It Is Enough for the Day
1 Kings 21:1-21
If you take a
look at the ìtopical indexî in the back of the Presbyterian Hymnal youíll find two entries under the heading
ìjoy.î Youíll find more under ìredemptionî or ìrepentanceî or ìsupplicationî than
you will under ìjoy.î I think that says something. Itís not for nothing that
weíre known as ìGodís frozen peopleî or ìthe frozen chosenî as some like to
say.
No, if you look
in that index, youíll find lots of songs listed under Godís sovereignty ñ which
is good and right and appropriate as one of the essential tenets of the
Reformed theological tradition is, as our Book
of Order puts it, a ìcentral affirmation of Godís sovereigntyî (G-2.0500).
Likewise, you will find a long list of hymns to God the creator that affirm
ìthe majesty, holiness and providence of God who creates, sustains, rules, and
redeems the world in the freedom of sovereign righteousness and love,î as the
soaring phrases of our churchís constitution put it.
But only two
hymns listed under joy?
By the way,
weíve sung ëem both already this morning! So this
must be as close to overflowing joy as itís possible to get in a Presbyterian
church! Can I get an amen?!
I could not
help thinking about this apparent lack of joy among us mainline Protestants of
the Reformed stripe as I was reading this passage from 1 Kings last week. I was
struck by the image of King Ahab, ìresentful and sullen.î Was Ahab a closet
Presbyterian?
Well, no. Ahab
was clearly a rapacious and unjust ruler who took advantage of the poor and
powerless. His sins were many and manifold as the arc of the Ahab story
underscores. I donít think that even the leaders of the Presbyterian Lay
Committee would be involved in such a plot as this even though their manifestly
questionable theology does leave a great deal of destruction in its wake.
As King of
Samaria, Ahab no doubt had access to and control over a good deal of land ñmore
than enough for a vegetable garden and more than more than enough to meet the
needs of his royal household. But he wants still more. Wanting more, he casts a
greedy eye on the
ìHe lay down on
his bed, turned away his face, and would not eat,î the story tells us (and
right there we know heís certainly not a Presbyterian!)
Jezebel
recognized immediately that Ahab was, well, a little depressed. Leaving aside
any psychotherapy concerns ñ and sympathies for those who suffer real depression
ñ Iíve got to ask: why are you depressed Ahab? Youíre the king. Youíve got
control over all of
Ahab seems to
want more for the sake of having more. He seems unable to find any security in
what he has, even though he has the kingís share already.
His problem
lies not, I think, in the love of more, so much as it
lies in the inability to feel secure with enough. Ahab raises security ñ in the
form of more land to control ñ to such importance that he is more than willing
to murder Naboth to get the land.
As Martin
Luther observed, security is the ultimate idol, and idolatry, as scripture
shows over and over, leads to destruction and death.
Insecurity
arises for many of us when we cannot find comfort and satisfaction in enough.
And, too often, insecurity creeps in when we cannot find joy in living with
enough.
We are
demonstratively better off in the ways that Ahab seemed to want to be better
off ñ that is to say, most of us have demonstrably more ñ more space, more
stuff, more money, but we are no less likely to turn our backs on the world in
resentful sullenness than was Ahab.
Indeed, divorce
rates and teen suicide rates have more than doubled and rates of depression
have increased dramatically over the past 40 years, and the percentage of
Americans who say they are happy has
actually declined in the midst of this material boom.[1]
Itís no wonder
we only have two songs about joy in the hymnal!
We have made of
ourselves a great, unhappy success. We produce more, we buy more, we have more,
we achieve more. We have met the aims that the culture
sets before us as normative values: high personal incomes; occupational
success; social and professional prestige, and yet.
It is as if,
like Ahab, we have so much to be thankful for yet cannot find gratitude in our
vocabulary.
And if we
cannot find gratitude in our vocabulary, we cannot pray, for, as Anne Lamott[2]
observes, the two basic forms of prayer are: ìthank you, thank you, thank youî
and ìhelp me, help me, help me.î You cannot get to that second prayer if you
have not found the grace to say ìthank you.î
Saying ìthank
youî is, perhaps, the most reasonable response to the ìmajesty, holiness and providence
of God,î to go back to where we began. Expressing gratitude, as Henri Nouwen once observed, is the fundamental attitude common to
all religious expression. Gratitude in response to grace is expressed as joy.
For saying
ìthank youî acknowledges Godís gracious action in our lives and in the life of
the world. Saying ìthank youî acknowledges that we are not alone. We are not
isolated individuals left completely to our own devices. Saying ìthank youî
acknowledges the other, and implicitly, all the others. Saying ìthank youî
means youíre not a solo act, but youíre part of a relationship, indeed, part of
a community.
Saying ìthank
youî acknowledges the gracious actions of the other ñ whether it is the Holy
Other or a sister or brother ñ and such acknowledgment forms the ground for
relationships of mutual interdependence. In other words, it lets us ask for
help and it lets us respond to otherís requests for help.
A progressive
theology understands that the simple act of gratitude ultimately situates us in
an inescapable web of mutuality, bound together and finely woven into a single
garment of destiny in which whatever affects one directly affects the rest of
us indirectly.[3]
In this week of
overflowing tribute to the late President Reagan, itís worth noting that this
is the primary ground of radical distinction between the right wing philosophy
that Reagan embraced and the progressive understanding of the world.
King Ahab
clearly had no vision of the common wealth, and I think itís fair to charge that
most of the social policies of the Reagan era were tilted in favor of the
uncommonly wealthy. In the midst of his abundance, Ahab perceived scarcity and
thus sought greater security in the annexation of one more garden.
