First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
8 August 2004
Things Unseen
I
About one third of the way through Barak Obama's keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, Obama finished his personal history and reached the heart of his message. And, as he did, his vocabulary and his voice began to change. It was the genius of his speech that he could draw on the most disparate voices of the American experience and appropriate them to himself. Scripture was one of those voices—not trotted out for show—but subtle and allusive, so that it seemed—as it once had been, when the King James Bible and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress were the two books sure to be on every bookshelf—to be still part of America's language—a great universal voice, suggesting not just a moral, but also a theological, ground on which we might unite.
One of those allusions was to Second Corinthians: "For this slight momentary affliction," Paul wrote, "is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." Obama said: "The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation; the belief in things not seen; the belief that there are better days ahead."
I had been thinking about my former law partner, John Bailey Dunne, about whom I had just read a book that I didn't even know existed until the week before. John was big, warm man, with a round face, a heavy beard and a perpetual grin—he loved people and he was our rainmaker. John had a working farm—a barely working farm—in Hartland Four Corners, just outside of White River Junction. When he was diagnosed with melanoma in his late thirties, he and his family went up there for good, and John helped set up what is now the Vermont Land Trust. He had learned to play the violin when he was at Choate and he loved to play Bach sonatas out in the barn after dinner. John had an old wooden apple press that he brought down to our place in Carlisle from time to time. He could make a hard cider that fizzed in your head, right behind your eyes—it kept our law firm going when cash didn't flow as fast as the cider did.
What I didn't know then about John—and what I learned later from the papers his parents had donated to the University of North Carolina after his death—was that in his freshman year at North Carolina he had joined the marches in Birmingham, Alabama, and had been arrested and jailed and badly beaten by other inmates; that he had organized a local chapter of CORE and led the first demonstrations and sit-ins against segregated restaurants and lunch counters in Chapel Hill; that he had been arrested and imprisoned and beaten again; that he had served hard time in three different prisons on a chain gang and in solitary confinement; and that he had been paroled to Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford, Connecticut. From there, he went to Harvard and on to Yale Law School and to the life in which I knew him.
I practiced law with John for more than a decade before he died; knew him socially and as his partner; knew his wife and his children and his tractor and his hogs; but most of this life in Chapel Hill was utterly unsuspected and unseen. I thought I knew John, and I did; now I know him more. Now my memory of him has more weight, more heft. John has become more visible—not more real, not more complete—for he was always all of those things throughout—but simply more visible.
Here is something to be hoped for: that while now we see those we love through a glass, darkly, then we will see them face to face.
And, indeed, today's texts are about things unseen now, but which we will see in the latter days.
II
Micah is one of the twelve minor prophets. He lived and prophesied in the late eighth century BC, after the fall of the northern kingdom and during the southern kingdom's subjection to the Babylonians. He may have been a younger contemporary of Isaiah's. As with many Scriptural texts, however, the Book of Micah contains much material that was added to Micah's own words long after his death.
Our text from Micah also appears in Isaiah 2:2-4, but without the last verse. This text was not written by either Micah or Isaiah. It almost certainly dates from the post-exilic period—long after both prophets had died. Second Isaiah had comforted Israel in the Babylonian exile that followed the destruction of the First Temple with the promise that it would, some day, be released from captivity. After the Persians liberated Babylon in 539 BC and freed Israel from captivity, the Israelites returned to Judea, now a vassal state of Persia. Their condition was marginally improved, but so far from the restoration of the kingdom that Second Isaiah had seemed to promise that, if anything, the Israelites were more sullen and despondent than they had been in exile.
Second Isaiah had urged faith in what could be seen: rebuilding the Temple. But Micah, writing after the return to Judea but without anything immediate on which the Israelites could pin their hopes, called for faith in something unseen: the latter days. In this latter time, said Micah, the entire world will stand in relation to God as once Israel alone had stood. Not just Israel, but every nation, will stream to Zion to learn of God's laws and will return home to teach what they have learned. And Israel will finally be at peace.
However idealistic or utopian this may sound, Micah is not talking about an eschatological event, after the end of time. "The latter days," here, means a time in the future, perhaps far in the future, but still within human history. It marks the fulfillment of God's intentions and purposes for the world. The latter days are the completion of our history, the end of the time between the "already" and the "not yet" of the kingdom of God. That time—appreciated through the prism of the Christ event—is the time of the church, and the latter days of the life of the church are the days in which the Body of Christ becomes more fully visible.
