The God That Gives a $&#%: sermonic thoughts on Psalm 139

Psalm 139 Sermon

Pursuing our Prophets

When I was in college, I hung around with a Push The Envelope, Seek Justice, Screw The Man kind of crowd. Adults told us that we couldn’t change the world, but we believed differently. We arranged boycotts, “Buy Nothing Day” campaigns, and guerilla gardening. Scores of us taught overseas or worked in orphanages, hung out with the poor on downtown streets, and wrote letters to our MPs. It was not uncommon to wear only used clothing, to live together in large numbers, and to frequent dumpsters for day-old groceries (fondly known as “dumpster diving”). True, we were no draft dodgers, but we considered ourselves pretty radical in our little corner of the Christian College world.

Some would say that at 18 and 21 we were radical for the sake of sheer differentiation, a normal cutting of the purse strings at best. But I still believe that the reason for our social rebellion was a bit simpler than that. The reason for our insistent differentiation could be summed up in just one word: Jesus. We believed that Jesus was a homeless revolutionary, loving his neighbours to the point of death and calling his followers to do the same. If everyone loved the world the way Jesus did, we were convinced, the world would be a different place.

This kind of loving was not just about being kind to individuals, though it was also that. Loving our neighbours as ourselves took on a more corporate feel as we tried to love our neighbours economically and globally. 

How can I love my neighbour by the way I buy groceries? The place I bank? My choices of clothing, transportation, and entertainment? Granted, our response to these questions tended to be unduly simplistic in an increasingly complex global economy. But each one was wrestled with, argued over, and considered of value to how we lived our faith.

Yet as the years after graduation multiplied, increasing numbers my radical Christian friends found that their convictions around loving their neighbours did not line up with the way they’d experienced the Church. The gap between what they understood to be the values of Jesus and the values of the human institution slowly grew, until, eventually, they seemed like two things entirely. With both sadness and understanding, I watched most of these friends leave, first the Church, then the faith, and finally, theism altogether.

Some people assume that my now-atheist friends abandoned their Christian values when they abandoned the Church. But, in most cases, this simply is not true. They left the Church, not because they were leery of commitment or sacrifice, but because that is what they were looking for. Starry-eyed and idealistic, we Christian college students looked to the Church to mentor and grow us into great lovers-of-the-world who would give our very lives to the people Jesus loved. We longed for a faith that transformed economic systems, materialistic values, and individualist careers.

But what these friends of mine found in the Church only mirrored what they despised in the culture. They found there an inward-looking, survival-seeking institution unwilling to take the kind of risks they felt were required to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

Of course, it is a decade later and all of us realize that life is just not that simple. Humans are the same everywhere, at once both saint and sinner, both healed and hurting. Walking in the steps of Jesus looks differently in every context and takes the sweat and tears of a lifetime. It is never as simple as choosing to bank with a credit union.

I have chosen to live from within the institution and my friends have chosen to life from without. Yet I often think of their frustration with the institution I now inhabit and wonder what might have been different. Richard Rohr, Roman Catholic teacher and mystic, warns that the Church has long suffered from “too much priesthood and almost no room for prophets.” The result, he explains, is “a very imbalanced religion.”

As I begin my journey into this very priesthood, I am simultaneously aware of the increasing need for the prophetic among us. Our prophets are those who continually hold up a mirror from within our communities, calling us again and again to our true vocation as children of the Holy One. Israel's prophets were the ones who spoke the word of God to the people; the men and women, lay and ordained, who served as guides through the wilderness.

Let us not forget, of course, that Israel also had a history of casting aside, scorning, and even stoning her prophets. Life on the edges of the Church is not an easy place to spend life. But, increasingly, more and more of God's people are being called to dwell in that space, the spot where the Church's gifts and the world's hunger collide.

As we too enter a time of wilderness in the Church, when our future is unclear and the way forward in an ever-changing cultural context is unsure, it seems that now more than ever we need the voices of our prophets. They are singers, poets, and musicians; artists, support-workers and carpenters. Rarely are they theologians, pastors, or teachers (though of course they sometimes are). Our prophets are the ones quietly whispering along the edges of the Church, calling us home to a new way of living in the world.

Rohr continues: “the church, strange as it seems, has always been a bit uncomfortable with saints and mystics; it is content to just have people 'in the pews'”. My hope is that, as the old way of  being God's children in the world passes away and a new way emerges before us, we will hold onto that discomfort like a good dose of medicine. We will no longer be content to "just have people in the pews" but be more concerned with seeing the kingdom born among us. We need our prophets. It's an exciting time to be Church.