“Where is God as we journey through this sometimes dark and dreary land? God dwells in us … God dwells in you.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, May 12, 2019.
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Even though I walk, through a dark and dreary land
There is nothing that can shake me
She has said She won’t forsake me
I’m in her hand
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God dwells in you.
And also with you.
OK … good to know. So, we agree on that, right?
God dwells in you. Individually. Collectively.
God dwells in you, in me, in us.
Now, if All Saints is the only Episcopal Church you’ve ever been to, you might be surprised to know that pretty much every other Episcopal church I know doesn’t say this. If we were to pry those prayer books out of our pews, dust them off and open them up we would find a different phrase:
The Lord be with you.
Now, that’s a significant difference.
The Lord be with you – or in the old Latin, Dominus Vobiscum — is an ancient greeting that historically, in the Roman Church, can only be said by clergy. It has origins in a couple places in scripture, most notably in Ruth 2:4 where Boaz says it to the harvesters. It states a desire – a desire that Christ, that God become more and more present with each individual and in the gathered assembly.
It is a wonderful greeting. To desire that God be more and more with someone.
It reminds us of the words of the 23rd psalm
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Or, as they are so beautifully interpreted by Bobby McFerrin in the words we heard/said this morning:
“Even though I walk, through a dark and dreary land
There is nothing that can shake me
She has said She won’t forsake me
I’m in her hand.”
The Lord be with you.
We say something different.
We say, “God dwells in you.”
I wasn’t here when All Saints made the switch, and, believe me, I have heard many different stories about why it was made and how it came about … so I’m not going to try to get into that.
What I will say is that this is a radical innovation. And I choose each of those words carefully.
It is an innovation. It is a departure from a thousand years or more of church practice and the current canonical norm of The Episcopal Church. Departures like this regularly need to happen – particularly when church practice and canonical norms are oppressive. It’s why this congregation blessed same-sex unions long before our General Convention decided that love is love, and why we regularly alter our liturgical and scriptural texts where they reinforce male imagery for God and gender binaries…. like using Bobby McFerrin’s version of the 23rd psalm this morning.
And … it is not something we do lightly. You might not know it, but when your clergy were ordained we had to sign something called the “oath of conformity,” a vow to “conform to the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal church,” and technically, we could be brought up on ecclesiastical charges and stripped of our orders for altering the text of the Book of Common Prayer
… though as a seminary professor of mine once said, “the trial for that one would have to be held in the Louisiana Superdome because it would be the only place big enough to hold all the defendants!”
So, when we say “God dwells in you” it is a radical innovation. And I mean radical in two senses of the word. First, it is a significant departure from current and historical practice. Second, it is radical in the truest sense of that word, which means “at the root.”
Saying “God dwells in you” is a radical change because it returns us to the root of a powerful stream of Christian theology before the institution decided that it could increase and maintain power by asserting that God’s presence must be mediated through the clergy.
“God dwells in you” returns to the root of a primary theology of the Gospel of John, from which we heard today.
A little history.
In its final form, John’s Gospel was written near the end of the first century, after an event that was as traumatic as you can possibly imagine for the Jewish people … the destruction of the temple. The temple was believed literally to be the residence of God on earth. The Temple was how the people knew that throughout Roman occupation, the words of the 23rd psalm were still true:
“Even though I walk, through a dark and dreary land
There is nothing that can shake me
She has said She won’t forsake me
I’m in her hand.”
The centurions may be pulling me off the street and beating me … but I know God has not abandoned us. Look – there is the temple. Inside is the holy of holies. God dwells with us.
Then around the year 66, the Jewish people rose up against their Roman occupiers. And about four years later, Empire did what Empire does. It came back with vengeful force.
And this was an epic, brutal smackdown.
They ransacked Jerusalem, slaughtered thousands, kidnapped thousands more into slavery around the empire and … destroyed the temple and took its sacred relics back to Rome to be displayed as spoils of victory … and as a message to anyone else who would dare stand against the might of the Empire.
This was the valley of the shadow of death … and the worst part of it was … if God dwells in the temple … how can God be with the people now that the Temple has been destroyed? Where does God dwell now?
That is the question on the hearts and minds of the people as John’s Gospel is coming together. And John’s Gospel had an answer.
John’s Gospel sang of the presence of God that became flesh and dwelled among us – using the same verb “to pitch a tent” that was used to describe God’s dwelling place, the tabernacle. And that presence of God, who John says came because God loved not just some people but the whole world, came to show and tell us one thing:
“Love one another. Love one another the way I have loved you.”
And of the old Temple, the Temple that was lying in ruins. The Temple that was God’s dwelling place and assurance of God’s presence among the people, Jesus said: “You don’t need it.” John put these words on Jesus’ lips more than a half century before the temple was burned to the ground:
“Destroy this temple … and I will raise it up.”
And what did that new temple look like? What does this new temple look like when the Temple of the Jews and the Temple of Jesus’ body have both been put to death? What did the new promise and embodiment of God’s presence look like?
John’s Gospel tells us in Jesus’ resurrection appearances.
Jesus stands with the disciples in the upper room and says: “As God sends me, so I am sending you.”
And then standing on the lakeshore with Peter assuring Jesus over and over again that, yes, even though he betrayed him, yes, he still loves him, Jesus responds:
“Feed my sheep”
John’s Gospel comes to a people in trauma, a people in deep mourning, asking: “Where is God now that the Temple has been destroyed?”
