What we're here for

 

Psalm 16
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
June 29, 2025

A deejay wearing a black long-sleeved shirt and a gold statement ring, with warm medium brown skinned hands, works a soundboard and turntable.  

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a few people ask me how they can handle their anger, how can they cope with their fear given everything that is happening in our country and around the world. I thought it would be good if we all spent some time together thinking about that, especially considering that the overall picture doesn’t look like it’s going to improve anytime soon.



Going back to the beginning of the pandemic, I heard people say, and still do now, that this is not a sprint but a marathon. Meaning that it’s important to not wear ourselves out, but instead we need to build community, take care of each other, make time for rest, do things that give us joy, so that we can be resilient in this struggle to get all of us free.



But I think it’s even more than a marathon. It’s an evolution, but we get to choose how we will evolve. Will we hold onto our humanity, our compassion, and keep growing or not? If we choose to hold onto our humanity, which is a spiritual practice itself, then that means everyone, everyone, everyone is human. We don’t get to pick and choose who is human and who is not. Because once we’ve done that, we have abandoned our own humanity and we can’t expect anyone to listen to us defend ourselves.



Holding onto our humanity can be hard some days, especially if we are consistently treated as less than worthy of dignity, care, and respect, when our suffering is unavoidable. Even those who have been referred to as ‘deplorables’, it is precisely their racism, their misogyny, ableism, homophobia and transphobia that deprives them of their humanity, and they deserve our pity rather than our hatred or derision. Because we harbor some of that same prejudice.



All of this can add up to a sense of nihilism, that life is meaningless and that what we do or don’t do doesn’t matter. And so, it does matter what we think about, the thoughts we give ourselves over to, the emotions that rise within us. Our fears, our anger are reasonable but they are not a place to live.



In 1970 George Harrison, who was deeply influenced by his time at the Radha-Krishna Temple, wrote and recorded a song entitled "Beware of Darkness” on his album "All Things Must Pass”. In the second verse he warns,

“Watch out now
Take care, beware of the thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your head
The hopelessness around you
In the dead of night
Beware of sadness”

“It can hit you
It can hurt you
Make you sore and what is more
That is not what we are here for”



Whenever we feel like we’re in trouble, the psalms are a good place to go for anything having to do with being human. They contain all the dimensions of the human experience: fear and courage, lack and comfort, grief and joy, anger and gratitude, pleading with God and praising God.



Perhaps it’s because many of the psalms were written by a deeply flawed yet faithful human being. We know that David was no saint. Though he was a hero as a king, he could be a horrible husband and father and regarded some people as though they were prizes to be taken or obstacles to be eliminated. But he also knew when he heard the voice of God and to pay attention to it. No matter what was going on in his life, David was talking to God about it and writing songs about it. David recognized there was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do that would separate him from God and God’s love. It was as though it was written in his DNA.



On any given day, let alone when we are stretched beyond our limits, it can be difficult to remember that we are every person we have ever met, every interaction, every relationship, every experience, everything that has happened to us since we were born, the good and the horrible, and that from any of those points or all of them, we can decide who we are going to be and what we are going to do. We are also more than everything we have lived through and thank goodness. As Walt Whitman wrote, “I am large. I contain multitudes.”



Like the Church, we are not solely our past or what we have always done. We can be what we do next. David sings in his psalm, “My choice is you, O God, first and only. And now I find I’m your choice! …I’m happy from the inside out, and from the outside in, I’m firmly formed. You canceled my ticket to hell—that’s not my destination!” That is not what we are here for.



Bishop Marian Edgar Budde writes, “The courage to be brave when it matters most requires a lifetime of small decisions that set us on a path of self-awareness, attentiveness, and willingness to risk failure for what we believe is right. …This is when we…trust that most of life is lived in smaller acts of faithfulness.” Some of these decisions call for action, others need our acceptance. All of it requires our perseverance.



We have to feed our perseverance. Not quite like working out a muscle, it’s more like finding our balance. Gay writer and activist Dan Savage wrote, “During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night.” And it was the dance that kept them going because it was the dance they were fighting for.



Joy is not only at the heart of revolution and resistance, it is the very stuff of life. It is what makes life worth living even when we have to scrounge for it, every little bit of it. David danced before the Lord with all his might. Ecclesiastes reminds us that even though all is vanity, there is a time to mourn and there is a time to dance. Farmer and poet Wendell Berry, a self-avowed curmudgeon, gave us the wisdom “Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.” My brother, who for a long time had every right to be angry and sullen, lived by these words: “Be the Love and the Light that you are.”



Take a moment to think of those people who have been love and light to you and for you, who have been like the hand of God reaching out to you to put you on the life path. Remember too that you are also love and light to others. Writing professor Auburn Sandstrom told a true story on The Moth Radio Hour about when she had finally hit bottom as an addict and at 2 in the morning called the phone number of a Christian counselor that her mother had given her. The person who answered instantly snapped to attention and listened intently and offered comfort as she poured out her fear and anxiety while she suffered the agonizing pain of withdrawal. 

The man stayed on the phone with her throughout the night until it was dawn, by which point she felt more calm. She thanked the man and asked him how long he had been a Christian counselor. He paused and asked her to promise to not hang up. She promised. He then confessed that she had the wrong number, that he wasn’t a therapist but that he had really enjoyed talking with her.



She ended her story with these words, “In the deepest, blackest night of despair, if you can get just one pinhole of light … all of grace rushes in.” David also wrote, “Sing a new song.” You and I are that new song for each other. And that, my friends, is what we are here for.

Benediction


Go forth into the world in peace.
Be of good courage.
Hold fast to that which is good
and render to no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the faint-hearted;
support the weak; help the afflicted.
Honor all people.
Love and serve God,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The grace of our Savior Jesus Christ be with us all. Amen.