Holy No's

To turn towards life, you must turn away from what is not life. To grow closer to God, or your partner, or your children, or your church, you must turn away from what takes you further away from God or your partner or your children or your church. Turning towards also involves turning away.

Turning away from is our first act in baptism. The first three questions we answer in the baptismal covenant are these: Do you renounce the Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? Do you renounce the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God? Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?

On this the first Sunday in Lent, we are at the beginning of our yearly retreat that we take to ground ourselves once again in the our goal – that is complete communion with the Divine. We retreat so that we can remember again that what we are about is growing into the full stature of Christ. And so, at the beginning of our 40 day retreat, we return again to the first steps – in order to go towards love and life with God, dwelling in Jeru-shalom – or in the peace of the City of God – we renounce what does not serve the peace of God, what does not serve peace in our own hearts – we renounce whatever takes us away from wholeness.

Saying no is as freeing as saying yes – but this came as revelation to me.

I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. Even though my family was conservative, the culture was not. It was all about Yes to all kinds of experiences, and foods, and substances, and relationships – Yes! And I love the word Yes! I love e.e.cummings wonderful poem

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

Sister Mary Corita Kent was particularly popular during the social upheavals of that time. If you don’t know of her work, it can be still be seen in almost any retreat center – beautiful silk screens and colorful seriographs of Yes to love and peace and life.

So when I began to read the theologian Karl Barth, I was unprepared for the forcefulness of his No. Unprepared, but immediately grabbed by it because he spoke a truth that was critical to any real ability to say yes.

Barth was a Lutheran pastor and theologian in pre-war Germany who grew increasingly alarmed at the growing militarism of his country and the support for this among his former professors and fellow pastors. This support was a result of what he saw as the moral weakness of liberal theology. That is, a theology that increasingly was focused on making peace with the world, and believed that humans, on their own, were progressing towards greater and greater enlightenment. The concentration camps of WWII, and Hiroshima, and later, the mass graves of Cambodia and Rwanda threw cold water on the idea of humanity’s progressive enlightenment – but at the time the result was churches which accommodated the prevailing politics rather than speaking out the distinctive word of the Lordship of Jesus the Christ.

In an attempt to understand what was happening to his country and his church he began a deep study of the Book of Romans, and he came away with the overwhelming conviction of the victorious reality of Christ’s resurrection – that is, that all the death dealing powers in the world were not able to dismantle and destroy the Irrevocable Intention of God to Love. God is absolutely sovereign – he is not dependent upon us – and he exercises complete freedom in revealing himself through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. At the same time, we can never know God the way we can know a patron saint. God is not our patron saint, and he is certainly not the patron saint of any one country or any one group of people.

Faith, Barth said, is " awe in the presence of the divine incognito; Faith is the love of God that is aware of the qualitative difference between God and human beings and God and the world."

Barth, almost single handedly, brought back the idea of the utter transcendence of God, the apophatic God before whom we bow and are silent, because we essentially do not know and certainly cannot control.

He founded what came to be called The Confessing Church in Germany, the small underground group of pastors and laity, who pitted the revelation of Jesus Christ against the “truth” of Hitler and the death machine of Hitler’s party. For a people immersed in churches that for decades had made peace with militarism and a political system in which classes of people – Jews, Gypsy’s, homosexuals, cripples - were made scapegoats and eventually rounded up and murdered, this thundering No, was an essential if bitter tasting corrective.

The truth is this No is the starting point of any authentic religious life. Any life that desires intimacy with God must begin with understanding that God does not belong to you, that God is not a vending machine, that God does not need to cure your cancer, or provide you with a job, or insure your prevailing in lawsuits, or make your life comfortable or easy.

Real Life, Life with God, begins on our knees. Begins with this recognition that God is beyond our thoughts and our imaginations, beyond our rules and our regulations, beyond our potlucks and our passions. God, in God’s essence, cannot be known – except in the way that God chooses to be known.

So, renunciation is the way that we begin this journey of Lent. Because the Holy Yes to the leaping greenly spirits of trees and the blue true dream of sky requires the Holy No to waste and pollution. The Holy Yes to seeking and serving Christ in all persons requires the Holy No to envy or pointing the finger at Muslims or illegal immigrants. The Holy Yes to healing and abundance requires the Holy No to blindness to human suffering and lack of compassion.

The truth is that at times this No is quite costly. It may mean saying no to what we most treasure in order that we may yes to what is more helpful and healthful. It may mean awkward and painful letting go of what does not belong in order that we may say yes to what truly does belong. It may mean asking for help in discerning what is standing in our way of love and accepting help in changing behaviors that are, in the long run, destructive. In other words, this saying no and this saying yes are not one time events, but are questions that we must return to over and over again.

So – the first and most basic question of our Lenten retreat is this: Do you renounce the works of Satan and all the evil powers of this world that would corrupt and destroy the works of creation?

And the response is: I renounce them.