sermons
The Way of Jesus In Public Life
This is Not the End
Steve Watson
Nov 10, 2024
On Thursday morning, I huddled up with a group of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clergy to talk about where we were at after the election. We sang together. We prayed in the different languages and spirits of our different faiths. And we talked. I’d got us together to talk about what our people are experiencing and what they need, the people of our congregations. And there was a lot.
Some of us wondered about our fears.
A community leader in a large, mostly immigrant congregation was wondering about the not properly documented members of his community, wondering if they’d need to fear getting swept up in traffic stops again and detained, as they were several years ago.
A queer clergy member talked about themselves and their community of gay, lesbian, and trans friends and family, wondering which of their rights would or wouldn’t be stripped from them. They said:
I look to the strength of our queer ancestors who survived and thrived even when no one in the government was on our side. But it would be nice if the government didn’t scapegoat and oppose us again, wouldn’t it?
Some of us were processing our anger.
One of us said
I’m not from this area, but I feel like I can’t go back home. Because my parents, my neighbors, the people I went to high school with where I’m from have betrayed me and my values and my interests again. And I’m just so furious.
More than one parent was so angry at the conversation they’d had to have with their daughters the day before, that America had a chance to elect a competent woman but instead elected a man accused by dozens of women of sexual misconduct and found liable for sexual abuse.
There were Asian and Black colleagues wondering when they’d next be harassed or endangered and what safety looked like in the months ahead.
We wondered how we would organize together to protect our rights and communities. We were wondering if we knew enough about trauma care and if we had the stamina for four more years of leading angry and in some cases, divided congregations.
Mostly, though, we were also just tired.
Maybe you relate to some of this. I know that many of you do.
And maybe you don’t. Friends, I know many of our shared values here at Reservoir, but I obviously don’t know all your politics.
A little over one in three Massachusetts voters voted for Donald Trump. In Cambridge, Boston, Somerville, Arlington and the rest of the communities close to here that was more like one in five to one in 12, but that’s still not nobody.
So I don’t think we should ever assume in our communities that everyone votes the same way, just like we shouldn’t assume that everyone does anything the same way.
But I know a lot of us online today are angry or scared or sad or tired or some mix of all those things. And I feel like we need to make some room for that today.
I had been thinking about a different sermon – one about sick people and sick nations and what healing looks like with the help of God and friends. And I still want to give that sermon, maybe sometime soon, but not today.
Instead we’re going to read one of the short poems in the Bible’s prayer book called the Psalms. Nearly half of those prayers are called psalms of lament – prayers of sadness and anger and doubt, despair, and just plain rage. And in all this, they’re Psalms of faith, and we need that too.
When life gets hard, we pull away from God and we pull away from each other a lot of the time, when we most need each other. And when we most need the deep stuff of God too – when we most need to keep the faith, and to push forward in hope, and to love and be loved harder too.
So we’ll try to go there today.
This isn’t the only thing we’ll do.
Whatever you think of the election, these are times for people of faith to get focused and organized about renewing our communities, about living lives of meaning and purpose in seeing more just worlds into being. And months ago, anticipating what these times might be like, I invited a national leader in faith and justice to visit us this month.
Our guest speaker next weekend is Dr. Drew Hart. His podcast, Inverse, hosts powerful conversations about faith in the Way of Jesus and social justice. And his last book: Who Will Be a Witness? Igniting Activism for God’s Justice, Love and Deliverance is an important book that’s been praised by some of the biggest voices of our age in faith and justice. So you’ll want to be here next weekend, and if you’re serious about giving time and energy to our church’s efforts to organize for a more just world in this season, you’ll want to register today for the lunch with Drew we’re hosting next Sunday at 12:00.
And then a couple weeks after that, we’ll move into our darkest month of the year celebrating Advent, the four weeks before Christmas. This year, we’ll be getting curious about how Jesus moved with the Spirit of God and how we can do the same. It’ll be called Inspire Us.