As the Ahab
story so clearly illustrates, the inability to perceive Godís gracious
abundance and express gratitude for it leads to the idolatrous worship of the
god of security. Rather than a joyous, gracious ìthank youî for having more
than enough for the day, Ahab chooses to respond first with ìsullenness,î and
then with violence.
Surprisingly
enough, itís in choosing our response to our time and context that we in the
progressive church might actually learn something from non other than Ronald
Reagan.
Surely Reaganís
time in power was marked by policies that neglected the poor, the outcast and
the marginalized, the thousands who died of AIDS as the band played on, the
millions who lost jobs and benefits, and all of us who are even now victims in
the culture wars that began under his leadership.
And yet, it is
precisely as I list but a portion of the catalog of the specific places where
progressive disagreed with and disdained President Reagan that I could almost
hear him saying, ìwell, there you go again.î
And it is
precisely there, as we imagine Reagan smiling at an opponent and disarming him
with a quip, that we find the message of Ronald Reagan for the progressive
church today as it faces the Ahabs of our own time.
You see, as so
many eulogizers of Reagan reminded us last week, the man was an incurable
optimist. Now we may scoff and say he was not wise enough to know the
difference, but he had great hope for the future, and he was able to articulate
that hope in ways that captured both the brilliance of the founding ideas of
this nation as well as the energy and imagination of her people. As he said in
his first inaugural address, ìwe have every right to dream heroic dreams.î Reagan
may not have understood justice very well, but he did perceive abundance and
the opportunities inherent in an economy of abundance.
As Reagan, himself, put it in his farewell address to the
Republican National Convention in 1992, ìI hope [history] will record that I
appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather
than your doubts.î
That should
logically be the turf of progressives; after all, essential to the notion of
progressive thought is a vision for the future that is grounded in hope. Such
hope, when it is the hope of people of faith, is grounded itself in a profound
trust that a gracious God has provided enough for this day, and will provide in
the future enough for the days to come.
That trust
never blinds us to the reality of suffering ñ and here I would contrast it with
the often pie-in-the-sky hopes of those who foist off on the nation such
notions as trickle-down economics in place of policies of genuine hopefulness
grounded in justice. No, trust in a gracious God does not blind us to the
reality of suffering at the hands of contemporary Ahabs.
Nevertheless,
such trust does lead us, even in the midst of suffering, to find seeds of hope
to plant today for a flowering of justice come harvest time. For we know now
that we do live with enough to say ìthank you,î and, in saying ìthank youî we
know that we are connected to all those others ñ including the ones who
struggle on the precipice of sufficiency.
Trusting Godís
gracious abundance, in thanks for enough, we can find solidarity with the poor,
the outcast and the marginalized and go work among them, sharing from our
abundance that all may have enough.
And, you know
what? There is great joy in this calling: way more than two songs worth!
In God of the Oppressed, James Cone writes
about finding strength for the work, for the struggle, precisely in joyous songs
that could create an alternative view of reality to the one that Ahab would
impose upon us. Cone writes of his mother singing in church, and says, ìIt was
her attempt to make a statement about her life and to say to the world that she
is who she is because and only because of the presence of God in her world.î[4]
It is that
alternative vision of reality that is the great gift the progressive church has
to share with the world. Surely, such a vision does not include rapacious Ahabs, but, and hereís the wisdom we can borrow from Ronald
Reagan, we must move beyond articulating merely that which we oppose. You know,
the chanting, ìhey, hey, ho, ho, King Ahab has got to
go!î Or, in terms closer to our reality, ìhey, hey, ho, ho, G-6.0106b has got
to go!î That doesnít even have rhythm!
Rather, the
gift of the progressive church comes in lifting up to the world a vision of a
community of belovedness in which the structures of
genuine community make space for all of Godís children to share in the
abundance of Godís gifts, to know the simple joy of enough for the day, to
share in the common wealth and participate freely in its governance, to stand
in the mighty stream of righteousness and watch as it waters that garden of
justice and of joy. There is enough for the day because, though the wrong seems
oft so strong, God is the ruler yet!
I had the good
fortune last week, in the midst of all the Reagan recognitions, to listen to
another Reagon ñ Bernice Johnson Reagon
and her daughter, Toshi ñ in a noontime concert at
the Library of Congress. Now Bernice Reagon was a
victim of the injustice and violence inflicted on the powerless by the Ahabs of the American South of the 1950s and 60s. She was a
founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom
Singers and the founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock.
She spoke with
incredible power of singing in Parchman Penitentiary
when she was jailed with the Freedom Riders. She said, ìwe sang so we would
know that we were not alone,î and that, in singing, they knew who they were ñ
that they were not criminals or even prisoners, but a joyous, faithful people
working to overturn a system of Ahabs, and to offer
in its place a vision for a community of belovedness.
She sang it
like this:
ìThere must be
more love somewhere. There must be more love somewhere. Iím going to keep on,
till I find it. There must be more love somewhere.î
Rev. Dr. David E.
Ensign
[1] Statistics from David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness (Avon Books) as digested by David G. Myers, Hope College, Holland, Michigan, 2004, at http://www.davidmyers.org/happiness/Excerpt.html.
[2] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999).
[3] Martin Luther King used this image of the web often, including when he said, ìWe are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.î ìA Christmas Sermon on Peace,î in A Testament of Hope, (San Francisco: Harper, 1986) 254. The phrase ìbound together and finely wovenî comes from a song by Ken Medema.
[4] James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, revised edition, 1997 ) 12.