Sunday,
July 5, 2015
First
Congregational United Church of Christ – Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
This is what happens when I plan ahead: it
doesn’t work. Today was supposed to be the beginning of a five week sermon
series on the Song of Songs. I wrote the first sermon of that series already,
back before I left for vacation. But then marriage equality happened, and Bree
Newsome scaled the flag pole in South Carolina, and eight black churches across
the south have burned to the ground….and that sermon is just going to have to
wait.
Last week, the UCC General Synod was happening in
Cleveland, OH. I am so thankful Kerri Keller and Amanda Tross were there,
representing the K-O Conference, and I can’t wait to attend their Dinner Discussion
later this month so we can learn more about their experience. As I kept an eye
on General Synod from afar, one of the things that caught my eye was a sermon
given by Bishop Dwayne Royster of Living Water UCC in Philadelphia. I saw so
many friends Tweet about it that I had to look up the video and watch it.[1]
Bishop Royster shared the words of Howard Thurman
who, over 65 years ago asked Christians to consider this question: What does
your faith have to offer those whose backs are up against the wall?
What does Christianity have to offer to those who
wake up each day in hell, trying to figure out how to survive one more day in a
world where the deck is stacked against them? Because, as Royster said, “Our
country is in deep moral crisis. The issues of race and economic disparity are
threatening to tear us asunder each and every single day.”
I don’t know about you, but I feel like we are on a roller coaster
lately – and mostly not a very fun one. The car we’re in seems to be veering
off track and I’m not certain I trust that the safety mechanisms have been
carefully checked. When the Supreme Court ruled just over a week ago that
marriage equality had finally come to all fifty states, it was a rare moment of
joy – but it was almost immediately tempered by the knowledge that many states
and counties would fight the decision, the realization that backlash would be
swift, and the recollection that in many
states (including ours) those who are LGBT may be able to get married, but they
can still be fired for simply being who they are. We still have a long way to
go.
The refrain that’s been rolling around in my head, keeping me
somewhat centered, comes from a traditional U.S. American folk song:
Heard the voice
of Jesus say
Come unto me, I
am the way
Keep your hand on
the plow, hold on. Hold on.[2]
Well, I got to wondering where that image comes from – keeping our
hands on the plow. Turns out it comes from the ninth chapter of Luke. This is
one of Jesus’s more difficult teachings. His friends were telling him, “We want
to follow you,” and he told them, “Great! People who travel with me are
despised. We have nowhere to sleep at night. Still want to come along? Come NOW.
You don’t get to say goodbye to your family. It’s time to leave.”
We often want to paint Jesus as this sweet and gentle savior, but Jesus
also has a harder, more demanding side. And the demand he makes here is pretty
simple: “Keep your hand on the plow. Don’t look away. Keep looking ahead as you
do the work. And, for God’s sake, HOLD ON.”
Here’s what I know about plowing: it’s one of the hardest parts of
farming. In Jesus’s time, they would have had animals to help them as they
dragged their plow through the hard clay soil. But even with the help of
animals, plowing is incredibly exhausting and relentless. Why do it at all?
Well, you need to plow before you plant for several reasons. By
turning up the soil, you destroy weeds that might impede growth. You stir up
nutrients. You create breathing space for the new seeds.
Plowing is essentially disruptive, but the disruption is necessary
for growth. It may seem a little backwards, but you have to disrupt the
environment in order for growth to occur. You might get lucky and a few seeds
may grow without plowing…but there won’t be many that grow and they won’t grow
well. You need disruption to make it work.
It seems to me this is what’s happening right now. There’s a lot
of serious disruption taking place. Terrible things that we really wish we
could cover up or bury are being brought to the surface. It’s difficult work.
Worse than being difficult, it’s dangerous. People are being hurt and killed as
the earth is turned beneath us. It’s not pretty. We may want to look away. We
may want to take a break. We may way to hand over the plow and ask if there’s
another job we could do instead.
But Jesus encourages – no, COMMANDS – us to HOLD ON and keep our
hand on the plow. Because without the difficult work of disruption, no real
growth can come.