But by inspire us, I don’t mean just feel good peace of Christmas vibes, I mean: Spirit of God, breathe new life and direction into a tired and angry and fed up, weary people, that we can live with deep faith, and fierce hope, and big love in this season, that we be equipped to for joy and justice in a world that doesn’t have enough of either of those.
So that’s some of where we’re going, friends.
But back to today. I’m going to read Psalm 13 for us, share a few thoughts, and tell you what to do with all those sticky notes around you.
The psalm is written in the singular. But I’m going to read it in the plural. These aren’t times for solitary faith.
Psalm 13 (Common English Bible)
For the music leader. A song of David.
13 How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?2 How long will I be left to my own wits,
agony filling my heart? Daily?
How long will my enemy keep defeating me?3 Look at me!
Answer me, Lord my God!
Restore sight to my eyes!
Otherwise, I’ll sleep the sleep of death,4 and my enemy will say, “I won!”
My foes will rejoice over my downfall.5 But I have trusted in your faithful love.
My heart will rejoice in your salvation.6 Yes, I will sing to the Lord
because he has been good to me.
Frederick Buechner wrote:
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
Beautiful and terrible things.
Sometimes we think that being American, or being a person who trusts God, means that mostly good things will happen.
Or we think that despite the bad things, history is just getting better and better, so it’s going to be OK.
Or we think God is in control of everything, so maybe some things might seem bad to us, but God’s really working them all for good, so things must not be that bad after all.
But the prayers of the Bible aren’t having any of this. There we meet people who have good days and good seasons and triumphs and dance their hearts out in joy. And we meet people who are working through their big regrets, or trying to survive exile or war, people who are sad and tired and scared and shaking with rage.
And all these people say:
come pray with us. Let’s tell the truth.
So we face the bad and the ugly together.
- Have you forgotten us, God?
- How long’s it going to be?
- Why do good people lose?
- Why do I love?
- Why do bad people get to strut out in public, saying: I won!
The good, the bad, and ugly. The Psalms make room for that. If you want to be at home in your body, if you want to be at home in this world and at home with God, you’ve got to tell the truth.
These Psalms weren’t read in private either. They have been anchors for the public worship of Jews and Christians for millennia. We’ve developed a tradition here at Reservoir of making room for our community’s prayers in the sanctuary through the holy means of the sticky note.
I kid, there’s nothing needful or holy about writing down a prayer but there’s something about writing something down that sometimes can honor the importance of something and can get it out of our heads too. And there’s something about placing those notes of prayer in public that helps us offer our collective range and sadness and fatigue and questions to a living God who has room for it all and listens.
So friends, in a couple minutes we’re going to play some music, and I invite you to grab a couple of sticky notes at home – doesn’t matter what color – and write down anything that’s wearing you out, that makes you angry or sad or afraid that you want to say to God. You can make it a prayer, like
“How long will such and such happen?”
Or you can just write the thing down without any particular question or prayer. This is a political week, so political stuff is welcome, but you don’t have to stay in that lane. Life gives us all kinds of terrible things we need to make sure that God knows about and is paying attention to.
Before we do that, I want to say something else though, first. It’s about where the Psalm we read ends, and it’s about something else we need right now, in addition to praying out our worries and our rage.
During the first Trump presidency, when we were all starting to notice how much division and cruelty and scapegoating and verbal and physical violence had become part of ordinary American life, some filmmakers made a documentary called: The Antidote. You can still stream it on YouTube and on Prime, I think. When it came out a few years ago, my family watched it together because someone we know was featured in it. And a local Boston-based health care organization was featured too.
It’s a series of stories about good and beautiful things happening in local communities in America, people making communities more just and good and wholesome and kind. If there was anything like a thesis to the film, it was that the antidote to division and cruelty in American life is kindness.
