Nightmares and Prayers: Life Under the Surface (Monster: Week 2)

Jonah 2:1-10

Romans 8:31-39

We come to this weekend as the second Sunday in a sermon series about monsters and fear.  I suggested last week that our imagined monsters are useful because they remind us that we’re up against large, threatening, harmful powers.  There are forces outside of us that can harm us and our communities.  So they are real, but they are also nightmarish reflections of the struggle with evil that is very personal for us.  This good vs. evil story isn’t just happening “out there.”  It’s also happening “in here,” in the deep spaces of our own lives.

More importantly, we come to this weekend as people who have lived through the nightmare of two more African Americans killed by police.  First, Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, LA.  Then Philando Castille near Minneapolis.

 

We have seen more than enough of this.  It is time for all of us to begin speaking up in behalf of peace.  You can’t kill black bodies.  Those black bodies are God’s love and delight.  God cherishes those black bodies.  They are lovely and wonderful to the God who made them.  Black flesh is precious to God, and anyone who harms black flesh is not from God.  Anyone who denies the dignity of black flesh does not know God.

We come to this weekend after a gunman killed five police officers in Dallas, who were on duty at a non-violent, peaceful demonstration for Black Live Matter.  Their names are Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa.  Seven other officers and two civilians were injured.  We grieve with the families of those police officers as we grieve with the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille.

And we grieve for ourselves and for our children, that this is the world we’re making.  This Land of the Free has become a land of terror.  And many of us are afraid and angry.  We’re growing tired of all the excuses and justifications and silence in the face of a legacy of violence against black flesh.  Black people are afraid of the police, and of the courts and laws standing solidly behind the police.  And now police officers are afraid of being targeted and killed while doing the necessary work of serving the community with courage and bravery.  They need our support too.

This sermon includes a little bonus feature.  I want to interject a word in favor of Black Lives Matter – which is both a social media hashtag and a non-violent protest movement.  In this movement of people I experience the movement of God’s life-giving Spirit.  It is a movement with which we can eagerly and joyfully align ourselves as allies.  It is not anti-white.  It is not anti-police.  Its goal is to be a peaceful, non-violent protest against the killing of black bodies.  It is the demand to recognize black flesh as dignified and beautiful. 

There is no reason to respond defensively with hashtags like #AllLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter.  Of course white people and the police matter.  The issue concerns an ongoing, systematic legacy of violence and brutality against black bodies.  Yes, every single life is precious.  But the most acute national problem right now is the dignity and safety of black people. 

Now back to our readings.  The book of Jonah is a monster tale.  The great fish that swallows Jonah reminds us of the sea monster in Moby Dick or the great white shark in Jaws.  And yet Jonah 2 is the most overlooked but most interesting part of the Jonah story.  It is the key to one dimension of the text’s meaning for us.  It is a story about depth and drowning.  About going down underneath the water, your face wrapped in seaweed, watching as your body descends to the deep darkness, the surface and the sunlight retreating from you.  You panic – this is it.  You’re sunk.  This is poetry about despair in the context of a story about the wideness and inclusiveness of God’s love.  This is a wideness that calls into question our own prejudices and biases, our unconscious favoritism and our blind-spots.  Wrestling with the narrowness of our compassion can lead us to confusion and despair.  This is poetry that gives voice to how we feel right now. 

Romans 8 is a brilliant meditation on what it is Christians believe about monsters, evil, and all potential harms and threats.  It gathers up all the complex ways God relates to us, and uses each of those dimensions of God’s goodness to express hope and confidence in a dangerous world. 

Because God relates to us as Creator, all evil powers are creatures.  They are bit players in a drama which God oversees and will see through to the end.  No created thing – visible or invisible – can threaten the significance of our lives.  (Though, they can kill us of course).

Because God relates to us to reconcile us through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, there can be no worries about those powers aligned against us.  The gospel story means that God is unquestionably “for” us.  God is on our side.  The crucified and risen Christ intercedes for us; he makes a case for loving us in spite of all the ways we’ve participated in evil.

Because God relates to us to give us a future beyond death and decay, we can be peacemakers in the face of even the worst kind of demonic violence.  If we ourselves are harmed or even killed in the process, we are in good company.  We are not those who arm ourselves for some approaching apocalyptic war.  We are those who live without swords in a violent world.  We are peacemakers who follow the non-violent, peacemaking way of Jesus.  God’s kingdom is arriving already, and it does not need to be defended with militaries, swords, clubs, guns, hatred, violence, and retaliation. 

Weeks like this are difficult.  They are difficult because I see in myself the same murderous dynamics that I point to in others.  I have swirling around in my heart and mind a range of hatreds, angers, and revenge fantasies that are not all that different from the violence that we saw on display this week.  I am not above it.  I am part of it.  And so are you.

