 |
 Clyde H. Miller "God the Enforcer? God the Mediator?" Program #3019 First air date February 15, 1987 |
Biography
Dr. Clyde H. Miller, Jr. currently
serves as conference minister of the Rocky Mountain Conference of the
United Church of Christ, headquartered in Denver, Colorado. He is a
graduate of Talladega College in Alabama and Chicago Theological
Seminary. He served in Chicago and Boston before going to Denver in
1980. Truly committed to the poor, Clyde also serves on the Board of
Oxfam-America, a world-relief organization. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted
above.]
"God the Enforcer? God the Mediator?" Oh Lord, our Lord.
Let us begin our time together by taking
some clues from our singers. And let me express my appreciation for your
rendition of the 8th Psalm, and let us again hear those words as they
were sung a moment ago.
As we begin to contemplate those words of the Psalmist, somehow we know
that we are to be the good stewards of the earth, that we are put here
to be responsible creatures of God’s creation. And in that light, I
would like to say that it would probably be appropriate for me to talk
about the violence that permeates the earth. I could talk about the
violence not only here in our own country, but throughout the whole
earth, for that violence represents a sickness that permeates the whole
world. It permeates our thoughts, our words and our deeds. This is the
sickness of Beirut. This is the sickness of Afghanistan, of Central
America, of Southern Africa, and South Africa. Yet we are reminded, as
the 8th Psalmist said, we are made just a little less that the angels in
the midst of all this violence.
How excellent is Thy name in all the earth,
Who has set Thy Glory above the Heavens!
When I consider the Heavens and the work of Thy Fingers,
The moon and the stars which Thou hast made,
Then I ask what is man that Thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man that Thou dost come to him?
For Thou hast made him just a little less than the Angels
And hast crowned him with all glory and with all honor.
Thou hast made him to have dominion over the work of Thy hands,
And Thou hast put all things under his feet.
All sheep and oxen,
Yes, all the beasts of the field,
And the fowl of the air,
And the fish of the sea,
And whatsoever crawls under the bottom of the sea.
Oh Lord, our Lord.
How excellent is Thy name in all the earth.
But I must contrast the kind of violence of which I speak as over
against the other kind of violence. Of this violence of simplistic
solutions and of utter, utter despair, I must contrast with the violence
done daily against the “throw-away people” in our society. The old, the
poor, the immigrants, the would-be immigrants, the minorities and the
homeless. It is this insidious violence, to which I allude at this time,
that is often heralded in our day as a new means of up-lift, of
self-determination “by your own bootstraps” when there are no boots. It
is the violence that surely kills as quickly as the bullets in Viet Nam,
or Afghanistan or Central America. It is perhaps even more insidious
because of the quiet violence that causes no evocation like Beirut. But
we are reminded that we are just a little less than the angels.
Outrage, then, becomes our evocation. Because the great crescendo of
this violence is heard in the streets of all of our cities, in every
place that we know in our own country. For it is in the cities of our
country that all of the hopes and the dreams and the fears are
celebrated, and crushed, and acted out. We are reminded of that phrase
that comes from the great poet, Langston Hughes,
What happens to a dream deferred?
And as we contemplate our cities we must remember that we have some
examples of how we perceive the city from our Lord. Our Lord went to
Jerusalem because God sent him into the city. Throughout Scripture we
find Scripture resplendent with examples where the cities were Meccas of
hope, where the cities were not always the scenes of negative activity,
but those places where people could go and build on those dreams that
they had harbored. In the Bible the city is the place where the Arc is.
And throughout the Gospel, throughout the Old Testament especially, we
find no difference between Jerusalem and Israel. For it is in Jerusalem
that God’s redeeming activity is to be acted out. We know that these
things are built for peace. It is in this city, the New Jerusalem, where
the new vision of the new world is created. Word comes to us: “And I saw
a new city, a New Jerusalem coming down out of the heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun
or does it fester and run
like a sore?
