LETTING GO John M. Buchanan
Genesis 1221-4 Broad Street Presbyterian Church

Hebrews Il:1-3, 8-16 Columbus, OH
Mark 1:16-20

September 18, 1983

"For everything there is a season," the ancient preacher announced.

"4a time to - cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together.
«ea time to - embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing,

wa time to - seek, and a time to lose;

wea time to keep, and a time to cast away."

There is a time, to paraphrase all of these poetic images, for holding tightly,
and a time for letting go. How often we have heard that passage from Ecclesiastes,
and appreciated its literary symmetry, but not understood deeply what it is describing.
And then, suddenly, life calls us to the task of letting go of something, releasing
our grip, and we find that it is not so easy. And just as suddenly we see that life
is an exercise in this discipline, this necessity of letting go, and just as suddenly
we know that the passage is in the Bible, not because it's good poetry, but because
it addresses the human situation at its most poignant, most needy, and most creative.

Think what a major theme it is in the Bible. Think of all the people whose
faith experience involved letting go of something valuable, something precious.

_wwwwesi Adam and Eve, for instance, taking charge of their lives, making a decision
which turns out badly, and which results in their having to let go of the secure paradise
of Eden.

Jonah - letting go of the security of home to go, reluctantly, to Ninevah; Elijah,
forced to let go of the warm, womb-like safety of the cave, to go back to the terrors
and perplexities of life; Jeremiah, letting go of normality, sanity, to be God's prophet;
Jesus...who, one has to assume, could have elected to spend his life working in the
family shop in Nazareth, and who had to let go of that.

The Bible is full of it. Jazz vocalist, Roberta Flack, had a hit awhile ago,
"Let Pharoh Go." And Ernest Campbell, former minister at Riverside Church, ob-
serves, "What a switch! We thought the action at the Exodus had to do with God

from God, A few dirty tricks and a little magic, and they were sprung. But what

\\° | getting Pharaoh to let the Jews go. But that was nothing...It didn't require much

a time God had out there in the wilderness. The Hebrews couldn't let Pharaoh go.
Some of them said, 'There’s not even a McDonald's out here.' Others grumbled, 'Can't
even use our VISA cards." (Ernest Campbell, in A.D. Mazazine)

There is a distinct dialectic in the Bible between our natural inclination which
is to hold on, to grasp tightly - and the call of God, which sounds always like a sum-
mons to let go of something, to loosen our grip.

In fact, sometimes it sounds like letting go is nearly synonymous with faith.
The prototypical couple in the Bible is Abram and Sarah. Faith for them is a matter,
not of their believing a lot of ideas about God, but their willingness to let go and

2a

Jesus went to Jerusalem because he loved his nation. He went because there
was no way for him to express that love honestly, and not go.

The issues are far from resolved. The venerable idiom, "religion and politics
don't mix," is mouthed universally, with a straight face, by people who should and
do know better. I have discovered that what the phrase means ordinarily is..."I
don't appreciate the criticism religion is presuming to make of my particular politics.
Religious suppert for my positions, on the other hand, and criticism of the other
side is always welcome.

Pope John Paul's visit to Poland recently is most instructive. Free men and
women the world over were inspired by what he did and said. Who will ever forget
the picture of the Pope, in white Robe, listening with intense strength, to the military
head of the government trying to rationalize martial law and the absence of basic
human rights in his land? After t mentioned it last week, someone was kind enough
to refer me. to James Russell Lowell's magnificent poem The Present Crisis.

"When a deed is done for freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from East to West

And the slave, wher'er he cawers, feels the soul within him climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime

Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stems of time."

John Paul TH acted and spoke out of that strong Judeo Christian tradition:
a prophet whose face was set to go to the city. How easy it is to be inspired by
that when it is someone else's city, someone else's system. Already Vatican officials
are leaking suggestions to the press that after all he is Polish and he may have
overdone it a bit. And in this country, while the Pope is applauded for confronting
totalitarianism of the left, his Bishops are roundly condemned for confronting totali-~
tarianism of the right in Central and South America. And the American Bishops,
setting their collective face to confront the matter of nuclear terror as the keystones
of American foreign policy, are told - of all things - to stop meddling in politics.

I propose that the highest and best of our religion calls us ~ not to retreat
fram the world with all its political ambiguity and complexity, but to involvement
in the world as responsible citizens, 1 propose Jesus, setting his face to go to Jerusa~
lem as model for his latter day followers. I propose the love of Jesus for, people
and nation as foundation. We are called to love our nation, I believe. The hard~hats
were right in the sixties, at least their instincts were right, with the beligerant
slogan: "America - Love It or Leave It.". What was missing from much of the Viet-
nam protest, they sensed, was love of nation, loyalty to nation, passionate affection
for everything they held dear, They were wrong, of course, in equating all protest,
all objection, with disloyalty. "Love It Right or Leave It" they should have said:
love it thoughtfully, loyally, critically, inteHigently, and passionately.

"We can't leave patriotism to the demagogues," Professor Walter Wink said
recently, and Martin Marty saw things clearly when he lamented that the trouble
with our country is "the committed aren't civil, and the civil aren't committed."

