Psalm 62.5-12, Common English Bible (CEB)
5 Oh, I must find rest in God only,
because my hope comes from God!
6 Only God is my rock and my salvation—
my stronghold!—I will not be shaken.
7 My deliverance and glory depend on God.
God is my strong rock.
My refuge is in God.
8 All you people: Trust in God at all times!
Pour out your hearts before God!
God is our refuge! Selah
9 Human beings are nothing but a breath.
Human beings are nothing but lies.
They don’t even register on a scale;
taken all together they are lighter than a breath!
10 Don’t trust in violence;
don’t set false hopes in robbery.
When wealth bears fruit,
don’t set your heart on it.
11 God has spoken one thing—
make it two things—
that I myself have heard:
that strength belongs to God,
12 and faithful love comes from you, my Lord—
and that you will repay
everyone according to their deeds.
SERMON (PASTOR)
I was with a mom this week when an e-mail went out saying,
“Brooklyn Elementary was placed in Lockdown at approximately 11:22 this morning. Law enforcement have determined the building is safe and secure. Students and staff are safe. The building has returned to regular instructional schedule.”
The mom sighed, visibly bothered,
“This is one thing I hate about public-school (rather than homeschooling). I try to explain things to my third grader, but how do I explain this? I don’t want my child to have to go through these drills and false alarms. School shootings are unlikely but the psychological outcomes aren’t. Did you know, a few years ago Brooklyn had these emergency beeper things, like the elderly wear for falls, and the school had at least three false alarms, where the police came in - guns drawn, and all it was was someone carrying books that pressed against the beeper, or things like that.”
“It’s not new either,” I quipped, “my parents tell stories of hiding under their desk preparing for an nuclear attack, which, my dad sadistically jokes, weren’t going to be much help when the school, the desk, and the kid were exterminated. But didn’t kids also hide in the cold war in bunkers and stuff? I think it has been going on forever. I remember drills as a kid. The Fire Department coming and telling us Stop, Drop and Roll which I don’t think is a thing anymore. We also had a tornado once in second grade. Seven years old, they lined us up, sitting crosslegged, in the hallway faces to the wall. I remember the kid next to me was crying, and the teacher was telling us to, “stop crying,” which of course makes it worse. I turned to that little boy and asked, “Why are you crying?” and I remember him saying, “We are never going to see our parents again.” Then I started bawling, and the teacher was still telling us not to cry, which made it worse, because I didn’t want to break the rules. When it was all over and we went outside, there were just a couple trees bent in half. A couple trees, for all that, but I still remember it.”
My friend said, “that was bad classroom management in the hallway, the teacher should have just had you play Heads-Up-Seven-Up.” “That is the worst idea ever, I said, “Go put your head down, close your eyes, and be completely silent while the wind is ripping around you. That is bad classroom management, much less Heads-Up-Seven-Up, that game should never exist, it’s a popularity contest and a shunned contest; I was never picked my entire childhood.” but that’s another story. “Maybe it would have been better to turn up the music as loud as possible and have a dance party in the hallway while there was a tornado outside. It was concrete block building, if those things started to fall we were going to get hurt anyway, sitting against the wall, or dancing between it. I am sure there are multiple reasons why dance parties are bad classroom management, but it has to be a better response to fear and danger than sitting with our faces to the wall.”
These kind of things tend to be my response to fear. I had a similarly flippant response at Synod, a Regional Presbyterian Meeting, when the denomination put a bunch of pastors and church elders through ALICE, Active Shooter Response Training. The trainer was telling pastors and congregants to throw hymnals and Bible’s at active shooters, and I quipped that statistically, training pastors on how to help families take keys away from older congregants who had lost their vision would save more lives. We were more likely to die on the way to church! I felt like the bulked up, former officer, who bragged about his gun arsenal, was attempting to make the room fearful, and I watched the anxiety of pastors escalate as their job was changed from pastor to protector.
Similarly after the church shooting in Texas, a congregant ask how I was doing, and I wasn’t sure why, “oh, because this shooting happened at a church.” I hadn’t been worried about that. What I had thought of was how all those Texans would want to bring their guns to church, and how having handguns in the sanctuary would vastly chasten my preaching. It would be like professors without tenure, pastors who had to weigh out prophesy against a impulsive angry bullet. I imagined it like the statistic that guns in a household were more likely to be used for domestic violence than against an intruder. In response to that shooting, the Baker Police Department sent a nice letter that they were offering training the next day for pastors on how to prepare and respond to such a threat. But I had already had training, not the ALICE one, the one called seminary. I knew that Bibles were not weapons, that they worked better if you read them rather than threw them, that hymnals worked better for singing, and that in the face of fear, we do not face the wall, but we as Christians dance.
That is what this scripture is about,
Oh, I must find rest in God only,
because my hope comes from God!
6 Only God is my rock and my salvation—
my stronghold!—I will not be shaken.
7 My deliverance and glory depend on God.
God is my strong rock.
My refuge is in God.
8 All you people: Trust in God at all times!
Pour out your hearts before God!
God is our refuge! Selah
This scripture isn’t saying that there are not horrible things of which to be afraid. It acknowledges there are horrible terrible realities, but it reminds us that which is greater.
We have something bigger than all the shootings, the drills, and the daily news. We have something stronger than even concrete block walls, or Cold War Bunkers, we have a God who is our rock, our stronghold. We have a Spirit who doesn’t sit cross-legged and cry. We have a Spirit who is dancing in the hallway. We have a Christ who was a different sort of king, not one of violence but of a salvific cross.
Here is an example, a few weeks ago, a prayer was lifted for the impending threat of nuclear war, and as there sometimes is during prayer requests, there was a collective feeling in the room of agreement, as if the prayer named what we worshipers were feeling. Our fear barometer was high, and what we did was collectively respond, “Lord Hear Our Prayer,” we lifted up and named that there was something greater, stronger, bigger than our fear. Then this week I read the news that North Korea is sending athletes to the Olympics. There may be a tornado of wild leaders out there, and the threat is real, but Spirit is dancing, and skiing, and skating, and celebrating a coming together of countries.
Here’s another example, after talking to this mom, and being handed this scripture I got to thinking about how do we weigh the reality of danger with the promise of our faith? So I called some of our principals. The year after Brooklyn’s false alarms, Gwen O’Neal said they were not going to do any drills; those kids had had enough. Now those same kids are at Nanette’s Lehman’s school and the particularly vulnerable ones she makes, “Special Agents,” and comes and whispers in their ears that they are going to have a drill. And that they are going to be just fine but she needs them to help lead by following the teachers directions. Molly Smith described the different ways the school responds to different threats, in order to keep school functioning and kids safe. Likewise, Phil Anderson, at Brooklyn, went to each classroom and asked every teacher which kids seemed particularly affected by the false alarm, it was over thirty, and he and his staff called every each and every one of those parents to follow through. Our principals are not going to let fear win. They aren’t saying that there are not things worth fearing, but they are showing that we respond to fear something greater, in this case the strength to care.
And I think we can learn something from them, and from this scripture about what we let win, what we let control us, what we herald. Letting God win might look like turning off the news which plays into our fears. It might look like reading a top ten list of what we need to know. It might look like spending as much time in quiet prayer as we do listening to talk radio. It might look like singing hymns. It might look like dancing in the hallway. It might look like being here in this space, with these people, once a week, to be reminded that it is more than us, we are merely breath, it is more than this life, it is more than our strength, our power, our violence, but there is a power far greater at work alive and dancing among us. Let us Rejoice.
