Scripture: Exodus 3:7-14, 4:9-13
People have been asking me quite a bit recently how I am doing, how I am feeling. Not that people never inquired after my wellbeing before, but since September 11 I have often had the feeling that when I’m exchanging greetings with people and someone asks me, “And how are you doing?”, “How are you feeling?”, that there’s a kind of tone in the voice that says there’s a little added meaning to the question. Whether people mean it this way or not, what I hear is: How are you doing in the aftermath of September 11? How are you feeling about all this? How are you dealing with it?
For me that’s a fairly complex question—how am I doing—but what I usually say when people ask me how I’m doing is: Oh, I’m doing fine. Which, of course, is partly a lie, but also partly the truth.
I think of all the people who lost loved ones in the attacks and I’m aware that I don’t have to deal with that directly, and I have to say that I’m doing fine.
I think of people who have been, or in all probability will be, called into active duty, and the people who love them, and I know that I’m not affected in that way, and I have to say I’m doing fine.
I think of people who have lost their jobs and the people who depend on them, and I’m not worried about paying the rent, and I have to say that I’m doing fine.
I think of sister and brother clergy, some of whom are ministering in the midst of whole communities of grief, and I have to say that I am doing fine.
I think of the people of Afghanistan and Palestine and Israel and millions of people in a million places throughout the world including Charlottesville where people don’t have the basic necessities of love or money to make it very long or far in this world, and I have to say I’m doing fine.
And I have to say I’m doing fine because I’m aware that even asking the question of how I’m doing or how I feel about things is a luxury many people don’t have. I think of people who live from day to day doing what they need to do, doing what it is necessary for them to do, and who maybe don’t ever ask themselves how they are feeling, because it would be too painful, and there is nothing they could do about it anyway—I think of them and I have to say I’m doing fine. And it’s not just a matter of saying it; in that frame of reference I really am doing fine.
But in truth I am also not doing so fine, partly because I can’t stop thinking of sisters and brothers who aren’t doing fine, and partly for other reasons I don’t understand so well. I wouldn’t expect myself or anyone else to be doing “fine” in the aftermath of September 11, but for some of the reasons I just stated and others as well, for some good and not so good reasons, there may be a temptation for us to pretend. In the weeks since September 11 I have attended a number of the gatherings that have taken place—clergy groups, peace and social justice meetings, teach-ins. I have felt a need to learn more, to understand more, to grapple with the issues, to pay more attention to the whole of array of questions that are before us. Where did these attacks come from? Who are the terrorists? What are the conditions that give rise to terrorism? What policies have contributed to those conditions? What is the United States likely to do in response to the attacks? What should the United States do? The gatherings I’ve been to have been for the most part interesting and helpful. They have also been dealing with things that are “out there”. Somewhere along the line in the last few weeks, as I was noticing the tiredness in my body, a kind of tiredness that I have associated in the past with being depressed, I realized in a more forceful way that not all of the issues I had to deal with were out there. Some of them were inside me, and although I have sometimes referred to what I have been feeling as depression, what I want to call it is more a heaviness of the soul.
Let me take a quick detour here and go back to the Exodus story. I’ll be honest. This sermon didn’t come directly out of Exodus. I didn’t start my preaching with the Exodus story this week. Obviously my words grow much more out of our contemporary experience, but as I also follow the Exodus story forward, I find that it does have some relevance. This is a rich story, the Exodus story, and we’re dealing here with a rich portion of that story. The burning bush, God calling Moses to set his people free, God identifying herself in the cryptic phrase, “I AM”. There are lots of good things to think about here that I’m just not going to get to, today or anytime this fall. I’ll want to come back to some of this at another time. But today, my current experiences made me approach the story with the question how did Moses feel about all this? The burning bush, that is, and God calling him back to Egypt to confront the Pharaoh and free the people.
The story actually does let us know how Moses felt, and the answer is: not very good. C’mon, Moses says. Why should anyone pay any attention to me? How will they know that it’s you who sent me? How will they know who you are? In fact, how do I know who you are? Who are you anyway? This might be a trick. Besides, you can find somebody better than me. I’m not very brave, not very young any more, not a very good talker, don’t know how to say things, can’t remember what I want to say half the time. Just…just…find somebody else.
God, I notice, was not impressed. God didn’t really care about how Moses felt. God didn’t care about Moses’ plans for the weekend, whether this would make Moses happy or fulfilled. God didn’t care about the state of Moses’ self-esteem. God wanted the people to be free. God didn’t much care about whether Moses was thrilled with the program. And I hear that message. All things considered, how I am doing, whether my psyche is wearing a smiling face right now, whether I’m feeling upset or depressed or worried or anxious or tired is probably not one of God’s major concerns.
I understand that. There’s a message here I need to take to heart. At the same time, I don’t mind talking back to scripture either. O.K., so my happiness, my comfort, my sense of wellbeing, my safety, security, or peace of mind—none of this is at the center of the universe. But there are some things that are going on inside me that probably do matter to God. And they have to do with that heaviness of soul that I referred to a few moments ago.
The issue is not so much how I am doing but how other things are doing within me: hope, for instance. You know sometimes the messages we need to hear are spoken to us loud and clear through the words of scripture. Sometimes they come from other places, today through the words of the song by Isaye Barnwell, who is the leader and composer of songs for the group Sweet Honey in the Rock, which I had the opportunity to hear this summer at the UCC’s general synod. You’ve got to keep hope alive in this world today.
For me I need to tell you, that’s going to be a struggle, and it’s a struggle that’s going to have to go on inside me, and that’s where “how I’m doing” takes on some legitimate meaning. Everywhere I’ve turned recently I’ve been encountering things that give little cause for optimism. Hope, I tell myself, is different from optimism. But where nothing much seems to offer real grounds for optimism, hope becomes hard work.
It requires allowing myself to continue to feel the grief over the loss of life and not to deny that grief and not to shove it aside, but also not to get lost in it. It requires allowing myself to acknowledge the griefs of so many people in so many other times and so many other places that maybe weren’t so deeply felt because the losses weren’t ours and they weren’t here, and yet not to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the suffering. It requires that I acknowledge and not deny my fears of future attacks and my fears about the nature of a military response that may lead to an increasing and ongoing cycle of violence, fears for now and for future generations, conscious fears and unconscious fears, the need to acknowledge them all but not to be imprisoned by them. It requires that I not let myself be distracted from all the important things there still are to do, that I not let all my resources or attention be fastened on the events and images that seem not to want to let go of us, but at the same time that I don’t simply pretend that nothing much ever happened and ignore the issues that have been raised for us and the voices who need to be heard without the use of violence to attract attention. Hope needs to find its way through a maze of issues that I need to deal with, that are not so much outside me as they are inside me. Hope needs to find a place, I need to work to provide a place for hope alongside the grief, the sorrow, the fear, the anger, the confession, the confusion that is filling and weighing on my soul. I need to work, intentionally, to keep hope alive within me, because despair is what seems to come more naturally these days.
Honestly, I hear the word of God for me today through the words of Isaye Barnwell. We’ve got to keep hope alive, and everyday we’ve got to pray on, sing on, teach on, work on, walk on…and do so knowing that—I would say it in Chinese if I could—love abides. God’s love abides in the midst of our brokenness.
May we come to the communion table today to confess our brokenness, but also to tie ourselves to God’s presence, to tie ourselves to other peoples, and in at least this symbolic way to take an action that keeps hope alive. Amen.
Jim Bundy
October 7, 2001