October
25, 2009 Des Moines
Stewardship
Commitment Sunday
Psalm
34:1–8 [19–22]
Blessing
the Lord
In his 2005 Commencement Address at Kenyon College, novelist David Foster Wallace told the story of “two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other’s an atheist, and they’re arguing about the existence of God... And the atheist says, ‘Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God-and-prayer thing. Just last month, I got caught off away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I couldn’t see a thing, and I was totally lost, and it was fifty below, and so I did, I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out, “God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me!”
And now the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled: ‘Well, then, you must believe now. After all, here you are, alive.’ The atheist rolls his eyes like the religious guy is a total simp and said, “No, man, all that happened was that a couple Eskimos just happened to come wandering by, and they showed me the way back to the camp.’” (This is Water, Little, Brown)
Well, that of course is one way to interpret it. The Psalmist had another:
I will bless the LORD at all
times;
God’s praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the LORD;
let the humble hear and be glad.
O magnify the LORD with me,
and let us exalt God’s name together.
I sought the LORD – who answered me,
and delivered me from all my fears.
Look to God, and be radiant;
so your faces shall never be ashamed.
Notice the
tense of these words: this is not a
prayer of need – as in “bless me, bless me, bless me”. Rather, it is a moment of prayerful pause,
looking back and recognizing all the gifts that God has given; and nourished by
the view, looking forward not simply with a new confidence and wisdom, but with
a fresh mission as well:
I
will bless the LORD at all times;
God’s praise shall continually be in my mouth.
In a recent
conversation, talk turned to the different way that kids grow up these
days. We remembered jumping on our
bicycles and riding across town to one store or the next; playing outside
unsupervised with friends in the neighborhoods until well-past dark; climbing
trees and skinning knees and exploring and discovering – sometimes the hard way
– the ways of the world; practices now all but extinct in a world of predators
and risks and dangers of every kind. We
wondered if the world has really changed and become more dangerous, or if life
has always been this dangerous and our parents were simply more naďve.
“The problem,” spoke up one of our friends, “is
24-hour news channels. Before CNN, the
various tragedies of life weren’t cycled over and over again in front of us
hour after hour and day after day. Since
there rarely is 24-hours of real news, the news we do have has to be
amplified and stretched and dramatized and drilled.”
What she was calling attention to, of course, is the
fact that “news” is, almost by definition, that which is out of the ordinary. News is
the non-routine – the exception. But when those exceptions are looped in front
of us incessantly, described in graver and graver voices, they start to sound
like the norm. And before we know it, the world around us
starts to feel like our childhood bedroom did once the light switch was turned
off – with monsters lurking under the bed and demons peeking out of every
closet and wild and wild-eyed animals nibbling on the window sills and
scratching on the walls. The scary and dangerous
all around.
But in the daylight, don’t we know it isn’t
true? Sure, danger could be lurking just
around the corner – but it’s usually not.
Sure, I could have a wreck every time I back the car out of the
driveway – but I usually don’t. I could
slip and fall every time it snows – but I generally manage to keep my
balance. And yes, terrorists could
strike at any moment – but despite the Homeland Security color coded
warning system, most moments pass uneventfully.
Sure, you hear
every now and then, about airport screeners uncovering some potentially
sinister sort of device, but the buzzers go off exponentially more often at the
discovery and subsequent confiscation of nail clippers and 4-ounce liquids
dangerously stowed outside of a ziplock bag.
I have been in airports a lot this month. I have stood in screening lines with hundreds
and hundreds of other passengers, and rubbed shoulders, once inside, with
literally thousands of other passengers who, like me, successfully made it
through the alarms. Bombs and knives may
be genuine concerns, but they are nowhere near the norm.
But somehow we have gotten into the habit of sensing
that terror is always just about to erupt; viewing every moment as threatened;
every movement as vulnerable, every activity as dangerous, and every freckle a
malignancy – when in fact the record shows that we pass through our days fairly
smoothly and for the most part unharmed.
Don’t hear this as an invitation to carelessness – only to a larger,
more honest and adequate perspective.
Even when times are tough and we feel stretched and sometimes wounded,
we lead lives that are significantly blessed.
And that’s worth paying attention to, too.
It’s interesting what happens when we do: we become grateful, and gratitude becomes its
own form of blessing. We move beyond
mere calculation -- counting our blessings, one by one – and begin to offer
blessings of our own.
I
will bless the LORD at all times;
God’s praise shall continually be in my mouth.
It’s true of congregations as well as individuals.
It’s easy to fall into the gloom of all that could stand improvement – easy to
become so preoccupied, for example, with the plaster chipping away on the
ceiling in the stairwell just below the 3rd floor landing and
neglect to notice how beautiful and fruitful is this wonderful tool for
ministry, and the many ways that we have been sharpening it for mission in a
new age. In fact, if you look around our
congregational life for a moment you will see our landscape virtually littered
with blessing – the honest challenges notwithstanding.
In the beautiful letter you hopefully received this week from Caryn Evans and the entire Stewardship Ministry much of that perspective was detailed. Acknowledging that, while this past year “has been a tough one, ... as a community of faith we have let God lead our hearts and... have accomplished more in a year than many churches do in a decade.” The letter went on to list a few:
·
We
promised to call a Family Minister and we found the financial support.
·
We
promised to continue the Logos program and we found the vocational support.
·
We
promised to finish Fellowship Hall and we found the support.
·
We
promised to remain active in AMOS and we are conducting house meetings.
·
We
promised to continue our relationship with DMACC and the ELL program and we
have the volunteers and space.
·
We
committed our energies and our parking lot for the creation of a farmer’s
market where the community could experience community at the same time they were
better nourishing themselves, and for the 13th year in a row we
accomplished it.
·
We
committed our hearts and space to the Boys and Girls Club and continue to
provide a place for that ministry.
·
We
focused on centering prayer to increase in spiritual growth.
·
We
walked the Labyrinth to find our hearts and peace.
·
We
opened our doors to a new congregation and made tough decisions about how to
make it work.
·
We
laid aside selfish conveniences to welcome all God’s children through our
doors.
·
We
consoled and comforted community members in the time of trial and loss.
It’s quite a list, and it is hardly exhaustive. Which is simply to say that despite the difficulties we have had a rich year. We could, I suppose, credit the couple of Eskimos who just happened to come wandering by, and showed us the way back to the camp, but I am convinced there is a better, more soulful explanation. I would suggest that we have been blessed by the God who gathered up the good gifts we offered and multiplied and used them for good.
It’s quite amazing, don’t you think – and humbling when you think about it? In their letter, the Stewardship Ministry went on to invite a couple of specific responses to such experience: the fresh generosity of our time and talents and financial resources – even in the midst of tough times. And we are about to make time for that.
But looking back over it all, and on the strength of it looking ahead, the Psalmist, however, calls attention to the first response that gives rise to every other: the gratitude of blessing.
I
will bless the LORD at all times;
God’s praise shall continually be in my mouth.
Would that we always had the taste of praise in our mouth – praise, that is, and blessing.