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Foundry United Rev. |
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“Until Christ
Comes…Want” Sunday, December 23,
2007 |
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Luke 2: 25-32
Rev. |
I want
to talk this morning about what I think is a difficult topic for a
congregation like ours, but one that our Advent theme unavoidably brings me
to. The
theme of Advent is waiting. Waiting is really a manifestation and a symbol of
the limitations of our power and control. We need to wait because we are not
in charge of the universe. The universe does not revolve around us. Every
time we have to wait, it is an experience of our finitude. Some of
us are not good at waiting. For those of you who, like me, do not find
waiting to be a pleasant experience, I want to suggest it may be because
waiting confronts us with the reality of our limited power, our limited
ability, our limited competence, our limited control. So the
topic Advent brings me to this morning that I think is a particularly
difficult one for a congregation like ours is the topic of oppression. Oppression.
Not someone else’s oppression. That’s easy. Other people’s oppression we can
talk about very easily and almost ad
nauseum. But the
hard topic is our own oppressions…yours and mine. This is a hard topic for us
to talk about, because most of us don’t like to think of ourselves as oppressed.
One of
the reasons people need to wait is because we are human and thus finite and
thus we have limited power to make happen what we want them to happen. But
another reason people need to wait is because we are oppressed by others or
by systems of which we are a part or by the past or by our own selves and
thus do not have the power to make happen what we want to have happen. One of
the reasons we need to wait…some of us…is because we are oppressed. And
people like us…many of us here in Washington DC attending a church like
Foundry…we do not like to think of ourselves as oppressed. We are
the ones who help oppressed people.
We are the helpers, not the victims. There
are good and fine reasons we don’t like to think of ourselves as oppressed.
One is that most of us are so phenomenally better off than others. We are so
remarkably fortunate. Who are we to sound like we are complaining about
anything? It seems tacky for us to pay attention to our own pain, like a
society matron complaining about her mascara running while volunteering in a
homeless shelter. And
then a lot of us, I think, are afraid of anything that smacks of self-pity. I
think some of us actually have an almost visceral fear of self-pity because
we are afraid if we indulged in it, it would destroy us. Here’s
a quote: “Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to
it, we can never do anything wise in this world.” Do you know who said that?
Helen Keller. Think of how easy self-pity could have been for her. How
appealing it would have been. No wonder she had to steel herself against it.
And so do many of us who fear that if we gave in to anything like self-pity
that we would become emotional and spiritual invalids. So we can’t and won’t think of ourselves as oppressed because we are
afraid it would kill our drive and determination and undermine our wills. We
are so determined to be in control of ourselves and our fate that we hate the
very idea of self-pity. But – this is really the key
to what I have to say this morning – each of us has an obligation to our own
pain. We have an obligation to the pain of others, surely, (all of us here
know this) but we also have an obligation to our own pain (and I am not sure all of us
here know this). I was
tempted to say that each of us has a right to our own pain, but actually I
think that would be a misstatement. It is not so much that we have a right to
our own pain as that we have an obligation to pay attention to our own pain.
We have an obligation to pay attention to our own oppression. We may
feel like our oppression is minor compared to the oppression of others. And
it may be. But it is still our oppression and unless we attend to it, it will
fester and infect us. Having
to wait can be a sacrament of oppression. It can be a reminder of the reality
of injustice and prejudice and powerlessness in the real world as it is. One of
the things that we are called to do while we wait is to want. I’ve had a hard
time coming up with the right word for what I want to say. Other words that
occurred to me were “yearn,” “desire,” “long,” “feel,” “ache.” It is
out of our own pain and our own experience of oppression that we develop a
wanting, a desire, a yearning, an ache for a better world where people do not
have to experience the pain we’ve known, the oppression we’ve felt. It is
our own experiences of oppression that create an affinity between us and
others who are oppressed, so that our work for a better world is not merely
charity but solidarity. We all,
each one of us, have an obligation to our own oppression. It is out of our
allowing ourselves to feel the pain of our oppression without drifting into
self-pity that a wanting, a longing, a yearning, an ache, a passion for
justice and inclusion and peace grows. One of
the things that we do as we wait is to keep wanting the world to be a better
place…to keep alive in our souls and spirits a longing for heaven…for the
kingdom of God…the peaceable kingdom…the beloved community…a better world. The
oppression doesn’t have to be earth-shattering to be powerful. I am convinced
that some of the most powerful childhood experiences that fueled the passion
of Dr. King were things that many might not consider all that important in
the scale of the world’s injustices. After all Dr. King grew up the son of
Martin Luther King Sr., one of the most prominent African-American pastors of
his time. He had pretty much all the advantages an African-American boy could
have in the The
experiences of oppression that really touched him as a boy, I believe, were
things like not being able to swim in the public swimming pool or go to the
amusement park, which was for whites only. Read
his speeches and he will talk about this pain, which some might consider
relatively minor compared to the grave injustices of inequality in education
and voting rights. Yet I am convinced that it is these experiences that most
fueled Dr. King’s wanting and passion. One of
the things we do while we are waiting is to want. Our
biblical hero this morning is an old man named Simeon. Luke says he has spent
his life “looking forward” to the consolation of This is
what I mean by wanting. He lived a long life as a citizen of an oppressed
nation and a part of an oppressed people. He was the child of parents who had
live long lives as oppressed people. His grandparents had lived in
oppression. But he
had never stopped wanting justice and inclusion and peace. And he believed he
would see a sign of it in his lifetime. And when Joseph and Mary brought
their baby Jesus into the temple to be present to God, he knew it was the
sign he’d been promised. And he felt he could die in peace for his eyes had
beheld God’s salvation. The
stubborn oppressions of the world had not killed the longing and ache and
passion for justice inside his spirit. Old man Simeon still had fire in his
belly. He had not become either cynical or depleted. He still had the
capacity to be in love with the dream of a better world. None of
us can see in each other’s souls. None of us knows really what another has
experienced. None of us can automatically know each other’s pain. The
Cuban-American theologian Miguel de la Torres says that oppression is not an
easy thing to define. He says that when he is in I’ve
known people whom the world would consider the most privileged of privileged
who carried within their chests the wounds of child abuse and deprivation.
You would never guess. You just can’t know someone else’s oppression unless
you are willing to listen. We all
have an obligation to our own oppression. Yes, we have an obligation to the
oppression of others. But we have an obligation to our own oppression as
well. Not to deny it. Not to bury it in the busy-ness of life. Not to numb it
with food and drink and activity. But to
feel it and to let it keep a wanting a live in us … a desire and an ache and
a passion for a better world. It is
no accident that Jesus was born to an oppressed people…that he was born to a
peasant girl and a carpenter…that the angels announced his birth to
shepherds, Jesus
always comes to the oppressed places. He comes to the oppressed places of our
communities and our world…and our own lives and souls. What do
we do while we wait? We feel the particular oppression we’ve been given…we
share in the pain of the oppression of one another and the oppression of our
world…we stay alive and tender and dreamy and open. We want and long and yearn and ache for a
better world. We keep alive in us the want. www.foundryumc.org |
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