Friends, I’m not so sure that kindness is enough for us at this point. We need kindness, yes, but we need a lot more than that.
I think the Psalmist agrees. Because in this poem of fatigue and fear and rage, the psalm takes a turn at the end and says this.
5 But I have trusted in your faithful love.
My heart will rejoice in your salvation.6 Yes, I will sing to the Lord
because he has been good to me.
Trusting in God – leaning in toward keeping the faith.
Rejoices in the coming salvation – a heart of hope.
And songs of God’s goodness, God’s hesed, that beautiful word for faithful, big, steady love.
Don’t get me wrong. In times of anger and of crisis, most of us do not feel these things. And friends, we do not need to. Our feelings matter a great deal, but we are not here to manage and manipulate and brighten them.
And the Psalms weren’t either.
But they are a reminder to us that the bad and the ugly are not all there is to life, ever. Terrible things will happen. But beautiful things too.
The full quote from Frederick Buechner goes like this. It says:
“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”
Even when terrible things happen, especially when terrible things happen, we’ve got to remember that the good and the true and the beautiful happen too. That the gift of grace is still calling out to us to participate in the antidote to all the toxins that poison and choke and threaten us. God is still loving and just and looking to breathe new worlds, new miracles into being. But God can’t do that alone.
Less pie in the sky, God still wants us to survive, and God even wants us to thrive as much as we can in this season, and get busy making sure that our friends and neighbors whose backs are up against the wall can survive and thrive too.
And I think that comes down to not running away from the three words that Brother Paul in the Bible says are at the center of the Way of Jesus, the three words that anchor the end of this Psalm too, which are faith, hope, and love.
Friends, how are we gonna keep the faith – faith that there is goodness and truth and beauty to be made still, that God is here with goodness and truth and beauty in many forms. We’ve got to keep the faith that doing good matters, that telling the truth is still worthwhile, and that making beauty together will help us thrive.
We’ve got to exercise our muscles of hope. As the great justice leader of our age Bryan Stevenson reminds us, hope is not a nostalgic vibe or wish, it is a muscular superpower. To believe that God can bring good things out of a bad time, that we can shape good outcomes together in a bad season, to keep acting like our worst today doesn’t doom us to an even worse tomorrow. Our children, our colleagues, our neighbors don’t need fake smiles or silver linings but we all need from each other the humor and the creative resilience that comes when we don’t let fools and liars and villains have the last word on our tomorrow.
And we need love. Not just sexy love songs, on holding hands, although those are good too. We need big love, fierce love, the kind of love that says I’ve got the back of my Black children and classmates when they get harassing, demeaning texts like Black youth across college campuses were getting last week. Or I’ve got the backs of our trans neighbors or our immigrant neighbors when they are targeted or scapegoated. This isn’t just personal, neighbor to neighbor, it’s public too. Which is why we’re having this conversation next week with Dr. Drew Hart on how we mobilize for justice in this season. Because justice is what love in public looks like.
So friends, alongside your words of fatigue and sadness and anger, where you write down the bad and ugly things we need God’s eyes on, I want to dare you to write down some way you’re going to keep the faith, and grow your hope, or live your love in this season. What help will you need to be a person of faith, hope, and love in the weeks ahead?
I invite you to write these things on your Post-it note at home. And then I’ll say a closing prayer and you can place your notes somewhere in your home that’s special and you can return to from time to time.
Communion Prayer-
The table of communion reminds us that we are members of the Body of Christ, joined to the life and strength of God and poured out together with Jesus for the healing of the world. So we join our prayers together at the table.
And the tree of Life reminds us that God is always birthing new life from dying seeds, that our prayers, our anger, our steady presence still here today, and our faith and our hope and our love can be joined together with power for great things.
So Spirit of God, receive our prayers, take all that we are today and do something good with it. Grow faith, hope, and love in our community, that we say survive together, that we can thrive together, that we can do some glorious good together in the months ahead. Amen.