UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST in
Third Sunday After Epiphany -
Anne G. Cohen
Psalm 62:5-12
Mark 1:14-20
For Our Reflection:
Trees only say what is worth saying. And that which is worth saying is
worth taking a long time to say.
- The Tree Shepherd, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to
God.
- Psalm 62:11 NRSV
Speak Once, Hear Twice
Blindness. People who suffer from blindness rely on the spoken word and
the one who speaks.
People who live with blindness rely on their hearing and their own
ability to discern.
And those who have lost both sight and hearing rely on insight,
imagination, touch, smell and a dwindling memory.
But who, in their right mind, would rely on God?
Blindness. There is the blindness of too much
light.
There is the blindness of no light at all.
There is the blindness of familiarity and the blindness of anxiety about
the unknown or the strange.
Blindness shuts not only our eyes but our ears and our understanding,
our hearts and our hopes.
Blindness is a language that no other language can contain, only -
perhaps - intersect.
It is a language in which God is fluent - and we are resentful
practitioners - linguistic beginners, losing ground the moment we begin
to speak our native tongue, our second language, never fluent in the
first.
Who, in their right mind, would trust a God fluent in blindness?
Blindness. There is no other word to describe
the context, the
environment in which we live and move and have our being.
We come not at the beginning or end of time, but in our own time.
There are no road maps or owners' manuals or absolutes - no accurate
documentaries of human history - only the experiences of others and the
blind luck of DNA to feel the outlines of our shape, the textures of the
journey, the probabilities of our PURPOSE for BEING.
Page Two
Because of the sequential nature of biology in time and space, we cannot
see where we are going; we can only see a shadow of the outcomes of a
seemingly complex mortality.
Because of the gift of FREE WILL, God cannot see where we are going, a
consequence of the gift, an experiment in NATURE -
human and divine -
the blind LEADING the blind yet believing that one or the other is
FOLLOWING blindly along.
Who, in their right mind, would trust such a God?
Blindness: A Novel by Jose Saramago c. 1995
...all the images in the church had their eyes covered, statues with a
white cloth tied around the head, paintings with a thick brush stroke of
white paint... that man nailed to the cross [had] a white bandage
covering his eyes... a woman with a lit lamp...she had her eyes
covered... a man with a lion...both had their eyes covered... a man with
two ravens...all three had their eyes covered...
The [ophthalmologist's] wife said to her husband... all of the images in
this church have their eyes covered... perhaps it was the work of
someone whose faith was badly shaken when he realised
that he would be
blind like the others, maybe it was even the local priest, perhaps he
thought that when the blind people could no longer see the images, the
images should not be able to see the blind either... images see with the
eyes of those who see them, only...now blindness is the lot of
everyone.
[I] can still see [she said, but] I'll see less and less all the time,
even though I may not lose my eyesight I shall become more and more
blind because I shall have no one to see me...
I imagine...that priest must have committed the worst sacrilege of all
times and all religions, coming here to declare that, ultimately, God
does not deserve to
see.
(pp.284-85)
Blindness. As my own limited vision deteriorates with time and eager
misuse, my greatest fear about going blind is the loss of words - the
disappearing page filled with familiar shapes and mysteriously shifting
meanings - the evaporating adjectives describing what I cannot see -
describing the beauty that will not not again take me
by surprise -
describing the feelings that are no longer necessary.
I fear that language will dwindle like memory and leave me speechless.
For me, grace and love are bound up in language.
Who, in their right mind, would rest in a God beyond language?
Page Three
Blindness: A Novel by Jose Saramago c. 1995
She was more beautiful once, that's what happens to
all of us, we were
all more beautiful once.
You were never more beautiful, said the wife of the first blind man.
Words are like that, they deceive, they pile up, it seems they do not
know where to go, and suddenly, because of two or three or four that
suddenly come out, simple in themselves, a personal pronoun, an adverb,
a verb, an adjective, we have the excitement of seeing them coming
irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting
the composure of our feelings, sometimes the nerves that cannot bear it
any longer, they have put up with a great deal, they put up with
everything, it was as if they were wearing armour, we
might say.
The doctor's wife has nerves of steel, and yet the doctor's wife is
reduced to tears because of a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an
adjective, mere grammatical categories, mere labels just like the two
women, the others, indefinite pronouns, they too are crying, the embrace
the woman of the whole sentence, three graces beneath the falling
rain.
(p.252)
Blindness. As blind as I am now - physically, metaphysically - I am
certain that true blindness is accompanied by a thickening silence.
And it is really that silence that I fear.
And I fear that it is in the silence that God will speak most clearly,
without words or images, dissolving the need for hope and the creative
tension of ignorance and mystery - and I will have clarity about my
purpose for being - bringing to a close the life I have known until now.
I exist to struggle, this is my calling.
To rest in full knowledge would be a death I could not embrace
gracefully.
Besides, who, in their right mind, would find refuge in a silent God?
For God alone my soul waits in silence,
for my hope is from God.
God alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my deliverance and my honor;
my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.
Trust in God at all times, O people
Pour out your heart before God;
God is a refuge for us...
Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this:
that power belongs to God.
(Psalm 62:5-8, 11 NRSV)
Page Four
Blindness. In the wind swept wilderness of blindness comes the CALLING
that is only the silence of still water in an undisclosed location.
