Download Tears in the Verses—Hope in the Refrain

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“Tears in the Verses—Hope in the Refrain”
A sermon delivered by Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell
at Myers Park Baptist Church
on June 19, 2016
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost from Psalm 42
In 1922, the Harlem renaissance poet Countee Cullen wrote:
The South is crucifying Christ again
By all the laws of ancient rote and rule:
The ribald cries of ' 'Save yourself” and "Fool"
Din in his ears, the thorns grope for his brain,
And where they bite, swift springing rivers stain
His gaudy, purple robe of ridicule
With sullen red; and acid wine to cool
His thirst is thrust at him, with lurking pain.
Christ's awful wrong is that he's dark of hue,
The sin for which no blamelessness atones;
But lest the sameness of the cross should tire,
They kill him now with famished tongues of fire,
And while he burns, good men, and women, too,
Shout, battling for black and brittle bones.
It is not just the South that is crucifying Christ—it’s America; it is all of us. Any time an innocent
person is executed, Christ is crucified again. Christ was crucified again at a college in Blacksburg, VA
and Roseburg, OR, and at a military base in Chattanooga, TN and Fort Hood, TX. Christ was crucified
again at school in Columbine, CO and Newtown, CT, at a mental hospital in San Bernardino, CA and a
movie theatre in Aurora, CO. Christ is crucified again every week on the streets of Chicago, Detroit,
Baltimore, and New Orleans. One year ago this Friday Christ was crucified again at a Black church in
Charleston, SC. And now our hearts are breaking because we have just witnessed Christ crucified
again at a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL. It is time for us to face the fact that Christ is being crucified
again in America today. Today, Christ looks like a gay Latino man, the cross looks like the floor of a
bar, and the nails that pierced his skin look like bullets from an AR-15 assault rifle.
It has been like Holy Week this week, and now we come to this place overwhelmed by grief to weep,
to mourn, and to stand in solidarity with the families of the victims. We come to this place in pain
and suffering, to lament, to remember, and to search for hope. We come to this place with raw
honesty—crying out like Christ did from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?”
Like the psalmist in our text today we stand tongue-tied as the world asks us, “Where is your God?”
We cannot see our God. God seems far away and hidden from us. The only God we see or hear in
America is the false and distorted god of Christian and Muslim hatred. In the wake of senseless
violence, it is only natural for us to ask God, “Have you left us? Have you forgotten us? Have you
abandoned us? Where are you? Why would you allow this violence to take place? How could you let
this happen? Speak to us!” But like Psalm 42, there is no reply. God is silent. And yet maybe, as
Elijah discovered in the cave at Mt. Horeb and as Jesus discovered on the cross—maybe God is in
the silence.
There are tears in the verses of this psalm, just as there have been many tears in the eyes of many
fathers this week and from children who lost their fathers this week. On this Father’s Day, it is easy
to imagine the writer of Psalm 42 as the father of one of the victims who was killed in Orlando,
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weeping to God in prayer. He has so many tears coming down his face—so much grief that he has
no appetite to eat anything but his own tears. His tears are his food; he subsists only on grief. They
are tears of great hunger and thirst—tears that flow from a deep longing for a God that is missing—
a longing that can only be fulfilled with God’s presence. And the presence of God was most fully felt
and experienced by him and by his people—in the Temple. The Temple was the most holy place
because it was where the people of Israel felt most connected to God, most connected to each other,
and most connected to their true selves. The Temple was the place where the people were given
grace and forgiveness. It’s where they went for refuge, safety, and peace. The Temple is where the
people found sanctuary.
Everyone needs sanctuary. Many people find their sanctuary in a church, a synagogue, a mosque, or
a temple, but for those who have been excluded from communities of faith—they often have had to
find sanctuary somewhere else. For many in the LGBT community, the first place where they could
be safe, the first place where they could connect with their true selves—the first place where they
could find sanctuary was at a bar or a nightclub. Back in the 50s and 60s, there was nowhere for the
LGBT community to go. They were not welcome in restaurants or community centers and they
were certainly not welcome in churches. The only place they could go to be themselves were bars,
and one of the first nightclubs that opened to the LGBT community was the Stonewall Inn in the
Greenwich Village-New York.
