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Fate, Destiny and the Devil Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis February 16, 2003, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Nehemiah 6:1-9
Hanging posters, fixing broken tail lights, affixing wires to the floor or wall, reattaching rear view mirrors, repairing cracked windshields, patching ripped clothing, hiding unsightly wallpaper seams, repairing broken hoses, broken fan belts, broken book bindings, broken noses, marking lines on a sports field, pulling unsightly hair, patching holes in vinyl siding, reattaching a dryer door, holding up an exhaust pipe for brief periods, stopping jeans from fraying, holding shoe laces together and car hoods shut: over two hundred uses for duct tape appeared in the inbox of my e-mail this week. Though in all two hundred uses listed, some of which had to be censored for the pulpit, there was no mention of duct tape's utility in the event of biological, chemical or nuclear attack! There are many voices in this world that are seeking to frighten us. Some would frighten us for our own good, they say. Some have frightened us already for the sake of their own destructive ends. Add to those voices all the other frightening realities closer to home-threats posed by disease to our bodies, abuse to our psyches, recession to our pocketbooks, rejection to our hearts--and we know ourselves as creatures beset, behind and before, by our fears. "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul," said Jesus, "rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." What did he mean? "My Dear Wormwood," writes Screwtape, C.S. Lewis' elderly devil to his young apprentice, "Now that it is certain the German humans will bombard your patient's town and that his duties will keep him in the thick of the danger, we must consider our policy. Are we to aim at cowardice-or at courage, with consequent pride-or at hatred of the Germans? "Hatred," Screwtape goes on, "we can manage. The tension of human nerves during noise, danger, and fatigue, makes them prone to any violent emotion and it is only a question of guiding this susceptibility into the right channels…. But hatred is best combined with Fear…[for]…hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. The more he fears, the more he will hate." The policy rings true not only as the policy of our enemies, but also as a policy ready-made for promoting security at home! "Do not fear," says Jesus, but how? In the first place, were we living in that time when people believed the world with devils filled was threatening to undo them, the worldview of the medieval church would have nurtured in us the imaginative capacity to connect the events of the week--the announced move from yellow to orange alert, the preemptive release of Osama bin Laden's latest audiotapes, the directive to gather fresh water, medicines, and three days of imperishable food in one place, along with a supply of duct tape and plastic sheeting--to the workings of the devil. Wormwood was no doubt using unsuspecting human beings in authority to enact Screwtape's policy of frightening us to death, keeping us from living the lives given us by God to live. Seeing the devil as suspect behind any present mischief was meant to keep human beings from falling prey, so easily, to his policy. Hence, a medieval man would not have been found emptying shelves at the supermarket this week, but rather practicing the directive of Martin Luther. "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of scripture," said Luther to his students around the table, with a stein of beer in his hand, "is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." Or he might have listened to Thomas More who concurred: "The devil…the prowde spirite…cannot endure to be mocked." The point is not to give control over to anything or anyone that, by frightening you, would divert you from living the life given you by God to live. Such is the power we may withhold, close at hand: from a diagnosis that would threaten our hope, an abusive relationship that would threaten our humanity, a destructive habit that would threaten our well-being. Such is the scorn shown by people in every land, including our own, who have taken to the streets to thwart the strategies of fear and hatred writ large. Such is the mocking that led others to think of two hundred peaceful uses for duct tape, thereby jeering and flouting the devil in the details of our post-modern existence. Though seriously and in the second place, as we seek help for the living of these fearful days, we would do well to turn directly to scripture, to the story within which our own stories cohere and are given hope. Albeit with no direct connection to our present situation, nevertheless, this seldom-read chapter in the Book of Nehemiah not only echoes the strategies of fear already exposed this morning by Luther and Lewis, but also reveals the God who is our help in trouble. The context is this: the edict of Cyrus, a Gentile king used of God in history for God's saving purposes, returns the Hebrew people to Judah. Ezra and Nehemiah lead a nation toward a rebirth that begins with the rebuilding of the Temple, moves to the reconstituting of the community and culminates in the securing of Jerusalem. In his sixth chapter, Nehemiah is busily rebuilding the city wall when his enemies attempt to dissuade him from the task at hand. Their words appear innocent, "Come and let us meet together in one of the villages