{"id":388,"date":"2013-10-06T18:14:07","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T22:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/?p=388"},"modified":"2014-12-05T18:26:01","modified_gmt":"2014-12-05T23:26:01","slug":"a-window-on-the-world-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/?p=388","title":{"rendered":"A Window on the World House"},"content":{"rendered":"<body><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-388-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/A.Window.on_.the_.World_.House_.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/A.Window.on_.the_.World_.House_.mp3\">http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/A.Window.on_.the_.World_.House_.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/A.Window.on_.the_.World_.House_.pdf\">A.Window.on.the.World.House<\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"CENTER\"><span style=\"font-family: ZapfHumnst BT; font-size: x-large;\"> A Window on the World House<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Text on Sunday, October 6, 2013<br>\nLamentations 1: 1-6; Luke 17: 1-6<\/p>\n<p>Last Sunday, leaning in close to the prayer of Psalm 91, we felt after an answer to the question, how God protects, how God saves. Our thought hung close to the personal experience. We said little of our self in relation to any community, or to larger joined purposes in the world. Yet now, hearing the words of Lamentations\u2014<i>How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!<\/i>\u2014we are exposed to grief of a most public kind, the destruction of a nation\u2019s home and purpose. If for many generations, Americans of a certain class have been spared such absolute, public grief, America has not spared other nations from feeling this. Need we name them?<\/p>\n<p>In the psalms and the prophets, salvation\u2014the hope for it, the need of it\u2014was always this public personal thing; never only a personal promise, but peace on earth. When today a Jew is puzzled by the Christian claim that the Messiah has already come, mostly the puzzlement is that the world still suffers, and do we not see? Where is the Messiah\u2019s \u201cpeace on all my holy mountain?\u201d Do we Christians prefer to shun, starve, or destroy the world\u2019s billions in order to lay claim to salvation as a personal prize? We need that Jewish judgment on the meaning of salvation. After all, it is Jesus\u2019 judgment, too.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756 \u2756 \u2756<\/p>\n<p>Next Friday, the recipient of the 2013 Nobel peace prize will be announced. On hearing of that fact, I was reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King\u2019s Nobel prize lecture from 1964, a speech which is sometimes called \u201cThe World House.\u201d King opened by imagining a theme for a novel scrawled on a scrap among the papers of a deceased author: \u201cA widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.\u201d King continued.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style3\">\u201cThis is the great new problem of humanity. We have inherited a large house, a great \u2018world house\u2019 in which we have to live together\u2014black and white, East and West, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu\u2014a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interest, who . . . must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.\u201d (<i>Where Do We Go from Here<\/i>, p. 167, Beacon Press, 1967)<\/p>\n<p>The Nobel lecture rehearses all the themes of the speech Dr. King delivered here in 1967, called <i>Beyond Vietnam<\/i>. The \u201cgiant triplets\u201d of social evil are there in fulsome review\u2014 racism, poverty, and war\u2014as well as the call for \u201ca true revolution of values\u201d and the sounding of an alarm still ringing by the nation\u2019s sleeping head, that we must confront \u201cthe fierce urgency of now.\u201d All that is in the 1964 speech, and this too: the words \u201cwe must\u201d urged again and again upon the hearer. \u201cWe must narrow the gap. .\u00a0. we must pursue peaceful ends . . . we must put an end to war . . . \u201c Could there be a weaker word than \u201cwe must\u201d when applied to the human will? My homiletics professor cautioned us against its use, or its uselessness. Yet what other word do we have to wake us to our crisis, than that we inhabit a great world house, and we must live in it in peace? The next question comes like the dawn: How\u2014how put an end to lamentations over peoples and purposes destroyed? God forbid we should supply a quick or easy answer.<\/p>\n<p>Consider this. In Lamentations, the first cry that tells just what has happened goes up in v. 3. \u201cJudah has gone into exile with suffering; now she lives among the nations, and finds no resting place.\u201d She lives among the nations! How similar this sounds to King\u2019s call to all to acknowledge that we <i>must <\/i>live together\u2014among the nations! Why is the one a bitter lament, and the other an upward call? To be sure, the modern world presents demands quite different from those of the ancient world\u2014but that is not all the story.<\/p>\n<p>Felt as a lament, \u201cto live among the nations and find no rest\u201d means that, when all around us swirl world views and values we do not understand, it just becomes too hard for many to maintain our identity, our values, our inner peace. This happens right here in Riverside Church. Right here is a window on the world house, and often it does not look like living together in peace. Human organizations need organizing principles, and when tribes try to live close, but have not much spiritual fortitude, they bang into each other\u2019s values and break the protective wall of identity and self-regard and thus set the self-system on fire, ready for a fight, or flight\u2014and no peace. At the bottom of that mess in Washington DC, what but that a lot of white men fear they have \u201cgone into exile and live now among the nations and find no rest?