First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: I Timothy 4:11-16, Exodus 3:7-10
September 23, 2001
In the tradition of the late Sam Levinson, Harry Golden was a popular Jewish author and after-dinner speaker whose stories I first encountered in a delightful collection entitled “Only In America.” In one of his essays, he said he was puzzled, as a child, by his father’s religious habits. For although his father loudly and frequently proclaimed his disbelief, he never missed a service at the local synagogue. Every time the doors of the house of prayer swung open, his father was there. When Harry became a teenager, he finally summoned the courage to confront his father’s hypocrisy. “You say you doubt that God exists, but you go to the synagogue anyway. Why?”
“There are many reasons one would go to the synagogue,” replied his father. “Take Silverberg. He goes to talk to God. Me? I go to talk to Silverberg.”
When you cut to the bottom line, I suspect that worship exists to meet a pair of human needs, the need for communion with God and the need for human community (i.e. “talking to God” and “talking to Silverberg”). From person to person, the urgency of those needs varies. And from church to church, the tilt of the worship (in response to those needs) varies. Sometimes those needs conflict in the worship experience, as when the person desirous of talking with Silverberg chatters away while Silverberg is trying to talk to God….like during the prelude. But eventually, each need is going to surface, requiring any church worth its salt to provide opportunities for both….speaking to God and speaking to Silverberg.
I suppose that’s why 1833 of you streamed through our sanctuary doors at some time or another last Sunday….to lift a prayer to the Lord, to listen for any late word from the Lord, and to take whatever comfort could be obtained from doing it among the people of the Lord. With few places to go, and still fewer reasons for going, sitting on your couch watching CNN for hours on end proved to be terribly isolating and more than a little frightening.
So you came, you sang, you prayed, you listened and, I suspect, you departed, having experienced a very profound sense of togetherness….even if you entered and left without uttering a word to anybody or having anybody utter a word to you. For one Sunday anyway, it was comfort enough to know that Silverberg was here, whether you talked to him or not. Several of you commented that not only was this the biggest crowd you had seen since Easter, but the most subdued crowd you had ever seen, period.
Many of you made it a point to tell me that, as a result of having been here, you felt better. Some of you went on to define “better” with words like “stronger,” “less anxious,” and “more hopeful.” But one of you (and, for the life of me, I can’t remember who) said: “I feel liberated”….not so much as in “freed” as in “released.”
Interesting word, “liberated.” I suppose it may have been keyed by the part of my sermon that spoke strongly of deliverance. After 37 years at this enterprise, I have come to believe that there are only two consistent action themes in scripture, and that the dance of biblical religion is essentially a two-step….with the two steps being deliverance and reconciliation (“Let my people go,” followed by “Bring my people home”).
Last Sunday, playing on both the white and black keys of deliverance, I said that there was no wilderness so barren….no valley so forsaken….no Babylon so pagan….and I should have added “no far country so foreign”….but that God could get us home from there.
Maybe that’s what my “liberated” parishioner was picking up on. Or maybe it was a more general feeling….one she couldn’t quite pin down….that some of the things pinning her down (things like fear, worry, insecurity and hostility) weren’t anymore. There are a lot of people who have been trapped by these events, and not all of them are lying beneath fallen buildings (although every time I try to imagine being under all that rubble, bad things happen to my head and my heart rate). Last week we sang, with measured gusto:
Lo the hosts of evil round us
Scorn thy Christ, assail his ways,
Fears and doubts too long have bound us,
Free our hearts to work and praise.
Which sounds like a prayer of deliverance to me, as I think it did to Harry Emerson Fosdick who wrote it.
I have never been bound or jailed, nor have my movements been seriously restricted. As one who is more than mildly claustrophobic, I dread the day some doctor tells me I need to have an MRI. Yet I know people who, because of physical or mental illness, could be described as being prisoners in their body or prisoners in their mind. I have heard addicts described as prisoners of habit. And I love to sing the old hymn about being “locked in the darksome prison house of sin.” In the waning months of her life, I used to visit my grandmother in the nursing home, where she would respond to my cheery, “How are you?” by saying: “I’m in prison. That’s how I am.” Except that every time I tried to “spring her”….for a ride, a meal in a restaurant, a family gathering….I could never get her to go.
Any religion that features “deliverance” as one of its dominant biblical themes needs people who can lead an occasional prison break. And the Bible has them, starting with Moses and ending with Paul. But if you think such heroism stopped with the end of the biblical era, you haven’t been looking at the same churches I have for lo these many years. But I can make allowances for your lousy vision, given that God’s work of deliverance has, in our time, been a more quiet work….a less dramatic work….but no less liberating work.
I find myself in a bit of an awkward spot this morning. Today’s sermon, originally programmed for last week, was to have been slanted toward helping kids read….the better to escape the prison of ignorance. And the updated version of today’s sermon, which never got out of the starting blocks, was supposed to be slanted toward helping people care….the better to unlock the prison of loneliness. Now I must take into account all of the painful and unsettling stuff that continues to go on around us, restraining us, binding us, and in 7,000 tragic situations, literally burying us. In “deliverance” I have found a theme that touches all the bases without doing justice to any. Still, an effort is required.
Let’s start with reading. If you can’t read, you won’t grow in most of the ways that matter. And many can’t. So many don’t. They are left behind before they even start. Sadder still is the fact that they don’t know they have been left behind until they are well past the point they can do much about it.
