(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Aug 16, 2015)
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Impossible?
It was a dark night, and darker still because of all the heavy hearts. In a Nazi concentration camp, a group of Jewish prisoners huddled together. The evil that they had suffered was unthinkable. And so tonight, they would do the unthinkable. They would put God on trial. They appointed attorneys. They worked through a number of accusations. And after a period of deliberation, the judges solemnly announced: “God has not held up God’s end of the deal. God owes us something.”
And if that were not outrageous enough, immediately after they closed their proceedings, they gathered for evening prayer. In the space of seconds, words of accusation gave way to words of devotion and thanksgiving.
I’ve often wondered about this legend. Did it really happen? Could it possibly be true? Because it seems impossible to me: to pray and give thanks to the same God whom you’ve just accused.
And I’ll confess, Paul’s words in today’s scripture seem impossible to me too. If you’ve read your bulletin carefully, you’ll already have noticed that I was, as the British would say, a bit “cheeky” with the sermon title: “The Days Are Evil, So Give Thanks.” If that strikes you as a bit impious, then you’ll have to take it up with the apostle Paul. They’re his words, not mine. In the meantime, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me to struggle with the question: If these days are “evil” (5:16) as Paul says they are, then what could it possibly mean to give thanks “at all times and for everything” (5:20)? Isn’t it illogical—impossible—to give thanks for everything if the time we live in is evil?
Escaping Life
It’s an interesting coincidence that Paul lived at precisely the time that the motto “Pax Romana,” or “the peace of Rome,” first appears in writing.[1] This slogan was meant to suggest that for the first time in the history of the world, there was an empire of order and peace. And while this may have been true from a broad political perspective, it wouldn’t have fooled Paul or anyone else in his day into thinking that life was actually peaceful, just as no-one is fooled today by the relative security we enjoy. One look at the paper, one minute of news would have told you then as it tells you now that despite our living in a nation that enjoys unparalleled power in world politics, we live in days that could rightly be called evil. How else do you describe days plagued by senseless gun violence and hateful discrimination, or more simply, days when millions wake up and go to sleep hungry for the same food that millions elsewhere enjoy an abundance of?
For Paul, there are two basic ways of responding to the reality of our evil days, two ways of making sense of a seemingly senseless world. He describes the first way with the specific image of “get[ting] drunk with wine” and earlier in his letter with words like “empty” (5:6) and “unfruitful” (5:11). This collection of words and images bring to mind a striking memory from one of my first experiences of culture shock in England. I was walking home from a friend’s on Friday night, and my walk took me straight through West Street, which was the main drag in Sheffield. It was lined with pubs, bars, clubs, and sprinkled throughout were a handful of “chippies” and kebab shops. And on a Friday night, it was hopping. Needless to say, my personal space bubble (a radius of six inches or so) was violated again and again. I rubbed up against University students decked out for themed parties, dressed as pirates or smurfs or wearing Hawaiian-themed attire. I pushed through locals who were wearing a few layers less than I would have thought England’s perpetually cool and damp weather called for. I stepped over puddles of people’s sickness. I walked by countless adverts that promised the best night ever.
I would later acclimate to West Street. I would even walk it myself with a few friends from time to time, and we could enjoy ourselves. But even so, I can’t help but feel that much of West Street on a Friday was little more than misery dressed in happiness, desperation wearing the mask of a good time. As a chaplain at the university, I saw this firsthand. Students would post Facebook pictures of their fun on West Street, and yet in the safe space of a few close friends, they would reveal their deep and abiding unhappiness.
West Street holds a curious place in my memory. I remember it not with disgust, but with a surprising sympathy. Because we all have our own West Streets. We all try from time to time to escape the reality of our evil days. Confronted with personal unhappiness and the despair of a world that doesn’t make sense, it’s tempting to think that the solution is somewhere else—if not at the bottom of a glass, then in the next job or social gathering or relationship or maybe even just the next nice meal. But like Paul says, this way of living is empty and fruitless. Life is hollow when we look for it somewhere else.
Embracing Life
The alternative, Paul says, is to look for life precisely where we are—in these days and these times, however evil they may be. This is why rather than advising us to run away from these broken times that we live in, Paul urges us to “mak[e] the most of the time” (5:16). In other words, Paul is saying, don’t try to escape reality. Embrace it. Don’t discard this damaged time. Redeem it. “Be filled with the Spirit” (5:18), Paul says, and what else can he mean but, “Be filled with the God who says ‘Yes’ to us and our world, who takes our flesh and lives among us, who comes not to condemn us where we are but to redeem us where we are.” There are divine possibilities simmering in every minute of every one of our evil days.[2]
We began today in a concentration camp, where a group of Jewish prisoners honestly confronted the evil of their days. If you’ll follow me, let’s go now to a different concentration camp, where another prisoner gives us a glimpse of how we might live the impossible—how we might actually embrace our reality rather than escape it, how we might give thanks to God amid evil days.
Corrie ten Boom was arrested by the Nazis for hiding and protecting Jewish families. After living in solitary confinement for a month, in a bitterly cold cell six steps long and two steps wide with a single light bulb that was operated according to the whim of her guards, she had just about lost the will to live. But at just this point, her life was transformed—by God, she would say. But if we were to take her at her word, we would all agree it was a God unlike the kind we would expect or want.
