Trusting in faith and not in duct tape

A sermon delivered in Christ Chapel February 27, 2003, by the Rev. Dr. Flora Keshgegian, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology

Seventh Epiphany/B

As some of you know, for many years in a previous life, I was a chaplain at Brown University. The chaplains' offices at Brown are located on the second floor of one of the older buildings on campus --having been built sometime in the 19th century. The ceilings are a good 18 or 20 feet high, so the offices are well above street level. During my first few years at Brown this building underwent some major renovations that lasted for a couple of years. And as we will soon experience here, living amidst a construction zone carries its own particular challenges. There were many days when the drilling was so loud, I thought I was living inside a dentist's office, if not inside the drill itself. Other days, I did not know what I would encounter -- such as walking into the anteroom to the women's bathroom to discover a large hole in the floor. That hole remained there a long time.

One day, a quiet day, a first year student came to see me. She told me that she was having a lot of difficulty with college life. In very dramatic terms -- drama was not uncommon for Brown students -- She described how confused and lost she felt. Her description got more and more intense -- until she declared: "I don't even know if up is up or down is down." At that moment, a workman appeared outside my second floor window. He proceeded to open the window from the outside and climb part way in, while not saying a word of greeting or excuse me for interrupting. Then he commenced to scrape the paint on the inside of the window frame. To lighten the moment and the interruption, I pointed to the worker in the window and said something to the student to the effect that maybe "up is down" or "down is up." She did not laugh. I knew then that she was in real distress and I moved us to another office.

In our day to day lives, we assume that up is up and down is down. So we do not expect people to appear at our second floor windows. Nor do we expect a paralyzed man to be lowered down from the roof.

There is a lot of drama and even a certain absurdity in the gospel narrative we just heard, just as there was in what happened in my office that day. Imagine the Gospel scene -- all these people crowded in and around the house trying to hear Jesus. Then entering into the scene are these people carrying their paralyzed friend on a mat. They can't get anywhere near the door, so they find another way -- literally climbing up on the roof, hoisting the paralyzed man and his mat up, taking the roof of the house and lowering the litter down. It was an ingenious thing to do and definitely got Jesus' attention and he responded by healing the man. But like my student who could not get out of her own perspective enough to see any humor or grace in the moment, the scribes around Jesus could not see beyond their own reality, their particular and narrow focus. Jesus is healing a paralyzed man and all they can do is be critical about the words.

I used to go to a dentist who put posters up on the ceiling -- not a place you expect to see a poster, but a place you spend a lot of time looking at, if you are lying back in the dentist's chair. One of the posters he had up there read: "If you don't expect the unexpected, you won't find it."

The readings for today are about the new and the unexpected. which is where, the readings suggest, God is to be found. In Isaiah, Yahweh God boldly declares: "I am about to do a new thing…. Do you not perceive it?" Nature itself will be transformed as wild beasts honor God and the rivers flow through desert land. The unexpected will be manifest. God will do this.

In the Markan story as well, God seems to be manifest in unexpected ways -- literally dropping in from the ceiling. God is active in the faith of those who bring the paralyzed man to Jesus. They go to great lengths to do so. God is also active in the faith of the man himself who, helpless on his mat, takes the risk of letting himself be lowered through the roof. And God is active and present in Jesus who pays attention to this unexpected thing appearing before him, recognizes the faith of these folks and responds by offering healing to the man. While the scribes are thinking about words and claims to authority, Jesus points out the obvious. The words are not the important or critical thing -- saying your sins are forgiven -- or stand up and walk. What is important is that faith has been manifest, that the man is healed, that God in Jesus is doing the unexpected. God is doing a new thing. Can we perceive it?
So much gets in the way of our vision .For the scribes, it was their interpretation of who God is and how God acts, it was their narrow view of how things happen. For the Israelites, it was their clinging to certain understandings of what it meant to be in relationship to God and how they were to enact that.
And for us, it is so often fear. And the need to cling tightly to control.

