THE SACRED JOURNEY

3. Confidence

March 25, 1990
8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
John 9:1-11
1 Samuel 16:1-13

"...the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looks on the heart." -1 Samuel 16:7b (RSV}

Harvey Cox, professor of Theology at Harvard Divinity School, who has
written a number of fine books on theology and culture, wrote a short
memoir a few years ago about his personal faith experience under the title,
“Just As IT Am." Cox, whose theology is bread, liberal, full of life and
has a passion for peace and justice in the world, grew up in a small
conservative Baptist Church in Pennsylvania. He recalls that church with
fondness and respect and remembers singing the old gospel hymn, "Just as I
am, without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me."

He reflects: "Though the words may sound lachrymose to many, for me
they still convey a sense of comfort and assurance. Was I really
acceptable to God 'just as I am?' Was it true that I needed no
improvements, no alterations... If true that was very good news to an
adolescent who was always being reminded... of my shortcomings and
defects."

And then this distinguished intellectual recalls those hazardous
days. He wasn't very good at sports, there were better musicians in the
band, the girls preferred other fellows. He wasn't the smartest, and
although he was sure his parents loved him, he was not at all sure he would
ever live up to their expectations.

"But God accepted me just as I am?

"That was not judgment but good news. Years Hater, when I read Paul
Tillich's famous sermon, ‘You are Accepted,' I knew exactly what it meant,
and I could hear the melody of the old hymn still humming on in the back of
my mind.” {Just As I Am, p. 151-152]

Life, T have been proposing on these Sundays of Lent, is like a
Journey, a faith journey, a journey made sacred by the one who calls us Lo
it, travels with us, and provides for aur needs along the way.

We have thought about Sarah and Abraham who hear a summons to Jet go
of their securities, pick up and move; they actually do it, actually trust
God with their future and the adventure begins.

And we thought about the children of Israel “murmuring in the
wilderness" and wishing they were back where there was food and water. And
we entertained the notion that when you do walk away from whatever provides
you security, when you acknowledge your ultimate vulnerability, the
emptiness of your hands - God provides.

So, this morning, Confidence - the sense that we can do it, can be
faithful, can live up to our potential, can be true to the end. And
another great story: this one about a man who would be and was King,
Israel's most memorable leader, David. It is a magnificent saga. It has
all the elements of a gripping novel or Soap opera: intrigue, conspiracy,
lots of sex and violence, family tragedy... Joseph Heller has written an
irreverent but affectionate novel about the career of this remarkable man,
God Knows. In it David says, "I don't like to boast, but I honestly think
I've got the best story in the Bible. Old Sarah's fun, Abraham is ever up
to the mark, Moses isn't bad, I have to admit, but he's very, very long
with all those laws. Moses has the Ten Commandments, it's true, but I have
better lines. I've got the poetry and the passion.” Ip. 5]

I want to focus on the beginning of the story but it helps to put it
in the context of his remarkable life. Several centuries have passed since
the Exodus and the wandering in the wilderness. Israel's Sacred Journey
has brought them to the land and now a monarchy is forming. Israel's first
King, Saul, will start the unification of the Kingdom. David will succeed
him and in several years forge a powerful nation-state out of twelve
loosely organized tribes of wandering Semites. It is one of the Major
political and military achievements in all of history. David had to have
been a brilliant strategist, an inspiring leader. He was also one of the
most human characters in the Bible. David conquers, establishes Jerusalem
as the capital of the Kingdom, makes it the center of the nation's
religious life, leads worship there - dancing naked before the Lord.

David, married to Saul's daughter, falls in love with Bathsheba; she
becomes pregnant; he arranges for her husband's death, marries Bathsheba;
the child dies shortly after birth. David's grief is intense and public,
but not as intense and public as a later grief when his son, Absalom, leads
an armed insurrection against him and is murdered in order to save David.
“Absalom, oh my son Absalom," he cries in one of the most poignant
tragedies in all of literature.

And if you can stay with this story and aren't too embarrassed or
scandalized by its humanness and earthiness, what comes through is a sense
that if God can stay with David, can accept David and love him like a son -
in spite of everything David does - just maybe there is room in the Kingdom
for you and me. Just maybe there is a place in the wideness of God's love
and grace and therefore room for a little confidence.

