Scripture: Psalm 27:1, 4-9; Matthew
4:12-23
(1) The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the
stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (4) One thing I asked of the LORD, that
will I seek after: to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the
beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple. (5) For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high
on a rock. (6) Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer
in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the LORD. (7)
Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me! (8) "Come," my
heart says, "seek his face!" Your face, LORD, do I seek. (9) Do not hide your
face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not
cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!
- Psalm 27 1: 4-9
(12)Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. (13)
He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun
and Naphtali, (14) so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be
fulfilled: (15) "Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across
the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles - (16) the people who sat in darkness have seen a
great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has
dawned." (17) From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom
of heaven has come near." (18) As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two
brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the
sea--for they were fishermen. (19) And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make
you fish for people." (20) Immediately they left their nets and followed him. (21) As
he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John,
in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. (22)
Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. (23) Jesus went
throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the
kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.
- Matthew 4: 12-23
Many years ago, the recently retired pastor of the church where Mark Smutny and I were
Associate Pastors asked me to visit a friend of his who was a member of that church and
needed pastoral care. He told me Gippy was one of the most faithful, courageous and
wonderful people he had ever known in his whole life. She was witty and fun, a full-time
volunteer in the community, and the heart and soul of a nationally known, all-women's
chorus. A terrible mistake in a routine medical procedure had caused continual pain beyond
imagining, was gradually causing total paralysis, and would take her life within the next
year.
The more Bill talked about Gippy, the more intimidated I felt, and the more fearful
about visiting her. I believe that I was afraid to be in the presence of such suffering,
afraid to acknowledge that life is unfair but can still be beautiful, afraid to
acknowledge my own vulnerability and confusion in the face of unanswerable questions,
afraid that I would know neither what to say nor do in the presence of one for whom I
wanted so deeply to be an instrument of God's hope and love and grace. I imagined myself
visiting Gippy and trying to start a conversation, and saw myself as inadequate and
afraid. What could I offer someone who was already facing senseless suffering and death
with courage and faith?
Maybe you have felt a similar discomfort or fear when a friend has been diagnosed with
cancer and you hesitate to visit, or a friend's husband says he wants a divorce and you
don't know what to say, or another's father dies and you neglect to call, or a friend
loses a job and you avoid making eye contact. It is natural to feel inadequate in the face
of suffering, afraid in the face of our own vulnerability, confused in the face of life's
complexities. It feels much safer to hold ourselves back from contact with such reality.
So, for a month, I did not visit Gippy. I asked the new pastor to visit instead. Even
though he was some 20 years older than me, I think he was afraid too. He arrived at her
home at the only time during the week when he knew for certain she would be away, and yes,
she was away. He told everyone that at least he had tried.
Finally, knowing that Gippy needed a pastor, and knowing there was no one else but I to
make the visit, I rang her doorbell. On the other side of my fear, I discovered one of the
most faithful, courageous, witty and joyful people I have ever had the honor and joy to
know. She neither denied her circumstances, nor ignored her pain, nor pretended that she
wasn't going to die soon. She acknowledged all of those dimensions of her life openly, and
talked about how unfair this was. And then she proceeded to celebrate life, to inquire
about others, to laugh and love and be grateful for life. In the midst of her pain, she
knew the depth of joy God hopes for each of us as well.
I'm sure that parishioner saw the fear in her young pastor's eyes, but she honored me
that day and in the months to come by graciously welcoming me into her life. My fear was
replaced by joy and gratitude. My visits with her became a high point of my week. We
talked about faith and suffering, about dreams she would not live to see fulfilled, about
her joyful spirit and her desire to help others by the way she lived and faced death in
those last years. We talked about the God whom she had come to know more fully and deeply
through her suffering, the God whose shelter she had found in her time of trouble.
That first day I visited, Gippy opened a book by her bedside. "So many books are
full of drivel," she said, "drivel that tries to deny what life is really like.
When I read the first sentence of this book, I knew its author understood my life."
That first sentence reads, "I can't remember when I last woke up feeling good."
(I know some of you know that feeling, too.)
Gippy gave me the book and I realized she kept a stack of them to give away to
visitors. "This is how I want to live," she said, "and how I want to be
remembered."
The book was written by someone who was paralyzed in a mountain climbing accident. It
begins with, "I can't remember when I last woke up feeling good." And it ends
with these words.
There is no box
made by God
nor us
but that the sides can be flattened out
and the top blown off
to make a dance floor
on which to celebrate life.
- Kenneth Caraway
Mark Smutny and I officiated at Gippy's service when she died. The sanctuary was packed
with 1,200 people. The top-ranked women's barbershop chorus in the nation, The Gem City
Sweet Adelines Chorus, of which she was the heart, sang Amazing Grace and Swing
Low, Sweet Chariot ... and the music sounded sweeter than I had ever heard.
Through the years since, when I have felt hesitant to make a visit that I know will
cause me to face my own mortality, or inadequate to know what to say in the face of sorrow
or injustice, or afraid to face great pain, I remember Gippy. Her legacy of courage and
faith remind me that on the other side of fear is a human being with whom God is already
present and that together we can find joy in the midst of the pain. She reminds me that
"there is no box made by God nor us but that the sides can be flattened out and the
top blown off to make a dance floor on which to celebrate life." I go forward. In
Christian terms, this necessity and willingness to go through crucifixion in order to
experience resurrection is one of the greatest paradoxes of our faith.
