Every Common Bush

a sermon given by the Rev. Bill Gregory

on Sunday, September 24, 2006

 at The First Parish in Lincoln

 

I’m thinking of 9/11 and a question I asked in the aftermath.

Why did the terrorists give their lives to kill so many human beings – nearly 3,000 individuals – mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, each a story, each sacred?

 

I think it comes down to great sins generated by narrow ideology blinded to the breadth of sacredness.

 

I want to unpack my conclusion by beginning with the story of Moses’ encounter with God in the burning bush.

 

Moses was tending his father in law’s flock on Mt. Horeb.

A bush that was burning but not burning up caught his attention.

God speaks out of the bush, “Take off your shoes.  You are on sacred ground.”

He was invited into the power and mystery of Divine love. 

Names were exchanged.

            Moses’ heard God speak his name. 

To hear your name spoken by God is to experience grace.

God knew Moses by name.  he was not alone, abandoned, forgotten.

Moses now knew God knew him but he feared his powerlessness

in the eyes of the Hebrews.  He asked for God’s name.  If he had God’s name it would be clear that he carried God’s power.

            God’s name, the name that cannot be spoken. was given.

The words pointed but did not describe 

“I am who I am.  Tell them that Being sends you”

           

Moses was empowered and authorized by his experience of sacredness.

 

Fire appears as metaphor in so many accounts of human encounter with the sacred.  Fire speaks of

            Power

            Danger

            Heat

            Transformation

            Light

                   

I know of no account of the encounter with the Holy One clearer on the subject than the words of Blaise Pascal, 17^th Century scientist-philosopher.  They were found on a piece of paper sewn inside of his lapel after his death.

                        “Fire!

                        The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.

                        Not of the philosophers and intellectuals.

                        Certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace.

           

Oh just Father, the world has not known you

                        but I have known you.

                        Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

Pascal’s experience must have been something of the same experience of the great religious heroes of human history.

Moses on Mt. Horeb – fire, transformation

Buddha under the Bo Tree finding enlightenment as he watches a leaf fall.

Mohammed’s encounter with the Angel Gabriel, light, power, empowerment

Jesus coming out of the water of the Jordan River after his baptism the heaven’s open, light streams down and he hears

God.

He hears the thundering yet silent voice of God

speaking out revealing that Jesus is God’s beloved child.

And I would add, he realized that each human one was

            a beloved son or daughter of god.

This is the heart of the Christian concept of grace, the gospel.

 

Fire words describe Jesus’ experience to me, galvanizing, transforming, refining.

 

These are Mt. Horeb experiences,

timeless moments of mystical refining.

The seer is like iron ore through a blast furnace of pure sacredness

emerging as steel motivated by grace.

 

Out of such experiences all of the great religious heroes

were given eyes to see and hearts to serve sacredness.

 

Seeing the sacred is not always cataclysmic but it is always life shaping.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning tells of those who see and those who don’t in her simple and profound poem.

 

Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only those who see take off their shoes.

            The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

 

First Mt. Horeb, where Moses encountered sacredness,

then Mt. Sinai where Moses was given the commandments.  

First the sacredness, then the commandments.

First grace then the law.

 

Sinai without Horeb leads to terror.

Commandments without eyes to see the sacredness becomes ideology.

Ideology without eyes to see the sacred becomes self righteousness.

Self righteousness without eyes to see the sacred allows terror to be defined as faithfulness.

            The cross of Jesus,

the inquisition,

the holocaust

all wars participate in this

9/11

 

Why did the terrorists give their lives to kill so many ordinary and decent Americans - nearly 3,000 individuals, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, each a story, each sacred?

A number of possible explanations have come to mind.

I suppose eternity in heaven with an unending supply of nubile sweet things serving your every need is a hard promise to pass by.

Or maybe it was hate, hate of a culture and its people who seem to flaunt you and your ways as they appear to seek to use whatever they can find of people and resources in the world to feed their gluttonous materialism.

 

These are probably parts of the answer.

But it struck me as I watched the terrible sight

of the twin towers collapsing,

and reflected upon it since,

that the central answer to the question “why”

is that it was ideological  blindness.

The terrorists were blind to the sacred value of each life slaughtered.

A terrorist sees the lives of those he/she kills as having worth

only as they serve the terrorist’s ideological purposes.

 

On 9/11 ideology trumped the mystical foundation of all monotheistic faiths  -  universal human sacredness.          

 

When ideology trumps sacredness,

When a them/us polarity blinds us

to the sacred humanity of all people,

evil is in the drivers seat.

 

That evil must not be ignored.  It must be unseated.

The question is how.

The answer  is not to dehumanize terrorist

and justify brutal violence in return.

 

Merle Evers was married to Medgar Evers.

In the 1960s they lived, with their three children, in Mississippi.

Medgar was the head of the NAACP in that Klu Klux Klan dominated state.

The Klan had a sniper’s site across the street from the Evers’ home and the local police condoned it.

 

Merle had to keep her children in the back of the house because every once in a while a bullet was randomly fired into their home to remind them who was in control and what might happen to them if they fought it.

Medgar had to race his car down the street and into their drive way and park behind the house for fear of being shot.

 

Merle told me that she was beside herself with anger that day when Medgar came home.  She shouted at him as he came in the door,

 

“I can’t stand those people.  I hate them!”

 

Megar took her in his arms

and after a time of shared tears said,

“Merle, we can’t let them / make us hate them. 

They are not the enemy. 

Hate is the enemy.”

Within a year Medgar was assassinated by the Klan. 

 

Merle moved herself and her children to Claremont, California and joined the Claremont Congregational Church where I was Associate Minister.  She told us, “Medgar was right.”

 

If hate is the enemy love must be the answer.

But how can we love those who terrorize us and our loved ones?  

It is hard. 

In no way can we justify the perpetuation of evil.

But I believe Medgar was right.

They are not our enemy.

Hate is our enemy. 

Can we love them then? 

Probably not at this distance.

Real love comes out of real relationship.

 

We are challenged by all the spiritual heroes throughout the ages

and by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to faith, to believe that

“Every common bush is afire with God.”

 

With eyes to see the sacred

the way to peace will be shown.  Amen