The Mafia owned the Stonewall Inn and it was not the nicest place in Manhattan. It had no running
water, no liquor license, no fire exits and the toilets were constantly overflowing. But it was the
only gay bar in the city that allowed dancing, and so it catered to a racially diverse assortment of
patrons and was popular among the poorest and most marginalized people in LGBT community:
drag queens, transgender people, lesbians, male prostitutes, and homeless gay youth. Police raids
on gay bars, like the Stonewall Inn, were routine in the 60s, and they were used to terrorize and
humiliate the people. In 1969, the growing tensions in America around civil rights for women,
African-Americans, and LGBT people increased the frequency of these raids on gay bars by the
police and, on June 28, the gay community had enough. The Stonewall Inn was their safe place, their
refuge, their sanctuary, and they were not going to let that be taken from them. When the police
came to harass them this time, they resisted and, over next two days, there were riots in the streets
of New York.
On Sunday, 47 years after the Stonewall riots, another sanctuary for the LGBT community was
stolen—a sanctuary called Pulse. It was a sacred space (a holy place), a sanctuary for the LGBT
community--no less a sanctuary than Mother Emmanuel church in Charleston . . . no less a
sanctuary than the Temple in Jerusalem—no less a sanctuary than this place where we are right
now. As someone said this week, “If you can't wrap your head around a bar or club as a sanctuary,
then you've probably never been afraid to hold someone's hand in public.” When violence
trespasses into a holy and sacred place—it is not just lives that are lost; freedom is lost, safety is
lost, refuge is lost—sanctuary for an entire community is lost. Psalm 42 gives voice to the pain and
suffering of someone who has lost his friends, his community, his sanctuary and his connection with
God, all because of an unnamed enemy who oppressed, wounded, and taunted him continuously. It
is a powerful psalm of lament, which is why it is the perfect song for us to sing today as we cry out
in lament for our brothers and sisters in Orlando who were gunned down by an enemy in their
sanctuary.
What are we called to do, as the people of God, when there is so much death? How do we keep from
falling into despair? How do we find hope? How do we find the will to carry on?
Here, the psalmist has a lot to teach us. Somehow in the midst of overwhelming pain, suffering,
grief, persecution, death and loss, the psalmist found hope—and he found it in an unlikely place that
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many of us would not think to look when we are in the midst of suffering. He found hope by
remembering the past. It may seem strange to turn to the past in order to find hope for the future
when death has stolen the lives of our friends and our sanctuary. It seems counterintuitive—even
counterproductive to look back into the past for hope, but that’s exactly what the psalmist did. In
the midst of suffering, he cried out, “As I pour out my soul, these things I remember; how I went
with the community, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of
thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.”
The psalmist remembered what it felt like to worship with God’s people, and it gave birth to hope.
Suddenly, in the midst of his song of lament, there was an interruption. A refrain bursts forth from
the tears in the verses, and these new words of hope rang out from the mouth of the psalmist, “Why
are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again
sing praise, my help and my God.” But hope is a fragile thing and when grief reared its ugly head
again, it sucked life from the psalmist’s lips again. It brought down his soul and the tears started to
come as before. But, in the midst of the darkness, the psalmist turned to memory again, “My soul is
cast down within me; therefore I remember you; from the land of Jordan, Hermon, and Mt. Mizar.
Deep calls to deep; at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and billows have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands steadfast love, and at night God’s song is with me, a prayer to the God of
my life.”
