EQUIPPED FOR THE WORST
Psalm 138; Isaiah 6: 1-8; Luke 5: 1-11
I want to start with a text and a newspaper headline. The text is in Psalm 138, and verse 7. "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me." The newspaper headline is from THE AGE of January 7, the day I began drafting this. "Defiant to the end, the master captain goes out swinging." A propos the latter, TV personality Mikey Robins had a quirky feature in the same day's 'A3' (the tabloid-sized part of the AGE) canvassing the idea of sainthood for Steve Waugh! That can wait for another day.
Meanwhile, would you note the rough similarity between the text and the headline. I've no idea where Mr Waugh stands in respect to what we celebrate here, but in each case we're talking about someone who comes up well despite the odds. And that is what it's all about this morning. How is it that the psalmist can say "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me"? I suggest there are three things going on here with the psalmist.
I
First, he has a no-nonsense view of the world. He knows that life is a mix of advance and retreat, triumph and tragedy, victory and defeat, good experiences and bad, ups and downs, healings and hurts. He doesn't say "Where did all that bad stuff come from?' or "Why does this happen to a nice bloke like me?" or "How can I go on in the face of all this?" He accepts that trouble is part of life; that walking 'in the midst of trouble' will be everyone's experience. He's not clinging to irrational beliefs about how the world should be, or must be, if he's to stay aboard it. He knows the world is an untidy place, with plenty of 'ragged edges' as John Polkinghorne, renowned physicist and Anglican priest, puts it.
Many years ago the manager of a firm I dealt with asked if we could chat about something personal. He was concerned over a younger man not long into a middle management position. "I thought I was on a winner," he said, "with this chap. He came to us with the best credentials: good family, good school, degree in eco' and commerce, interviewed well." "So . . . ?" "He's fine when all's going as he wants; when it doesn't he's almost like a child." "How do you mean?" The manager described these tantrums: throwing papers, slamming doors, shouting at people and finally burying head in hands at his desk. Duly he had some counselling, I heard. This provided some explanation - although I'm not sure he was cured. An only child, his every wish had been gratified by doting parents. He had been shielded where possible from nasty experiences: not kept in cotton wool, but close to it! His upbringing had built into him an expectation that the world should be a nice place where nothing nasty ever intruded to spoil his enjoyment. When it proved, as it does, to be otherwise, he couldn't cope. It can be empowering if you have a no-nonsense view of the world!
We need to step clear of this idea that creation was a completed achievement, the way it sounds when you read those old stories literally - and realise that it's a process. The universe and within it the solar system, and within that the planet earth, were not all finished, final, perfect and complete in a week. 'The New Story' as ex Catholic priest Michael Morwood and others call it, reminds us that creation is a process; not an event. Earth is 'evolving', and within that process humanity is 'evolving' also. The old stories make it sound like perfect unflawed humans, the crown of God's creative genius, once walked the earth and that the sin of the Adams Family brought all that undone.
The truth of the matter is that we, along with the whole cosmos, are caught up as actors in an evolutionary process; a process in which we can reverse what has so far been achieved or help move it along. Often we're involved in policies and activities that seem to be doing both. We are party to things that spoil the planet and spoil the lives of others; we are also party to things that enhance the planet and the lives of others. It's a wild ride, and it entails costs as well as benefits, for everyone. Just like the psalmist, there are times when we walk in the midst of trouble. This is what I would call a no-nonsense view of the world.