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>All this is not in fact \u201cthe great new problem of humanity,\u201d but rather our great old problem. How can we meet and touch real differences in the world house, and change as change we must, yet dwell in our depth, true, unharmed, knowing that no evil shall befall us? How? There is only one resolution to the bitter conflicts in those who are feeling ever threatened in their persons and their values and ever overmastered by their foes. After many \u201cmusts,\u201d Dr. King comes to it in the speeches, and gives it one name. After many \u201cmusts,\u201d Jesus comes to the same in his teachings, and he calls it by another name. King calls it the study of nonviolence. Jesus says, \u201cForgive.\u201d King says, \u201cIt is not enough to say, \u2018We must not wage war.\u2019 It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.\u201d Jesus says, \u201cWhoever saves his life will lose it; whoever loses her life for my sake and the gospel will gain it . . . Forgive, forgive. Seventy times seven, forgive.\u201d Do you want to look through a window on that world house we pray for? Then you must learn to forgive, for no peace can come\u2014not in a family, not in a church, not in a city or in the wide world house\u2014except it grow in you.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, we need an inkling for why it is so hard to forgive. Obviously, it is not enough to say, \u201cYou must forgive.\u201d The world has stood for thousands of years under that word, and still we do not forgive. What is blocking? What is missing? Jesus\u2019 answer is short. He tells disciples that when we shrink from forgiving, it is faith gone missing. \u201cHad you faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this tree, \u2018Be uprooted and planted in the sea,\u2019 and it would obey you.\u201d But what can <i>this <\/i>word mean? Told we have little faith, we might feel stung or guilty, but not inspired; and then the old fears fly up, but not love, for no resolution comes to the world\u2019s war when we feel judged. What is missing when faith is fruitless, and we do not forgive?<\/p>\n<p>In Christian language, what\u2019s missing from the unforgiving is eternal life; that is, our seeing who we are in the eye of the Divine, and our living in that light. When I lived in Buffalo, I had, with hundreds of others, the joy of working with a Franciscan nun named Sister Karen. Sr. Karen established and lived in a home for men coming out of prison, called HOPE House. In 2003, she expanded the mission by moving it into a large Catholic rectory which had been vacated after a priest named Fr. Bissonnette was murdered there. On Good Friday, 2006, Sr. Karen was herself also murdered there by one of the men of her shelter. On the day after Easter, our whole city learned of it. At her memorial service, our city learned that far back in 1991, soon after Sr. Karen founded HOPE House, she had written in her journal this:<\/p>\n<p class=\"style3\">Dear Brother, I don\u2019t know what the circumstances are that will lead you to hurt me or to destroy my physical body. No, I don\u2019t want it to happen. I would much rather enjoy the beauties of this earth, experience the laughter, the fears, and the tears of those I love so deeply!! God has been so gentle with me, so loving . . . But now my life is changed, and you, my brother, were the instrument of that change. I forgive you for what you have done, and I will always watch over you, help you in whatever way I can . . . Continue living always mindful of God\u2019s presence, God\u2019s love, and God\u2019s joy as sources of life itself. Then my life will have been worth being changed through you \u2014 God bless. (<i>Peaceprints<\/i>, pp. 60-61)<\/p>\n<p>Let us no more attend to what is missing when we do not forgive. Give attention rather to what is present when we do. It is the experience, as we said last Sunday, of a light within you, perfect and unextinguishable. It is the certainty that I am alive, now and always, and, though I hurt (<i>small i<\/i>), I (<i>everlasting I<\/i>) am not harmed. This is the key to forgiveness. To forgive is not to kindly reprieve one who has hurt you; to forgive is to correct the false impression that you\u2014Christ in you\u2014have been harmed, or ever can be. This is the door to peace. Here is the window on the world house. With that faith and that certainty\u2014that though you feel hurt, you are not harmed\u2014the fire stick of your fear-filled self is quenched in living waters, and you become peace in this world. Then are you free. Then can you love. Then can you live and forgive and let go. Then can you give your life for the world\u2019s need, as your master asks, and rightly oppose the evils God reveals to you. Then opens one more window on the world house where we can learn at last to live among the nations in peace.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: ZapfHumnst BT; font-size: medium;\"><i>Rev. Stephen H. Phelps<br>\nThe Riverside Church<br>\nNew York, New York<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"style1\">\u00a9 Stephen H. Phelps 2013<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Sunday, leaning in close to the prayer of Psalm 91, we felt after an answer to the question, how God protects, how God saves. Our thought hung close to the personal experience. We said little of our self in relation to any community, or to larger joined purposes in the world. Yet now,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon-2013"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}