TIMES THAT TRY OUR SOULS
A Sermon by Rev. James D. Brown
Market Square Presbyterian Church
April 20, 2008
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16, 21-24 and Acts 4:32-5:11
A while back someone said to me: “We’re living in trying times, aren’t we?” I said “Yes, we are.” Later on I began to mull over how people of faith and courage are to behave in trying times. This led me back to Thomas Paine, the American patriot whose words are quoted in our bulletin this morning. Paine was a newcomer to the American colonies when the Revolutionary War broke out. A self taught writer, he had a way with words that stirred the passions of many of his contemporaries, including George Washington.
Paine wrote a series of Crisis Papers intended to inspire those doing battle against the British, and they were so effective that General Washington ordered that they be read to his troops. The one I’ve quoted is the very first, written in 1776. It contains the famous lines:
THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and
the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their
country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man
and woman.
I hadn’t looked at this Crisis Paper since my college years when I was an American history major. It’s worth reading at a time like this. Remember, when Thomas Paine was writing it about a third of the colonists were rebelling against the British, about a third were Tories who sided with the British monarch, and the final third were sitting on the sidelines waiting to see who won. We do well to remember our history the way it really was.
The next words of Paine I’ve quoted are less familiar, but are extremely relevant both to the times in which we are living and the passage I’ve read from the Acts of the Apostles about life in the early church. Listen carefully:
‘Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through
a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them….Yet panics,
in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their
duration is always short [I’m not so sure about that]; the mind soon grows
through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before….They sift out the
hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world.
Times of panic and crisis force us to figure out what we believe and to have the courage to say it out loud and to act on it. The current primary marathon swirling through Pennsylvania is, from Thomas Paine’s perspective, a good thing for us. This was driven home for me by the words of Serene Jones, a theologian who has just been named as the first woman president of Union Seminary in New York. She’s reflecting about all the God talk that’s going on these days:
For a Christian like myself, this fomenting sense that ‘God-matters’ really
matter to so many is exciting. Not since the 1960’s have we seen such
intellectual seriousness about faith. But it’s clearly not an easy endeavor.
Opinions are strong, stakes are high, and our disagreements generate
gale-force intensities. Inevitably, these conflicts speak to what we value
most—our deepest desires and most enduring commitments.
Quoted in Union News, Spring 2008, p. 3
I had to chuckle as I was writing these words. Earlier in the week I was in the steam room at the YMCA when one of my compatriots opined out of the swirling mists: “I sure hope our next President leads us to victory in Iraq—this is what this presidential race is all about.” With nary a second’s hesitation I found myself barking through the steam: “Victory! Are you aware our invasion of Iraq has created 4 million displaced persons inside and outside of Iraq. There are 2 million Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordon alone. And the United States hasn’t even followed through on its promise to admit 12,000 of these refugees to this country. Victory? For whom?”
Dead silence, followed by a little throat clearing on the far side of the wall of steam. The fellow I’d responded to—who is a Y casual acquaintance—eventually left the steam room. I saw him in the locker room a while later. We smiled and wished each other good night. I’m sure we are not done with each other in the months ahead.
Gale-force intensity captures the mood of our national debates as we struggle to articulate our deepest desires and our most enduring commitments. This is why it’s so important that we frame our questions well and take a bit more time than I did in the steam room to listen carefully to the opinions of others. But speak up we must.
Gale-force intensity is not a bad way to describe our lesson from the Acts of the Apostles either. The story is so graphic it needs little retelling. The early Christian community was so overwhelmed by the surge of grace they experienced in Christ that they were of “one heart and soul.” They became true soul mates.
Out of their experience of God’s radical, to-the-core love for them, they began to sell their possessions and share the proceeds with the community at large. Ananias and Sapphira, a husband and wife team, kept for themselves some of the proceeds from the sale of their property. Pow! They both dropped dead.
Scholars question whether this account is historical or contains lots of embellishment by Luke. The message is clear no matter what. Something went very badly in the early church over the matter of holding things in common. It’s no wonder the rest of the community was scared silly.
This past Wednesday I took part in the 100 Men Reading Program in the Harrisburg School
District—at Marshall Elementary School, to be exact, where Nancy Snyder is the principal. I
read a story to 4th graders about two ants who went out with their fellow scouts to find food for their Queen. They stumbled onto a bowl of sugar which for an ant was like going straight to heaven. The main group of ants returned home with crystals of sugar for their Queen, but the two renegades remained behind gobbling up all the sugar they could eat.
