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Safehaven Worship Service
26 October 2003
The God We Trust - Proverbs 3:5
By Rev. Yap Kim Hao
Three weeks ago when I came here to preach the
"Caged Bird' sermon I stumbled into the "Frames: Within
and Without" exhibition. It did not dawn upon me then that
the symbolism of frames coincided with that of caged birds until
Keng Hock drew my attention to it after the service. I read the
brochure for the exhibition later.
The four walls of the square frames are similar
to that of the cages or iron bars of our encaged or imprisoned existence.
Dr Pwee Keng Hock made a perceptive social commentary in the brochure.
It is a brilliant piece of writing with great insight and I am intimidated
again with the literary flair. I want to share it with you. "We
live a life compartmentalized within a framework of rules and regulations,
of things we have been told we can or cannot do. There are boundaries
of politics, religion, superstition or custom that surround us.
Social taboos we dare not cross. Delicately stepping up in between
these invisible barriers can be very stressful, and we need all
our skills and wits about us to do so. Many limitations thus prevent
us from experiencing happy carefree and unfettered lives, and it
is the analogy of a framed or constrained life that Chng Seok Tin
elaborates on in her current exhibition."
In was also providential that on that Sunday the
metaphor of the caged bird in literary style parallels with that
of frames in artistic craft. Some of you may have captured that
but most of you like me must have missed it and I want to remind
you of it. What threw me off also was that I was attracted to the
human figures in their individual frames hanging from the ceiling
in suspended animation. Keng Hock visualized these hanging frames
with figures as "flit in an out of the geometrical restraints
that contain them, they fly, swing, sit, balance, and hang, representing
the milieu of life that exists in our society which is yet bound
by both traditional and contemporary values. It is a theme that
Seok Tin has recapitulated again and again, this portrayal of a
crowded metropolis and diverse individuals jostling for their own
personal space…Her figures adroitly navigate the frames she
has set around them, they venture without as much as they are kept
within and they are not imprisoned by despair. This is her knowing
nod to the resilience of humanity, that no matter what restraints
happen to bear down upon us, we will overcome."
How I wish the exhibition is still with us this
morning and what a greater impact it could have upon our lives.
It is a commentary of our human existence in visual art form just
as the caged bird is in poetic style.
I told some of you when I saw the exhibition that
there is a sermon in it for me. I was fixed on those hanging figures
in their frames and I was stuck with the image of flying trapeze
artistes. I remember how as a child I was intriqued and captivated
with those trapeze acts performed under the big top then. But I
also recall the life of an amazing individual and his enriching
experience with the flying trapeze - Henri Nouwen.
Allow me to introduce Nouwen to you whom some
must be acquainted with him already and read the numerous books
on spirituality that he has written. They are available also at
affordable prices from the Catholic bookstores. He was a Dutch Roman
Catholic priest who in 1986 abandoned a highly acclaimed academic
career as a professor in Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard to share the
last nine years of his life as pastor of L'Arche Daybreak community
in Toronto. He changed his academic robes to that of a humble care-giver
to the most severely mentally and physically handicapped whom he
literally carried, clothed, bathed, fed and loved. He himself was
a very much wounded person and he has given us the symbol of a Wounded
Healer binding the wounds of fellow sufferers. Those who suffered
are more equipped to heal the scars of victims. The title of one
of Nouwen's earliest and best-known books, "The Wounded Healer,"
became synonymous with Nouwen's name.
It was only in researching for this sermon that
I was able to come across Nouwen's own agony and anguish. The numerous
biographers kept him in his closet. This was his thorn in the flesh.
BBC producer Michael Ford met Nouwen while interviewing
him for a TV program and later wrote his biography. He succeeded
brilliantly in shedding light on Nouwen's life-long inner struggle,
particularly his angst regarding his homosexuality. Ford probed
Nouwen's emotional turmoil and described his consuming need for
affection, intimacy, and friendship. He had a network of friends
around the world and often called them in the middle of the night
to discuss his loneliness. He yearned for close intimacy, but felt
constrained by his vow of celibacy.
