Lament

Psalm 130

March 2, 2008

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

For a long time I have been avoiding the books written by folk often dubbed as the “New Atheists,” people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, but on my brief vacation days in February, I picked up the Hitchens book at the library and started to read. I expected to simply dismiss it quickly and take it back, half read, but I have found myself unexpectedly both fascinated and humbled. In the end, my response has been as much lament and penitence as it has been ridicule for his exaggerations, mischaracterizations and half-truths, of which there are many. On this day, though, when we have read Psalm 130, it’s the lament I want to invite you to take up.

Hitchens book, in case you have not heard about it, is called God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. His arguments against the existence of God do not interest me, but his characterizations of the church as representative of those who claim belief in God struck me because there is too much truth to what he says. Even though some of the things he recounts are very old history indeed, like the Crusades, these deplorable acts committed in the name of Christ continue to haunt and harm in the relationships between Christians and Muslims today in the Middle East and around the world.

As I said in my introduction to the scripture, although Psalm 130 begins as a personal prayer of penitence and lament, it broadens into a call for a whole people to hope in God’s forgiveness for all their sins. Today I invite us into looking at our people, not Americans, but Christians, and entering into the kind of truth-telling that must be done from time to time, not by those hostile to us only, but by us to us. We don’t tell this truth in order to say, as Hitchens does, that the followers of God are proof that God either does not exist or is in every way evil. Rather we tell this truth to energize ourselves to continually strive to act and speak in the world as bearers of love and life in God’s name, as God’s ambassadors. We tell the truth to remind ourselves that too often people outside the church see and hear only these things and not the good because we are too shy, too silent, too busy, too afraid to boldly speak and act in love in the name of God to counter those who so quickly act in hate, in fear, in anger also in the name of God. Lament publicly acknowledges that all is not right in the world, or in the church, and once we acknowledge that and stop deceiving ourselves, then we can work to make it right.

And although we ourselves may not have participated in or supported or even been alive when many of these things happened, we are still attached to them because they were done by our people, those who claimed the name Christians, and that is particularly true in parts of the world that have a much longer collective memory than we do in the United States. And so, as I name these things for which we lament, I invite you to join me in responding with the ancient Latin penitential response which acknowledges past sin, “mea culpa,” which means “I take responsibility,” and the Greek prayer that seeks God’s mercy: “Kyrie Eleison,” “Lord, have mercy.”

We remember those who, in the name of Christ, slaughtered thousands of Muslims and Jews who lived in the land of Palestine during the Crusades. We remember forced conversions of Jews during the Inquisition, and the torture and killings of those who refused to be baptized.

Mea culpa; Kyrie eleison.

We remember Christians who imprisoned, tortured and killed each other over theological differences during the Reformation in Europe. We remember those who, in the name of Christ, burned women accused of being witches across two continents, including our Congregational ancestors in Connecticut.

Mea culpa; Kyrie eleison.

We remember those who, in the name of Christ, sought to stop scientific and medical discoveries and cast great minds out of the church. We remember those who, in the name of Christ, were silent when some of those discoveries were used for destructive purposes.

Mea culpa; Kyrie eleison.

We remember Christians who used the Bible to justify the practice of slavery and the torture of thousands of men, women and children. We acknowledge that there are still Christians who use the Bible to justify racism, sexism and homophobia.

Mea culpa; Kyrie eleison.

We remember those who, in the name of Christ and within our lifetimes, engaged in oppression and warfare against other human beings, created in God’s image, in Germany, Ireland, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, and South Africa.

Mea culpa; Kyrie eleison.

We remember that too often the church has been and continues to be silent when Christ’s name has been used to justify hatred, violence, exclusion, ignorance and injustice. We acknowledge that too often we have allowed the strong voices which narrowly define Christianity to represent all of us to those outside the church and that we have done too little to raise up other ways of being Christian.

Mea culpa; Kyrie eleison.

If you, O God, should keep a tally of all the wrongs done in your name, we would be wholly lost. But you are greater than all our misrepresentations of you, and your very nature is that of forgiveness and steadfast love.

Kyrie eleison.

It is not too late for Christian to mean something else, something that cannot cancel out all that has been, but can lift up what has been good throughout the generations and make the voices of love stronger than those who continue to define our faith as one of coercive, hurtful power. Christopher Hitchens is by far not alone in what he thinks of the church. There are many, many people who are not here this morning because they have been hurt by a church or because they think we are irrelevant at best and poisonous at worst. We cannot fix this all by ourselves here at Redeemer.

But, we believe in a God who calls us to hope. Our hope is rooted in God, not in what is possible for human beings to accomplish, not what is logical or seems solvable by our power. The same God who has the will and the power to forgive also has the will and the power to transform, to bring life where there seems only death and decay. Right now some people might say the church is and always has been like Lazarus in the tomb; in Martha’s words, “there is a stench.” There has been for a long time in too many places.

But Jesus breathes, and a fresh wind moves over what seems decaying, and there is life. O Christians, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there is steadfast love and great power to make all things new. Amen.