I grew up in a pretty narrow sphere. Most of my friends lived on the same street. My church was at one end of the block. My school at the other. One set of grandparents, six miles to the east. The other set, four miles to the west. No out of town relatives to visit. Few, if any, vacations beyond the state. No bus trips except downtown. No plane trips till I was 24. When I went to college, I saw Albion for the first time when I was dropped off with my suitcase. Midway through my freshman year, it occurred to me that even if I begged, borrowed or stole a car, I wouldn’t know how to find my way home. We’re not talking “world traveler” here.
Except that I read….under the covers with a flashlight or for hours on end on the front porch. I read anything and everything. I read narrow and wide. I read shallow and deep. I read brain candy and red meat. Books opened my eyes….opened my doors….opened my future. Had I not been taught to read, invited to read and encouraged to read, there is no way I would have this job (or even this life).
Which is why I can’t say enough about Murray Jones, Lisa McIlvenna and our Church and Society Ministry. Their commitment to join our Jewish colleagues at Temple Beth El in recruiting “study buddies” for middle schoolers at Jefferson Whittier in Pontiac is laudable. This is a one hour a day, one day a week, one school blitz to unlock the futures of a whole bunch of kids. Biblically, today’s passage from I Timothy leaves no room for doubt that “reading” and “teaching” are verbs intrinsically connected with the verb “saving.” And as one who probably owes more to the teachers in my life than I owe to the preachers in my life, I commend Murray and the “Study Buddy” program to you.
Now, let’s move from reading to caring. This morning, we commissioned a trio of Stephen Ministers. I have taken the training myself. I have taught the training myself. I believe in it. And I believe in these three who have completed it.
They, too, can save your life. Not like a surgeon or a soldier. Not like a policeman or a fireman. Not like a teacher or a preacher. But at a difficult point in your life, when you “feel it” but can’t quite “face it”….or when you go over and over it without being able to come out of it (or move beyond it)….Stephen Ministers can provide the ear, hand, heart and shoulder you need. Better yet, they may also help you find the key to the door, the clearing in the forest, or the light in the tunnel you may have missed (given the uneasy truce you reluctantly made with the darkness). Trust them. Use them. Ponder the possibility that God might be calling you to join them.
Now, back to my theme. Deliverance! Ultimately, this is God’s work. And God will see it through. When I was but a little boy (third grade, fourth grade tops), I went to the high school auditorium one Saturday afternoon where I was privileged to see a children’s theater presentation of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Which is quite likely a Syrian folk tale (reading like a morality play about the virtue of goodness and the punishment of greed). It was added to the collection known as Arabian Nights in the 18th century at the behest of a Frenchman. But what captivated my imagination that Saturday was a cave that opened and closed whenever someone said the words: “Open sesame.” And you thought “Sesame” was the cute little street where Ernie and Burt lived.
Claustrophobic as I am, I do not do caves. But I have made an occasional exception. Twice, while in Egypt on the tail end of the Holy Land tour, I have stood outside the entrance to one of the pyramids, dreading the thought of entry and descent. Twice, I have conquered my fear because (after all): “I am the leader.” The last time I thought: “Been there. Done that. I’ll just point the way and let them go.” But Katie Matick really wanted to go, yet was afraid. So Kris said: “That’s all right, Katie. I’ll go right before you and Bill will go right behind you.”
The passage to the center of the pyramid is narrow and cramped. There are no stairs, just a ridged ramp….108 steps down. A short person can descend standing. A person my size has to bend forward and feel the ceiling scraping one’s head, neck, back and shoulders. Try descending 108 steps while bent over and facing the floor. Each step falls further from the light. Each step also falls further from any air that moves. As you can tell from my description, this is definitely not my thing. But I do it.
At the bottom there is a room where, praise God, the bent can stand and the group can gather. It’s like a dungeon….clammy, cool and dark. “Let’s get out of here,” I thought. “Let’s sing something,” Bill Pettibone said. But what does one sing in the bowels of a pyramid in Egypt? Which was when the words of “Go Down, Moses” came to me….a dungeon song if ever there was one….a deliverance song if ever there was one. And in the midst of a pyramid, what acoustics. We sounded like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
So we sang until I ran out of verses. Then we ventured out. “Out” is always easier for a trio of reasons.
1. It’s easier to walk bent over when you’re going up.
2. The destination is known, safe and filled with people who (because they have gone ahead of you) have gotten there before you.
3. Every step brings you closer and closer to the light.
My friends, God is still opening doors….parting seas….calling leaders….delivering children…. shining light. So sing with me.
When Israel was in Egypt’s land, let my people go;
oppressed so hard they could not stand, let my people go;
Refrain: Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land;
tell old Pharaoh to let my people go.
Your foes shall not before you stand,
and you’ll possess fair Canaan’s land,
Refrain
This world’s a wilderness of woe,
O Let us on to Canaan go,
Refrain
O let us all from bondage flee,
and let us all in Christ be free,
Refrain
Note: As indicated in the sermon itself, the original focus was to have been a reading program at a local middle school, thus counting for the I Timothy text. When events in New York and Washington dictated the movement of this sermon from September 16 to September 23, the focus was to have been “Caring Ministry,” in conjunction with the dedication of three new Stephen Ministers. Continuing events in response to the terrorist attacks led to a third refocusing, hence the addition of the text from Exodus.
The story about Silverberg and the synagogue was recalled by Tom Long in his book, Beyond the Worship Wars: Building Vital and Faithful Worship.
