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Prayer:
Gracious God, surely you are present among us today, at this
very moment. Let us sense your hand leading us as we listen
together for your living word. In the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Psalm 139
is one of the most beautiful scriptures in the Bible.
It has offered hope and peace to people down through the
ages, on All Saints Day as we remember people who have died,
and on days of alarm of all sorts. The power of this
scripture comes from the promise it contains: the promise of
God’s presence among us, no matter what.
Six years ago, on September 19, 2001, I
was due to be in Chicago for my regular Wednesday class. The
week before, on September 12, I had simply torn up my
airline tickets and driven the five or six hours to Garrett
Evangelical Theological Seminary. But the second week, I
decided it was time to fly again. Detroit Metro was eerily
silent. Very few people were traveling by plane that week. I
wrote in my journal about the young couple who waited with
me; newlyweds perhaps. She was sobbing quietly. He was
cradling her in his arms. There was nothing else he could
do.
There was nothing that I could do,
either. I could not control the possibility of another
attack, or the frightening specter of becoming part of a
guided missile aimed at Chicago. It was the kind of horror
that all of us were forced to contemplate late in 2001. I
could have chosen to drive to Chicago again. But I didn’t. I
had a sense that by choosing to be present, I was somehow
making a difference in the grand scheme of things. So I went
to the airport several hours early, and I simply sat. Others
sat with me.
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We used the time for prayer, for
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remembering people we loved,
whispering their names one by one.
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We used the time for realizing how
very precious our busy lives really are.
There is spiritual practice called the
Discipline of Attentiveness. Simply put, it means being
present. Being present: to our kids, to our grandparents, to
causes we believe in. Being present to God.
In the era of multi-tasking, being
present is especially challenging. We have lots of
responsibilities, lots of priorities, lots of technology,
lots and lots of things to do—some important and some…not
really. But when we manage to pull it off, to give someone
or something our undivided attention, this gift of presence
becomes a valuable treasure. We are giving the gift of our
now, which is all we really have to give.
You see, if we want to say “I love you”
or if we want to say “I care,” the best way, perhaps the
only way, is to pay attention. That’s why attentiveness is a
spiritual discipline. Presence can lead to a closer
relationship with God; it can lead to hope in the midst of
sorrow or tragedy. Presence leads to the possibility of new
life when the old life seems broken beyond repair. Perhaps
presence—paying attention—is really what the gospel is all
about.
In the New Testament, in the gospel
according to Luke, there is the story of an elderly woman
named Anna. Anna had suffered a tragedy. Her husband died
only seven years after they were married. Heartbroken, she
went to the temple, where she practiced the spiritual
disciplines of prayer and fasting. It seemed as though she
never left; she was praying for the redemption of her city.
When she was 84 years old, one day a man
and a woman brought an eight-day-old baby into the temple.
Because Anna was present, because she was paying attention,
she knew right away who this baby was. She was rewarded for
her attentiveness by seeing the
one who would
bring redemption not only to her city, but also to the whole
world.
In Luke 2, she was recorded for all of
history as being the prophet Anna. It is said that
she told everyone who was paying attention that this was the
child they had been waiting for. Can you imagine the joy of
actually seeing the baby Jesus, actually knowing who he was
when you saw him? All babies are special, but this one…
Anna’s tragic life suddenly took on a meaning that she could
not have expected. Because she was present.
In the America of the 1800s, there were
many people who felt that the social fabric of our nation
was broken beyond repair by the ugliness of slavery. Many
tried to ignore the problem, some called for war, and some
worried but could think of no way to make a difference. But
there was one woman who chose the Spiritual Discipline of
Attentiveness as her way to make a statement, and possibly
redeem her own soul.
Florence Kelly tells the story of her
aunt Sarah Pugh, who was a Quaker living in the 1800s. Sara
never used any sugar or any products made of cotton. One day
Florence asked her aunt to tell her why.
“Cotton was grown by slaves, and sugar
also,” my aunt replied, “so I decided many years ago never
to use either; and to bring these facts to the attention of
my friends.”
Florence continues:
Not meaning to be impertinent, I said,
“Aunt Sarah, does thee really think any slaves were freed
because thee did not use sugar or cotton?” Perfectly
tranquil was her reply: “Dear child, I can never know that
any slave was personally helped, but I had to live with my
own conscience.”
Sarah could not make a difference
directly about slavery. Hers was a ministry of
attentiveness, of being present and accounted for when an
important question was being asked. My fellow travelers and
I could not make a difference directly about terrorism, but
we could be present and accounted for in the empty airports
and in the powerful potential weapons called Boeing 727s.
Did our presence make a difference? We will never know. But
we were present and accounted for.
There are lots of ways that we can choose
to spend our time. There are lots of places that we can
choose to be. Some of them feel like heaven, and some of
them feel like hell.
God also had a choice, and God has chosen
to be present with us. As it says in Psalm 139. As it says
in the New Testament, when God comes to live among us and to
die for us and to show us the way to the kind of redeeming
hope that was longed for by Anna.
We too can choose. It’s a matter of
setting priorities, you know….figuring out which thing is
more important than which thing. When we are setting our
priorities, it pays to look at the big picture, rather than
get bogged down in the daily problems we all face.
There is a church in Harlem, above 125th
Street in New York City. It was surrounded by “shabby
little pawn shops and boarded-up storefronts and
roach-infested grocery stores. Many churches had given up
and moved away, but that church continued to hang in
there—keeping watch, staying alert… They organized a
locally-owned bank, they set up latch-key programs for
children, they put together neighborhood redevelopment
agencies… A newspaper reported once interviewed [the]
pastor. ‘Sure, he said, ‘you’re doing great stuff. But it’s
hard to see what difference any of that is making. What
enables you and your folks to keep going?’ The pastor said,
‘We’ve read the Bible, and we know how it ends…and that’s
what makes the difference.’”
If we are looking for Jesus the way that
Anna was, if we care about social justice like Sarah Pugh,
if we believe that how we choose to spend our time matters,
then we are in the right place. For the people of First
Church have made a choice to be present and accounted for in
our community, in our relationships with each other, in our
relationship with God, and in the way we care about the
broader world. We believe we are called to make a
difference. By our prayers, by our service, by our gifts,
and especially by our presence.
We trust God’s promise about being
present with us, and about how the story ends. And that’s
what makes the difference.
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