"Don’t Be Afraid"

Isaiah 9:1-4 and Matthew 4:12-23

Note: In the original sermon preached on January 27 in Turner Chapel, an important idea (the distinction between the problem of the non-believer and the problem of the non-person) was attributed incorrectly. In this version, the attribution has been corrected.

What you can learn from the Bible depends a lot on what questions you’re asking.
    The great Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of liberation theology, said that one way to understand the difference between a liberal theology and a liberation theology is to understand the difference in the questions.
    A liberal theology deals with what could be called the problem of the nonbeliever. Unlike the Christians of many previous centuries, we live in a secular and scientific world where reasonable, educated people hesitate to put their trust in supernatural stories and higher powers. We have to figure out how to express our faith in a way that makes sense in this world.
    Liberation theology, on the other hand, deals with the problem of the non-person.   By non-person what is meant is of course not that anyone is not a person, but rather that some human beings are not treated as a human beings, and their rights and dignity are not respected. We live in a world of extreme differences between rich and poor, where millions of people lack basic human rights, including the right to claim a reasonable share of the world’s resources. Liberation theology begins with the assumption that our faith requires us to do something about this situation. Instead of asking, “In a scientific age, does the Christian faith make sense?”, liberation theology asks, “In a world filled with senseless suffering, what does the Gospel tell us to do, and how does God empower us to act?”
    Here at FUMCOG, we wrestle with both of these theological problems. I suspect that for many of us, as we live out our faith in our day-to-day life, the problem of the nonbeliever is more central to our theology, even though we might not think to frame it that way. In our workplaces and schools and with our families and neighbors and friends, we constantly wonder if Christianity really makes any sense. Does God really exist? And even if God does exist, do you buy the story that Jesus was God’s son and rose from the dead? What about all those miracle stories and predictions of the end of the world – what does a reasonable person do with it all?
    But here at FUMCOG we also wrestle with the problem of the non-person. Many of us gather here because we see such great suffering in the city and the world around us, and we want to do something. In the richest country in the world we see teenagers who can’t get a decent education, hardworking families who can’t afford a safe place to live, and children whose spirits are crushed under the weight of poverty and despair. And throughout our world we see war and disease and brutality and starvation. We come together as a church because this is a place where we sense we will find the strength to do what we need to do.
     We may be here because we want to feed the hungry, or hang drywall in a ruined house in New Orleans, or get medical supplies and money to our friends in Haiti, or help a neighborhood teenager finish school. We do these things first, and we can worry tomorrow about whether the virgin birth really happened the way it says in the Bible. Or maybe, when we get to the point of reading the Bible in light of our experiences, we’ll discover that the real question is not even whether it really happened but what that story tells us about young, poor, unmarried mothers and where they fit in God’s moral economy.
    I’ve been in Bible discussions at FUMCOG with folks who really seemed to misunderstand each other, and I suspect that the reason they had so much trouble may have been because they didn’t understand each others’ underlying questions. If you’re wrestling with the problem of the nonbeliever, you might be most preoccupied with what elements of the Bible make sense to a reasonable, educated person. If your primary struggle is with the question of the non-person, you might be more concerned about holding on to sacred stories that give you strength and hope, whether they seem reasonable or not.
    Our Scripture readings today tell us two things: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. And Jesus healed their diseases.
    When I look at these texts through the lens of the problem of the nonbeliever, my questions go something like this. These people who sat in darkness, what is this great light that they have seen? It sounds like they received some supernatural wisdom, and I’m not too sure about that. Is knowledge and understanding just given to us that way? Can you really know anything through faith, or do the people who lived in darkness just think they see something that really only exists in their own heads?
    And what about those healing stories? Maybe they were added later to make Jesus seem more important. Or maybe their illnesses were mostly psychosomatic, and Jesus helped them think they were better and therefore they felt better, also.
    But when I consider the same texts instead through the lens of the problem of the nonperson, what I get from them is completely different. I remember sitting up late at night on a FUMCOG trip to rural Haiti, talking with the youth group, and realizing that our hosts had kept the lights on for us by using more fuel in the generator than they normally would, and it was time to go to bed so they could shut the power off. And then I realized what it meant to take electric lights for granted when all around us for miles, people lived every day without power.