The student who came to see me was losing herself in fear. Brown students are among the best and brightest in our world -- those who have excelled not only academically, but in other ways too. They are students who have been leaders and thinkers. And who have been rewarded for their accomplishments. Any entering class is full of national merit scholars, yearbook editors, class presidents, service club presidents, captains of athletic teams, etc. They have stood out in whatever school they come from. Then they get to Brown and they are in a class full of years book editors, full of class presidents, full of folks who placed first in their class. And it is a shock. These students can no longer rely on the ways in which they had been defining themselves. They cannot assume that their achievements will be enough. They are no longer in control of their world. Their world is no longer the one they knew.

All that defined these students -- and shaped their place in the world -- may no longer apply. Some of them -- luckily not too many of them -- get thrown by all this in a way that sends them careening. The student who appeared in my office was one of those who having been forced to let go of the controls that guided her through life -- was not able to find grace in the new and unexpected. Fear of falling, fear of failing, had gotten a hold of her and clouded her vision too much. The need to be in control -- as she imagined it -- drove her to try to hold on so tightly to what was slipping from her grasp that she could only imagine fear and not possibility.

Ever since 9/11 and, in actuality for years before that, as we Americans have experienced ourselves not in control as this country might wish it were, fear has been growing among us. It is commonplace to say that nothing is the same after 9/11 -- but how much have we been willing to examine the direction in which we seem to be moving. We all need to engage in such examination. As people of faith especially, we need to reflect on how much we are driven by fear. To the extent that fear overtakes our lives, there is little room for God. We will resist the unexpected and cling more and more tightly to our fear driven vision of what we think is happening. We will duct tape ourselves into narrow worlds that let in little air, let alone grace.

The leadership of this country seems to me to be like the lawyers in this story. They resist stepping out of their narrow vision and are not open to the miracle that may be taking place in front of them. As far as they are concerned there is only one way to go. If they can't get in through the door, unlike the people in the Markan story, our leaders will blast their way in, with little thought of who is in the way. Their narrow vision does not let them see what will be lost, let alone that there may be another way to go, an unexpected, but effective way, a creative way that just may produce a miracle rather than a disaster.

There is a popular saying in the black church -- that God makes a way where there is no way. That sentiment reflects the God of Isaiah, who makes a path through the wilderness, makes rivers in the desert, and brings to life the dry land.

Would that the leaders of our country could imagine such possibilities?

Would that we could. The voice of God, speaking through Isaiah, exhorts the people of Israel not to dwell on the past. The verses immediately preceding the ones we heard make reference to the Exodus by pointing out that God is the one who makes a way in the sea and drowns horses and warriors and chariots. Having brought the Exodus to mind, God goes on to say: "Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old." Why would God do this? Why would God bring up the Exodus and then tell Israel not to dwell on it? Precisely because openness to the new thing, faith in God's promises for the present and the future, may require us to question all that we take for granted, all that we assume. For so long, Israel had banked on God as rescuer and Israel had so counted on that it sometimes was not able to see the different ways in which God was acting. In these verses, God is, in a way, banging them over the head with this dynamic. God is telling them: if you really want to see what I, the Holy One, am doing among you then let go of your preconceptions and assumptions, Let go of how you think I am going to act. But do not let go of your faith in me, the one who has remained faithful to you.

We need such a perspective today. We are in a dangerous time, a very dangerous time. It is important that we not rely on former things or be too attached to things of old: whether that be allegiance to our fathers and what they began, including their wars, or American superiority and supremacy over other nations, or thinking we alone are responsible for the world's safety, so we do not have to play by the rules. Or even thinking that we can guarantee security on any terms, let alone through might. Now is a dangerous time, and an important time, A time to be guided by faith in God who ever remains faithful to us, rather than by fear which clouds our vision and chokes our faith.

I do not remember seeing that particular Brown student again, but I know that the students who thrived at Brown were the ones who embraced the possibilities before them and found ways not to be overcome by fear. They were able to see and imagine the new.

There are more and more things to fear in this world. Watch TV for an hour -- especially the news and commercials -- and you could make a whole list of things to be afraid of. Discernment is not only about perceiving which of those are the enemies of faith and which are not, but it is about trusting in faith and not duct tape. It is about trusting and placing our hope in God who is working among us, God who is doing infinitely more than we can hope and imagine. Can we perceive it? Amen