THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY

1 10 10

MATTHEW 6:24-34

JOHN 10:22-30

ANTHONY E.ACHESON, M.DIV.

I’d like to share some thoughts this morning about faith, and the deep desire we all have for a sense of confidence and joy, safety and security. Although the desire to feel safe is inherent in the human condition, our concerns about security have been heightened considerably in the post 9/11 world. Our fears about violence and disruption have been rekindled in recent months by the massacre at Fort Hood in November, the intrusion of three uninvited guests into a reception at the White House last month, and the Christmas day attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit. In recent decades our lives have been disrupted by the rise of globally violent groups antagonistic to our society. Disruption also comes into our lives through the entrenched tendencies of militarism, imperialism and environmental degradation, as well as through the potentially destructive technologies that Western science and modernity have created since the industrial and scientific revolutions.

This collection of disruptive forces heightens our yearning for security, a yearning that takes many forms. We yearn for secure borders, of course, just as we yearn for secure retirement portfolios and secure homes. That word ’security’ approaches us from several directions. We hear about national security and global security. We hear about social security and personal security. We look at toddlers and think of them as clinging to what we sometimtes call security blankets. More than anything else, we want to feel secure and keep ourserves free from high levels of risk, and we spend large measures of time and money to reach that goal. We spend thousands of dollars buying insurance for our homes, cars, and medical care, and even our lives. We invest in our menus of mutual funds, and pension plans. We sign contracts about job and wage security. We even produce pre-nuptial agreements to protect us in case of divorce or marital exploitation. We’d like to picture ourselves living life in a cozy family room, fireplace aglow, insulated from danger or harm. And, yet, despite all our best efforts, we always know in the background that there are finally no guarantees. One way or another it can all be stripped away, and eventually, of course, will.

I think of my own years in parish ministry watching these issues get played out in people’s lives. A young woman launch a family and career with bright-eyed optimism, only to have her spouse taken away with brain cancer, as has happened to two of my UCC clergy colleagues here in the Vermont Conference over the past several years. Or there is the man who works long and hard in a successful career only to find out that internal politics have cost him his job. Or there is the family that watches the growth of a bright and promising son, only to discover that at age 20, he’s diagnosed with schizophrenia. And there is the woman who comes home one day to find her husband gone for good-and with him, the only source of income for her family.

We all know stories like these. We know people whose sense of security has suddenly been stripped away. Living competent and honorable lives, doing mostly right things, being fair and just and kind, none of these can protect us from that vulnerability. Even when we do everything right, we still remain profoundly vulnerable.

In the midst of all this, even as we look squarely at the insecurities of life, Jesus presents us with an alternative approach; a way of thinking that is fundamentally different from what our culture offers and values. Throughout the 10th chapter of John, Jesus speaks of God’s people as a beloved flock and himself as the shepherd protecting that flock from thieves and wolves. Jesus was very much a realist. He was keenly aware of the wolves that exist and the harm they can do. There are powers and principalities that threaten the flock. But despite his clear-eyed view of that reality, he is also cognizant that there is one power which is greater, one security which cannot be threatened. That security is metaphorically pictured in today’s Gospel as the home we can find in the palm of God’s hand. According to Christ, there is a ground-floor level of realty on which no power or force, can snatch us away. Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and no one shall snatch them from my hand,” And, “No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” Yes, of course, given our finitude and impermanence, there is a level of life in on which we are all inescapably vulnerable. But the proclamation of all authentic spirituality, whether inside or outside Christianity, is that, there is a deeper, subtler level on which, despite our vulnerabilities, we are also ‘unsnatchable.’ There is a soul-level security to be found at that deepest level. As Jesus says, “I give those who look unto me eternal life, and they shall never perish.” This is not a security that guarantees any outer circumstance. It is the security of knowing that the deepest essence of what we are cannot be destroyed, and cannot be taken from us.