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The story could not begin more modestly. Saul is through. God's man
Samuel] is scouring the countryside looking for a new king. If he knows who
he's looking for, no one else does. He goes to Bethlehem to see a man who
has a lot of sons.

And now we're ready to hear the lesson, from the 16th chapter of
1 Samuel:

“The Lord said to Samuel, 'How long will you grieve over Saul,
seeing I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill
your horn with oil, and go; I will send you to Jesse the
Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his
sons.' And Samuel said, ‘How can I go? If Saul hears it, he
will kill me.’ And the Lord said, 'Take a heifer with you, and
say, “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord." And invite Jesse
to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you
shall anoint for me him whom I name to you.' Samuel did what
the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the
city came to meet him trembling, and said, 'Do you come
peaceably?' And he said, 'Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice
to the Lord; consecrate yourselves, and come with me to the
sacrifice.’ And he consecrated Jesse and his sons, and invited
them to the sacrifice.

“When they came, he looked on Eli'ab and thought, ‘Surely the
Lord's anointed is before him.' But the Lord said to Samuel,
‘Do not lock on his appearance or on the height of his stature,
because I have rejected him; for the Lord sees not as man sees;
man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the
heart.' Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before
Samuel. And he said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.'
Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, 'Neither has the ~
Lord chosen this one.’ And Jesse made seven of his sons pass
before Samuel. And Samuel said te Jesse, 'The Lord has not
chosen those.’ And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are all your sons
here?' And he said, 'There remains yet the youngest, but
behold, he is keeping the sheep.' And Samuel said to Jesse,
‘Send and fetch him; for we will not sit down till he comes
here.' -And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and
had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. And the Lord said,
‘Arise, anoint him; for this is he.' Then Samuel took the horn
of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the
Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day
forward."

_ The point is that the one who would appear least qualified is the one
God wants to be King.- Eli'ab had what it takes. Even Samuel was
impressed. But God has cther ideas. ‘The point is that there is a dynamic
at work in this situation, a dynamic built into the nature of reality, we
believe, called grace. God is operating with a different set of criteria.
God, this magnificent old text tells us from across 3,500 years, “sees not
as (we) see." We look on outward appearances. God looks on the heart. So
Jesse's strapping sons are rejected. God wants the little one, the child

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out in the field. Some later writer can't resist telling us that David was
actually quite handsome. But the point has already been made. David
doesn't get to be King because of his looks: in fact it is not because
anything about David is kingly at all. It's because God sees something
there which no one else can see. It's because God's love penetrates a lot
of sins, covers, accepts, forgives, empowers. It's because we live in a
state of grace.

The point - the point of the whole Bible - the point of Christianity
- is that God's love is net based on the productivity, value or
accomplishments of human beings. God loves us for who we are. “Just as we
are," all unrealized potential.

We know now about the psychology of grace. If grace is a bit of a
stretch for you intellectually, clinical psychology will document its
therapeutic reality. We know now that acceptance is very close to the
beginning of the healing process: that part of what has to happen is a
person's learning to accept, to “own" his or her own feelings; and that it
is healing when the therapist does just that, perhaps for the very first
time in the individual's entire. experience - actually accepts him/her,
doesn't judge or condemn or criticize, but accepts.

We know now the reality of grace in physiological terms. Medical
science can tell us that there is the power of life in grace and love; that
little ones eat more, sleep more, survive more when they are stroked,
cuddled, rocked and loved. We know that one of the few things we can do
for a newborn addicted to cocaine because of the mother's habit, is to hold
on tightly and rock during the hell of withdrawal.

We know now that there is a very elementary cause-and-effect
relationship between grace and love. We don't love until we are loved. We
enable our children te love by loving them. And we know, I suspect, more
than we'd like to admit, about the pain of relationships from which grace
is absent: the pain and anger of alienation... waiting for the other to
make the first move, responding to one another's sullenness, getting angry
at the other's anger, retreating further and further into the contained
fortress of self... until the miracle of grace happens and one decides to
stop keeping score and calculating offenses and waiting in stubborn
resentment for the other to shape up - and simply walks across the room,
becomes vulnerable and opens his or her arms and says, "I love you.'
Grace. The miracle.