This time, the psalmist remembered the beauty of the land that God had given to the people—the
depth of the ocean, the greatness of the cataracts, the wind and air that blew life into his lungs each
day. Even more deeply and powerfully, the psalmist remembered God’s steadfast love—hesed in
Hebrew, a love that is unconditional and everlasting—a love that knows no bounds—a love that
cannot be defeated by death—a love that will not end—a love that always wins. Along with the
beauty of the earth and the gift of God’s creation, the psalmist was reminded of God’s steadfast love
in the day and remembered how to sing God’s song of life through the night. Then as suddenly as
before, a refrain bursts forth from his tears in the verses and words of hope ring out, “Why are you
cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again sing
praise, my help and my God.”
Walter Brueggemann tells us, “Memory produces hope. That is how we live our lives in faith—we
live in a constant cycle of memory and hope and that is how the Psalmist moves as well. He begins
with sorrow, moves to treasured memory, and ends in vibrant hope.” It is an extraordinary
statement—one that reminds us that even though hope is about the future, the grounds for hope
lies in the remembrance of the past. What memory could we turn to today, as we sing our song of
lament with tears in our eyes? What memory do we possess that might have the power to elicit
within us a new refrain of hope for the future? Many have forgotten that the tragedy that occurred
at the Stonewall nightclub in June of 1969 gave birth to the gay rights movement. Immediately after
the violence, people started organizing, getting to work, creating activist networks and newspapers
to raise awareness and promote the rights of LGBT people. Within two years of Stonewall, there
were gay rights organizations in every major American city. A year after Stonewall, on the first
anniversary of the riots, the LGBT community marked the occasion with the first ever Gay Pride
Parade, a celebration that now spans across the globe. We go from tragedy, to lament, to memory,
to hope, but then what?
In her book, Hope in the Dark, historian Rebecca Solnit claims, “Hope is not the belief that
everything was, is, or will be fine. It is not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative. Hope
locates itself in the premise that we don’t know what will happen and in the spaciousness of that
uncertainty there is room to act. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and unknowable, an
alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine
without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from
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action. Hope is the belief that what we do matters. It is resistance to the status quo, which wants
you to believe it is immutable, inevitable, and invulnerable. Hope is an ax you break down doors
with in an emergency; because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from
endless violence, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures, and the grinding down of the poor
and marginal. Hope means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed, but
possible. Hope calls for action and action is impossible without hope.”
Like the psalmist, I have cried this week and I have wondered, “Where is God in the midst of this
violence?” Like the psalmist, my soul has been cast down and disquieted by the events in Orlando,
by the one-year anniversary of Charleston, by the memory of all the horrific acts of violence that
continue plague this country. It took me awhile to discover what I was truly feeling, but eventually I
realized that it was a longing—a deep longing for God to do something—a powerful longing for the
living God to come and help us. Like the psalmist, it was a thirst for the God of life, love, and peace
to act decisively once and for all to end this violence. The psalmist compared himself to a deer, and
that’s how I feel, like a thirsty animal longing for the flowing waters of God’s kingdom to come
down; for “justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” What
are you longing for?
In my longing I turned to memory, and like the psalmist, I remembered what it feels like to worship
God in community. I remembered I’ve had the unique and incredible opportunity to worship with
LGBT brothers and sisters at every church I have served. We’ve sung songs of worship together in
good times and in bad and when I remember how the power of God’s presence was among us I am
filled with hope. In the midst of my tears, I remembered the glory of God’s creation, the depth of
God’s steadfast love, and the song of life I have seen and heard this week.
I saw Muslims come to vigils to support and honor the victims in Orlando.
I saw neighbors line up around the block to give blood to save the lives of those who were injured.
I saw strangers care for one of the victim’s grandmothers on a plane.
I saw people of good faith come together by the thousands in cities all over the country to raise up
candles in an act of compassion and solidarity with the families of those who died.
I saw people dressed as angels surrounding the funerals of the victims to protect them from hate.
Seeing these things didn’t eliminate my grief over the loss of life in Orlando, but it helped me to
remember God’s love, God’s power for new life, and God’s song for the world, and it filled me with
hope.
