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Center of Gravity
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Text: Psalm 27 Now, who would want to stick
that on their back bumper? No one. And yet it seems like it
is the subtext of so much public chatter these days. I can't tell
you how many conversations I have had with people that include a phrase
like, "What I'm really afraid of is…" Or if such and such
happens or doesn't happen, "I fear for the future of this town-state-country-planet"-fill
in the geographical blank. There's apparently good money
to be had in fear. Violent or scary movies continue to rake in the
big bucks. Politicians try to get you to donate to their campaigns
by scaring you about what will happen if the other guy wins. Fundraisers
for various organizations have grown expert at trying to scare you into
giving them money by mentioning in the opening paragraphs of their letters
the latest greatest threat that only their organization can fight against.
News programs play scary tag lines-"Escaped convict spotted in this
suburban neighborhood (without naming the neighborhood, of course)"--trying
to get you worried enough to watch their channel's news program.
I thought Michael Moore's documentary "Bowling for Columbine" did a credible job of zooming in on the fear-mongering that regularly goes on in our media. Just to show you how pervasive fear-mongering is in our culture, I got an email this week alerting our list-serve of UCC leaders that there is a new program being launched by some of our Christian brothers and sisters called "Rat Out a Church." The program is an effort to get Christians on what would be typically called "the right" to secretly visit churches on what would typically be called "the left" and spy on them to see if they are saying anything that could be construed as supportive of one particular political party or candidate, and if so, to rat them out to the IRS to see if their tax-exempt status can be revoked. One of the code phrases the spies are supposed to listen for is the name "Michael Moore." So I am supposed to be on the
lookout for undercover Christians, I guess, and now maybe I'll get EHCC
posted on the "Rat Out a Church" website for mentioning that
name. The organizers say it is just getting even with Americans
United for Separation of Church and State for siccing the IRS on Jerry
Falwell, who named a name on his church website as the best candidate
for President and paid a hefty you're-no-longer-tax-exempt settlement
of $50,000. So now we can all worry about spies in our worship
services, in case we didn't have enough to worry about already.
Our era has been called the
Age of Anxiety, and I think it fits. So many powers are trying with
all their might to keep us all in a constant state of anxiety that "If
you're not terrified, you're not paying attention." Certainly some
have wondered if God is paying attention as the human community shows
signs of spinning terrifyingly out of control. God, are you seeing
this? Are you hearing this? Are my breathless prayers reaching
any divine ears? Fears about God's involvement or lack thereof in
this whole mess get stirred in with the other host of anxieties.
Rachel Naomi Remen tells a story
about her childhood that asks the question, "What if God blinks?"
When she was little, God was still discussed in the public schools, and
one day the school's principal gave a sermon to the student body that
suggested that students needed to kneel and pray three times a day in
order to remind God that they were there. You prayed to make God
look at you. If God turned his face away from you, she told the
hushed assembly of children, you would wither up and die, like an autumn
leaf. She held up a large dried and withered leaf to illustrate
her point. Remen says that even as a five year old it seemed to
her that God might have a lot of other things on His mind besides her.
And in between times she was praying, He might blink, and then what would
become of her? She was terrified, and became so obsessed with this
question, "What if God blinks?" that she couldn't sleep at night.
Her parents were scornful of
religion, so she had to wait a few days until she could see her grandfather,
the rabbi, to discuss this fearful question. When she asked it she
was overwhelmed by terror and started to cry. Grandfather stroked
her hair to comfort her. She remembers that despite his gentleness
he seemed distressed and even angry. But in his usual calm way,
he answered her question with some questions of his own. "Nashume-le,
if you woke up in the night in your room, would you know if your mother
and father had gone out and left you alone in the house?" Still
crying, she nodded yes. "How would you know that?" he
asked. "Would you see them and look at them?" She
shook her head no. "Would you hear them?" "No."
"Could you touch them?" By then she had stopped crying
and she remembered puzzling over his questions because it seemed obvious
to her that she would simply know that she wasn't alone in the house.
She told her grandfather this and he nodded, pleased. "Good!
Good! That's how God knows you're there. He doesn't need to
look at you to know that you are there. He just knows. In
the same way you know God is there. You just know that He is there
and you're not alone in the house." Remen writes then that God's
presence in the house is an inner experience that never changes.
It's a relationship that's there all the time, even when we're not paying
attention to it. Perhaps the Infinite holds Itself to us the same
way the earth does. Like gravity, if it ever stopped, we would know
it instantly. But it never does. This inner knowing, Remen
says, is a way in which she orients herself, an unfailing point of reference.
Its effect on her life is as profound and as deep as gravity's influence
on her body. More than anything else, that sense of not being alone
in the house is what has allowed her to do the difficult work she has
done with seriously ill patients. Remen's use of the word gravity
got me to thinking about the concept of center of gravity. The phrase
jumped out at me for some weird reason while reading a newspaper article
about this guy's mobile hot dog cart. He says he has had some occasions
to tow it out on I-5, and he says it is pretty good on the road.
