Upon a High Rock
Lent 2C
24 February 2013 8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Lent 2C
24 February 2013 8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity Ashland
Dear God, let us not accept that judgment, that this is all we are.
Enlighten our minds, inflame our hearts
with the desire to change—
With the hope and faith that we all can
change.
Take away our hearts of stone and give
us hearts of flesh. Amen.
(Dorothy Day)
I had an experience during June 1989 in
Beijing China that had a profound effect on me. I was the director of the Fulbright Scholarly
Exchange program at the U.S. Embassy.
After the June 4 crackdown on student demonstrations, there were a
couple of weeks of real uncertainty and danger.
On June 5-6, in a flagged and marked convoy of cars and vans from the
Embassy, I helped evacuate American teachers and students living in Beijing’s
universities, getting them to the airports so they could leave the
country. You couldn’t cross the city
without such assistance, since there were armed patrols everywhere, roadblocks
preventing any movement, and sporadic weapons fire to disperse crowds. At a couple of the university entrance halls,
I saw the mangled bodies of students killed near Muxidi and Xidan, central
access points to the center of the City where Tiananmen Square lay, laid out on
biers with banners declaring “THEY WILL SAY THIS DID NOT HAPPEN. REMEMBER THE DEAD.” (他们要说大屠杀没有发生. 奠)
When we got to South Gate of
Peking University, we found it blocked by a 2 ½ meter tall barricade thrown up by students and
teachers afraid that the army would enter the campus and start killing
people. People manning the barricade
asked us if it had been the Chinese government that had asked us to remove our
nationals or the U.S. government that had done this on its own. We assured them that it was a U.S. choice to
protect our citizens. Reassured that the
army hadn’t sent us to get rid of foreign witnesses, they began taking down the
barricade to let us pass. As we waited,
a local professor of mathematics who had noticed I spoke Chinese approached
me. She said, “We are glad you are
helping our American friends get to safety.
It is very dangerous to be here right now, and we don’t want any of them
to be hurt. But if you are going to help
them leave, promise me, once things calm down, that you’ll help bring them
back.” I gave a vague reply of “yes, of
course.”
She grabbed my arm and looked me in the eye. “No I mean it. You don’t understand. I was 5 years old when the People’s Republic
was declared. My generation has lived
through hell—the anti-Rightist campaign, the Great Leap Forward and the
starvation that followed, the split with the Soviets, the Cultural Revolution
and the ten years of chaos. When the
leadership after Chairman Mao opened the door to the outside world and declared
a policy of reform, we finally started having hope. The most present form of that door to the
outside world is in fact these foreign teachers and students. It is our last hope for getting our country
right. Things are really bad right now,
and it is good that you are taking them to safety. Once things calm down, the leaders have no
choice but to come back to openness and reform.
But if you foreigners won’t come back because you don’t want to have
anything to do with those ‘evil’ Chinese who run their children down with tanks
in the streets, then it will be as if the door had never opened. And that is the end of hope here. So you have to PROMISE me to help bring them
back.” I was really moved by what she
had said, and I looked her back in the eyes and promised her that I would do
everything in my power to help bring the students and teacher back and help
Chinese students go abroad.
I had joined the Foreign Service with a
desire to travel and see the world. But
the experience at the barricade left an impression on me. With
the exception of three years in Africa when I was told I needed to get
professional experience apart from China, my entire 25-year career with the
State Department was in or about China, building people-to-people exchanges
between the two countries.
That barricade experience changed
me. It gave me a vision and a
commitment. It brought focus and form to
my life and my career. There were many,
many times when fears, personal disputes, family issues, disagreements with
national policies, and other distractions made it seem to me that I needed to
do other things, go to other parts of the world, or perhaps needed to leave the
foreign service. But through it all,
whenever I thought back to that experience and the promise I had made to that
desperate woman, all the distractions faded away and my path was clear. So I worked to restore and increase the exchange programs bringing Americans to China and Chinese to the U.S. And now there are more in both directions than ever before, far beyond our wildest imaginations back in 1989.
Later in my life, when I felt the call
to ministry in Holy Orders, it was very similar. The vision and sense of call that God had
planted in my heart again and again made it very, very clear, what the next
step I needed to do was, despite distractions, impediments, confusing mixed
signals, and the attraction of other good things.
Life can be a very confusing and
discouraging affair, and it is easy to lack focus, become distracted, and
wander.
But God has a purpose for each and every one of us,
and God has a plan, as obscure and hard as it may be for us to see at times. God is engaged with us, and hopes to take
us from the confusing fog around us and place us, as today’s Psalm says, high
upon a rock where we can see clearly, at least the big things in the distance.
It is what all today's lectionary lessons are about. In today’s Gospel, Pharisees warn Jesus
that Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and trans-Jordan, wants to arrest Jesus
and perhaps kill him as he has killed John the Baptist before him. They tell Jesus to stop what he is doing, and
leave Antipas’ territory for a while till things calm down.
