(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Nov 15, 2015)
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The Self-Made Individual
During my three years or so abroad, there was one question that I was asked more than any other: “Why did you come here to study?” It was a question overloaded with curiosity and disbelief. Underneath it lay the presupposition that however good English universities were, the schools in America were just as good—if not better. The real question, in other words, was this: “Why travel all the way across the ocean for a degree when you could have gotten a better one in your own backyard?” Needless to say, this question exposed me to the high regard with which America is often held…even by the British, although their pride for tea and the queen and pubs and the most indirect way of asking a question typically masks the begrudging interest or envy that they show toward their younger, if now bigger, brother.
Besides this question and its constant reminder of my Americanness, I also noticed that certain other international students treated me as a symbolic extension of the country of their dreams. They almost made me feel like a superhero, like I were wearing a star-spangled cape and carrying Old Glory in my hand, like “Yankee Doodle” was playing triumphantly in the background anytime I entered the room. For instance, my Lithuanian neighbor never failed to mention something about America when we bumped into each other. “Is it true that you have streets lined with restaurants?” he would ask. “How many dollars would a burger cost?” “Does everybody drive a car in America?”
This infatuation with America opened my eyes to the reality of the American Dream. For many people, both here and abroad, America symbolizes the freedom and the possibility to make yourself whoever you want to be. It’s a dream that we teach in our schools and in our businesses: it’s the dream of the self-made individual, a dream that we’ve all heard presidential candidates gush about again and again. If you put your mind to something, if you expend the effort, then the sky’s the limit. Anything’s possible. In America, you don’t have to get lucky. You make your own luck. You can make yourself whoever you want to be.
America’s Split-Personality Consciousness
This is by now deeply ingrained in the American consciousness. But it’s not all that makes up our national psyche. There’s another impulse within the American consciousness, an opposing impulse that gives this nation what we might call a split personality, a Jekyll-and-Hyde consciousness. In just a week and a half, millions across the country will take a day off work to celebrate Thanksgiving. Now Thanksgiving has a checkered history, and there are many sides to its story. But at its best, it proclaims a message of gratefulness. Not for what we have done, not for how we have made ourselves—that would be like thanking ourselves, which is not how thanks is done. It’s a message of gratefulness for what has happened to us, for what has happened upon us—as though by chance. And while Thanksgiving rightfully steers clear of religious affiliations, it suggests that behind this chance is a goodness, divine or otherwise, that is somehow getting itself done in our lives.
Contrary to the message of the American Dream, which is the message that we are our own masters, that we can prevail upon the world, is the message of Thanksgiving, which is the message that we are not in complete control of our lives, that from birth onward we are always already “thrown” about by circumstances not of our own choosing,[1] and that, sometimes, the best things in our lives are the things that prevail upon us, that come out of nowhere, without our asking, like a gift. Isn’t this what family and friendship are? Isn’t this what forgiveness and hope are, the things that reconcile us in a way no glue or nailgun or advanced diplomacy ever could?
“Not by Might Does One Prevail”
Although over two thousand years of history and thousands of miles separate our text today from the American tradition of Thanksgiving, even so there is a peculiar resonance between them. In the scripture, Hannah sings a song of thanksgiving. She, who was formerly without child and presumably barren, has given birth to a son. (The story is much juicier than that simple synopsis, and it’s just a chapter long, so if you’re interested, you should bookmark 1 Samuel 1 for later reading.) Her story happens at roughly the same time as the story of Ruth, which we’ve read the last couple weeks. And like the story of Ruth, the story of Hannah exhibits a sense of wonder and appreciation for a God who lives among ordinary people and gifts them with life. In both stories, a child kicking within the womb symbolizes this gift of life—a gift that we receive too, baby or not, the kind of life that kicks within our own spirits whenever faithful relationships carry us through loss, whenever hope sustains us in times of trouble.
And at the heart of these stories is the bold message that Hannah proclaims, a message of gratitude that challenges the American Dream: “Not by might does one prevail” (2:9). And so it is that Hannah sings of crazy reversals, of the hungry becoming fat and the satisfied becoming hungry, of the strong becoming weak and the weak becoming strong (2:4-5). These reversals, she would suggest, are evidence of the reality that we are not our own masters, that there is something else going on in our lives that can determine our paths more than we can ourselves.