Listen to her account of the fateful morning: “Into my cell came a small, busy black ant. I had almost put my foot where he was…when I realized the honor being done me.”[3] At night, she crumbled bits of her own meager portion of bread on the floor. “[A]nd to my joy he popped out almost at once. He picked up a piece, struggled down the hole with it, and came back for more. It was the beginning of a relationship. Now, in addition to the daily visit of the sun, I had the company of this brave and handsome guest—soon of a whole small committee. If I was [doing anything else] when the ants appeared, I stopped at once to give them my full attention. It would have been unthinkable to squander two activities on the same bit of time!”[4]
Corrie ten Boom lived in the most broken of days. And yet it was precisely this shattered world that she embraced, precisely this evil time that she redeemed. She saw the divine possibilities for our world in the tiniest of God’s creatures. Corrie would survive the war, and she would later write and speak words of healing and peace, words of forgiveness and reconciliation. And I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that all of this happened because she saw God’s grace in one small tireless ant who walked into her life. And the grace of that encounter renewed her hope for more life, for more life-giving relationships like the one she had with this ant.[5]
The God of Impossible Possibilities
Perhaps it’s more than mere coincidence that Corrie ten Boom’s story of transformation involves the smallest of God’s creatures. Think about the Bible. Jesus tells stories about the smallest of seeds and the least of these; Paul talks about the nobodies and the nothings (1 Cor 1:27-28; cf. 2 Cor 11:30; 12:9-10); the rest of the Bible tells stories of the divine waiting to be born in the smallest and most unlikely of characters. All of this emphasis on divine grace springing from the smallest and weakest things illumines why Paul can say, “The days are evil…[so] giv[e] thanks...at all times and for everything” (5:16, 20). We worship a God who infuses the smallest of things and worst of times with divine possibilities. We worship a God who is born on a bed of straw, a God who dies weak and helpless on a cross. We worship a God of the littlest and seemingly most insignificant moments, a God of the most tragic and unjust moments, because inside these moments we are also worshiping a God of impossible possibilities, of new life breathed into the deadest and most hopeless situations...a God of resurrection.
The last eight words of our scripture today are probably the easiest to dismiss. We say them all the time at the end of our prayers: “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We say them so often that we may forget that these words actually have meaning. For Paul, these words are crucial.[6] They are precisely the reason we do not run away from our evil days but instead give thanks to God. To give thanks for everything “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” suggests that everything somehow assumes that name. It’s almost like all of creation assumes the last name, or “family name,” of Christ. So an ant becomes “the ant in Christ.” And that coworker you cannot possibly get along with becomes “that coworker in Christ.” The complication that you could have done without—when your car breaks down, when a friend calls begging for help, when someone hurts you—that complication becomes “the complication in Christ.”
All of which is to say, all of creation—every moment of every day—carries within it the new life promised by Christ. As followers of Christ, we don’t run away from this life because this life has been claimed by Christ, by the God of impossible possibilities. So we say “thank you.” We say “thank you” not for the evil of our times, but for the divine goodness that is waiting to spring from it and to redeem it. We say “thank you” not in spite of these devil days but precisely because of them: saying “thank you” is our only hope of redeeming the evil, of drawing forth goodness and life from within the worst of times. Saying “thank you” is the first step in welcoming God into our broken world. It’s our human way of cultivating God’s desire, it is the water and sunlight that nourishes the divine impulse, that strengthens its roots and brings it bursting up from the ground. Saying “thank you” is our way of opening ourselves and the world up to transformation, a transformation that may well lead us not away from the evil of our days but even more boldly into it so that it might be redeemed through the powerless power of God’s love and peace.
By saying “thank you,” we say “Yes” to God’s vision of new life, and we live to make that vision a reality.
I’d be a hypocrite to say it’s easy to embrace this life with thanksgiving. But I’m not sure I could call myself a follower of Christ if I didn’t passionately believe and feel compelled to say, “What a divine world of difference it would make.”
Prayer
Loving God, the goodness of your creation is all around us. But sometimes it is overshadowed by pain, death, and suffering, by the evil of our days, and we would rather escape than embrace this life. Assure us in times of doubt that you are the God of impossible possibilities, the God of ants and seeds and the tiniest elements—the God of resurrection. May our lips sing your praise, may our lives be a beautiful song to you. May your will be done in us. Amen.[7]
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[1] Ali Parchami, Hegemonic Peace and Empire: The Pax Romana, Britannica and Americana (New York: Routledge, 2009), 25, cites the first mention as occurring in Seneca’s writing at 55 CE.
[2] Cf. Jean Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment (trans. Kitty Muggeridge from original text of Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence; London: Fount, 1981), 36, who says that God is “forever available, forever being received.”
[3] Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place (???), ???.
[4] Ten Boom, The Hiding Place, ???.
[5] Yet another story from a different concentration camp helps to focus even more the idea of giving thanks in evil times. In the case of the Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe, who was arrested for sheltering Jews and speaking out against Nazi violence, one man destined for execution cried out in despair at the prospect of never seeing his wife and children again. Maximilian asked to take his place, and on the day of execution, he led other executionees in song and prayer. Kolbe’s feast day is August 14. His story demonstrates the extremities of what it means to give thanks in the worst of circumstances. Certainly he wasn’t giving thanks for his loss of life. Rather it was for the love and life of God that would continue because of the witness of their and others’ deaths. Cf. Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 400.
[6] Cf. Eph 1:9-12. The idea that the divine plan is “to gather up all things in him [Christ]” is fundamental to the theology of Ephesians. It inflects the letter’s discourse with an eschatological hope that reminds us of the divine desire to see all of creation redeemed.
[7] Adapted from Claiborne, Wilson-Hartgrove, and Okoro, Common Prayer, 398.
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