I propose that our religion calls us to civil commitment to the body politic,
to an involved, informed and thoughtful lowe for our nation. It can be, urged altruisti-
cally as simple civic respoysibility. Time Magazine, in the regular "Presidency"
feature quoted Plato..."He who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is
worse than himself." And better still, James Madison's sharp observation in 1788..."As
there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires...circumspection and dis-
trust, so there are other qualities in which justify...esteem and confidence. Republi-
can government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree
than any other form."

~3~

It is the Adam and Eve story, retold in every life. That primal paradise repre-
sents the security each of us wants and needs so badly we would never leave it if
we could avoid the break. But part of the profound sublety of that story is that
while Eden may be paradise, full human life only becomes possible once we pass
through the gates and get outside,

Letting go of the Sécurity of childhood is essential to our growth as adults.
Intellectual growth, as well, requires us to let go of the security of fixed certainties.
There is a sense in which the intellectual history of our civilization is the story of
genius battering down the fixed certainties of the prior generation. It was not easy
to persuade people to take seriously the suggestion that the earth is round; or that
the sun, not the earth, is at the center of the solar system; or that blood from one
person may be transfused into another. It has not been easy to convince people
that the process of creation is evolutioning, in spite of overwhelming evidence, To
grow intellectually is to be open to new truth and consequently to let go of the fixed
certainties of the past.

yihere is a powerful scenario in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men in which
a physically large, gentle, and mentally handicapped man by the name of Lenny
practically squeezes the life out of a rabbit in the precess of expressing affection.
You may recall that the same horrible thing happens later, when Lenny tries to love
a woman. Steinbeck knew a fundamental human truth, namely that in order to love
you have to let go:/sthat love which grasps, holds tightly, restricts, does not give
life at all. There is a sens@ Iwhich you have to let go of something in order truly
to appreciate it, Human sin is never mofre-eloquent or powerful than in the demonic
control the things we are squeezing exercise ovérus. And there is a sense in which
you have to let go of someone in order truly to love. ‘It is not easy. We would rather
control than love. Our own insecurity, our sense of mortality drives us to hold too
tightly. "You must lose your life if you want to find it," Jesus taught. You must
loosen your controlling grip on children, wife, husband, parents - if you love them.
You must let go of what you own if you wish to enjoy owning it - or to avoid being
owned by it.

Jesus began his ministry by summoning a few individuals to let go of their
fishing nets. Part of what Jesus did throughout Galilee was to call men and women
away from an old and comfortable way of seeing things, a religious sytem that was
as precious as life itself to them. Part of what Jesus did was to invite people to
leave old securities behind and to discover a whole new foundation for security -

in following him. P A
(x

So, in our day, we have experienced that summons. #fe has called us to examine
and leave behind fixed certaintites about race. It came about when the accumulated
injustice of two centuries of human slavery, oppression, discrimination was gathered
into a major force for change. But it also came about, I believe, because the same
Christ who asked Simon and Andrew to drop their nets - called his people to examine,
discard, and grow away from the racial stereotypes which were the fixed certainty
of the past. So, we have been called in our day to examine fixed certainties about
the role of women and many of us are astounded to see now the silliness of those
certainties which we thought served us well. And so, it seems to me, you and I can
expect Jesus Christ to continue to call and push and prod and summon - to continue
to examine all the certainties and to be willing to follow where he, not they, lead.

~4-

Solzhenitsyn warns that the only hope for Western civilization is a profound
change of heart. That is a religious matter of the first order. Political scientists

know that republics last only so long as their citizens love them. May I Suggest
three ways to love our nation.

First, an emotional commitment, Fly a flag on occasion, Care enough to
invest emationally, Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca told the graduating class at
the University of Michigan recently, "The only thing we seem to be missing is the
determination...J want you to get mad about the current state of affairs. I want
you to get so mad you kick your elders in their figurative posteriors and move Ameri-
ca off dead center. Our nation was born when 56 patriots got mad enough to sign
the Declaration of independence...Getting mad in a constructive way is good for
the soul - and the country.” (Time, June 13, 1983}

Second, an intellectual commitment, Learn the truth, Read, read, read,
not just the journals and papers that tell it the way you Hke hearing it, but particular-
ly those which tell it the other way. Read the Call and Post, as well as the Dispatch;
Newsweek as well as U.S, News and World Report. Read hard enough to satisfy
yourself that you have same Manageable concept of what is actually happening.
Read hard enough to learn what you don't want to know: that poor children die
at a rate three times that of nat poor in this country; that forty percent of the
poor black urban children in this country between five and nine are not immunized;
that nine billion dollars was cut out of federal programs for disease prevention
and lifeline support for poor families last year by Congress and the administration.
(see New Yorker, p. 26, June 27, 1983)

Third - commit your will, your intention, Set your face and do something,

The COMPASS program of this church is trying to stand with the poor, COM-
PASS needs help. Why not invest the money the Conpress pave us last Wednesday
in the commonwealth? Invest that money in the human family. Better yet, vokim-
teer: come down and help a few hours a week. Or write letters, or call congressmen,
or contribute to your party.

The decision to go to Jerusalem was the most critical choice Jesus ever made,
It cost him his life. It showed us how human life was meant to be lived. It demons-
trated that profound Christian truth, that in losing life you find it: that in investing
self in the common good, you realize more fully your own personhood,

Jesus the Christ came to Jerusalem and forever defined the locus of the Gospel
as the fulcrum of Hfe: yours and mine toa. In Christ - God loves us where we are:
in Christ, God bids us follow, Amen.