Nouwen frequently expressed his need to be physically
held. Once, after he gave a speech, an obviously distraught Nouwen
returned home and asked one of his friends to simply hold him. "He
just clung to me fiercely, and I hugged him tight in return,"
the friend recalled.
Ford said it was impossible to "understand
the complexity and anguish of the man" without considering
his homosexual orientation, something he was aware of from the time
he was a boy, but started to come to terms with only in his later
years.
At the well-known Menninger Foundation for psychiatric
treatment in the United States , he wrestled with his homosexual
leanings, which he regarded as a disability, a cross to bear. While
Nouwen was at Harvard, he was hard on gay students, saying to them
that homosexuality was an evil state of being.
In time, he became friends with many homosexuals
and was under increasing pressure to come out of the closet. Other
friends, however, advised him to keep his secret, saying he would
lose all credibility as an illustrious Catholic writer if people
knew he was gay.
Nouwen was troubled by the possibility that people
would reject him if they knew about his sexual orientation. "This
took an enormous emotional, spiritual and physical toll on his life
and may have contributed to his early death," Ford said. There
is no indication in the book that Nouwen was anything but celibate.
Other writers generally have avoided the question
of Nouwen's sexual orientation. To his credit, Ford gave us a fuller
picture of Nouwen and demonstrated the depth of Nouwen's anguish
about his sexuality in particular and issues of sexual intimacy
in general.
Before he died in 1996, Nouwen was becoming more
vocal in his support of gay men and women, saying they had a "unique
vocation in the Christian community." It is a blessing and
not a curse. Ford speculated that had Nouwen lived, his next major
book might have been a study of homosexuality.
Nouwen was fascinated with the flying trapeze
and developed a long friendship with the famous Flying Rodleighs,
trapeze artistes in a German Circus. One day Nouwen was speaking
with the leader of the troupe about flying. Their leader Rodleigh
said, "As a flyer, I must have complete trust in my catcher.
The public might think that I am the great star of the trapeze,
but the real star is Joe, my catcher. He has to be there for me
with split second precision and grab me out of the air as I come
to him in the long jump. . . The secret is that the flyer does nothing
and the catcher does everything. . . The worst thing the flyer can
do is to try to catch the catcher. . . .A flyer must fly and a catcher
must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that
his catcher will be there for him."
When Rodleigh said this with so much conviction,
the words of Jesus flashed through my mind: "Father into your
hands I commend my Spirit." Dying is trusting in the catcher.
To care for the dying is to say, "Don't be afraid. Remember
that you are the beloved child of God. He will be there when you
make your long jump. Don't try to grab him; he will grab you. Just
stretch out your arms and hands and trust, trust, trust."
This story of Nouwen and the Flying Trapeze which
he repeated often was etched in my mind. It is the message I bring
to you this morning. When we fly out of our cages and frames we
fly in the air moving from one place to another in our spiritual
journey and God is always there to catch us when we descend. The
wisdom of Proverbs 3:5 teaches us "Trust in the LORD with all
your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways
acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."
Whom do we trust is the all important question.
Who is this God we are called upon to trust? The trapeze artist
Rodleigh trusted Joe the catcher completely. The relationship was
established after years of practice and working together. He just
did not put his trust on any catcher that came along. He must know
the nature and character of his catcher.
When I visited Las Vegas a few years ago I watched
the show Cirque de Soleil - the present day circus that tours the
world and has appeared in Singapore recently. The performers are
like the trapeze artistes of old. They jump and float in space and
they swing and somersault and there are the catchers to catch at
the appropriate moment and in the designated space. Their acrobatic
skills are much to be admired and they relied and trusted upon one
another when they performed. I went to see them because I was not
able get tickets to see the famous Siegfried and Roy White Tiger
show. It was sold to full house or capacity crowd every night for
the past thirty years in Mirage Hotel where I was a guest. This
show hit the headlines a couple of weeks ago. Roy Horn the magician
along with Siegfried had trusted one of the tigers and worked in
the enclosed cage for the past seven years. The wild tiger whom
they thought they had domesticated became the wild animal that he
by nature was on that fateful evening and mauled Roy severely. He
is now fighting for his dear life. His complete trust that the tiger
will not turn wild and attack him was misplaced and he now suffers
for it.
