A Bold and Fearless Faith

A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Javier Viera as part of Foundry UMC's Outstanding Preacher Series on Sunday, July 5, 2015, the sixth Sunday after Pentecost.

Text: Ezekiel 2.1-5; Mark 6.1-13

As a nation, we’ve had a roller coaster last few weeks.  In the very recent past we’ve grappled with the horrific and lingering effects of our nation’s deep-seeded and unresolved racism, and have been challenged by the powerful witness of a deep-seeded Christian faith that understands the spiritual freedom found in forgiveness; we’ve been called to action in a letter from Pope Francis on the ecological crisis we face on a global scale, and particularly because the impact this crisis will be most heavily borne by the world’s poor; we celebrated landmark decisions that protected health-care coverage for millions of Americans, extended housing protections for thousands of poor or low wage earners, and secured the right of our LGBT sisters and brothers to legally marry.  Yet, we’re soon reminded of the intractable problems of income inequality in the richness nation on earth, the sin of mass incarceration that has come to symbolize how this nation systematically approaches its black and Latino young men, to name but a few.  It’s been a roller coaster few weeks.

 

Yet, as I name these challenges I have to admit feeling a sense of hopefulness and excitement as a person of faith.  I haven’t felt this hopeful and excited about the Church’s witness since the innocent and naïve years of my youth.  At the forefront of all these challenges facing our nation are people of faith of all persuasions—Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant, evangelical and Pentecostal.  From where I sit and the people with whom I speak, I have a growing sense that in spite of all the dreary reports and studies documenting the precipitous decline of religious life and identification in America, we’re actually on the cusp of renewal and reimagining.  A missional renaissance is beginning to take shape, and it’s being led by a broad coalition of people who take Jesus seriously when he says, ‘bring good news to the poor; proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; let the oppressed go free; proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

 

There is a bold and fearless Christian imagination at work in our nation today.  The compassion and mercy Jesus taught is being expressed in bold and refreshing ways that inspire hope and potential healing for a fracture nation and people. 

 

When I see a broad coalition of Christians leading the #blacklivesmatter movement, leading the struggle for a fully inclusive church and society, standing side by side with the poor, with the immigrant, with the spiritually empty; when I see young Christians of all traditions leading a call for gender equality within and without the church; when I read of Christian economists calling for humane and prudent approaches to the economic crises in Greece and in my homeland of Puerto Rico; when I see young evangelical and liberal Christians working together to address the problem of pervasive Islamophobia and anti-Semitism; when I see this sort of Christian engagement with the great moral, economic, and political challenges of our day, I feel hope!  I feel joy!  I feel as if the message of Jesus preached inside these walls and the walls of so many other places like this may just have a chance at being heard or witnessed by the world beyond these walls. 

 

This reality is not hopeful for all.  We’re a fractured nation, split down the middle on just about every matter of importance.  I recognize that even within the Church many good people were demoralized, devastated, and dismayed by the very things I just named as giving me hope and joy.  Sermons in other churches may be decrying the moral bankruptcy of this nation, and will use the words of Jesus to justify their mourning. 

 

The words of Lincoln’s second inaugural come to mind in such a setting, although the stakes are not the same by any means.  Describing the struggle between north and south, Lincoln said, “Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

 

It’s those purposes of the Almighty that we are humbly called to discern.  And as we discern them, we must have the spiritual maturity of a Lincoln and Martin Luther King to know that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  And when I think of that, I can’t help but hear the words that God spoke at the call of the prophet Ezekiel as words spoken to us today.  Hear them yourself, again, and see if they resonate:  “O mortal, stand up on your feet… And you, O mortal, do not be afraid, and do not be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns surround you and you live among scorpions; do not be afraid of their words, and do not be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house. You shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear.”  Sometimes God sends out not to enemies or to strangers, but to our own; and that struggle can be more terrifying than when we struggle against the unknown.  That’s where Jesus finds himself in today’s gospel reading, among his own people at the synagogue of his childhood and the message he offered was not well received.  Bold and fearless faith among your own is probably the most difficult witness one can give. 

