THINK ABOUT IT
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Texts: Psalm 126; Isaiah 43:8-12, 16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14
Think about it. “Every time I think about Jesus, surely he died on Calvary.” The haunting words of today’s anthem, invite us to stop and think. This spiritual is really a chant. You can imagine slaves rhythmically repeating it as they worked the fields or prisoners intoning it as they labored on the chain gang. Under the solo, the choir sings over and over again, “Think about it. Think about it.” Think about Calvary and the price love paid for confronting the powers. Think about Jesus, crucified for speaking God’s truth and calling the world home to God’s realm. Think about people living in captivity, lamenting their lot in life.
There are other Spirituals filled with hope and joy, but this one is an appropriately Lenten challenge. “Every time I think about Jesus, surely he died on Calvary.” “Out here in this blazing sun, under the overseers’ watchful glare, chained together with a band of brothers, languishing in exile, the one thing I can say for certain about Jesus is that he died on Calvary. He was a captive like me, held in bondage, abused and ridiculed and then executed. There’s no getting around it, surely he died on Calvary.”
This is the language of lament. A powerful crying out from a place of pain and suffering, sometimes in tears, sometimes in groans too deep for words, sometimes in shouts of defiance, sometimes in the repeated words of a simple song. One thing we can say about the language of lament is that it is necessary to any process of hope and healing. Today we have these words from the psalmist, from second Isaiah and from Paul to consider in this context. How may they be seen as lamentation, a crying out to be seen, heard, understood and redeemed? Both the Psalm and the passage from Isaiah are related to the coming out of the Hebrew people from exile in Babylon. Paul’s words are testimony to his own liberation from the law to live a new life in Christ.
The first part of the Psalm refers to the rejoicing that was elicited from those returning home, those awakening from a dream of restoration to its reality. It’s not difficult to imagine that the initial response to homecoming would be shouts of joy, but then the reality of return sets in. The glory of the past is gone. The ancient city and its magnificent temple are destroyed. What was glorious in the dream is achingly difficult in the blazing light of the desert sun. Yes, we come up to Zion with a shout of joy, but eventually our brave laughter gives way to the daunting task before us. We affirm that God has brought us home from exile and we give thanks - at least until we begin to consider what lies ahead of us. Think about it. The work of rebuilding is enormous. The God who gives us life also calls us to responsibility in shaping that life for ourselves, our families, our community and the world. The psalmist says of the returnees that the world will look at them and say, “God has done great things for them.” But do they believe it? Do we? Can we say honestly, in real faith, that God has done great things for us? I mean look at the mess the world is in with natural disasters everywhere, economic collapse with a few people having obscene wealth while the rest of us get poorer by the day, terrorism, wars and rumors of war. Maybe the end of the world is at hand, though we have managed to hang on so far to our little piece of paradise in Palo Alto.
I would guess that most of us have not known captivity in the same sense the ancient Hebrew people did, either in Egypt or in Babylon? I don’t know of anyone in our community who has lived in slavery. Some may have fled oppression or escaped abuse. Perhaps some of us have been incarcerated for one reason or another. We pray regularly for one of our members, David Kurtzman, who is imprisoned at Vacaville, but that is a unique story in our community. Still, I wonder if there are not forms of captivity that we each have known at some time in our lives – a bad habit, an addiction, an unhealthy relationship that we could not let go of, self-serving pleasure, like the Prodigal Son, or even the self-righteousness and pride of the elder brother. Have you known something in your own life that has felt like captivity? Have you had dreams of freedom? Have you sung songs in the night of frustration and lamentation? Have you struggled to find your way through a desert in your soul? Think about it. I know there have been times in my own life when I have sung, “I wish I knew how it would feel to be free. I wish I could break all these chains holding me. I wish I could say all the things that I should say, say 'em loud, say 'em clear for the whole round world to hear.”