Whom do we trust these days? There are those who
even find it hard to trust in God. A man was walking along a steep
cliff one day and got too close to the edge and fell. On the way
down, he grabbed a branch, which temporarily stopped his fall. He
looked down and to his horror saw that the canyon fell down for
more than a thousand feet. He couldn't hang onto the branch forever,
and there was no way for him to climb up the steep wall of the cliff.
So, he began yelling for help, hoping that someone passing by would
hear him and lower a rope.. HELP! HELP! Is anyone up there? HELP!
He yelled for hours, but no one heard him. He was about to give
up when he heard a voice:
VOICE: " Can you hear me?"
MAN: Yes, yes! I can hear you. I'm down here!
VOICE: "I can see you, "
MAN: Yes, but . . . Who are you! And where are you?
VOICE: "I am the Lord, I'm everywhere."
MAN: The Lord! You mean, GOD.
VOICE: "That's me."
MAN: GOD! PLEASE HELP ME.
VOICE: Now, here's what I want you to do. Listen carefully."
MAN: I'll do anything, Lord. Just tell me what to do.
VOICE: "Okay. Let go of the branch."
MAN: WHAT!
VOICE: "I said, let go of the branch. Just trust in me, let
go."
There was a silence. The man hung on and yelled
again, IS ANYONE ELSE UP THERE? We say that we want to know the
will of God, but when we find out what it is, we can't handle it.
It sounds too scary or too difficult. We decide to look elsewhere.
When God says, "Let go of the things that stand between you
and me, and trust me with your life," we are in doubt. But
if we let go, we find freedom and safety in God's hands.
When we hear the call to trust God we must have
a right understanding of the nature of God. Our concept and image
of God will determine the kind of trust and relationship we can
maintain. Unfortunately we continue to carry a very traditional
and conservative view of who this God is today.
Robert Fulghum has a bestseller which he entitled
"All I really need to know I learnedn in Kindergarten."
He admitted that his notion of God and the universe have always
been too small. In matters of faith and theology all that we learnt
in kindergarten and primary classes in Sunday School in those care-free
and innocent days is just not adequate for the facing of the present
complicated and challenging times. The image of a God who is like
Santa Claus for little children persists in our adult life in a
subtle manner. The children pray to God to grant them their wishes.
They send them their wish list. We no longer believe in Santa Claus.
Yet how often in our prayer life now we petition God to grant us
our wishes and realize our hopes. In doing so, God still comes across
as Santa Claus. Or we continue to image God as the Superman who
will speed to our aid when we send him an SOS and deliver us from
all our miseries and sufferings in life. Then we wonder why the
miracle does not take place in the way we prayed for. It has been
said: "Prayer does not change God. Prayer changes the one who
prays." Or "I pray not to change God. I pray that God
might change me."
We try to domesticate God and make God respond
to us in the way we wish and in the time we want. God is no vending
machine that we can put in a coin, choose what we want and push
a key and wait for it to be delivered.
How do we think about God - the concepts and images
of God. Our concepts of God shape how we imagine God and God's relationship
to the universe. Our images of God shape how we see God's nature
in relationship to us. How we see God is basic and fundament in
our Christian faith. Our concepts of God can make God seem real
or unreal, remote or near. Our images of God shape our sense of
the character of God and of what taking God seriously is about,
indeed what the Christian life is about.
Let me introduce you to one of my favourite theologians
who has written a number of religious bestsellers - Marcus Borg.
The titles of some of his books are captivating like The God we
Never Knew, Meeting Jesus for the First Time, and more recently
Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. These books are even
in the National Library. Currently he is the distinguished professor
of Religion and Culture in Oregon State University and a recognized
New Testament scholar much in popular demand for public lectures.