At the end of the day that is the only real security that is available to human beings. This is the security that comes when we know the eternal aspect of our own beings. Each of us has an eternal aspect as well as a temporal aspect to our own being. The temporal aspect comes and goes. This is what the Buddha referred to as the ‘bundle’ of physical, finite, and conditioned elements that make up our human personalities, stories and egos. These parts of our beings have their own roles in their own times. But we are called inevitably to learn the spiritual skill of laying down, releasing and letting go of these finite parts of ourselves when life requires it of us. Beneath that bundle of our finite parts and aspects, though, there is another ground-floor level of our being. This is our soul, our essence. It is the part of us which existed before we were born and continues after we die. This is the part of us that constitutes our true being. It is the part of us that we can never lose and can never be lost to God. When Jesus talks about spiritual security, he is drawing our attention to this one aspect of our being that is indeed secure because it is made up of spiritual stuff that is eternal and unchanging and not susceptible to disintegration, destruction or loss.

This is the level of life that Jesus is drawing our attention to by using this poetic metaphor of resting in the palm of God’s hand. Knowing that we rest in the palm of God’s hand means maintaining a sustained consciousness of our connection to the eternal aspect of our own being, which is our soul. Resting in the palm of God’s hand also means being conscious in a sustained way of our connection to the eternal aspect of Being Itself, the Reality which is God. Being in the palm of God’s hand is a metaphor pointing us toward experientially knowing and feeling the deep underlying ground floor of reality which no person or power can take from us because it is spiritual and eternal. Though your employer can harshly remind you that our job is not eternal, she can’t tell you that God’s love has disappeared. Though your spouse could leave you for another person, he or she cannot walk away with your truest self and deepest level of being. Though your doctor can tell you that your may soon die , he or she can never say that your soul will ever die. No tragedy can bring with it the news that the divine power of life-itself has forsaken you, that the divine hand has been removed. In all of life’s fragileness, one thing remains strong and constant. You are held in the hand, in the palm of the hand, of the Divine power of life itself and nothing can snatch that away.

So, what does it mean to have the security of living in the palm of God’s hand, to use that turn of phrase of Jesus? Is it life lived in a cozy family room, a never-ending retreat before the fireplace or TV? Does it mean a chance to sit back, relax, basking long-term in the warmth of our gatherings of families and friends? There are, of course, appropriate and fine moments for all those things. We need the restorative power of some ‘good times,’ and retreats into the quiet of our peaceful times. But if that’s all there is when we think of security, then we have not heard the whole story.

The security of being held in God’s hand is not the security of our social, material, economic and familial comforts, legitimate and beautiful as those all are in their time and place. On the contrary, this is the security of an expanded and deepened consciousness of the eternal aspect of ourselves, and of the eternal dimension of Reality Itself, which frees and empowers us for any circumstance that comes upon us. In the language of Jesus, the hand of God is not only an image for safety; it’s also an image for power, specifically the power to live our lives confidently and strongly even under straitened circumstances. We are both secured and empowered by God’s hand if and as we become increasingly conscious of the eternal and indestructible aspect of Reality both within our own being and beyond the limits of our own being. Knowing that God is caring for us and holding us, we are freed and empowered to get on with the business of living our lives including seeking greater truth, loving both self and neighbor, striving for justice, and caring for the creation. The security that you and I have in the Divine is the very thing that frees us to lean into the very insecurities of this world and to participate in the work of God to redeem and heal the world.

The theologian Helmut Thielecke put it this way: If we know what power holds the final hour, we don’t need to be anxious about the next moment. Secure in the Divine presence, and in your consciousness of it we can live this day, this hour, this moment, in freedom and in joy, in fullness of life.’

And so as we prepare to again to face and embrace another week of life, with all its mixtures of pleasure and threats, let us once again prepare ourselves to take in the nourishment which the spiritual side of life offers; to acknowledge and embrace the radical insecurity of our human condition, just as Jesus modeled for us by his full embrace of both life and death, suffering and joy. Let us recognize how much it was his willingness to embrace the insecurities of this world of temporariness that enabled him to find the true security that lies at the level of eternal spirit. Through that example we have a powerful resource by which to draw closer to that same spiritual dimension he knew that is both around us and within us, in order that authentic spiritual security might increasingly be known and felt and experienced by us as well.

And we ask and offer all these things this day in the knowledge of the presence of the Living Christ and of the eternal God. Amen.