| Seeking
Refuge Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis September 29, 2002, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Joshua 20:1-6 "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." "I have been thinking a lot about refuge," writes Barbara Hurd, "how what makes the swamp a safe hideaway also makes it dangerous, a paradox for all the scoundrels and saints, artists and hermits, victims and perpetrators who have fled there." Hurd has been prompted to think about refuge by an artist friend named Michael, who "sold his house and is dismantling his identity as an artist by living at the edge of the swamp. Michael," she says, "is after an intimacy in his life that has nothing to do with sex….He tells me…I want to live like an animal close to the earth, self-sufficient, doing as little harm as possible. Then, ten minutes later, And I want to live like Christ, close to God, detached, finding refuge in the unknown." It is, I must say, a kind of Buddhist midrash on Jesus: detached? finding refuge in the unknown? Jesus? I think not! Still, Hurd goes on to draw another conclusion about her friend's swampy refuge that sends me seeking "refuge" in the small print of my concordance for the sake of the gospel's proclamation. She concludes that her friend's refuge is not to be understood as an act of going into hiding. Rather, she says, he is "retreating from a path that wasn't headed toward what, for him, is being fully human." How many of us gathered in this sanctuary might say the same of our days: that for reasons we cannot always articulate, we feel ourselves--individually and collectively-on a path headed toward what is not being fully human. I hear this as you reflect on the jobs you cannot afford to leave and so the bills about to tear your insides apart, on the relationships you are afraid to question lest they be broken at the prospect of change, on lives constructed like a house of cards and always in danger of collapsing for want of a worthy purpose, on unexamined beliefs that can neither do business with your doubts nor your hopes, on a pace whose treadmill has more than taken its toll upon your heart. And now many of us would add our helplessness at the specter of war, threatening to put this nation on a path headed toward what is less than fully human when all is said and done alone. How many ways we find ourselves on paths leading us farther away--not from our heart's desire, as Joseph Campbell so seductively suggested, nor even from some seemingly worthy ambition--but away from the life given us by God to live. Prompted, then, not by a friend's retreat but by the common human condition of our having misplaced ourselves, I opened the Bible in search of refuge for a people in need of a little distance-or is it in need of a greater proximity--to things that would claim our life and breath. Curiously, the word "refuge" is not to be found in the whole of the New Testament. Like Michael, you can fix on images of Jesus tempted in the desert or adrift on the sea or alone in the garden. You can remember stories of people seeking Jesus out for what could be called refuge from whatever difficulty had befallen them. But never is the word "refuge" used to name the experience. This is a decidedly Old Testament term. Though even there, an unexpected definition awaits us. "Appoint the cities of refuge," says God to Joshua, "so that anyone who kills a person without intent or by mistake may flee there; they shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood." Once received into a city of refuge by the elders, the fugitive remained there, safe from the avenger. No doubt this refuge was unique among the peoples of the desert, an enlightened social order decreed by the God who had brought the Israelites up out of the land of Egypt and through the wilderness to a land promised for their possession. This same enlightened social order is spoken by us when in the 23rd psalm when we recite by heart, "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." In fact, the image is of a fugitive who has come within the borders of the shepherd's tent where, by the law of the desert, the enemy in pursuit cannot enter: there a meal is prepared. The Lord who is our shepherd is our refuge, even and especially when we seem to be on a path headed toward certain death: within his refuge, we will fear no evil. So in this way, say the writers of the Old Testament, God is our refuge. In the face of all that would take from us our humanity and even our life, God is the one to whom we may flee for safe-keeping. It is a metaphor for God, and as metaphor names a mystery by way of something known, we are invited to see God through a city harboring those upon whom others would take revenge. Yet there is, we now know, no such refuge to be found, for the most part, between life and death, no city designated nor nation immune, in the words of another psalmist, from "the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday." Perhaps, along with Michael, that is why another verse in the 