The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. If I want to know God and what God is doing, if I want to see the great light, I need to go where the people are sitting in darkness, where there’s no power or no money to pay the electric bill, and I need to begin learning to live in solidarity with the poor.
    And then there’s those healing stories -- Jesus went among the poor, and healed their diseases. He started his ministry by going to those who were sick and suffering, and making them better. He started by doing what he knew was in his power to do, to make a difference. It was only afterwards that he began to teach and explain about God in sermons and stories.
There are days when I need a theology that unpacks for me the mysteries of the Bible and helps me understand them in a more rational way. There are days when I need someone to spell out for me who God is, and who Jesus is, and what salvation means, and if there’s a way that I can explain it to my agnostic neighbor and not feel dumb.
But there are more days when I need a theology that says: Don’t think so much. Just go and do. You know what’s in your power. You know what resources you have that you can share, and you know who needs them. You’ve already begun to live on the edge of what is possible and comfortable for you, and you will be given the strength and courage you need to take the next step.
    My partner Chris put it this way the other day. She said, “Some days I just need to hear a sermon that says, ‘You can do it!’”
    Now in a strictly middle-class, privileged context, there is a danger in preaching “You can do it!” If your whole life up to this point has taught you that you can do it, if your family and your schooling and your work history have constantly taught you that you are strong and smart and capable, and if the economics of your life have taught you that if you don’t want to sit in darkness all you have to do is switch on the light, then if your church preaches only strength and hope for living each day, you run the risk of a very shallow theology and a spiritual life where you never pray for anything more important than a good parking space.
    But if the world has been telling you day after day that you are nobody, that you’re not important, that your choices don’t matter and you’ll never get anywhere anyway, then you need to hear it: You can do it. You can get through this day, and the next one, and the one after that, with God’s help. The future can be different than the present. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.
    It’s possible to hear the same message in two different contexts and miss the fact that the context makes all the difference. We’ve probably all been in churches where every word that was said or sung was hopeful, positive, and simple. I guarantee you that in some of those churches those simple words were shallow, and in others the same words were very, very powerful, and it all depends on the context.
    Being poor means your problems are not easily solved by turning on a light switch or going to a better doctor. Being poor means the solutions that may work for other people don’t always work for you because when you fix one thing you may discover something else that you didn’t even know was broken because you never had the time or energy to think about it before.
    As Rachel Falkove reminded us just before Christmas, when she spoke about the ministry of the Interfaith Hospitality Network, so often the problems of the homeless are like an onion, with layer after layer after layer to peel away. Sometimes it’s only when a family is finally in stable housing that their real problems come to the surface and have a chance to be addressed – problems like a history of domestic violence or abuse or other traumatic experiences, difficulties in relationships, or a lack of education and confidence that makes it difficult to obtain and keep a job.
    Most of us here are not struggling for our own day-to-day survival in that way. But if you are engaged at all in the struggle for justice, if you have even put your big toe in the struggle, then allowing your faith to offer you the strength to live each day becomes much more important because when you’re trying to live a more just and peaceful life, it means you face problems you can’t solve. It means sometimes you might feel like you’re giving everything you have but not making any difference at all. It means you might learn so much about someone else’s problems that you feel like you want to give up on trying to help them, or that you don’t even want to be around them. It means getting in touch with your own limitations, your own helplessness, and the chaos and pain of the world, even while you keep trying to do your own part for change.
    When you begin to spend some time in that spiritual space, then it makes a big difference to know that the people who lived in darkness have seen a great light. And that Jesus healed their diseases.
    Because you will need help. Because even if society has taught you that you are strong and powerful, once you begin to use your strength and power in the service of others, you will also encounter and experience your own powerlessness in new ways. You will share the condition of the poor in that you won’t be able to fix everything you’d like to fix or solve every problem you would like to solve.
    But the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. Jesus healed their diseases.
    You are important. You matter. Your life matters. God loves you. God will use your efforts, however small, to make a difference, even if you can’t see that difference for a long time.
God is with you. You can make it through the challenges of this day, this week, this situation. You can do it!
    Amen.

 © 2008 Irene Elizabeth Stroud