So I say to you today, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again sing praise, my help and my God.” We are called to be people of hope
and we can become people of hope if we can believe that, with God, all things are possible—that,
with God on our side, there is no obstacle that we can’t overcome—not hatred, not violence. . . not
even death. But, in order to truly have the kind of hope that the psalmist did-a hope that springs as
a refrain from tears of our laments, we have to be able to remember what God has done. We have to
remember how God delivered the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. We have to remember how
God took on flesh in Jesus. We have to remember how God sent the Spirit to empower and lead the
church. We have to remember Stonewall, and Selma, and South Africa. We have to remember
Gandhi, King, Tutu, Dorothy Day, and Harvey Milk. We have to remember Jesus’ vision of the
kingdom, and we have the ability to imagine that another world is possible. Hope refuses to believe
the prevailing pretension that what is—is all that there can be. Hope envisions a better future.
Is it a coincidence that June is not only national LGBT Pride month, but also the sacred Muslim
season of Ramadan, and Gun Violence Awareness Month? How could it be that, during Pride,
Ramadan, and Gun Violence Awareness Month, a Muslim man killed LGBT people at a gay nightclub
with a semi-automatic weapon? It is horrifying and incredibly tragic that a month that was meant to
be a time of celebration, holiness, and peace for each of these groups has turned into a month of
violence, persecution, and death. But what if this tragedy could give birth to something—what if
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this disaster could be a catalyst for change—what if this event could be a galvanizing force for a
new future like the Stonewall riots were. Could Orlando have the power to bring people together, to
provoke people to action, and to give birth to a movement where the LGBT community, the Muslim
community, and their allies unite to stand together against gun violence in America—to act
together to make this country a more peaceful place? Is that dream too wild to imagine? Crazier
things have happened! All it takes is hope.
Yes, Christ was crucified again in Charleston. Yes, Christ was crucified again in Orlando. Yes, Christ
will be crucified again somewhere in America. But whenever Christ is crucified—be it a gay Latino
man in a nightclub, a poor Black woman in a church, an innocent child, a college student, a movie
goer, or an innocent person on the street, we will lift up our voices to God in lament. We will
grieve—but not as those who grieve without hope. There is one memory that is more powerful than
all the others and when we recall it we find great hope for new life—that memory is that Christ
didn’t stay dead very long. Christ was resurrected, which means we can have a kind of hope that
believes the end is never the end. It has been more than three days since Orlando, and so it is
probably time for us to start talking about resurrection—not just the promise of resurrection for
those who died, but a resurrection for all of us from apathy and despair, a resurrection for our
nation from this culture of death that we live in.
If we think the violence in Orlando and Charleston is just the way it is in America today—that this
is the way it always going to be and that things will never change, then we don’t have any hope—we
are hopeless. Hope envisions a world where all people in the LGBT community are loved and
protected, offered sanctuary, and treated with respect and dignity. Hope envisions a world where
all people of color are loved and protected, offered sanctuary, and treated with respect and dignity.
Hope envisions a world where there is less violence from guns, less death of innocent people, and
less violence and death in general. Hope envisions a world where Christians, Muslims, and Jews
treat each other with love instead of hate. Most importantly, hope does not sit around and wait for
the world to change; hope acts. Hope does whatever it can right now to make the world more like
the kingdom of God.
As people of faith, we can no longer be silent about gun violence or any kind of violence that plagues
our streets, our theatres, our schools, our clubs, or our sanctuaries. We must rise up in hope and do
something about it. We are suffering from an epidemic of violence and death that has taken America
captive—taken the church captive, and we must do something; we must act. But in order to for us to
do that we have to move from lament, to memory, to hope. And so we must ask ourselves, “Can we
sing through our tears? Can remember what God has done? Can we envision a better world? Can we
have hope? And can we have hope that strong enough and deep enough to call us to action?” If we
can then, just like the psalmist, we will discover that even though there are tears in the verses of
our song, with God’s help, there is always hope in the refrain. Amen.
© 2016 W. Benjamin Boswell