Perhaps in America more than in any other place, we live our lives under the illusion that we can prevail over our surroundings and our circumstances. But the gospel of Hannah, her good news for us, is a good news that dethrones the American Dream. It is the good news that, ultimately, it’s not a question of our prevailing: it’s a question of our being prevailed upon.
A Power Working on the Womb of the World:
The Divine Dream That Prevails upon Us
All of which might bring to mind a rather traditional view of God as the omnipotent, white-haired grandpa, seated on his throne above us somewhere, accomplishing feats of power through the clouds of our sky with the flick of a finger here, a nod there. So what exactly is Hannah saying? That we are to wait for God to prevail upon our lives with good things? Is hers a message of fatalism? “God will do what God will do”?I don’t think so. These reversals of hers—the hungry finding food, the barren conceiving and bearing children, the poor and lowly raised up—they call to mind another story in the Bible. Not long from now, actually, we’ll remember the story of a woman who is said to have miraculously conceived and borne a baby in Bethlehem. And this baby will grow up and lead a host of reversals himself: he will give pride of place to widows with just a couple coins to their name and to the children who get in the way, he will preach good news to the poor and the imprisoned, he will feed the hungry, he will welcome the company of the unwelcome, the prostitutes and the unclean. All the while, many who are privileged with riches and who wear long robes and who sit in seats of power will miss out on love and grace because they will not be able to accept that life is a gift and not the work of their own hands.
The power of Jesus is not the power of the American Dream. His power was not to prevail upon the world around him by forcibly manipulating the reversals that Hannah describes. It was rather a powerless power, like the power of an invitation, or like the power of an uninvited dream that prevails upon you and makes you restless. It is the power that works not upon the material world but upon the womb of the world, where things are getting conceived; it is the power that works not upon the surface of things but upon the heart. It is the power of loving your enemies, forgiving those who persecute you, welcoming the unwelcomable, living peace amid violence. It is not a ruthless power that gets its own way but a selfless power that makes a way where there is none. The power of Jesus is a difficult power, some might even say impossible, especially in the wake of Paris, Beirut, and Baghdad. It is a power that does not manipulate or control life but gives life.
Within the good news of Hannah, then, is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Within her message is not the American Dream but the dream of God, or the God who is an uninvited dream that prevails upon us whenever we are visited with the inexplicable urge to show love to the lonely or the bitter, to build someone up with a smile or a hug or a simple word, whenever our hearts tug on us with concern for the woman begging at the corner or the old man who has no family to check in on him or the child who is forlorn in his own home. Within Hannah’s message is not only a sense of Thanksgiving—which we all of us will celebrate soon—but also the restless spirit of Christ, which intrudes on us uninvited, like a thief in the night, filling us with the memory of how he overturned the tables of this world, conceiving within us and our communities the gift of new life, which of course is a gift we do not make but rather receive. We are not self-made individuals prevailing upon the world, but rather a people prevailed upon by God, by the dream of God, by the God who is a dream of unconditional love, forgiveness, and welcome.
Prayer
We feel new life kicking within us, God. We feel it every time hope points to the future, every time love leavens our flat lives, every time forgiveness breaks us free from chains of debt and cycles of retribution. May your sacred dreams prevail upon us today, God, and may we share them with the world. May we courageously answer the death and fear and terror of our world with the grace of new life that comes from love, forgiveness, and peace. May we bear the dream of your powerless power, a power that does not coerce or manipulate life but rather conceives life in the womb of the world. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: Amen.
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[1] See Heidegger’s idea of “thrownness” in Division 1, Chapter 5 of Being and Time. The simplest example of our thrownness is our birth, namely that we are born into a particular time and place and experience without our consent. As Kierkegaard pithily puts it, “Why was I not asked about it? … Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?” Kierkegaard’s Writings, VI, Fear and Trembling and Repetition (trans. and ed. Howard and Edna Hong; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 200. Simon Critchley offers a helpful outline of Heidegger’s concept of thrownness in “Being and Time, Part 4: Thrown into This World,” http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jun/29/religion-philosophy. Accessed Nov 13, 2015.
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