The alarm goes off; you open your eyes. It is the morning of October 6, 2013. This is the day the Lord has made – let us rejoice and be glad in it. You swing your legs over the side of the bed, stretch and then pick up your basket – your big, round, woven basket that will hold both the joys and the stresses of the day to come. The weather is bright and pleasant: the basket holds a few flowers. But your back is stiff and your doctor’s appointment tomorrow weighs on your mind: so a few stones settle into the bottom of your basket and make it harder to carry. You have a home, food in the fridge, someone to laugh with, which makes the basket feel light enough to be forgotten for a while. But you read bad news in the paper, you worry about how to pay an unexpected bill, and stones land in your basket making it hard to carry from room to room. But carry it you must – carrying our baskets is part of life for all of us. Sometimes we navigate the day and carry our baskets without too much difficulty. Sometimes, though, things happen that drop so heavily into our baskets that we fall to the floor; we drop to our knees and don’t know how we’ll ever stand up again. A relationship ends. A job ends. Our health leaves us. A child is killed. As it says in Lamentations, in that moment we groan and grieve, for our lot is bitter. Our eyes flow with tears and our very souls are bowed down within us.
We each have stress in our lives – things that make us anxious, that cause us to lose sleep, that make our daily baskets heavier. Take a moment to name to yourself what those are for you… Now bigger than stress are “stressors.” These are things that knock you to your knees; they’re the boulder in the basket that causes peaceful people to become violent or contented people to despair and give up all hope. Stressors happen to individuals and entire communities. Some people are at home right now because something has happened that makes it impossible for them to get out of bed or find the energy to face others. Some nations right now are tottering on collapse because some stressor has pushed their homeland into violence, hatred, and civil war. None of us is immune to having this happen. The last time I checked, our government was still shut down and tens of thousands of soldiers were stationed overseas in war zones and hundreds of thousands of soldiers have returned home permanently wounded in body and spirit. Stressors happen.
Do you remember last summer a year ago when the entire Midwest suffered under a terrible drought? Remember the pictures of shriveled corn fields and huge cracks in the soil between parched stalks of wheat and soybeans? How farmers had to sell off cattle herds because they had no grassland to feed them and the cost for grains hit record highs? Why are those stories now a distant memory? Well, the rains were better this year; America has resources available to help navigate agricultural crises, and as a nation, we only spend about 7% of our income on food, so a slight rise in food costs doesn’t break our piggybanks.
Now the 2012 drought may seem like old news, given that it is World Communion 2013 – and churches are being burnt in Egypt, mass killing occurred in Kenya, civil war is raging in Syria and plenty of stressors are happening right now. But in truth, old news of droughts is precisely the cause of some of today’s global stressors. Most of the Middle East endured a terrible drought for five years – from 2006 through 2011. In Egypt, 1/3 of people’s daily calories come from wheat and they spend about 38% of their income to buy their food. But from June 2010 to February 2011, because of the region’s droughts, wheat prices doubled. People couldn’t feed their families; the government was of no help; so one month later, March 2011, came Tahrir Square protests and the end of Hosni Mubarak’s reign of power. Think about it.
Or consider Syria. The worst drought in millennia happened during that same period. Climate change plus mismanagement and corruption affected farmers in over 60% of that nation. Most had total crop failure. Herders lost 85% of their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people moved from rural areas into crowded urban areas, cities already stressed by Iraqi refugees and Palestinian refugees. (Remember those two countries?) Protests against dictators don’t just occur by chance or whimsy. It’s not one group of leaders pushing against a different group of leaders. No, it starts on the streets when fathers can’t find work and mothers can’t feed children. It starts when stressors hit entire communities, landing heavily in people’s baskets, so they fall to their knees and weep until someone decides it is time to pick up stones to throw or AK-47s to fire.
Our global memory is too short. Our tendency is to simplify conflict into opposing sides who disagree over ideology: Al Qaeda extremists vs. moderate Islamists vs. Assad’s army in Syria; Muslim Brotherhood vs. Christians and moderates in Egypt – when in reality all these conflicts involve neighbors who had been living together for generations but now are pushed to warfare and violence because of stressors in their midst. Let me give an example of this complexity, for which I am indebted to the first-hand reporting of church members currently serving our denomination in Cairo.
Six weeks ago, on August 14, the day that Egyptian leaders moved violently against the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, extremists in rural areas began attacks upon multiple targets, especially in Christian communities, burning buildings including five Presbyterian churches. The church in Beni Mazar was founded in 1905. Their main building was 75 years old, and next to it was a half-completed community service building and clinic where over 600 families a year received help. Pastor Jack lived above the church. Around 3:00 pm, as news of violence in Cairo reached this village, a large mob gathered outside the church. They broke into the sanctuary, the community center, bookstore and canteen, stole anything of value and destroyed anything too big to carry. They climbed the gate to destroy the cross on top of the church’s entrance and then set everything on fire. It burned for two days.
During the attack, the elders repeatedly preached a message of peace to the young people of the congregation, telling them not to go out and try to defend the property. However, some Muslim neighbors did go out and tried to stop the destruction, some of whom lost their lives in the process. When our mission co-worker toured the church one month later, congregation members repeatedly told her that none of their community work or ministry would stop because of the attack. They even said that if someone they knew had been involved in the attack came to their church for help, they would not turn the person away; a remarkable declaration of forgiveness and Christian charity. Another elder said that his favorite service in over 36 years as a member came two weeks after the fire, when the congregation gathered in a smoky, unfinished part of the social service building and adults, youth and children all spoke, sharing a message of hope and forgiveness. They asked us to pray for them that their church may take on an even more prophetic role in the country, working for the welfare of all people and standing up to evil around them.
In Lamentations, when the destruction of Jerusalem knocked the people of God to their knees, there came a powerful message of faith. Vs. 21: But this I call to mind, (I remember), and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The stressors of life never have the final word. When things knock us to our knees, we land on a foundation that is ultimately trustworthy and will not crumble beneath us. It is a foundation of God’s own making, the bedrock of Christ’s love and mercy and grace. Scripture says that we are to “call this to mind” and thus will have hope. We gather at table where Christ is the host, who looks at us and people the world over and says “Do this in remembrance of me.” We remember how the stressor that fell into Christ’s basket was a huge wooden cross. It knocked him to his knees and was so heavy that instead of trying to lift it up himself, Christ allowed himself to be lifted up on the cross. And in being raised up for us, in his example, his sacrifice, his death, all our stressors have been overcome as well. For on the third day, Christ arose from the dead – his basket was now empty – his victory won for us and all humanity, and therefore we have hope. Steadfast, determined, out of the smoldering ruins, never to be dissuaded, hope. Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.
Our call as people of faith is to remember deeply. To open our eyes each morning and honestly remember “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” To know that we will carry our baskets of joys and troubles each day – just as all carry their baskets, here and around the world. To know that some things will knock us to our knees – addictions, tragedies, disease, drought, violence, war – and we will discover others down on their knees right beside us. In those moments we will be tempted by despair, tempted to give up, tempted to demonize and blame someone else for the stones in our baskets. But instead, call this to mind and have hope: Christ is alive! God’s steadfast love is eternal! They are new every morning. Take strength from this table’s meal today and know, yes, great is the Lord’s faithfulness.
AMEN
Copyright © 2013 to the author of this sermon. All rights reserved.