Then, God's presence in the world was framed by God's covenants with Israel—the covenant with Noah, the covenant with Abraham and the covenant with Moses. Now, God's presence in the world is framed by a new covenant, informed by a new commandment, to love others as ourselves. The experience of that presence—all of us, inspired by the Holy Spirit, bound to one another and to God by covenant and incorporated in the very Body of Christ—is what is essential in our church—is, in fact, the church.
Like the Kingdom, the church is "already" and "not yet". Like the Kingdom, the church is visible and invisible. The church, to paraphrase Paul, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Buildings are always visible. Stained glass windows are always visible. Organs and hymnals are always visible. But they are not the church. What is essentially the church are the covenants that bind confessing Christians gathered together to receive the word of God in Scripture and in sacrament. The people in covenant with one another and with God move from invisibility to visibility as their covenantal relations within that loving community we call the church are nurtured, enhanced and perfected. And as the people in covenant with one another and with God move from invisibility to visibility, so does their church.
This is the mission of the church in the time between "already" and "not yet"—to bring all of its members into view, so that they can fully realize their love for one another and their calling in discipleship. The church is us, made visible to one another through our love for one another.
Had I understood that when John and I first became partners, I might not have had to wait for the internet before I could see and appreciate as much of him as I do now.
III
I have been called to a church which is virtually invisible and to minister to men and women who are themselves virtually invisible.
This past year—with the help of Pat Zifcak, a deacon at Christ Church on Garden Street—I have started an outdoor church for homeless men and women in Harvard Square. Every Sunday afternoon, at one o'clock, we take sandwiches and pastry and Juicy Juice boxes, together with communion, across Garden Street on a shaky metal cart onto the Cambridge Common—literally right across the street from here. We have a short prayer service there, and a meal afterward.
We go out every Sunday, in all seasons and in all weather. The cart serves as a makeshift alter and our liturgy is very loosely modeled on the Book of Common Prayer. We serve communion after a reading of the Gospel; after it is served to all who have joined us, we take it around to anyone who is nearby. When we're done with the prayer service, we share a simple meal of sandwiches and cookies and juice.
Because the police sometimes sweep the Common, not very many homeless people venture up to the Common on Sundays, so we have learned to take our sandwiches and communion into Harvard Square. That's where we encounter most of the homeless men and women to whom we minister. We do a landmine business in tuna fish sandwiches and clean white socks, but we also offer a blessing and communion to everyone. Most people accept. Some have started offering the blessing themselves!
Nor are we out there alone. We have been supported from the beginning by the many churches that surround Harvard Square, with sandwiches and clean white socks and all kinds of things to eat and drink and wear. The children from those churches have made most of the sandwiches, and parishioners from those churches have joined us outdoors, braving the February cold and the March chill to pray together with the homeless and to share a meal with them—perhaps the truest form of communion.
In the fall we will expand this ministry to Porter Square and Central Square. If only all of the homeless men and women in Cambridge could avail themselves of your wonderful shelter here at First Church, and of the extraordinary array of services offered by all of the churches in Harvard Square! But they can not—so we will take the church to them.
When, in our ministry, we encounter homeless men and women as people—sharing pastry, talking about science fiction, offering communion, taking requests for bologna sandwiches—we see them, and they see us. People who were invisible, or only vaguely visible, come into view. I don't mean that I have managed to overcome the callousness and indifference of a lifetime and, in so doing, become a somewhat better person. However unusual it may be—and, since the norm for encounters with homeless people is physical and verbal abuse, it is unusual—it is still no more than should be expected of a reasonably engaged ethical person.
But I am not talking about morals or ethics. I am talking about discipleship, the call to be a Christian in community.
It is one thing to see another as the object of ethical engagement—that is well within the means of any moral person. It is altogether another matter to see someone because God calls us to do so. Not as the object of help, but as one to whom we owe a Christian duty. Not as an isolated soul adrift in Harvard Square or Central Square or Porter Square, but as a member of our own church. Not as someone we might like, but as someone we must love.
Micah's text ends with a verse that does not appear in Isaiah: "...but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken." These men are not now safe because they have accumulated great wealth, or surrounded themselves with armed body guards, or cleansed their lands of dangerous elements. They are protected by a loving community that holds their safety and their well being in the highest esteem. They are not alone; for, although they seem to sit by themselves, their security lies in being held harmless by some against the threats of others.
In the latter days for which Micah and Isaiah so fervently hoped, we will hear all those with whom we are in covenant say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob." And as those who urge our salvation and who, in turn, are ours, become more visible to us, the former things will begin to pass away. Then into view will come that kingdom which is here and which we yet long to see, that place where God is with us, and we with God, where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying or pain any more.
© 2004, Jedidiah Mannis