to come, be it the evening of our struggles, the evening of our despair, even the evening of our death: “Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.”

A few years ago, a troubled young man brought his loaded automatic weapon into the McNair Elementary School in Dekalb County, just outside Atlanta. On that day, every Atlanta resident feared another tragic story of gun violence gone mad. On this day, though, the story had a different ending.

Antoinette Tuff, an office worker at the school, was on call that day. The troubled young white man, carrying a AK47, entered the school and shot off several rounds of ammunition to get everyone’s attention. That is all the news could tell us.

 Later we learned that inside the school office, though, a much different story was unfolding. Mrs. Tuff talked to Donald Hill not as a madman brandishing an automatic weapon, but as a deeply troubled child of God, even as she had been deeply troubled recently when her husband of 33 years had left her. She spoke these simple words to him as she would have hoped someone would have spoken them to her, “Sweetie, it will be okay.”

The conversation continued and not much time passed before Donald Hill was telling Mrs. Tuff his own plight and then set aside his gun without a person being harmed. Anderson Cooper of CNN asked Antoinette if she considered herself a hero. No, she considered herself a vessel for God and that her recent life experiences had prepared her for this terrifying moment.

What did she want people to walk away learning from this experience, asked Cooper. She hoped that through this experience people might come to know that God really does exist and that God was there that day for her, for the children, and for the “man with a gun.”

When evening came in her all-too-short life, the poet Jane Kenyon was not finally overcome with fear and dread. When evening came and the air was thick with the prospect of death at the McNair Elementary school, the office administrator, Antoinette Tuff, was not finally overcome with fear and dread.

At the heart of Kenyon’s poetry and Tuff’s calming words, you can hear the cries of the poet in Psalm 71: “You are my hope, O LORD, my refuge since youth.” The psalmist looks back over his life that has often been filled with pain and suffering. Yet, his is a life that has been grounded in trust in a God who hears our prayers and stands with us when the trials of life should “threaten to undo us,” even “when evening comes,” our God “does not leave us comfortless.”

  The God we meet in Psalm 71 is not a God promising refuge from the rough and often harsh, indisputable realities of our own mortality. Psalm 71 is about a God who does not forsake us even when we are feeling the most forsaken. It is the God who answers the cry in the dark: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” with the dawn of an empty tomb on Easter morning.

Long before he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in D.C., the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon called:  “Our God is Able.” In the sermon, King tells the back story of his leadership in the Montgomery bus boycott. Almost daily, he got threatening phone calls, had rocks thrown through the windows of his home, and he worried for his own life and for the well-being of his family.

King writes: “I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. Finally, I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing to be a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had almost gone, I determined to take my problem to God. My head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. . . ‘I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone’.

“At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never before . . . It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, ‘Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever’. Almost at once my fears began to pass from me. . . . the outer situation remained the same, but God had given me inner calm” (Strength to Love, p. 113).

Both King at midnight and Tuff at midday dispel any notion that taking refuge in God is some sort of magical protection from the worst that life has to offer us, some sort of Harry Potter “Invisibility Cloak.” To trust that God is our refuge gives us confidence to walk through the toughest trials of life, and in Tuff and King’s cases, courage to confront violence with nonviolent love, thereby, ultimately to disarm violence.

To trust that God is our refuge is to sing with Martin Luther: “And though this world, with devils filled, Should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed God’s truth to triumph through us.” To trust that God is our refuge is to cry out with the psalmist: “From my mother’s womb You brought me out. To You is my praise always.” To trust that God is our refuge is to walk into every evening, even the evening of our own dying, with confidence that our God “does not leave us comfortless.”

“In you, O LORD, I take refuge,” says the psalmist. So breathe deeply, trust God fully, and “let evening come.”

          AMEN 

One Wild and Precious Life

One Wild and Precious Life

Text:  Luke 12:49-56

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 8-14-2016)

In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes cited one of the few restrictions on the First Amendment. He said, “You cannot yell fire in a crowded theater.” I wonder what the good judge would have said about the words Jesus speaks in our text from Luke. Listen to the one shouting fire in the crowded theater:

⁴⁹ 'I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already!

⁵⁰ There is a baptism I must still receive, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!

⁵¹ 'Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

⁵² For from now on, a household of five will be divided: three against two and two against three;

⁵³ father opposed to son, son to father, mother to daughter, daughter to mother, mother-in-law to daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law to mother-in-law.'

⁵⁴ He said again to the crowds, 'When you see a cloud looming up in the west you say at once that rain is coming, and so it does.

          ⁵⁵ And when the wind is from the south you say it's going to be hot, and it is.

⁵⁶ Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the face of the earth and the sky. How is it you do not know how to interpret these times?

                    The Word of the Lord.

                    Thanks be to God.

True confession. I nearly punted when I read these words of Jesus. Living in a world as sharply divided as ours and living in a country specializing in political division, why listen to Jesus talk about causing even more division?

