Opening Hymn: O God Our Help in Ages Past
Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meet-up for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing, is welcome.
Psalm 90, Jewish Publication Society
O Lord, You have been our refuge in every generation.
Before the mountains came into being,
before You brought forth the earth and the world,
from eternity to eternity You are God.
You return humans to dust;
You decreed, "Return you mortals!"
For in Your sight a thousand years
are like yesterday has past,
like a watch of the night.
You engulf men in sleep;
at daybreak they are like grass that renews itself;
at daybreak it flourishes anew;
by dusk it withers and dries up.
So we are consumed by Your anger,
terror-struck by Your fury.
You have set our iniquities before You,
our hidden sins in the light of Your face.
All our days pass away in Your wrth;
we spend our years like a sigh.
The span of our life is seventy years,
or, given the strength, eighty years;
but the best of them are trouble and sorrow.
They pass by speedily, and we are in darkness.
Who can know Your furious anger?
Your wrath matches the fear of You.
Teach us to count our days rightly,
that we may obtain a wise heart.
Turn, O LORD!
How long?
Show mercy to Your servants.
Satisfy us at daybreak with Your steadfast love
that we may sing for joy all our days.
Give us joy for as long as You have afflicted us,
for the years we have suffered misfortune.
Let Your deeds be seen by Your servants,
Your glory by their children.
May the favor of the LORD, our God, be upon us;
let the work of our hands prosper,
O prosper the work of our hands!
Romans 8:22-25, 35-39, King James Version
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are accounted more than conquerers through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord
Homily
It is not going to be OK.
An astroturf front group can threaten a global economic crisis. And the drama surrounding the nonsense around that has only highlighted the precarious state of our social contract - the stop-gap measure we're left with simply makes the challenges we face more visible.
The gap between rich and poor widens.
It is only a matter of time before water becomes a cause of war.
Every indicator of Global Warming is worse than the previous one.
The tools we have at our disposal are inadequate to these crises. Just think of the percentage of proposals to move forward that we read here that end not in constructive action, but in that staple of DailyKos, the pie fight. When we realize we will not reason our way out of the mess we face, we can collapse into despair or cynicism, or we can fumble as best we can toward some source of hope, grace, and resilience. I, with many, but not all, participants on Brothers and Sisters name that source God. You may need to translate that into language that works for you.
The Psalmist and Paul give us completely different answers to the enormity of the task we face. The Psalmist reminds us of our transience, and of God's eternity. All our hopes and efforts proceed within that distinction. The Psalmist hopes for a reprieve from God's wrath, in exchange for a momentary blessing. Paul juxtaposes the hope that moves our transient efforts forward to the steadfast love of Christ. Here, God's eternity is present in every transient effort. And the hymn sits in between these two grapplings of faith to reconcile a good God with a world of horrors, transforming the Psalmist's anxiety about the possibilities of life - both good and bad - into a soothing reminder that the eternity of God is unshakable.
Contradictory scriptures always force us into an in between place - much like, on a good day, competing rec list diaries do. When we hope to escape disaster - what is the in between space of the Psalmist's reminder that our transience and God's eternity are distinct, and Paul's conviction that God's love permeates our transience?
Instead of solving that paradox by looking for a point where the two insights are perfectly balanced, I want to ask how do we translate our anxieties into awareness of what it means to love and hope in a world that is already broken? What we, as Americans, fear is present reality for much of the world. Our daily - if increasingly threatened - comforts have been secured at the cost of Third World people for decades. While we fight for greater equity of wealth distribution, for universal health care, for an energy policy that isn't suicidal, we need to remember that tribulation, distress, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword have taken and are taking our sisters and brothers from us - from Haiti, to the Horn of Africa, to Guantanamo and Bagram. Instead of looking for an ultimate answer to what will ease our fears of what bad things might come, what would happen if we translated those fears into a deeper commitment to people for whom those fears have been realized? What would happen if we could stop simply "lowering expectations" for our future and instead turn, relinquishing privilege, to a true spirituality of the common good?
Neither the Psalmist nor Paul is content to simply be overwhelmed by problems. Whether expressed in a hope that God will turn from wrath to blessing, or a confidence that suffering can not separate us from the love of God, they both express a faith that comes from being honest about ones limitations and trusting in a horizon that exceeds our vision. There's always another enormous task to pick up, and there is an enormity on which we draw to make the next task less exhausting. So, take a deep breath, get the rest you need, find the source of your strength, and tackle what piece of repairing this broken world you can handle. Your neighbor's life might depend on it.
Recessional: Little Axe, Ride On