The Community Church of Sebastopol
Rev. Tara Barber
January 20, 2002
Isaiah 49:1-7
You’ve chosen who? Me? Us? To be a light to the world? I don’t think so. I think you’ve got the wrong gal. Maybe this scripture was meant to be read by somebody else. Maybe it was written for a particular people in a particular time. In fact, that’s what some biblical scholars had to say. This reference book claimed that it was only the Israelites who were called into this particular ministry of prophecy and hope. And on days like today, I am hopeful that those scholars are right. Let someone else do the work of transformation. Let someone else do the restoration project. I’m tired and I have other things to do. You know, regular things. Like driving the van full of junior highers to their retreat. And laundry, grocery shopping. Finishing off my to do list, writing my belated Christmas thank you cards. You know, regular things. Where on earth am I going to find time to join Isaiah on this mission. I already have two mission trips scheduled for this year!
So, there I was. Sitting on my couch, minding my own business, reading for pleasure – a great treat since I’ve been out of school. I found this amazing book by Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer, and I am loving her incredible descriptions of trees and bugs. Sentences so great I have to read them twice. This is the life. A good book, a cup of good coffee and my good old comfy couch. In her book, she beautifully illustrates the interconnectedness of life, in part, by describing how the predators keep the bugs in check. An animal who eats a bird who eats thousands of bugs is a godsend to all of us. She even makes a case for snakes, and until one particular snake eats some fledglings, I can admire the snake’s beauty. Did you know that every kind of mussel must spend part of its life as a parasite on the gills of a different kind of minnow and that if the right minnow isn’t there at the right time – no mussel!
After reading Prodigal Summer, I have renewed belief in the awesome wonder of diversity. Great story, great characters – even the humans are likeable. And then I come to the end. (Don’t worry, I am not giving anything away) In the end she writes, “Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.” All along, she’s writing about how the animals are just doing what they do. The moths are laying eggs, the coyotes are playing, the trees are shedding their pollen. They’re just doing what they’re called to do. Without thought or rebellion, without psychology and laws, they’re doing what they need to do to survive. And God is in the midst of all of it.
Here she’s made a case for evolution, for adaptation to environment, and described how pesticides actually increase bug populations, and I am eating it up, fascinated by her prose. There is such hope in her observations. After I close the book, though, it hits me. How am I evolving? How am I contributing to this amazing ecosystem? What was I born to do? What choices am I making that are creating new worlds? This is bigger than deciding on paper or plastic at the grocery store – though that’s part of what I choose. What worlds can I create by the choices I make? I confess that the thought was a bit overwhelming. I had to sleep on it. When I woke up, however, the questions still plagued me. Maybe Isaiah does have something after all. Maybe I was formed in the womb, with my sharp mouth, to be a light. And if that is true, then, my friends, I am not alone.
These past weeks and months, I’ve been working hard at finding God in the midst of all the violence in our world. I even bought a book by Renita Weems, an African American minister, who writes about feeling God’s absence. She writes, “On my desk near my computer is a photograph of a young black girl dressed in fifties clothes on her way to school that I cut out from the newspaper years ago… The young black girl in the photograph is Elizabeth Eckford, and the photograph was taken on her way to Central High School. Elizabeth Eckford would be remembered in history as one of the first black students to integrate Central High. The photograph of her and the angry, jeering white faces in the background would become a symbol of racial hatred in America. In fact, it’s not the face of Elizabeth Eckford that has captured my imagination all these years. Instead, it’s the twisted expression of hate and contempt on the faces of the whites looking on that has made me frame this photograph… How many times have I looked at the now infamous photo in American history and wondered what was going on in the minds of men and women on a beautiful September morning more than forty years ago? For years I held this and other snapshots like it from my own past against God. I couldn’t understand what felt to me like God’s silence… Every time I look at the picture on my desk of Elizabeth Eckford I become sad… Not only do sticks and stones break bones, but hateful words have the potential to disfigure a person deep within. For years, I have wondered about the other faces in the photograph: Where are these angry white people now? Do these people still hate black people as they did back in 1957? Although I’m a minister, I admit that I’ve never held out much hope in their change over the years…
Imagine my surprise in September 1997 when I received in the mail from people who knew my interest in the story a news clipping… of a woman who in 1957 had been an angry 15 year old white teenage girl named Hazel Bryan. Now…a mother and grandmother, she was in search of a way to ask forgiveness and set out looking for (Elizabeth Eckford) whom forty years earlier she had tormented when they were girls of fifteen. Hazel Bryan was haunted by and hostage to a picture taken of her with her teeth bared and her face twisted with hate. After years of soul searching and months of anguishing over where to begin, Hazel Bryan Massery found Elizabeth Eckford. The new photograph is of the two of them standing together in an embrace on the steps of Central High School in September 1997, forty years after first encountering each other over a racial divide. Forty years later, both are different women, wounded by the memories but changed women nonetheless… Hazel Bryan Massery… can no longer recall what she was afraid of (and) wants to offer history a picture of a changed self… It took Hazel Bryan Massery forty years to change. Many of us won’t and don’t have the luxury of forty years to wait. Every day something comes along that offers us the chance to change, begin anew, turn around, stop, and start over. A repugnant picture of an old self. The words of a child. The story of a victim. The words to a song. A chance encounter with a stranger. The voice of God.”
-Renita Weems Listening For God
We are called to growth and change and transformation. Not simply for ourselves, but for the good of creation.
Martin Luther King Jar has been with me this week when we remember his birth, and his powerful words from the last sermon, sadly and coincidentally, are about what he wants to have said at his funeral. He says, “… if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell him not to talk too long. Tell him not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize. That isn’t important. Tell him not to mention that I have three hundred or four hundred other awards. That’s not important. I’d like someone to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to be able to say that I did try in my life to clothe the naked. I want you to say that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.”
That’s what we’re called to do. To figure out what is truly important and to do it even at the same time as the laundry and the lists. Isaiah complained that his work was in vain, that he spend his strength for nothing and vanity. Some days I can relate. Other days, however, it seems that our time has just begun, and there is so much to be done.
Listen to me, O coastlands, and hearken, you peoples from afar. The Lord has called you from the womb. You are my servant, in whom I will be glorified. I, the Lord, will be your strength. I have given you as a light to the nations, that my salvation – my healing presence may reach to all the ends of the earth. The Lord who is faithful has chosen you.
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