What Next?

. . . a sermon for these troubled times

I preached the sermon below two years ago. It’s still relevant today. The Way of Jesus, the way of loving enemies, is not delineated by religious doctrine. Though you may not belong to a Christian flock, I trust you will find sustenance here for these troubled times.

---

What Next?

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Thomas C. Davis

At the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant

On October 15th, 2023

Texts:

Psalm 23

Philippians 4: 1-9

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

First, a story about Tom and Jerry. Not the cartoon cat and mouse, but rather, best friends since the nineth grade at A.I. DuPont School. We used to run up and down the bleachers there, training for track. Jerry, long and lanky, ran the 880-yard dash like a gazelle. I, short and stocky, ran the low hurdles like a Neanderthal. Jerry lives on beautiful Lake Cayuga in New York state. I visited and enjoyed sailing with him several times up there, but the pandemic put an end to those trips. So, I was very happy to get an email from him last week saying he’d be in Wilmington to visit his sister and would like to catch up over lunch on Friday. Great! I wrote back. Call me at noon. He did, reporting that after staying a couple days with his sister she emailed him to say that she had just tested positive for Covid. He told me, “I’d better go to a drug store right now and get a test.” Not wanting to waste any time in our tight schedule I said: “Come straight away. You can test yourself here. Alice and I have a whole stack of tests. “Oh, thank you! I’ll wear a mask,” he promised. “And so will I,” I said. “We have scads of those too.” Alas, we didn’t go out for lunch as planned. I spread some tuna fish salad on bagels, and we ate them hurriedly, hastening to mask up again. Meanwhile, Jerry waited the required twenty minutes for his test result. It was positive. That was the end of our eagerly anticipated catching up. He left for home, and I wondered: what next?

It had been a horrendous week. It seemed the entire world was falling apart. The war in Ukraine still slogged on with no end in sight, a devastating earthquake struck Afghanistan, the worst fighting ever between Palestinians and Israelis erupted, and bickering brought paralysis to the U.S. House of Representatives. These very present crises diverted our attention from the biggest worry of all, climate change. Blues singer Mose Allison had a song that put the mood perfectly. He sang: “I don’t worry ‘bout a thing, ‘cause I know nothin’s gonna be all right.” Well, actually, one thing did turn out all right. The Monday after seeing Jerry I tested negative and went on to get my Covid booster and had absolutely no ill effects. Yet, Congress is still dead in the water for lack of a House speaker, and the news in the Middle East just gets worse and worse. Oh, good Lord, what next?

That’s a subject surely on your minds, too, dear brothers and sisters in the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. Our company is small, our purse is nearly empty, and we’re wondering how we’ll manage to keep the lights on here. Maybe you learned this hand gesture as a kid: Here is the church, and here is the steeple. Open the doors and there are the people. We all know, of course, that people are the church, not a building. Yet, this building has made a lot of loving and serving possible over the years, and it contains so many dear memories. So, now we’re wondering—God help us—what next?

The Common Lectionary handed us two readings for this morning which couldn’t be more appropriate for our current anxious situation: namely, the Twenty Third Psalm, and secondly, Paul’s encouragement and exhortation, sent by letter to his church friends in Phillipi. Let’s have a look at each of these comforting passages, tailor-made as it were, for these days.

First, the Twenty-Third Psalm. In the Judeo-Christian heritage there is no more familiar a scripture than this: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.”

When I lived in Miami I served for a while as a part time chaplain at a children’s hospital. I wore a beeper then. Remember those? We didn’t have cell phones yet. People away from the office but on call wore a little black plastic box that clipped onto a belt or breast pocket. It beeped if there were an emergency. Hearing it, I was to call the hospital immediately! A beep from the Miami children’s hospital always meant one thing: a baby had just died or was passing away. What comfort could I bring to parents who were anxiously wondering, what next? I brought a pastor’s white collar, a Bible, prayer, and the Twenty-Third Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me…” Church, when it seems that things can’t get any worse, when you are looking death square in the face, you must fear no evil, for the good shepherd who knows each of us by name is walking right beside you, and he doesn’t ever leave one of his flock behind.