in the plain of Ono." Seeing through their invitation, Nehemiah reports, "They intended to do me harm," and so manages to resist each of four entreaties. A fifth time, his enemy's servants up the ante. They accuse him of building a wall of defense in anticipation of the Jews' rebellion against Cyrus. Nehemiah's response is clear: "'No such things as you say have been done; you are inventing them out of your own mind'-for they all wanted to frighten us, thinking, 'Their hands will drop from the work, and it will not be done.' But now, O God," prays Nehemiah, "strengthen my hand." Again, let me say: the story has no direct bearing on our current circumstances. Yet in the exchange between Nehemiah and those who would frighten him, who would have his hands drop from the work God had given him to do, I think we are given a biblical angle of vision on the dynamics at work within our own time. Like Luther jeering at the devil and Sir Thomas More mocking those who would scare him into a false confession, Nehemiah refuses to be engaged by those whose words were meant to frighten him away from his destiny. Nehemiah was building the wall that, when finished a few verses later, caused the nations around Jerusalem to be afraid and fall in their own esteem because, says Nehemiah, "they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our of our God." What lurks beneath the strategies of those who would motivate us by fear-be they friends or foes-is the fueling of a fateful worldview. That is to say, when we begin to order our lives by what we fear or have been told to fear, we drop what we are doing and invest ourselves in anything that promises control of a seemingly uncontrollable future. "Fate," writes Glenn Tinder, in words you have heard before, "is all that threatens and befalls us. It comes upon us from without, often strange and uninvited, always at enmity with personal being." But Tinder goes to say that though it seems fate comes upon us from without, "the truth is that we ourselves are the authors of our fate. Swept up in a drive to master the natural and social worlds, and ignoring the finitude and imperfection of man, we encounter human limits suddenly and disastrously. Fate is made up of the unexpected consequences of our own actions." Tinder is saying that our fate is dictated by the voices we choose to fear, finally bringing us to ask again, in light of Nehemiah and Luther and Lewis…in the face of Screwtape and Wormwood and those who would frighten us here and now: what did Jesus mean when he counseled his disciples in their choice of whom to fear, sending them out as sheep in the midst of wolves? To his disciples, destined as witnesses to God's light in a dark and dangerous world, Jesus says: fear not those who by fate or force threaten to cut short your days, or who, by promising you security, circumscribe your witness. Rather live in awe of the One whose hand alone holds your destiny secure. Here the definition of fear shifts from Webster's first meaning [anxiety caused by the nearness of danger, evil or pain wherein human life is of no account] to the second: fear as awe, reverence, or respectful dread called forth by the presence of the Living God. What are any of these little fears of ours when our lives are lived in the presence of the God before whom alone we were made to stand in awe and adoration? Rather live in awe of, fear the One who is your only comfort in life and in death, the God from whom even a sparrow cannot be separated, the God who values every hair upon your head. So says the Savior who will let nothing keep you from His presence, now and eternally. The point is this: if God so values our unique and unrepeatable lives, and not only ours but the lives of every other creature, then far from victims of fate and forces beyond our control, our human lives matter ultimately, our human actions reverberate eternally, our human existence has been given a destiny in love. And therein lies the choice Christ puts before each one of us this day. We are free to choose our fate and simply live in fear of the things close at hand: the dark rumblings of war on the near horizon, the threatening things that go more than bump, these days, in the night. We can choose to order our lives by the words of those who falsely promise control over all that threatens our existence, thereby being diverted from the life God has given us to live, and missing our destiny. Rather, Jesus says to the disciples as he sends them out, fear God and God alone. Together amid duct tape, orange alerts, audio tapes and troops deployed, he would send us out too: dim witnesses to Christ's Light which the darkness has not overcome, ragtag saints living the life we have been given by God to live unafraid. Living thus, you see, is a confession of faith! Then if, by God's mysterious purposes written into our days, our "action acquires the character of a venture…if [we do] something which is perhaps annoying to others and dangerous to our selves…it is not because we intend all of this… Our task is that we should not cease to be that little light reflecting the great light. Our task is that we should not place that little light under a bushel. If we see to this," says Karl Barth, "we do the act of confession which is required of us, the confession of faith." And if we do…if, by God's grace, we thus confess with our lives…I tell you, we will enter our days-even the darkest-with thanksgiving, and our nights-even the longest-with praise. Thanks be to God. Amen. |