Some time ago I wrote a review of his book "The
God We Never Knew." In his own spiritual journey the most important
issue for him is the question of God. The older understanding of
Christianity is literalistic, doctrinal, moralistic, exclusivistic,
and after-life oriented. He has moved from "the monarchical
model of God to the model of God of love."
God according to Borg is traditionally seen as
the Lawgiver. This is the image that he grew up with and the one
he suspects that many of us grew up with too. We can admit that
this is the most common or visible image of God within the Christian
church today. As Lawgiver, God had given us the Ten Commandments
and other laws about how to live. We see the picture of the bearded
Moses with the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments coming down
Mount Sinai. The Bible has become for us the Rule Book which we
must rigidly follow.
God is also seen also as the Judge. There will
be a judgment. Because we are evil and not good at keeping God's
laws, God provided us with the way to salvation and forgiveness
of our sins. In Old Testament times this was done through temple
sacrifice as a way of placating God. In New Testament times, God
sent Jesus to be the sacrifice to die for our sins and save us.
We just simply affirm we believe in Christ without following Christ
in a life of discipleship so as to avoid judgment. Such images place
God a great distance from us and above us presiding over what we
do on earth.
Where is this God? God is often conceptualized
as a God "out-there" beyond the heavens and the earth,
separated from the universe who from time to time intervenes in
the natural order. Such a God is rather remote and is not seen to
intervene all the time resulting in evil and suffering on earth.
It is also believed by many faithful that God occasionally intervenes
if we pray hard enough, long enough and have faith enough in the
events in our life in this world. Such miraculous interventions
are claimed to occur to those who believe in such a God.
Borg prefers the term panentheism which literally
means everything is within God. It is contrasted with pantheism
where everything is God. Panentheism looks at "God not as a
being separate from the universe but see the universe and everything
that is as being in God. God is the encompassing spirit in which
everything that is, is. And that means that God is all around us
and not somewhere else." God is also transcendent beyond all
things and it means that "God is right here, as well as more
than right here." Quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is "the
beyond in our midst."
The way Borg sees God as a Spirit not as a supernatural
being out there, but as a presence and reality which is right here
and all around us. When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the
well as recorded in John 4:24 he said: "God is a Spirit, and
those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
This concept is therefore faithful to the Biblical tradition and
indeed the theological tradition of the Church. Let me share with
you also part of my favourite Psalm 139, Verses 7-12
"Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither
shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend to heaven, thou art
there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! If I take the
wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there thy hand shall lead me. If I say, 'Let only the darkness
cover me, and the light about me be night,' even the darkness is
not dark to thee, the night is as bright as day; for darkness is
as light with thee."
What is the name of this God? Just click back
to the conversation that Moses had with God as recorded in Exodus
3:13-15. Then Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of
Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to
you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?"
God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say
this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" God
also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'The
Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you': this is my name for ever,
and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generation."
God is the great I AM. God is not I WAS. God is
not I WILL BE. God is always I AM. God is in the present tense.
God is always present with us.
The Christian life is not so much about believing
- prescribed set of doctrines but about living - a Christ-like life.
Jesus taught us as in his reply to the lawyer who asked the question:
"What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus reply in Luke
10:27 "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all
your mind ; and your neighbour as yourself." This is the Great
Christian commandment. This is the Christian life.
Life is about building and sustaining a relationship
with the one in whom we live and move and have our being, with the
God who is right here within us and around us. We witness to that
human-divine relationship through our words and actions, marked
by love and compassion. We do not lose heart or abandon hope, because
we know who we are, whose we are and who our God the Great I AM
is. This is the God we trust.
O God in Christ,
when all is darkness
and we feel our weakness and helplessness,
give us the sense of Your presence,
Your love, and Your strength.
Help us to have perfect trust
in Your protecting love
and strengthening power,
so that nothing may frighten or worry us,
for, living close to You,
we shall see Your hand,
Your purpose, Your will through all things.
(By St. Ignatius of Loyola, 1491-1556)
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