Rev. Molly Phinney Baskette ~ First Church Somerville
Sunday, November 30, 2008 ~ First Sunday in Advent
Psalm 80
Peter and I were traveling cross-country once, and found ourselves in Mitchell, South Dakota very early on a Tuesday morning. We were there to admire the Corn Palace, a department-store sized building with great sweeping murals depicted on the outer walls, all fashioned from corn kernels and glue. As you can imagine, it stirred many feelings in us. Primarily hunger. We looked around for a place where we might get some breakfast. Nothing was open, except for, believe it or not, a store called “Just Things and Stuff.” They had a lot of those Willow Tree angel dolls with no faces, but no bacon or eggs or coffee. Peter and I had just invented a new bumper sticker the day before, that read: “South Dakota. It’s better than you think.” But the lack of coffee at 7 am, and the proliferation of Just Things and Stuff, caused us to reconsider.
We’re two days out from what is supposed to be, fingers crossed, the biggest shopping day of the year. They call it black Friday, I learned, because it is the day storeowners hope they will finally start to turn a profit, putting their ledgers in the black. But they might well call it Black Friday because of the way it teases our desire and tarnishes our souls. If you watched or heard the news on Friday evening, you heard about the Wal-mart worker who met with tragedy at a mall on Long Island. I don’t want to say anymore because there are children present, and they deserve to be protected from the worst of human nature while they are young, and their own better natures still have the upper hand. But this Friday was black indeed, and says something dark not just about Wal-Mart shoppers on Long Island aching for a bargain, but all of us who buy in, at some level, to buying things as a holiday pastime. It makes one unutterably sad, to really think about it.
I had a dream last night. I was walking through my house, only there were all these extra rooms, rooms I had forgotten were there, secret rooms with lots of closets. And the rooms and closets were filled with stuff. Clothes I’d bought and never worn, never even taken the tags off of. VHS tapes, and pictures, appliances that may or may not work. Bags and boxes and buckets of just things and stuff.
I started to sort through the stuff, to take a hard stand and rid myself of most, if not all of it, but I became more and more overwhelmed by how much there was, and how attached to it I became as I handled it again, all these pieces of my history that I’d forgotten, and I had to walk away. Later on in the dream, I came back to those rooms to find that a lot of people had taken up residence there. Some of them were from church. They were reading or talking excitedly with each other; most of them were admiring the stuff, pawing through it and wanting to take this or that home, since these things obviously weren’t doing me any good. I felt panic, that they were here in my inner sanctum, and getting all up in my stuff. I also felt relief, that they were willing to liberate me from all this baggage, but I had to fight the dark urge to hold on to these things, things that until just a little while before I had completely put out of my mind, but were now reclaiming their hold over me.
The Christian journey is one for which we are strongly advised not to take a lot of stuff. When Jesus let the disciples loose on Galilee, to go out two by two and see how they could do on their own, delivering the message of Good News, he famously told them to take nothing for their journey: not a wallet nor any money, no bread, nor an extra tunic. It was a social experiment—would people take them in, take care of them? How would going out without the armor of belongings and self-sufficiency impact the disciples themselves? How might it influence their would-be hosts, to see these guys show up on their doorstep, so earnest, needing everything?
There is great value in having nothing, every so often. Psalm 80 was a song of lament—think, country-western sob story, think, the aria from Madame Butterfly, think, knock-down drag-out blues. It was probably written by an Israelite who had been exiled from his homeland, a homeland his ancestors had spent hundreds of years fighting for and winning. Land in the Middle East has always been a hot potato, even before the discovery of oil. The Israelites took it away from the Canannites, and then the Assyrians took it away from the Israelites. The Israelites went on forced march out of their homeland and ended up singing this sad, sad song.
We can hardly imagine what life is like as a refugee. Living in a tent on someone else’s property, sick, tired, taking the crumbs you can get from people who pity you while not being able to do your life’s work, to cultivate the land or build homes, enduring pregnancy or old age out in the elements, with no hope of going home. In a typically lyrical, Jewish way, the Psalmist declaims that they have nothing to eat but the bread of tears—tears for breakfast, tears for lunch, tears for supper. How much more desolate than being in Mitchell, South Dakota on a Tuesday morning without so much as a cup of coffee. No wonder they cry out, “Restore us, O God of hosts, let your face shine!”
We don’t know what it feels like physically to be a refugee, but we do know what it’s like to be exiled, to have our family relationships so broken that we can’t go home. We know what it’s like to feel that God has left us in the dust, and it’s through no fault of our own. Probably. I love the fourth verse of this Psalm—the more idiomatic translation is “how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?” but the literal translation is something more like “how long will you smoke against us?” One especially tangy Spanish translation puts it, “how long will you hide in the smoke, o Lord?” I don’t know about you, but that version is more like my experience of God. I don’t know that I have ever felt God was angry with my prayers, but I certainly have felt that God is hiding in the smoke, mysterious and elusive, while I pray and pray and pray, feeling despairing and maybe a little foolish.
Three times in this little Psalm, the singer cries out, “Shine your face, O God!” When you’re in darkness, you need a light to see by.
It’s taken for granted that at least part of what God was doing, every time the Israelites spent time in the wilderness, or in exile, and there were many, many of those times; God was helping them sort through what was really important, and what was really important was their relationship with Him. Only those who have need of God can recognize the shining face of God. Only those who live in darkness can see a great light when it arrives.
It’s not always easy to interpret our own dreams, but my dream seems pretty obvious. There are people I need to let in, and there is stuff, emotional baggage, I need to get rid of. I think that makes me unique, yes? none of you need to do that, is that right?
Last week, at one of our small groups, Kerrie Harthan suggested that the hardest and most important work we can do is relinquish the stories we hold on to about ourselves. We have taken bits and pieces of just things and stuff to build a kind of flimsy shelter for our egos. Inevitably, these stories begin either “I am valuable because…” or “I am worthless because…” You can fill in the blanks with material possessions or lack thereof, hence the run on Wal-Mart on Black Friday. Gadgets and media are still the number one way people insulate themselves from the world, and from their own shadow sides. But our flimsy shelters are built of other things, too. We are valuable or worthless because of our education, our skills, our weight, our social class, the state of our mental health. And all of these things and stuff start to tell us stories about ourselves that just aren’t true. Our spiritual work is to get rid of our emotional baggage, and come back home to the certain truth that we are of inestimable value to the One who made us.
But how does one start? Sometimes inner work is best done by doing outer work. Here’s a homework assignment. Start a new Thanksgiving tradition. The day after Thanksgiving, instead of spending money, stay in, and clean out a drawer or a closet or a whole room in your house. Take some of your treasures and just plum give them away. Don’t look back. As you throw things in the trash, or re-gift them, hold your own story more and more loosely. You’re not only part of the family you were born into; you are not just defined by the things and stuff that have already happened to you, by the body you live in. Look ahead. A new family is about to come into the world, a holy family, and you are invited into that family. They will take you in.
Then get into the quiet, dark space you’ve created by emptying out the closet. Remember the Israelites, shivering in Syria. Remember a Muslim security guard, in the predawn fluorescent glow, unlocking the front door of a Wal-Mart. Remember a Jewish mother, her child, her fiancé, taking refuge in a hut for animals. Take up residence with them. Light a candle in that darkness, and say these words, “Restore us, O God of hosts. Do not hide yourself in the smoke. Let your face shine, that we may be saved.”