And John’s Gospel answers: God dwells in the gathered, sent, compassionate, beloved community of love.
God dwells as we “Love one another. Love one another the way I have loved you.”
Where does God dwell?
God dwells in you.
Which brings us back to the 23rd psalm and those beautiful words, words that have comforted and strengthened us for thousands of years:
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Even though I walk, through a dark and dreary land
There is nothing that can shake me
She has said She won’t forsake me
I’m in her hand
The truth of life not just today but always is that we walk continuously through dark and dreary lands. We live continuously in death’s shadow. Each of us has struggles nobody else sees. A phone call in the middle of the night can change our life forever.
I know it’s why it is so often so hard for many of us to hear me talk about dismantling white supremacy and misogyny and homophobia and all the oppressive systems of this world.
It’s hard because it’s hard and scary for many of us to come to terms with our own complicity in those systems and how that makes us feel.
But that’s not all.
It’s also hard, because for all of us, relative to our own experience, things are hard already. Because in some way, pretty much all of us are walking through some sort of dark and dreary land.
Our kids are struggling
…or maybe we are struggling to have kids,
…or maybe we are struggling as children of aging parents at the same time our kids are struggling or we are struggling to have kids.
Our predictable present and our dreams of the future are changed or shattered in an instant by cancer, a stroke or some other test result from what we thought would be a routine checkup.
That phone call in the middle of the night comes … and tells us someone we love has just become a beloved name, a beloved face on what to the rest of the world will incomprehensibly be just another statistic.
Housing costs are so high we can’t afford to buy a house so we are trapped in the rental economy … or maybe we can’t even afford that.
Maybe we are unhappy in our jobs, our marriages, our friendships … or maybe we are just feeling really, really alone.
We walk through a dark and dreary land and, yes, sometimes we feel shaken, sometimes we feel forsaken.
And that’s why many of us come here. We need to dismantle those systems, we absolutely do, because they create not just dark and deeply dreary lands but literally toxic and fatal lands for so many of God’s children.
… AND, we also come here because we need to hear these words so desperately, these words of hope, of courage:
Even though I walk, through a dark and dreary land
There is nothing that can shake me
She has said She won’t forsake me
I’m in her hand
And the question on our lips is the same one that was on the lips of those late first century Jews.
How? How is God present? Where is God in the midst of all this?
Not, as Pema Chodron says, as some magical, divine babysitter, some external force protecting us and holding our hand and coming when we call … that would mean God’s presence is something separate from us that can be given and withdrawn.
Where is God in the midst of all this? As a living love that dwells deep in our being. A love that binds us to one another in ways we cannot ask or imagine. A love that makes our hearts restless until they find their rest in loving one another as the source of that love, the living, loving God, loves us.
We can’t avoid the dark and dreary land.
But we can be unshaken and unforsaken as we walk through it.
Because God dwells in us.
Because God dwells in you.
We’ve been talking about how we sing our redemption song. How we join the revolution of love. How we embrace a life of radical inclusion, courageous justice, joyful spirituality and ethical stewardship.
And last week, I said one way we do it is by going out to the places where Christ tells us the Christ is to be found, out on the margins of society
Out where people are told they are worse than the worst thing that they have done.
Out where there is judgment without love.
Out where guilt and shame are not befriended but become accelerants for fear.
Meeting Christ in each other … and falling in love one person at a time.
The truth is those places are out there … and it is so important that we go out there because the transformation that awaits us out there will change our lives forever. And that’s how the dying will stop.
And … the truth is that those places are in here, too.
Because God dwells in the you who is out there in the furthest flung reaches of humanity.
And God dwells in the you who is the beloved community that has been caught in the gravitational pull of the love that is All Saints Church.
And God dwells in you, the beloved child of God, made in God’s image as beautiful, powerful, holy and good.
And so when we sing
Even though I walk, through a dark and dreary land
There is nothing that can shake me
She has said She won’t forsake me
I’m in her hand
We know this is true because God dwells in you, and because together is how we roll, ride or die, as God’s beloved people.
A wise woman once said: “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.”
OK … It was Buffy the Vampire Slayer … I’ll quote wisdom wherever I can find it. (And there’s some pretty good wisdom in Buffy!)
It’s true, though, isn’t it?
The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Every day. That doesn’t mean there isn’t incredible joy and wonder. And … it’s hard. We are all carrying something. We are all in the struggle somehow.
We walk through a dark and dreary land.
And yet, God’s presence is real.
God’s presence is powerful.
God’s presence is comforting.
God’s presence is healing.
We walk through a dark and dreary land, and God’s presence is with us as we walk, crawl and roll through it together.
And it takes courage. Everyday, incredible, hardest-thing-in-this-world-is-to-live-in-it courage, to walk through this land. And together we have that courage … together we can do brave and courageous things.
Together we can face cancer and smash the patriarchy.
Together we can make it through the middle of the night phone calls and the statistics that will always be a name and a face … and a voice … and a hole in our heart.
Together we can walk through a dark and dreary land and there is nothing that can shake us, for God has said she won’t forsake us.
Together we are in God’s hand because we roll together hand in hand.
Because God dwells in you.
Amen.