Surely, Jesus was having a bad day, got a little too worked up, and then said some things he wish he had not. Anyone who speaks in public knows the temptation to get carried away, so why not give Jesus a break, let his incendiary words be forgotten and sink into the growing netherworld of words that should never have been uttered? Actually, as a preacher, I find it strangely comforting to know that even Jesus could have a bad preaching day!

Before I decided to skip this text and find one more pleasing to the ear, I read it carefully in the Greek and it actually got worse. In Greek, the first two sentences begin with the words, FIRE and BAPTISM, as a point of emphasis. Most English translations loose this emphasis. Even worse, they soften the opening words of Jesus about the impending fire, “how I wish it were already kindled” when actually the Greek reads not nearly so pensively. The sentiment Jesus is describing is much more like the feeling just before having a root canal, without anesthesia. “How I wish this root canal were already over” just does not cut it.   

The preacher who is speaking in Luke today is not the sweet, baby Jesus being cuddled by Mary or the gentle shepherd that you can see in the obligatory all-white-shepherd picture hanging in almost every church building in America. It is not the Jesus who has been on the road too long, has not had enough sleep, who has heard the same stupid question from the crowd one too many times, and who is ready for someone to give him the proper respect.

The Jesus who is preaching is about to face something far worse than a root canal botched. He is heading to Jerusalem, where the chorus of “hosannas” will quickly turn to the angry cry of “crucify him.” This is the Jesus who will soon be nailed to his own killing tree in Golgotha.

The Jesus preaching in Luke 12 is the Jesus who is not asking for a minute of our time when we can spare it or a leftover dollar or two when we have some change in our pocket. This Jesus is not asking us to cast our vote for him, as he runs for emperor on a platform of family values. This Jesus has come to ask of us the most important, the most fundamental question of our lives.

In her amazing poem, A Summer Day, the poet Mary Oliver writes:

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper? . . .

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

         

That is the question Jesus asks in today’s text. “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” He asks this question not just this one time, but he asks it with his entire life, with his in-your-face challenge to make following him more than a happy habit or a mindless obligation, but the well-thought-through, core direction of our lives.  

I am grateful to John’s brother, Alex Evans, for reminding me about an incident involving Clarence Jordan. Jordan was a Southern Baptist and a fine biblical scholar. He lived “in Georgia and started an interracial farming community in 1942 call Koinonia. It was there at Koinonia that Millard Fuller came for a retreat and formed the idea of Habitat for Humanity.

“Before Jordan’s community gave birth to Habitat, he was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Jordan would often preach as a guest in pulpits across the south, but after congregations heard his message of equality for all people of all colors, he was rarely invited back. On one occasion, he gave a sermon that called for the country to stop the practice of segregation. After the sermon, a lady came up to him and said, ‘My granddaddy was an officer in the Confederate army and would not believe a word that you said about race relations’. Clarence Jordan smiled sweetly and said, ‘Well ma’am, your choice is very clear then. You can follow your granddaddy, or you can follow Jesus’.” (see M. Felton & J. Proctor-Murphy, Living the Questions, p. 87).

          Jesus does not ask for our occasional attention or our polite applause as if he has given a perfectly fine performance that we can talk about on our way home and then move on with our lives. He asks for our entire lives, our bodies, our souls, our minds, our hearts. He wants to burn away with baptism fire anything that keeps us watching from the sidelines or sitting in the balcony, a safe distance away.

In her provocative piece about the power of the people of God, Annie Dillard argues that when Christians join in worship of the crucified and risen Jesus, they are like:  “ . . . children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT . . . It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return” (“Teaching a Stone to Talk”).

FIRE. Jesus wants to burn away all the excuses we cling to that keep us quiet when we should speak, lethargic when we should take action, tepid when we should burn with Gospel justice. Jesus has come to bring FIRE to the earth, but it is not scorched earth FIRE; it is FIRE that destroys the dross that we cannot do ourselves.  Elizabeth Peters writes, “One of my divinity school professors used to say wryly, ‘If we could save ourselves, then the crucifixion was a massive overreaction on God’s part’.” [Christian Century, August 3, 2016, p. 18].

          “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” That is the question Jesus shouted out to two stinking fishers by the Galilean sea. That is the question Jesus shouted out to the rich young man who wanted to know how he could get best positioned to “inherit” eternal life. That is the question Jesus shouted out to Pilate just before he took a towel and washed his hands of the whole affair.

          “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” May that question burn in every last one of us, every day, with life-giving fire!

          AMEN

Homeland

Homeland

Text:  Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 8-7-2016)

The fastest growing religious group in America is NONEs. That is not N-U-N; it is NONE. The NONEs are those who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious.” They argue that the ways and worship of the traditional church obstructs their relationship with God. They lament how most churches major in the minors, and as a result, actually distract people from paying attention to Jesus.