How do fishermen by trade learn to fish blind in such a place as this?
How to self-described humans come to follow someone described only by
others?
How do rocks and thunder learn about God when all they've ever done is
set boundaries, relied upon hard labor and chance, given and given until
circumstances drive them to give up?
Never, in their right minds, would they wait in silence, relinquish
control of all outcomes, trust in a mortal and soon murdered God.
They did but they didn't - more deeply blinded by the light than by the
darkness before and after.
A blind man once wrote, when considering his blindness:
God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.
-
Swallow c.1962 (p.106)
"...They also serve who only stand and wait."
To wait is to relinquish the illusion of control over the outcomes of my
life.
There is a resignation in waiting that I rage against.
There is a silence that grows in the darkness that presses on that rage.
In this blindness I believe these things:
In the darkness a light will shine.
Out of the light a shape will clarify.
There will be no words, really, to describe that grace.
There is no sound that can carry the weight of the soul.
Out of our minds, listening without ceasing for that which cannot be
seen,
we hear twice what was spoken once at the dawn of our own time:
that power BELONGS to God
THAT power belongs to God
The rest is silence.
***
PASTORAL PRAYER
"The Time of Quiet" Psalm 41, from Aotearoa
Psalms:
Prayers of a New People
by Joy Cowley c.1989 New Zealand
Sometimes, on a still morning,
it seems that all the earth
is breathless with love
for the God it conceals and reveals.
The brown stones at the water's edge
are set like some ancient language
pronouncing the truth of God
where our words fail us,
and the sea, the hills, the early mist,
become like water colour painting
on a fine gauze curtain
drawn over a tabernacle.
At such times we feel so close
to the eternal light
which lies behind everything,
that we can almost reach out and touch.
God wraps us in the quiet
of Christ, and invades us,
making us captive to a love too deep
for naming in this world.
All we know in this perfect moment,
is that we, too, can walk on water.
***
BULLETIN
January 26, 2003 10:00 a.m.
Music for Gathering
Welcome and Perspective on the Day
Musical Preparation for Worship - A Time for Centering
+ Call to Worship Masithi Hymnal # 760
+ Welcoming Hymn Walk With Me Chapel Songbook # 3
+ Psalm of Invocation (unison)
Sometimes, on a still morning,
it seems that all the earth
is breathless with love
for the God it conceals and reveals.
The brown stones at the water's edge
are set like some ancient language
pronouncing the truth of God
where our words fail us,
and the sea, the hills, the early mist,
become like water colour painting
on a fine gauze curtain
drawn over a tabernacle.
At such times we feel so close
to the eternal light
which lies behind everything,
that we can almost reach out and touch.
God wraps us in the quiet
of Christ, and invades us,
making us captive to a love too deep
for naming in this world.
All we know in this perfect moment,
is that we, too, can walk on water.
Time for Silent Reflection
One: My soul waits in silence.
All: God is my rock and my fortress. I will be at peace.
Silent Reflection
The Assurance of Good News (unison)
In the silence God's Love is spoken. Thanks be to God.
Sung Response
Hallelujah! God be praised!!
Conversation with Our Children
Reading from the Jewish Psalter Psalm 62:5-12
Reading from the Christian Gospels Mark 1:14-20
+ Calling Hymn You Have Come Down to the Lakeshore Hymnal # 173
Teaching and Proclamation Speak Once, Hear Twice
Intercessions, Celebrations and Encouragements
Taize Call to Prayer (sung in unison)
Ubi caritas et amor,
Ubi caritas, Deus ibi
est.
(Where charity and love are found, God is there.)
Time for Silence
Our Joys and Concerns and an Offering of Prayer
Sung Response In Solitude Hymnal #521 vv. 1 & 2
We Offer Our Gifts So That Our Lives May Be Our Prayer
Offertory
Prayer of Dedication (unison)
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
+ Sending Hymn Jesus Calls Us, o'er the Tumult Hymnal # 172
+ Commissioning (unison)
Let us go and preach the Gospel - and, when necessary, use words.
+ Sung Response Hush, Hush Hymnal # 604 v.1
Hush, Hush, Somebody's Calling My Name
Hush, Hush, Somebody's Calling My Name
Oh, Hush, Hush, Somebody's Calling My Name
O my God, O my God, what shall I do? What shall I do?
+ Postlude
WORSHIP NOTES:
The cross marks (+) in the order of service are an invitation for those
in the congregation who are able to stand to do so.
The New Century Hymnal or "Hymnal" has a black cover.
The Chapel Songbook is a blue, looseleaf notebook.
Psalm of Invocation is "The Time of Quiet" Psalm 41, from Aotearoa
Psalms: Prayers of a New People by Joy Cowley c.1989 New Zealand
Prayer of Dedication is from the Pilgrim Hymnal #177, v.4
Commissioning is taken from the words of St. Francis of Assisi
Much of this sermon comes from grappling with the
book: Blindness: A Novel by Jose
Saramago c. 1995
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Ubi Caritas from Songs and Prayers from Taize/, copyright © 1991, Les
Presses de Taize/ (France). Used by permission of GIA
Publications,
Inc., Chicago, exclusive agent. Reprinted under license no. 10293. All
rights reserved.