And we know, but do not like to know, about the politics and
economics of grace. My proposal for the most critical problem immediately
confronting our nation - our city - is urban violence. Chicago Tribune
columnist, Clarence Page, wrote an excellent editorial last week about the
frightening new phenomenon of urban young people killing one another for
clothing - the right jacket, for instance. "Chicago may be leading the
kill-for-clothes trend" he said. Whatever possesses a youngster to kill
another youngster for a jacket I wonder, if it is not a complete absence of
the value of human life. Page reflects:

3/25/90

“Poverty alone does not lead into crime. But those who think
they have no money or no power undoubtedly have a tough time
feeling good about themselves in a society that places so much
value on money and power.

“The resulting lack of self-esteem can result in self-
destruction, including drugs, crime, street gangs or other
hazardous temptations that rush in to fill the self-worth
vacuum....

“That might begin to explain," says Page, “why young men in
Harlem have a higher death rate than their counterparts in
Bangladesh." [Chicago Tribune, 3/21/90]

When there is no grace in the system, when the traditional source of
grace - namely stable, loving and accessible families ~ do not exist and
where secondary sources of grace -— well funded, safe and effective schools,
and social services, even churches - are not visible, accessible or don't
exist, then we should not be surprised at not only the inability to love,
but the inability to care and the consequent absence cf value about life -
any life. >

We live in a state of grace - or we aren't living much.

In the journey of life there have been people for most of us, who had
confidence in us: who saw something in us no one else could see; saw
something in us we ourselves didn't know was there, had trouble believing
was there. We have been blessed, most of us, by people along the way wha
in one way or another said "yes" to us, had confidence in us and their
confidence had a powerful effect. Almost in spite of ourselves we began to
experience a little self-confidence, a little self-esteem. If the teacher
thinks I can do it, maybe I can - maybe I can play the solc, memorize the
lines, hit the ball, run for president. She thinks I can do this:
shinks I could write poetry, do trigonometry, become an astronaut or a
neurosurgeon... Maybe there is something here pretty important, at least
potentially important. They are our saints - those cheerleaders who urged
us on, and whose graceful confidence in us gave us confidence in ourselves.

We are blessed by them along the way. We are blessed by them still.
And the astonishing assertion of Christianity is that even if you are not
blessed by people who love and accept you and see potential in you and have
confidence in you: even if you never have been blessed, there is one who
loves you and accepts you and knows everything about you - all your flaws
and failures and frailties - and still loves you, still sees your
potential, still has confidence in you.

One of the great ironies is that the religion whose purpose it is to
announce this good news is often better at reminding us of our shortcomings
than reminding us of our value: more eloquent in describing our sin than
our potential: more effective in making us feel guilty than giving us
confidence for the journey.

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The great tragedy is that the Gospel is presented as a courtroam
drama and we are on trial ~ rather than a reunion with the one who loves us
unconditionally.

To the psychology of grace, the relationship of grace, the politics
of grace - we add the grace of Jesus Christ which says that the one who
created you loves you and accepts you and there is nothing you have ever
done - or can do - that will change that love and that acceptance.

Oh, you can hide from it. You can ignore it. You can choose to
argue with it and about it. You can doubt it, disbelieve it and deny it.
But you cannot change it. You can live as if you den't matter to anyone,
but it isn't true because you do matter to someone. You can live as if
your life has no value, but it isn't true. Your life is valuable to God.

David, back on the very edges of history, was one of the first to
learn it. He was also a poet and although we cannot know for certain that
he actually wrote Psalms, many of them are attributed to him, including the
most beloved of them all, titled "A Psalm of David"...

And I like to think that the opening words:
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want..."

have something to do with that day he remembered all his life, when he was
out keeping his father's sheep and old Samuel looked him in the eye, this
non-descript wisp of a boy, and said - "This is the one."

And I like to think that all his life, on the day his baby died, the
day he had to hide from his own troops, the day they told him his beloved
son was dead - that David remembered that there was one who loved him and
cared about him and had confidence in hin.

And I like to remember that 1,000 years later, when Jesus, who had
made the blind see, and the lame walk, and the oppressed and beaten down, the
unlovely and unloved, stand up straight and tall... when he came riding into
the city of Jerusalem one day, the crowds that came out to meet him said,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!"

And I like to think that as he faced that Holy Week with high
intentionality and incredible bravery... and as he died an almost
intentional death, alone, that there was a strong confidence which came
from his own faith that God's love for him was boundless. ;

And so, I like to think it is and will be for each of us.
“Amazing Grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see."

Amen.

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