The story tells of their harrowing time in the house where they found the sugar bowl until the main group of ants retuned the next day and the two ants were able to go back home with them. As we finished the story I asked the students what the moral of the story was. What are we to make of it? I asked. What’s the central point or message?
The children did a great job of figuring this out. They came up with the word “greed” and the fact that the two ants were only thinking about themselves. They related the story to their own families, and how important it is to take every one’s needs into consideration. We talked about how much we need each other, about looking out for each other.
The moral of the story from Acts is similar and yet different. Did you note that the leaders of the early church never said it was an absolute requirement to sell all you had and give the proceeds to the community. Grace-filled believers just did. Peter told Ananias that while his property was unsold it was his. But when he sold it the proceeds were no longer his and were to be at the disposal of the community.
The sin of Ananias and Sapphira was not really greed, but rather duplicity, deception, lying, pretending to do one thing while doing another. This is the community-breaker in the early church. When we lie to one another we are lying to the God who has redeemed us into the community of Christ’s Church. It’s as simple as that. Friends in Christ don’t deceive one another. This surely has to do with our deepest desires and most enduring commitments.
I think this helps explain why Pope Benedict was absolutely compelled to deal with the sexual abuse of young people by priests as he visited here this past week. The sin of pedophilia has many sides to it, including the utter misuse of spiritual authority and power that it represents and, above all, the lasting harm done to young victims who deserved so much better.
I also believe that the moral at the heart of today’s lesson about lying, about breaking the trust that keeps a community whole, is relevant to this whole matter. Bishops and priests who have covered up the misdeeds of others have truly put the Spirit of the Lord to the test. Having said all this about the Catholic Church, we must quickly acknowledge that we live in the glass houses of our own communions where such things also happen. The Pope deserves our praise for being forthright and for pledging to set things right.
What a week it was! The Pope was here, and presidential candidates were asked about their favorite Bible stories and why God allows innocent suffering. When was the last time you heard questions like these put forward in debates? These are heady, trying times, and if Thomas Paine is correct we should give thanks to God that we are blessed to be alive at this moment in history. Our hidden thoughts are being sifted out and held up for others to see—in steam rooms and board rooms and bed rooms and class rooms and rooms like our sanctuary where we are worshipping this morning. We are blessed to be living in times that try our souls.
Recently one of you sent me excerpts from an interview with Rick Warren, the pastor of the Saddleback Church in California, which is helpful for thinking about living in trying times. In the past year one of Warren’s books has sold 15 million copies. During this same period of time his wife has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Mirroring the famous line of Scott Peck that “Life is difficult,” Warren says that “Life is a series of problems: either you are in one now, you’re just coming out of one, or you’re getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than is making your life happy.”
He then talks about his wife Kay’s battle with cancer. He laments that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people—and I suspect he is not exaggerating—they’ve had to face the fact that she is not going to get better. Here he is at the peak of his ministry with his books being read by millions of people—and his wife is dying. This excruciating juxtaposition of success and sorrow has led him to this helpful insight:
Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it’s kind of like
two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good
and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your
life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no
matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good
you can thank God for. You can focus on [the good], or you can
focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you’re going
into self-centeredness—which is “my problem, my issues, my pain.”
But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off
yourself and onto God and others.
His wife is doing everything she can to focus on the needs of others, and Rick Warren has set up a foundation to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick and educate the next generation. May God bless them both in their journeys.
Speaking of journeys, last Sunday I asked for your prayers as I anticipated surgery on one of my eyes. I told you the exact time—8:30 on Tuesday morning. Right about that time I was sitting in a room adjacent to where the surgery was to be done, waiting for the drops to dilate my pupil. I’ll jump ahead and tell you the good news that the actual laser surgery lasted but two or three minutes, and everything went very well.
But it’s the waiting time I want to share with you. I had closed my eyes and was taking deep breaths. I suddenly felt very calm and remembered that you were praying for me. I reflected that “I’m not alone. I am part of a company of friends and loved ones who wish me well and are seeking God’s blessing for me.” In that moment it was as if I were being caught up by a great field of energy not my own, one that connected me with you and with God.
Is this not what our life together affords us—communion with one another and with God through Jesus Christ? Such moments help us know the peace that passes all understanding, a peace that empowers us to embrace the trying times in which we find ourselves. What better time than this to be alive?