His reply is striking: “Go tell that fox this: Look at me!
Here I am casting out demons and illnesses, for a little time at
least. And after a little time, I will
finish my work. But that is not here,
and that is not now. Jerusalem is going
to kill me, not Antipas. Jerusalem, that great religious trump card in the deck
of the system of oppression that seems to run everything around here, is where
prophets like me get killed. I am just going
to have to continue going about my work, and ignore this Antipas and his animus.
”
Jesus here is not distracted by the
very troubling message of these friendly Pharisees because he has a clear sense
of what his mission is, and where the real enemy to his mission lies. He has been to the Judean desert, and has
faced the temptations of self-gratification, power, and of wanting God to be on
his side and at his beck and call. Despite
being just a couple of miles from the provincial capital Sepphoris, and its
commerce and trade center, Tiberias, he has avoided these population centers
like the plague in his ministry. It is
not as if he didn’t know them—he probably helped reconstruct Sepphoris as a
building contractor as a youth and probably had it in mind when he said “a city
on a hill cannot be hid.” But once he began his work of proclaiming the Good
News of the arrival of God’s Reign—of God being in charge, right here, right
now—he had gone exclusively to poor peasants, artisans, and desperate
day-laborers and their families. And
these had included at times both Jews and Gentiles. He knew that the hopes of his people included
the rescuing of the poor and enlightening the Gentiles, and that somehow
Jerusalem, with its big city history of heartlessness and tendency to kill
prophets, was at the heart of this hope.
Antipas was a sideshow. Jesus
would continue his mission, and in the
end, set his face to Jerusalem.
In the Hebrew Scriptures lesson, God tells Abram to "go outside" and look up at the stars. In that moment, God makes a promise to Abram, and Abram, despite everything, trusts him. And it is a trust that stays with him, despite problems and things like "the terror of Abram" later in the passage.
In today’s epistle, Paul asks his gentile converts to imitate him in the example he has given them and to model themselves on that. The confusions and wanderings of life in Phillipi otherwise might be too great for them, and they would have only whatever their natural urges were at the moment as their guide and “god.” It is about the same idea—the need to stand on a rock that is higher, the need for vision and a sense of calling to bring clarity in the midst of chaos, in the midst of distractions.
In today’s epistle, Paul asks his gentile converts to imitate him in the example he has given them and to model themselves on that. The confusions and wanderings of life in Phillipi otherwise might be too great for them, and they would have only whatever their natural urges were at the moment as their guide and “god.” It is about the same idea—the need to stand on a rock that is higher, the need for vision and a sense of calling to bring clarity in the midst of chaos, in the midst of distractions.
How do we know that we have been lifted
to a rock that is higher? We still see
all the distractions and are totally in the middle of them. But we find ourselves at peace. Tranquility, not distraction reigns. Firm clarity of purpose, not detachment,
denial, or emotional withdrawal prevails.
How do we recover such clarity that we
once had, but lost? Think back to the
experience or commitment that gave you the clarity. Replay it in your heart and mind. Do not forget it. And then, relying on it, wait patiently for
the Lord, as our Psalm today says.
If we have never had such clarity, how
do we get it? Jesus said, “Ask and you
shall receive, knock and it shall be opened.”
Prayer, engagement with scripture and a faith community, honest and
empathetic mutual communication and service, and doing the little things we
know are what we must do, despite our confusion, is key. God has a way of rewarding faithfulness in
small points of clarity with greater clarity.
Knowing what we are called to and being
true to the call—this is essential in finding a sense of happiness and
fulfillment in our lives. We have in
the Church the process of discernment and counseling to help us if we are
finding it hard to see the way, or if what we think is the way doesn’t seem to
fit what those about us see. In the
words of Frederick Beuchner, “Mission is finding where our deepest joy meets
the world’s deepest need.”
Sisters and brothers—I have been struck
in talking to people recently just how many of us feel unworthy, unneeded, or
unloved. Know this: God loves you. God made you as an individual creation with
your skills, likes and dislikes, passions and disabilities, talents and
gifts. God has a very specific intention
in creating you. Know you are held in
the heart of God in full love, honor, and with every hope. We are in a broken world, and we are broken
along with it. And that is why we must
dig deep to try to find the treasure buried in the field of our heart, the
pearl of Great Price for which we will be willing to give up all things. The voice of God is buried there, and it
calls you to great things. It can place
you on a rock that is higher, place you high upon a rock from which you will be
able to look out and see things clearly.
And not just for a moment, but for decades, for your life, and for
eternity. Dig deep, pray, talk to a
counselor or work with dear friend to discern.
Let God place you on that rock.
In the name of God, Amen.
Lovely - thank you!
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