The Apostle Paul, whom we will come to in a minute, is best known for his declaration that we are saved by grace through faith. By grace he meant the unconditional love of God that has been shown to us through Jesus. And what did faith mean in Paul’s teaching? Did it mean adherence to a certain doctrine? We speak today of the Christian faith as contrasted to the Jewish faith, or the Muslim faith, or the Sikh faith, and so on. When we use the word that way we’re connecting it to a set of religious beliefs. But Paul was not using it that way, because the church he founded was still young, and there hadn’t yet been time to promulgate doctrine. No, by faith Paul was more likely referring to simple trust, trust in the unconditional love of God, and the power of God to bring us through whatever lies ahead.

When I was in seminary, Alice and I joined an ecumenical congregation called The Community of Reconciliation. It was formed in the turbulent 60s following the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. People of color in our congregation sang “We’ve come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord, trusting in His holy work, he’s never failed us yet. Oh, can’t turn around. We’ve come this far by faith.” Singing about faith with such passion, did they mean adherence to a certain doctrine? No, they meant trusting with all their being. That is the balm recommended for us in these days when the entire world is falling apart and we’re wondering, what next? We’ve come so far, haven’t we! We can’t turn around now. We must go forward. But how? By trusting in the Good Shepherd with our whole being.

Every time I preach here, I try to bring some aspects of my veteran experience to you, since the Session invited the Interfaith Veterans Workgroup to make this building their headquarters. As I reflect on my military training, I recognize that it prepared me well for dealing with battles when a soldier might get overwhelmed by fixating on the question, what next? I never got into huge firefights in Vietnam, just skirmishes, but I realize that the noise and confusion of battle can take a soldier into deep discouragement and even paralysis. That’s where military training comes in. In training you perform a drill over and over again until it becomes second nature to you. You don’t have to think any more about what next. You have a job to do, a mission to carry out, and the training which has been drilled into you helps you avoid paralysis when the going gets really tough.

There’s a lesson here for soldiers of the cross, but of course, our drill is very different. Our drill is to act in ways that prepare us for peacemaking, perhaps if the time is right, even for preventing the outbreak of war altogether. Paul described the peacemaker’s drill where he wrote in his letter to the Phillipians:

Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure. . . if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, (-- Paul was thinking of himself as their spiritual drill sergeant) –and then, he concluded, the God of peace will be with you.

This past week I filmed a speech given by Kim Graham, who consults with Delaware Pacem in Terris about how to heal trauma, especially trauma the effects of which are passed down over generations. I posted an eighteen-minute portion of her speech on YouTube which I entitled “The Hard Inner Work of Peacemaking.” Ms. Graham points out that social activists have two kinds of energy: warrior energy and healer energy. The warrior energy is aroused by gross injustices. Warriors kill, and sometimes the warrior energy in a would-be peacemaker becomes so strong it threatens to get out of hand, seeking the destruction of an adversary. Would-be peacemakers must prepare their minds and hearts to moderate their righteous indignation, their warrior energy, to prevent it from becoming truly destructive. This is the hard inner work of peacemaking. It isn’t easy to love our enemies as Jesus urged us to do. It takes inner work, daily disciplining of the body, mind, and spirit, to bring warring energy into concert with healing energy. This is not new wisdom, nor is it uniquely Christian. Masters of martial arts have known this for centuries.

Yes, kind folk, we do live in very troubled times, the most trying of my 78 years on the planet, and maybe yours too. It’s understandable that we should ask, with a deep foreboding, what next? But we’ve come this far by faith, and the Good Shepherd who loves us and equips us with his Spirit is walking right alongside us in these troubled times. Let us rejoice in the spiritual drill we have received from our forebears. Let us rejoice and move forward, in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving may our requests be made known to God. And then the promised peace of God, which surpasses all our understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. So be it, church, so be it!