II
Second: the psalmist has a no-nonsense view of the self. One of the reasons there's a recovery of interest in the psalms is their honesty about the human condition, and about human beings themselves. You find in these ancient songs every aspect of life and every mood you know: gratitude and hope and trust and lament and complaint - yes, and confession. But our own Howard Wallace, an authority on the psalms, points out that only seven of the 150 are psalms of confession. He says this may seem strange to Christians. "We are used to confession as a regular part of worship," he says, "and many of us, particularly those of Protestant affiliation, have often heard the sinfulness of humans preached or proclaimed." (The Practice of Prayer, p.123)
Indeed, we have! I was introduced to it by the good sisters at O'Neill Convent school in Gardenvale, my first school. The reason I was there is unimportant. Why I mention this is that I first fell in love there. She had the face of an angel: smooth pink skin, long blond hair cascading over her back and shoulders, and we sat together in one of those old 'tandem' desks. One Monday she was not there. She had contracted meningitis on the week-end, and died. If that was not enough for little people to manage, we were assured that if she hadn't been a good girl, she would be fizzing and crackling now on the eternal barbecue! "Gross!" you will say . . . but true. We heard about sin early in those days. We weren't sure what it meant, but we knew that God spelled out in fine detail the rules of behaviour, that he saw and heard everything (including our thoughts), that he kept a meticulous record of our conduct, and paid us when we died, with heaven or hell. God was like a sort of cosmic headmaster, who took a rather jaundiced view of us - or at least Christianity did.
Now I'm not saying we don't do nasty things to one another. We all do. It's in the genes, related to the instinct for survival. If we hadn't been good at fighting and at mating, homo sapiens wouldn't be at the top of the evolutionary pyramid. But this doesn't necessarily make us good people. Nor does it make us inherently bad, either. In fact, the bible doesn't uniformly support what I call a 'jaundiced' view of humanity. In places, it suggests a very high and positive estimate of us; indeed that God believes in humanity. That's very empowering too. Listen to part of Psalm 8.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars that you have established;
What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
Mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
And crowned them with glory and honour.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
You have put all things under their feet. (Psalm 8:3-6)
III
Third: a no-nonsense view of God. Four weeks ago, in this pulpit, your minister began by quoting an attack in the AGE on talk about God. The writer had said, "If God controls the universe, he has just saved a 97-year-old and killed 30,000 others." She contrasted two ways of thinking about God's relationship with the universe: as one who is intervening, tinkering and manipulative - and as one who is influencing lovingly, subtly, persuasively. It was a good word.
One of the reasons we're ridiculed is that, rightly or wrongly, we're thought to believe in some giant-size image of ourselves, dwelling somewhere above the clouds. This elsewhere god periodically enters the historical process and human experience from out there - tinkering, manipulating in some way or another. He (always a 'he') confers favours on those he approves, and withholds them from the others. In light of what we know about how the world works, this makes no sense at all; it is primitive, indeed pre-Christian! To be sure, Jesus did not have access to what we know from modern science about the workings of the universe. Even so, he rejected any idea of a tinkering, interfering divinity who was partisan to good people and punitive to bad ones.
God is not 'out there' or 'up there', coming and going, sometimes with us and sometimes not. God is everywhere and in everything, and everything is in God. As Paul says to the intelligentsia of Athens, "In God we live and move and have our being." So how does God relate to us - specifically to empower? After all, this is what the psalmist is talking about: coming up well despite the odds. "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me."
Let me suggest a way of thinking about this that brings together modern technology and the bible's favourite image: ruach, which means 'wind', 'breath', 'spirit'. In September my wife and I drove to Adelaide for the first time in many years; flying has long been our preferred form of travel. Near Ararat we had our first glimpse of giant wind generators. I have long been fascinated with sources of power in sun, water and wind. I respect those for whom wind farms interfere with the view, but we are foolish not to connect with a great clean energy freely given, all around us and constantly available. You see, it's there whether or not we erect those giant vanes and connect them with generators. It has been there since the dawn of time.
And so it is with this uncapturable mystery we dare to name 'God', sometimes called in scripture ruach - the wind. Spirituality, to use the trendy word, is what we do to access the power of the ruach. Some of you do this by listening to music; some of you by making music. Some of you do it in meditation, or in the contemplation of an icon or a garden. Some of you do it in conventional forms of prayer; some in less conventional. Some of you do it in reading the prayers of others. In "Streams of Energy", by Francis Macnab, Steven Koski and Steven Poole, you find this one:
Eternal God, let this be a moment in our life when we realise
we are surrounded by resources that will help us;
that there are resources given to us that are within us, that will heal us.
Let us be open to the power of those resources.
And all the people said 'Amen!'
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A sermon presented by the Rev Dr John Bodycomb at St Aidan's Uniting Church North Balwyn, on
8th February, 2004.
IT MAY BE REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
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