Somehow we must be those people who hear that evocation. Somehow all of
these places where hopes and dreams are lifted tip must be transformed
if they are to be the place of vision. In our Lord’s death and
resurrection the future of all of our world has been determined, but is
not complete unless we are at the center of that activity redeeming that
presence. Having understood, and seeking to respond to what our Lord
calls us to, we are called to that arena where people seek to live out
their lives and to do that which is possible. So for us this day, as we
contemplate who we are in this metropolitan center, or all the
metropolitan centers in the world, or in this country, we ask first the
question — what kind of community do we want?
Those of us who have heard the term, “Lord, Lord” and understand it,
must be the advocates, and must appreciate anew the differing values
that can be found and celebrated within the city. Somehow or another, as
we perceive the city of the future, work — itself — has to be rethought.
We must be able to move towards a systems approach if we are going to
redeem the time and redeem the city as we know it. All of this in light
of our understanding of a new city. Because Christ has come, the
possibilities stagger the imagination in all of its sweep and all of its
brilliance. Somehow or another we have been those who can redeem the
time with new strategies for what it means to live together in a complex
environment.
Here we must find that we must be those who are about the business of
transforming the totality of life. The tragedy of the Garden of Eden is
undone. The tragedy of Human History is at an end. In the renewed world
Revelations speaks of a city where the Rivers of the Waters of Life
flow. On either side of the river, Revelations would tell us, the Tree
of Life with its twelve kinds of fruit sits there, yielding its fruit
monthly. All of these, as we understand the symbolism of Revelations,
leads to the healing of the peoples and the nations.
Moses said in the Old Testament, “Show me Thy glory.” And showing “Thy
glory” means that we must work for community, utilizing all our
resources to build that beloved community.
The systems approach to all that we are, and all that we stand for, must
be done by those of us who are part of the church. Josiah Royce wrote:
I believe in the beloved community, and in the Spirit which makes it
beloved, and in the communion of all who are in it, and, indeed, with
all of its members.
I see no such community as yet, but my role in life is to act as though
I can help hasten its coming.
I would say that those of us who are part of the church and are
sensitive to all the parts of the church clashing as they might, as they
would seek to understand the Gospel at this time, that we must see a God
who is open to all of humankind, those of us who are called out in all
of our variations, that we do not shroud what we say or cloud what we
say in some presumed religious rhetoric that we find in so many of our
colleagues within Christendom, or prejudicial historical judgements, or
even limited views of the Gospel. We do not believe in a graceless
society. We believe in a society in which the Grace of God is operative
and we are to be those vehicles if we are to redeem the time. We do not
see God as enforcing a mandate on those of us who would fit into a
certain category. We do not see God as mediating our differences, but we
find God at the heart of all that we are — moving and prodding us to a
new life and a new understanding of what life is about.
We have been given a mandate, my sisters and my brothers, we are a
little less than the angels. We have been created to have dominion over
the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea and, yes, every living thing
that crawls on the bottom of the sea. That is a part of our mandate of
stewardship. The violence that characterizes our cities as we would seek
to live out our lives is no longer tenable. Its an untenable posturing
of God’s creation if we are to be good stewards.
Going back to Revelations again we find:
After this I beheld a multitude which no one could number of all races
and tribes and kindreds and spirits. And they stood before the throne
and the Lamb saying, “Blessing and honor and glory and power and wisdom
and thanksgiving and might.”
These are those of whom we speak coming from the Barrios, coming from
those places in other continents, those who are seeking Sanctuary, from
the suburban town and from the small towns all over our country seeking
to find a new life. That new life in which we are all reconciled one
with the other, appreciating and appropriating and celebrating all of
our differences, all that we are because all of us making up that chorus
around God’s throne saying that we are those co-creators, in one sense,
with God — the good stewards here in this city and in all cities where
dreams do not have to be deferred, where dreams are to be acted out and
given credence in the lives of all those people.
And I said unto him, “Who are these?”
And he said, “You know who they are. These are those who come out of
their great tribulation and have washed their robes and have made them
white in the Blood of the Lamb.”
Seek a new city. Seek to be a new people. God calls us into that arena.
Not to be in combat one with the other, not to denigrate our
differences, but to celebrate who we are and be that people of God.