23rd psalm sends me to the part of the Bible missing this metaphor and to Jesus Christ. He has come, says the psalmist in prospect, to lead us in paths of righteousness for his name's sake, in paths that head us toward being fully human. Could it be that God is our refuge not known through a city in which we are kept safe from harm, but known in one who had no place to lay his head, who lived, died and was raised from the dead in order that we, who do not deserve refuge, might be taken in eternally. In him, you and I are invited to turn the metaphor of refuge inside out for such a time as this! In the first place, there is a sense in which we may say metaphorically, by way of the known, that this unknown God quit the refuge of heaven for us in the flesh of Jesus Christ. In other words, the God who dwelt in the high places and who was a fortress now is born into our every vulnerability. God would be known to us not as a refuge where we flee to hide from all that we fear, but as a refuge returning us to a right path, in whom and with whom we may face our every fear in life and in death. In Jesus Christ, our fearful flight away becomes, rather, a grateful pilgrimage toward the human beings we were created to be in him who has no place to lay his head. "Follow me," he says in contradiction to the safer paths we have chosen to excuse ourselves from the lives we were given by God to lead. Follow him and we will be given refuge from the trivial pursuits, the gnawing hunger, the pointless ambitions, the shallow desires that have kept us from ourselves and from him these long and hunted days. In the second place, as we are given refuge in him who has no place to lay his head, we may live as those who, in Hurd's words, "let the world creep closer, [who] drop to our knees as if to let the heart, like a small animal, get its legs on the ground." Following him and so the path that heads us toward our humanity, we discover that we are headed closer to the world rather than farther away from it, we find that we are known by the strange company we keep rather than keeping a safe distance. He heads us toward each other and so toward another's pain, fear, need, hope, hurt. He heads us out of our selves, our obsessions, our worries, our woes, and bids us bear the other's burden. It is the only path for those who wish refuge from all that binds the heart and keeps the mind from sleep. We who have desired nothing more than to escape the messy tangle of human need are sent into its heart with news that the kingdom of God has come near by way of our proximity to one another. Then in the third place, slowly, surely in him, we find ourselves letting down our guard, shedding our armor, says Hurd, accepting "the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves…." Surely there is no better place than a swamp or bog," she goes on, "to learn about uncertainty, to notice how we feel when the ground under our feet literally moves, what small boats or dogma we cling to, what we must let go of when we look down and learn to trust that which is holding us now…. Such paradox that in a groundless refuge, what has been tight and willed relaxes until fear begins to dissipate." With no place to lay his head, with nothing tangible to secure him in life, Jesus had only the groundless refuge of God to uphold him, only the God with whom, moment by moment, he had to do. Suddenly we see that the refuge for which we were made is neither a place nor a time that will keep us from harm, but it is a relationship of incredible vulnerability before the God in whose love we have nothing to fear, and by whose love we are redeemed to be the fully human beings we were destined to be. How misleading it is, finally, that this place where we have come to drop to our knees as if to let the heart get its legs on the ground is called a sanctuary. Of course it may be, for the hour we inhabit a pew, a space and time apart from the din of the world. But, says Hurd, "as in the first moments of most flights to safe havens, you're basking in some feeling of grace until you notice that everywhere you turn, the alters keep slipping under the surface, and the next minute there's a copperhead at your ankle and you're fleeing through the sedges, leaving a trail of stirred murk and sludge." In other words, welcome to the swamp called Christ's church, a safe and dangerous refuge for the scoundrels and saints, artists and hermits, victims and perpetrators who have fled to her pews. Welcome to this sanctuary where the disconcerting news, for any who have come to get away from it all, is that week after week, in the name of Him who had no place to lay his head, we are led on paths of righteousness for his name's sake and so sent back into the fray: lambs in the midst of wolves, with no purse, no bag, no sandals and only peace to offer the world's warring madness. Yet if you are among those who have come seeking the humanity lost in the living, know that you have already been found of Him whom alone to follow is to be fully human. Thanks be to God. |