By contrast, the great dream in our society is that if we work hard enough, we will
eventually be able to experience a life without limitations or difficulties. It is also
one of the greatest sources of underlying pain in our society, creating disappointment,
unnecessary suffering, and missed opportunities to live a full life.
Enron executives deluded themselves with this dream, playing a shell game not only with
millions of dollars, but tragically, with people's lives. They certainly believed that if
they could accumulate enough wealth, prestige and acclaim, their lives would be wonderful
and trouble-free. We all have a bit of that within us, the desire to live with the
illusion of limitless money, love that never needs an apology, bodies that never get ill
or deteriorate.
Fortunately for us who must someday face reality, the witness of our faith goes there
before us. When the psalmist writes "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom
shall I fear?" he knows the dark night of the soul, the despair and anger of
injustice. He knows that life is not just chirpy lightness, for what good is one more
light on a bright day? We need light in the darkness, and the darkness is one of the
places where God comes to us.
"The Lord is my salvation." How could he write of needing salvation
if he did not know there was someone or something to fear?
The psalmist's words are not, "If I encounter trouble, God will shelter me."
He writes, "The Lord will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; God will
conceal me under the cover of his tent; God will set me high on a rock to keep me
safe."
Imagine, in the imagery of the psalmist, being plucked from trouble and hidden in a
safe place. Imagine, in the midst of turmoil, being rescued and put on a high rock where
we can see what is happening, but not be injured by it. These are powerful images from one
who must have longed for and experienced God's strength and comfort and rescue in his own
life.
Matthew says that Jesus began his ministry when he heard that John had been arrested.
In other words, Jesus began his ministry and called his disciples in a time of upset and
turmoil and despair, not a time of peace and tranquility. That is the context in which
Jesus begins, the context in which the fishermen leave their boats. That is the context in
which Matthew proclaims "the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned."
Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness, in the darkness!
One of the greatest tragedies of our society is that it is so tempting and easy for you
and me to live a trivial life and get away with it. But as Christians, we know that if our
life has been free of sorrow and suffering, and our heart has no ache in it, then we have
not left our boats and followed Jesus. We have not listened to the woman beside us in the
pew whose father died last summer, or the man in front of us who is having heart surgery
next week, or the neighbor who lost a job in the fallout from 9/11.
If our heart has no ache in it, then we have not dared look into the eyes of people on
the street and children in the schoolyard, we have closed our eyes as we watch the news
and stopped our ears as we read the Times.
"Come and follow me," Jesus says. "Follow my light into the
darkness, and be light for others. Step through your fear into to suffering of the world,
the pain of your neighbor, the confusion of your own heart, and let my light, light your
path, and by doing so, you will bring light to others. I am the light in the darkness and
the darkness shall not overcome me."
The Christian faith is not a vaccination against suffering. Most of the Psalms were
born in difficulty. Many of the epistles were written in prisons. Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's
Progress from jail. Florence Nightingale, too ill to move from her bed, reorganized
the hospitals of England. Lincoln grieved the death of a child as he wrote the
emancipation proclamation. Henri Nouwen was virtually abandoned by his parents as a child,
yet has been a guide for hundreds of thousands of Christians.
The heroes and heroines of our faith are not knights in shining armor, nor persons born
with golden tongues, nor giants lumpy with great muscles. They are just ordinary people,
fisherman and tax collectors and housewives and children and grown-ups who discovered
something in God and in themselves which was a mixture of the majestic and the ordinary,
the divine and the human. The great people of faith today are ordinary folk who have
opened their lives up to a new dimension and who do not simply tolerate difficulties, but
with God's help, lean into them. Ordinary people who find light in our darkness, and
comfort in the shelter of God's tent.
As a young pastor years ago afraid to visit a woman who couldn't get out of bed on her
own, I knew that contact with pain and suffering carried the risk of breaking through my
protective crust. We are right to be afraid of such risk. And yet, like the fishermen who
took the risk to leave their safe boats behind and follow Jesus; we have experienced the
truth that trusting God's presence and strength in the face of suffering leads us to
discover life on a deeper and more meaningful level. We discover that God's light shines
in the darkness of suffering and injustice, of illness and death, of loneliness and
addiction, of poverty and war. Here's the final paradox: experiencing that comfort and
discovering that light leads us to bring that comfort to and share that light with others.
Mixing metaphors as freely as the psalmist, let me ask you to imagine yourself on a
little boat on the ocean, knocked about by waves and wind, lost on a night so foggy and
dark that you don't even know anyone else is in the same situation, a few yards away. Then
up ahead, a lighthouse is turned on. Its beam is so bright that it pushes away the
darkness and dissipates the fog. In its light, you see that all around you are other
people, lost in the dark in the same ocean as you. Only now, with the lighthouse beam
shining brightly, you can see to tie your boats together, and working together in the
light of God, you set aside your fear and move forward toward the shore that is your
comfort, your salvation, and the home that beckons you onward.
"The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat
in the region and shadow of death light has dawned." We row and march and sing and
live in the light of God we know in Christ Jesus, our risen Lord and Savior. "The
Lord is our light, our light and salvation. Whom shall we fear?" Thanks be to
God. Amen.