 

A few months ago one of my favorite writers, Juan Goytisolo, won the Cervantes Prize—the most prestigious and highest cultural honor that is given the Spanish-speaking world.  The ceremony is held in ancient halls at the country’s oldest universities, and is presided over the King and Queen of Spain.

 

I happened to be in the Mexico City airport when ceremony took place, and every television screen was carrying a live broadcast of the event.  The next day the front page of every newspaper carried prominently the awkward photograph of the diminutive novelist standing alongside the giant-looking King.  What was so odd, even controversial about this meeting of the two men, was Goytisolo’s public disdain and constant critique of the Spanish ruling classes’ influence and impact on the daily lives of people who struggle just to find work and to survive.  For many years, during the time of the Franco dictatorship, Goytisolo self-exiled to France and his works were banned in Spain.  The King is the living symbol of that ruling and elite class, and so the encounter was an event that almost overshadowed the honor itself.  Goytisolo was being called home to offer a word to his own people, in the very cradle that he had long resisted.

 

It’s been the custom at these events for the recipients to laud and glorify Cervantes himself—the elegance of his prose, the poetic lyricism of his verse, the profound human insight of his comedies and dramas.  Goytisolo, however, took a very different approach.  In the shortest addresses ever given at this event, he chose instead to focus on the difficulty of Cervantes life, and on the obstacles faced by his most famous literary creation, Don Quixote de la Mancha.  Don Quixote is often parodied a man insane, a man who cannot grasp reality and who lives in a world of fantasy.  Goytisolo, argues, however, that Quixote is a fearless dreamer of the best kind, who refuses to accept the twisted and distorted world in which he lives, and instead sees it as it should be:  a world where loyal and eternal love is still possible, a world where injustice is rightly opposed and not accommodated, a world in which the poor and maligned are given rightful place and not simply used for the purposes and ends of the rich.

 

Cervantes himself, we’re reminded, lived the extreme difficulties of life.  He says in the prologue to Quixote that he has been resigned to live “in the basement of history.”  He had extreme financial difficulties and was exploited for his talents, he lived in a cramped house with members of his extended family in Valladolid, and he even applied for passage to America, but was turned down by the government.  This hardship, argues Goytisolo, shaped him and shaped his greatest literary character. 

 

Cervantes knew despondency, depression, oppression, and misery first hand, and he fought it the only way he knew how: with the power of the pen.  Don Quixote fought it in a manner that was deemed lunacy and is now so often caricatured.  But if we look deeper, if we see that which is being critiqued and resisted, we see that the hardships of life didn’t embitter Cervantes, rather he came to understand that his own struggles were too light a thing to consume all of his energies and talents.  They needed to be put in service of something beyond.  He developed the imagination, the subversive spiritual imagination necessary to turn his hardship into a blessing for others.

 

In an elegant, yet scathing critique of modern Spanish society, Goytisolo, a diminutive man, respectfully stared at the King and spoke words on behalf of the poor, the immigrant, the forgotten, the hurting, and those needing healing.  He spoke to his own a word of grace and word of challenge, concluding his remarks by saying, “Those of us moved by Cervantes cannot be resigned to injustice.”  You could hear a pin drop as he ended his address.  He fought injustice the only way he knew how: with the power of words.

 

I would add:  “Those of us moved by Jesus and the God of Israel cannot be resigned to injustice.”  How we will continue to resist it and to bear witness to God’s love and mercy in the world remains to be seen.  Yet, if along the way you feel discouraged, take strength from the words spoken to prophets throughout the ages:  Fear not.  Do not be afraid.  One fearless prophet expressed his hope in words that I believe are still fitting for us:

 

"Yet, I still dare to hope when I remember this:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning — new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness Oh Lord — great is your faithfulness."

 

Amen.