Weeks like this can also be clarifying.  It can clarify what your options are.  You can either follow the crucified Jesus who bids his disciples to put away their swords, or you can live in a world where everyone is fully armed.  You cannot have both.  If we want something more or different than Jesus offers us, we will live in a world where all flesh – black, brown, and white – will be torn and ripped and shot and stabbed and blown up in a violent, nightmarish hellscape.

Jesus did not invite you to the popular way, or the easy way, or the way where you can always protect yourself and your family.  If that is what you want, go somewhere else.  Find an organization that feeds your fear and makes an excuse for violence and join that organization.  Let that be your church.  This is the church that belongs to the Jesus who walked freely into crucifixion at the hands of a violent political system.  This is the Jesus who preached this way:

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).

This peacemaking isn’t an invisible, spiritual, interior, or individualistic peacemaking.  Jesus speaks of a public, political, visible peacemaking.  He expects us to be peacemakers in a violent, angry, racist culture.  He expects us to be peacemakers in our conversations with friends and family.  He expects us to be peacemakers in the ways we engage with others on social media.  He expects us to be peacemakers in the ways we vote for leaders and participate in political debate.

But here’s the thing.  We will never be public peacemakers if we cannot welcome God’s peace into the conflicted and murky depths of our own lives.  You came here today worried, fearful, distracted, and angry.  But you can leave here as a person who has heard good news.  That good news of God’s love for you and all others really can begin to rearrange the furniture in the deep parts of who you are. 

The series graphic for this Monster series is a washed out image of Nessie, the Loch Ness monster.  I wanted a visual cue for the series.  I wanted an image that conveyed what we were talking about, but one that stopped short of scaring children.  So this is what I landed on.  It’s perhaps a little tame.  Penny Pollock Barnes called me out on this last week.  She said, “Nessie is nice.  She’s a harmless herbivore, right?  It’s obvious from the shape of her head that she’s a plant eater and not a meat eater.”  Yes, that’s right.  It’s not that Nessie’s shape is terrifying.  It’s that she’s submerged.

Part of what makes monsters monsters is that they hide under the surface, down in the deep, or in the dark.  This should be our clue that dealing with monsters has a lot to do with dealing with what lives down under the surface of our lives, what inhabits the deep and dark places of who we are.  Things down below and things in the dark are fear triggers for us.  Basements, cellars, bunkers, wells – these are places we feel trapped and claustrophobic.  There is little light, and often no escape routes.  Underwater, we can’t breathe.  Down underground is where we bury the dead.  And here’s what I’m getting at: down under the outward surface of your life there is your shadow self, a part of you that you deny, overlook, and ignore.

Can I tell you a silly little story?  It is a Jewish story told by a rabbi.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, talking with Krista Tippett, said:

“Dov Beyer, an early Hasidic rabbi, speaks about the doctrine of alien thoughts.  What Rabbi Beyer says is that you’ll be praying with the congregation, and you’ll really get into the prayers, they’ll make sense, they’’ll be beautiful, the person leading is at the top of their game, your life is in order, the prayers are wonderful, and its been the best prayer experience you remember having.  And Rabbi Beyer says, at precisely that moment, you’ll be assailed by the most lascivious thought you’ve had in decades. Your immediate reaction to the thought is, something like, not here, don’t you see what I’m trying to do?  Come back at the reception later, please.  So what happens when you push the thought?  Well, you push it away and it comes back even stronger and harder.  And the harder you push the stronger it wants to stay there.  So what you have to realize is that the reason you can’t push it away, is because it’s part of you. 

And according to Rabbi Beyer’s theory, it has chosen precisely this moment of heightened spiritual awareness and joy and connectedness as its opportunity to come out from under the rocks in your psychic cellar, like some little Hieronymous Bosch creature, saying, “Can I pray with you too please?” (hissing its yellow, putrid, sulfurous breath).  And instead of trying to beat it away, what you must do is say, “There is room under my prayer shawl for you too, wretched little creature that you are.  I still wish you weren’t part of me.  But I accept that you’re part of me. 

And the minute I accept that this monstrous little thought is part of me, most of its power over me is destroyed and dissolved.  Most of the time, you will find a way to receive and admit the ugly little monster that has intruded into your prayer life.  But if you can’t think of a way to deal with it, then you must say, my praying for today is over.  You close the prayer book and you’re done.  It was bigger than you today. 

So if there’s evil in me, I will never succeed in trying to banish it or push it away.  That effort won’t succeed, because it’s part of me.  I need a way of life that connects me to others who can help me.  I need to receive a gentle force with power greater than my monstrous thoughts.  I need someone who can hold my hand and go with me down into the basement of my life, and redeem the monsters that populate my nightmares.  Come, Lord Jesus, into our streets, and into our hearts, Amen.