As a pastor in my fourth decade of ministry, I do not underestimate or belittle the legitimate complaints of the NONEs. In fact, it is tempting to get my own NONE card. After all, how many hours have I spent in endless church committee meetings debating matters that matter little to almost anyone? How many weeks have I spent trying to assuage hurt feelings of a member because of something done or something said that was hardly helpful and often hurtful? How often have I wished for two toothpicks to keep my eyes open as someone got on his doctrinal soapbox and recited his position about “you name it” for the fiftieth time? How many times have I wished I could take every last member’s hand and lead them outside, point in every direction and say, “Friends, the church is out here! Let’s go be it”?

Far more seriously, how long have I been a part of a church that has tolerated homophobia and has given it an ignorant Scriptural shine? How long have I led a church that gave lip service to non-violence as if Jesus were just kidding when he addressed an angry mob, saying: “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword”? How long have I listened to good Christian people justify why the church is still more racially segregated than any other public institution?

Maybe it is time to say a fond farewell to Cove and join the growing congregation of NONEs. The time seems right, since Jennell and I are living, albeit temporarily, atop Afton Mountain in a secluded, beautiful spot that overlooks Nelson and Albemarle Counties. It is just the two of us, an occasional bear, and God. Why not sit on the deck and sip some coffee or wine, read the paper, relax and then take our place in the growing NONE Revolution? Who really needs the messiness of church life? Who needs one more obligation?

I did sent off for the NONE paperwork, but hard as I try, I cannot join them. As often as I get frustrated, even maddened with church life, I cannot be a NONE because I do not know how to be a Christian alone; I have no clue how to be “spiritual” alone.

Last week, I told you one tidbit about your new pastor. I wear hearing aids and you should feel free to fuss at me when I am not wearing them. The tidbit for this week is that I love to play golf. To be perfectly clear, I did not say that I am a good golfer, but I do love to play the game.

I love golf so much that sometimes I go out by myself and join another three golfers to make a foursome. Inevitably when play slows down and we are just standing around, someone will ask:  “Gary, what do you do for a living?” When I tell them that I am a pastor, two things always happen. First, they apologize for the language they have used for the past hour, clearly not having listened to my own. Second, they apologize for not going to church or going rarely at best. Finally, after their cursory confessions, they almost always say something like this: “Well, you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian.”

For years, I ignored that comment and played on. No more. Now, I say what I believe to be true, “I respectfully disagree. Christianity is ultimately a team sport.” Yes, I know better than you all the ways that the church of any and every denomination can get in the way of our personal relationship with God and can add roadblocks to following Jesus. I can publish a laundry list of all the ways that the church falls short of the glory of God, including its preachers.

Even so, I have not joined the NONEs and will not join the NONEs, because, despite all its failings, the church is the beloved community of God, the one that on its best days resembles and points to that “better country,” that “homeland” about which the author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes. By church, I do not mean glorious buildings, elegantly simple like the Cove Church or even elaborately ornate like St. Peter’s in Rome. I mean the flawed and fantastic people of God who join to set their sights on home by following Jesus together, sometimes stumbling, sometimes hurdling, but always doing so together.

As a boy in Sunday School, I learned the first question and answer of the Shorter Catechism, an ancient method to teach the Christian faith. The question is:  “What is the chief end of human life?” The answer is: “To glorify God and to enjoy God forever.” Now, you and I can surely worship God, glorify God by walking along the beach, hiking in the mountains, tending our gardens, setting out on a solitary spiritual journey, even taking “a good walk spoiled.”

Ultimately, though, you and I were created to worship God together, to do mission together, to tend to church grounds together, to visit those unable to make it to church together, to advocate against all forms of injustice together, to laugh together. Together, you and I track in the footsteps of Abram and Sarah and all the saints since who have searched for a “better country,” searched not to “Make America Great Again,” but to seek a “homeland” not of our making, not with any national lines, but a “homeland” where we bask in the never-setting sun of God’s goodness and grace.  

In May, I attended the longest church service of my life in the tiny village of Trou Jacques in Haiti. In that sanctuary, my skin color made it impossible for me not to stand out. My inability to speak Creole left me often lost in worship and feeling isolated. Most faces were friendly, but almost all were unfamiliar. I felt so far from home.

Then music began and we started to sing, “Let Us Break Bread Together,” the crowd in Creole, our group in English. The bread was broken and wine was poured and the gifts of God were distributed to us all and though far, far away, my true “homeland” surfaced and my family grew far larger and much more diverse. This table has a way of expanding our idea of home and tearing down any notions that we can live faithfully at home alone.

          I realize that there is a certain irony and also safety in preaching a sermon about the NONEs when they are not present to make their case. That is where you enter the picture. Kristin will post this sermon on the Cove website this afternoon. I invite you to share this sermon with NONEs in your family, with NONEs in your neighborhood, with NONEs working next to you in the office, with NONEs at your favorite bar or favorite music venue, with NONEs at your gym or in your book club.

Why? Because we need the NONEs. We need them to point out where we are stuck in old worship ways that block their way home. We need them to share their fresh ideas of how to tell and to live the old, old story in new ways. We need them because without them there are too many empty seats at this Homeland table.  

You and I are the beloved community of God seeking our true Homeland. All are welcome on this journey. May no one stay away.

AMEN