You may know another version of the song, popularized during the
Civil Rights movement. “Keep your eyes on the prize. Hold on. Hold on.” When we
are plowing, we have to keep our heads up. We have to keep our eyes fixed on
where we’re headed. We have to squint into the sun and look ahead to the end of
the row. That’s how we keep our lines straight – by focusing ahead.
Now some people have interpreted “don’t look back” as “don’t worry
about what’s in the past.” Nothing could be further from the truth, I think. We
absolutely have to understand our past. A big part of so many of our problems
right now in our country is our failure to do the really hard work of turning
the soil. That’s why we have a bunch of people who don’t understand why the
Confederate Flag is so offensive. They have never been taught about the true horror
of our shared history. We must all struggle to learn our history and teach it
to our children. We cannot afford to bury the past any longer.
And as we carry that painful history inside of us, we keep our
hand on the plow and our eyes on the prize and we keep putting one foot in
front of the other. I have this image in my mind of God as the oxen pulling
that plow. Just straining and working and never resting. Just pulling us
relentlessly towards a world where all are given the respect they deserve as
God’s beloved children, a world where there is enough for all, a world where
generosity and hope and kindness and love rule. God is pulling and we simply have to keep up
and keep our hand on the plow.
Even this is not easy, of course. I am reminded of Moses – that
great emancipator of our Holy Scriptures. He has been celebrated for millennia
now as a human who was faithful and courageous and brave. He was all of those
things.
And then….forty long years later, when he is at the ripe age of 80
(80! Don’t think you’re off the hook if you’re past retirement age!), he is
called back to Egypt. He took his hand off the plow for a good long while, but
God is not done with him yet. The author of Exodus tells us, “After
a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery,
and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard
their groaning.”
Moses took his hand off the plow,
but God did not stop relentlessly dragging the world forward. God was there,
working in the background, even as Moses rested – pulling the plow towards the
end of the row, stirring up the ground, troubling the waters.
Bishop Royster said in his sermon
last week, “We need to get back to believing that God will use us to do
miracles that will change the damned world.” Because there are people living in
hell each and every day and the world surely feels damned to them. He said, “The
Bible doesn’t tell us to preach justice but to do justice. If all
you’ve done is preach justice, you’ve not done much. Get out of your comfort
zone. Get out of your pews and put your life on the line.”[3]
I fully believe the people who are supposed to change the damned
world are seated in this room today. I’m not kidding. I don’t know what God may
be calling you to do, but I fully believe that God is a-pulling that plow and
Jesus is urging you to get your hand on it and keep your eyes on the prize.
Every single person who ever did a miracle and changed the world
was a regular person before that happened. Two weeks ago, Bree Newsome was just
one activist in a sea of activists. But then she put her hand on God’s plow and
said, “This flag comes down today,” and the world was changed.[4]
Nicholas Winton, a British man who died this week at the age of
106, was nobody special.[5]
For over 50 years, he lived a normal adult life – no one even knew about his
past. And then, one day, his wife discovered a scrapbook in the attic. In it
were the names of 669 children that Winton almost singlehandedly saved from
certain death in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. He had never told her. He was
uncomfortable until the day he died with the fame, failing to understand why
people called him “Britain’s Schindler.” He was just an ordinary man who saw a
problem and knew he had to do something to try and help. He put his hand on the
plow and the world was changed.
I’m not telling you you have to singlehandedly change the world.
Heck, I’m not telling you you have to do anything at all. But I do hear
Jesus saying very clearly to you, to me, to all of us that if we want to be his
followers we have to put our hand on the plow and hold on.
God is relentlessly pulling that plow towards freedom and new
life….and our work is to get our hand on the plow and keep moving forward.
[2]
There are about a million different versions of this song. This one is the version
that Mahalia Jackson made famous. Common titles for the song are, “Keep your
hand on the plow,” “Hold on,” “Gospel plow,” and “Keep your eyes on the prize.”
[3]
I am paraphrasing a bit as I didn’t have access to a transcript of the sermon.
[4]
Here’s the video of
Ms. Newsome taking down the flag.
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