Remember Me

Revelation 7:9-17

Although I have been both a student and a teacher of the book of Revelation, I cannot claim to have any facility with it. Overwhelmed by the symbolism and just plain weirdness of it, I find myself unable to keep track of what’s going on. The members of the roundtable asked, “what are these four living creatures that are mentioned in verse 11?” I should know, but I have to flip back through the previous chapters to find out.

Seems like the only time I preach from Revelation is for All Saints Day, that one day of the year when we look beyond our small lives on earth and consider the life beyond death. We try to remember that we are connected with all lives, past and future. Most especially, we like to remember the ones we love who are no longer here.

At Faith, we light candles for those ones we miss, whose loss is deeply felt. Everyone participates. I sit in my front row seat and watch as they all come forward, knowing that they are all remembering their personal losses, but also that they are all remembering the two or three members of our congregation who have gone on to the Church Triumphant this year.

Yet we didn’t find it easy to connect our experience of All Saints Day with the reading from Revelation. Struggling to comprehend this image of a diverse multitude too great to count standing before the throne loudly praising God, with all the angels and the elders and those four living creatures, we were disconcerted.

I asked, “If this is a vision of heaven, what do you think of it?”

For reasons that were hard to articulate, it didn’t seem very appealing to people. It seemed to be the general sense that it’s crowded and noisy and, well, just unfamiliar. And something seemed to be missing.

We often think about the importance of remembering those who have died. We have special days set aside to do just that: Memorial Day, for example, and of course, All Saints Day. But something I had not considered before is our need to feel that we are remembered by them too.

Is there a fear that our loved ones have gone to heaven and feel such constant joy in the presence of God that they never think about us? Is there a concern that now that they are free of pain and sorrow they no longer care about our pain and our sorrow? We can’t really bear to think of our loved ones that way. Surely, they must remember us.

By sarah alfinito - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44949358

Worry

Philippians 4:1-9

Last Sunday morning I woke up to the news that there had been a reported shooting at the local high school homecoming dance – but that it had been a false alarm. What actually happened was a kid got angry and slammed a table on the ground, someone thought it sounded like a gunshot and yelled out, “Gun!” Then all hell broke loose.

Calls flooded the 911 dispatchers, more than 50 police cars arrived at the school within minutes. But there was nothing there. No one had been hurt. No shots had been fired. There was no gun. Thanks be to God.

But it almost didn’t matter. People were really rattled. The conversation on social media centered on the dangers all around us, the need for tighter security, even though nothing had happened. It didn’t matter, because it got people started thinking about all the things that potentially could happen.

Things should have calmed down Sunday and returned to normal Monday. But instead, they intensified. Someone took to social media and suggested that students should stay home Monday for fear of a bomb threat. Fact: there had been no bomb threat. No matter, though; someone thought it was an idea worth tossing out there anyway.

And parents started checking in of social media, of course, saying it just wasn’t worth the risk of sending their kids to school. After all, the authorities might be trying to hide something. Maybe there actually was a gun at the school. And maybe there has been a bomb threat that they are hiding from us.

Attendance was down Monday by a significant amount.

This is worry, and what it will do to us sometimes reaches the point of absurdity. But it goes back much further than the Saturday night homecoming episode. We have been living in a state of fear for years; fear which is exacerbated by suspicion of others and fabricated news stories.

Where is the true, the honorable, the just and commendable? Where do we find those things that are excellent and worthy of praise?

In recent days I have been asking myself the question: what does it mean to be the church in the world at times like this? We must draw the courage from our faith to continue to be light in a world darkened by fear and hatred. We must keep our sight on Jesus, whose presence is never far. We must not let worry guide our thoughts and words and actions.

Let the peace of God, which is all surpassing, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

The Golden Rule?

Romans 12:9-21  

“Is this just a long-winded way of saying we should obey the Golden Rule?” was the question that started our conversation at the roundtable this week. We read through these verses and found a lot to agree with. It’s about peace, it’s about love, it’s about acceptance. Cool. Yes, we were a little bemused by the part about heaping burning coals on our enemies’ heads, but we found reasonable explanations for how we should understand the intention. When someone treats you badly, it is still best to treat them with compassion. When we do, we might even find that our actions have a softening effect on them.

Then, the more we talked about this particular verse, the more we became aware of what this passage is really asking us to do. Paul is asking Christians to be the light that the world wants to snuff out. Return evil with good; return hostility with hospitality; return curses with blessing.

The key to understanding these words is to realize that we are being asked to extend Christian love to people who actively seek to cause us harm. While all of it might be contained in the Golden Rule, it certainly causes us to consider it more deeply than just a saying we would stitch into a needlepoint pillow. And when we think about what is involved in living these words, we quickly see it is more complicated and difficult than we thought before.

Our thoughts turned to the recent protests and counter-protests around the topics of racism and white supremacy, in particular. Our nation reveres the value of free speech, but when speech turns to violence it is no longer free. And when things turn violent, it raises the question: should violence be met with more violence? Or nonviolent resistance?

“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” When is it possible? We would not all draw the line in the same place. One of the loosely-organized groups that showed up in Charlottesville is Antifa. The name is short for anti-fascists, and they exist to fight fascism and racism wherever they might be, using violence if necessary. Unsurprisingly, they often find it necessary.

Antifa members have taken on the task of defending peaceful anti-racism demonstrators. When armed Klansmen or Nazis show up, Antifa members are the ones to step between them and their targets. At the Charlottesville protests, clergy of all denominations came together to form a nonviolent resistance to the white supremacist protestors – to be the light that the world wants to snuff out. For much of the day they were the targets of nothing more than verbal abuse and some shoving. But later in the afternoon the white supremacists turned violent, and Antifa intervened, giving counter-protestors a chance to disperse. As one clergy member put it, “That’s when Antifa saved our lives.”

A couple of weeks later the same groups showed up in Berkeley, California. Signs were seen that read “Avenge Charlottesville.” Video showed Antifa members attacking and beating a man, rather too vigorously to be called a defensive action.

“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” There is a part of me that would like to remove the first clause of this sentence and leave it at, “As far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” That would be ever-so-much simpler to interpret. But determining what is possible? That is a much longer conversation.

photo credit: By Original work by US government, scanned by Wing-Chi Poon - Scanned, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4578869