He fills the hold up with cases of soda pop when he travels a long distance
with it in order to keep its center of gravity low. The center of gravity of an object,
as you of a more scientific bent will know, is the average location of
its weight. Through informal observation we become quite adept at
observing an object's center of gravity by guessing with some level of
accuracy when something will tip over as you push it, which is how we
instinctively know about center of gravity even if we don't use that term
or couldn't define it. One writer says about center of gravity,
"This is a well-behaved concept in Newtonian physics. But a center
of gravity is not an atom or a subatomic particle or any other physical
item in the world. It has no mass; it has no color; it has no physical
properties at all, except for spatio-temporal location. It is a fine example
of what Hans Reichenbach would call an abstractum. It is a purely abstract
object." It can be manipulated. You can, for instance,
change the center of gravity in a pitcher of water by pouring some water
out. But you can't see it shift; it's like a point-no-point. I'm dwelling on this center
of gravity idea because I think it is an interesting metaphor for the
role faith plays in a person's life. Faith that you're not alone
in the house, that God knows and cares about you, acts as a force in one's
life that keeps your psychological center of gravity low. You don't
tip over into hysteria or despair at the state of the world because you're
rooted in confidence in the steadfast love of God. You know they
say that the Space Needle in Seattle is one of the best places to be in
an earthquake. Why? Because the center of gravity is way underground,
in steel girders you can't even see at the surface. When you orient
toward God as the stronghold of your life, God as your shelter, your center
of gravity gets to the point that you will be able to withstand all kinds
of shake-ups without toppling over. You can't see a center of gravity,
yet it's real. You can't see faith, you can't see the mark of it
on your body, but it's real, a real communion with God that affects your
being in the world. You can't see God, but God is real, anchoring
the souls of millions in courage, peace, and compassion. Psalm 27 reveals the center of
gravity of the singer in the opening verse. "The Lord is my
light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold
of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" This is a perfect psalm
for the Age of Anxiety. And it's not just perfect for our age because
of these serene phrases. It's perfect because it also acknowledges
the powerful pull fear has on the human soul. The first six verses
mention threats that the psalmist is facing with apparent serenity and
confidence in God's ability to shelter him or her. But then in verse
seven you can almost hear the singer hyperventilate as a wave of fear
washes over. "Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to
me and answer me!" Then, as if talking to himself,
and trying to get a grip, the line, "'Come,' my heart says, 'seek
his face!'" This soul is swaying in the wind of terror, but
is trying to re-orient away from fear and back to the source of confidence
and strength. "Your face, Lord do I seek." Do not
hide your face from me, don't turn away from me in anger, don't cast me
off or forsake me! And then a ray of light into the darkness
of fear, like a memory coming back, "If my father and mother forsake
me, the Lord will take me up." Yes, the psalmist is remembering,
even if my closest human relationships fail, God's love will not.
Then it's back to some sweaty, fast-pulsed pleading: Teach me your way,
lead me on a level path, don't give me up to my adversaries who are breathing
out violence. Then the psalmist finds her true
center of gravity with a steadying expression of faith: I believe that
I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
And finally, some counsel to others who may be in trouble: Wait for the
Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
It sounds like the voice of experience, doesn't it, the voice of someone
who has discovered a center of gravity rooted deeply in confidence in
God who will shelter us in the day of trouble. No matter what. You see, fear and confidence
co-exist in the 14 verses of the psalm. The song begins with confidence,
weathers an episode of fear, and ends with enough renewed confidence in
the steadfast, unblinking love of God that the singer can urge faith on
others who are wobbling. Beautiful. Entirely true to life
in any era-because we will never completely excise fear from our lives,
and we will not escape trouble, loss and grief. But trouble will
not defeat confidence that God is our light and our salvation even in
the valley of deepest darkness. When you keep your center of gravity
low, rooted in the invisible but potent power of God's love, it's mighty
hard to tip you over into desolation. Biblical scholar Joachim Jeremias,
whose parents were missionaries in Israel, told a story about going home
after the second World War. He said, "I had to return to the
place where I had grown up to see if any of the Jewish people would speak
to me, would care for me, would love me after six million of their brothers
and sisters had been killed by my brothers and sisters. I went back
to that land, I went frightened to every door, knocking…I went to one
house, the door opened, and there was a friend of my father's. He
recognized me immediately and said, 'Come in…We are now observing the
Feast of Booths, and we have our little brush arbor out in the back.
Won't you come out with us?'" Jeremias went out, and says,
"I went out in the back with them where they had the brush arbor
with the pomegranates hanging down, and they were celebrating the tent
life, the life of the tent in the wilderness….In the doorway of their
brush arbor, there was a little piece of paper clipped to one side of
the door, and [another on] the other side of the door. [Each] said
one word in Hebrew. I asked my host, 'What is that?' And he
said, 'It's a summary of the 139th Psalm.' 'Well, what does it mean?'
'Well, this word is "from God," this word is "to God,"
and in between, a tent.'" "Nothing," the preacher
reflecting on this story notes, "can possibly hinder the free flow
of the grace of God." From God, To God, and in between, a tent. A tent, not a fortress, not a bomb shelter, not a bank vault, but a tent. Flexible, mobile, the shelter of people on the move whose God never abandons them. "God will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock." [Psalm 27:5] From God, To God, and in between the tent of unfailing grace and the unblinking gaze of steadfast love, full of wisdom and guidance. If I am anchored in this, centered in confidence that this is the story of my life no matter how it unfolds, of whom shall I be afraid? |