Remember, that is really our Lenten challenge - to “think about it” – to consider life and its meaning, faith and its demands, Christ and our calling, God and God’s realm. In this time of taking stock, of doing personal inventory, is there some way in which you feel captivated by powers that keep you from fulfillment, living in exile from God, family, friends, faith community, hung up in a way of life that keeps you from love’s embrace? Are you like the one, described in the Psalm, who goes out sowing seed in sadness and tears, holding hope for the promise of the harvest and a time of rejoicing?
Or are you one who has tuned out the old ways, who has become comfortable in Babylon, who has assimilated to this new way of life and forgotten or given up on the old ways, the old days and the old home, turned your back on God and taken up the latest fashion? “Listen,” Isaiah says, “bring forth the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears!” Think about it. Maybe it’s time to reconsider who God is and what God may yet do - even in our world, even in our lives.
In his Christmas hymn, written in the midst of the US Civil War, Longfellow lamented, “Then in despair I bowed my head. ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said, ‘for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.’” Vision is obscured and witness is unheard in the face of overwhelming evidence against God’s promise. Brothers and sisters are enslaving other brothers and sisters and killing one another over the rightness of the practice. But, like the ancient prophet, the poet sees, hears, cries out, in the face of despair, “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep, ‘God is not dead, nor does [God] sleep; the wrong shall fail, the right prevail with peace on earth, good will to men.’”
The prophet proclaims to those in captivity, “You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.” Think about it. Open your eyes, unstop your ears. Look around. Listen carefully. Remember the old story about the Exodus, the liberation of God’s people from slavery in Egypt. You may think that’s just a fable, a somewhat interesting story that may or may not have happened a long time ago. Well, if it’s a problem for you, forget about it, let go of the past. “I am about to do a new thing;” God says, “now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” This new thing is full of wonderful promise. God will yet make a way where there seems to be no way. There will be streams in the desert and they will provide not only strength for the journey but the way home. People may yet praise God for salvation.
This is Paul’s very personal witness to the people in Philippi. “Listen, my friends. If anyone has a right to brag about his credentials, it’s me. But, in the end, I found myself captive to my claims of righteousness, persecuting God’s people in what I thought was God’s name, thinking I was following God’s will. But then I had this shattering experience, this encounter with Jesus, the Christ. Now, every time I think about Jesus, surely he died on Calvary. And I do think about it. In fact, thinking about it has become a way of life for me.” “…whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.” He goes on to claim, with deep passion, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
Think about it. “I am doing a new thing,” says God. “I am calling my people out of every captivity – whether it is prison or slavery, addiction or loveless relationships, self-indulgence or self-righteousness. Come be free in my Beloved Child. Come find salvation in Jesus Christ.” There is no promise here that the way will be easy or the waters will flow calmly. Right in the middle of the journey looms death. There is no getting around it. Jesus himself knows Calvary. He dies there. Part of the Lenten journey is to think about that. There is no leaping over the agony of the garden and the brutal murder on Calvary. It does us no good to pretend it is not crucial to the story. Exile, captivity, pain struggle, death – all are part of life. Think about it. Lament it. Weep if you will, cry out if you must, struggle if that’s the way for you.
In the end, the promise is real and its fulfillment lies ahead. God is about to do a new thing. You may “sow in tears” but then you “shall reap with shouts of joy”; you may “go out weeping, carrying seed for sowing,” but you “shall come home with songs of joy, bringing in [the] sheaves.” With Paul, we can all profess that it’s “not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” We are not supposed to forget the past. We can’t, really. It’s part of the reality of our lives, but we don’t have to dwell there. “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old,” the prophet says. Or following Paul, “…this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Think about it. Think about him. Think about it what it means for you to be called by God in Christ Jesus, to lose all things in order “to gain Christ and be found in him.” “Every time I think about Jesus, surely he died on Calvary.” Yes, and just as surely he rose on Easter, but that is a story for another time. Stay tuned.