Word that the LORD has not spoken

A sermon delivered in Christ Chapel February 6, 2003, by the Rev. Dr. William Seth Adams, Professor of Liturgics and Anglican Studies

Blessed be the Name of God

"How can we recognize a word that the LORD has not spoken?"
[Deut 18.21]

It's a good question, isn't it? Quite a good question! And the answer follows quickly, "If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptively; do not be frightened by it." [Deut 18.22] How can we know? Dear God, don't we wonder?!

In these current days and for some time now, I find myself almost persistently in a dark frame of mind, gloomy, sorrowing, beset by the dreadful marvels of the world. Tho' I've never been possessed of a natural buoyancy, there's nevertheless, even now, more to me and my mood than the gloom -- I am mindful of the love of a good woman, the joy of children and grandchildren, the texture and energy of creation, the cheer of good friends and the blessing of work, the mercy and beauty of God -- I know all this in both my head and my heart. Yet, still when left alone, allowed to ponder beyond the obligations and amusements of my days, the terrain underneath gets quite rocky and surefootedness becomes something only to be longed for. Perhaps it's a trait of personality, a fact of age or a matter of early formation -- potty training or some such. Whatever it is, the question put by the Deuteronomic writer seems more than apt. How do we know? Who presumes, in a false and therefore damnable way, to speak for God?

The answer given isn't really very satisfying, at least to me. If it's not true, says the answer, then it's not God's. If it is, then it is. Very simple. Very unsatisfactory. In a world where the word of God competes with the word of God, a world where "true" is as slippery a notion as a bar of wet soap, the 'truth test' will just not do.

I try to tell myself that what I'm feeling is very like what my forebears felt when their world was threatened or "beset," a favorite word for me lately.
> When the factories came and the machines and their menace;
> when the towns emptied in favor of the cities;
> when the drought came and the land dried and blew away;
> when "the war to end all wars" didn't…end all wars;
> when the locusts ate the grain and the rains came and took the soil;
> when the economic fortunes of the nation collapsed and many took to the streets;
> when riots from injustice torched our cities;
> when households became frail and broken;
> when silence disappeared from our lives and we were not able to be still;
> when the only sanity to be found was in the poetry.

I try not to notice. I play with my granddaughters. I do my work. I dance with Amy Donohue. I plant our garden -- lettuce, radishes, chard, herbs, "plotting the resurrection," someone once said. I keep moving. I do hopeful things as if natural and properly diverting. But I am not hopeful -- not in the short run. "Chairs on the Titanic…"

A friend sends me, several times every day, word about the plight of the Palestinians, particularly Palestinian Christians, and the darkness of their prospects. Canadian friends send me, several times every day, word from the world press about our place in the global community as we contemplate and force upon the world an unprecedented "war," one denounced by Anglican Christians and others around the world, beginning with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the US Episcopal House of Bishops, the Primate of Canada, the World Council of Churches and on and on. Yet, it's as if these voices were no voice, no voice to speak a contrary word, a word that might be light and not darkness, salutary and not savage.

What language serves the heart in this time and place? Which words -- if words at all -- will express with power what needs to be said? Surely we want to hear hopeful things, nourishing things in our ears, yet I'm drawn more readily to the language and energy of lamentation, pleading, grieving, gnawing at God as if we had not. "The joy of our hearts has ceased; our dancing has been turned to mourning…Because of this, our hearts are sick, because of these things our eyes have grown dim." [Lam 5.15, 17] So the scriptural Lamentations. In these laments, we cry out in our sin, admitting that we have fallen short and that this has caused God to abandon us. "…woe to us, for we have sinned." "Why have you forgotten us completely? Why have you forsaken us these many days? Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored; renew our days as of old -- unless you have utterly rejected us, and are angry with us beyond measure." [Lam 5.16b, 20-22] Jerusalem had fallen to Babylon and we knew God's abandonment. So we cried out.

But for our time the more likely lament to be heard, I suspect, is of a different sort. We still have our sin to confess and our transgressions to grieve, that is for certain. We are at a distance from God. But if we could hear it, we would be more likely to hear the lamentation of God -- not the lamentation of the likes of you and me, but rather the grieving of the Holy One.

On the Sunday after 9/11, I preached at the evening service at St. James'. I had been at the main morning service that morning but preached only in the evening. At the 10 a.m. service and at the evening service as well, lead by the choir we sang, "We shall overcome," a powerful and encouraging song, particularly in a historically black congregation like St. James'. But at the evening service, in my sermon, before we sang that song, I asked that we not sing the third verse. Perhaps the words of that verse were true for protesters to sing in Selma or Birmingham…or Austin years ago, but after 9/11 I thought we should forswear that verse, at least for a time. "God is on our side" it goes, "God is on our side, today." It seemed to me then, and now as well, that that verse was not a verse God could tolerate. Suggesting that the presumed righteousness of this nation was alluring to God seemed both false and dangerous. It seems a word that the LORD would not have spoken.

"How can we recognize a word that the LORD has not spoken?" I took this question to church with me this last Sunday, anticipating our time together today. This past Sunday, we were graced by the visitation of Theodore and Christina Daniels. Bishop Daniels, lately of the Virgin Islands and now the assistant bishop of the diocese of Texas, preached with energy and reassurance in the most welcoming of gatherings. What a joy to have a black bishop, a Spanish speaking Panamanian born bishop proclaiming a confident word. Several times during his sermon, actually many times, Bp. Daniels said, "The Lord has a word for you" -- as if to give us confidence and nourishment for the future, he said over and over again, "The Lord has a word for you." And each time he said that, as you might imagine, I became more and more attentive, leaning toward the answer. And the word? "I will not fail you." The word for us, Bp. Daniels said, was just that, "I, the Lord, will not fail you." Good news, great news.

I wanted this good word to overturn my own lamenting. I wanted this word to redistribute my energies and settle my heart, for my sake, of course, but also for yours. What good, thinking then of now, what good is a gloomy preacher!!

Bp. Daniels reminded me of what I know to be fundamentally and finally true -- and you must also know it -- that in the resolution of all things, whenever that comes to be, God will gather up and make good all that is. Things will indeed and in fact, turn out as God imagines. God will not fail.

What makes me struggle in the good Bishop's promise is the word "you." "God will not fail you," he said. I think, rather I know that God will not fail, that's for certain. But who under heaven is "you"?

Will God choose amongst those who offer praise, those who call upon the divine name, those who on mountaintop or desert or cross find life and mission and blessing? Who is it that God will not fail? And when, when will 'not failing' come to pass? Have we only "the meantime"? Questions full of melancholy!

As to words that the LORD has not spoken -- they fill "the meantime" -- terror, war, execution, starvation, rape -- these are such words. And as I recount these ever-present ungodly words, I hear the text from Deuteronomy saying that these ungodly words are not to frighten us, but dear ones, I am very frightened by these words. They are too common, too rampant. Like other obscene words, in this "meantime," they are taken for granted.

Though I try to prevent it, my own lamentation moves toward lament's boundary with rage, and my heart fills as do my eyes and my guts and I cry out, railing at the darkness, cursing the torment of "the meantime," dismayed that the folly of war cannot be overpowered by the foolishness of peace, angered at greedy and grasping political leaders for testing, wasting the energies of God. I am pulled into exhaustion by my own impotence in all this, by the absence of a contrary voice.

What value is a cri de coeur, a cry from the heart, beyond the heart of the speaker? I don't know. But I give this cri de coeur to you and to the Holy One, the cry of whose own heart I cannot conceive.

Blessed be the Name of God

wsa