PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Psalm 55:9-11                                                                         Guards upon the City Wall

Sermon July 5, 2009:  People’s United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            We Americans are blessed with peace in our own country.  Even in spite of the al-Qaeda attacks on 9/11 we live with the basic experience of peace.  Two generations ago there was Pearl Harbor, and German submarines were sinking shipping in view of those living in Rehoboth Beach; still our America stretches for thousands of miles in all directions without an enemy army, without anxiety.  On Independence Day weekend we can be thankful for this:  throughout the long history of the human race, right down to this day, the people of many countries live under threat of invasion.  We don’t even know how that feels.  We have never had the experience of living in a walled town and having to post guards on the walls day and night to watch for the invaders.

            I want to read to you part of a letter written by someone who did know that anxiety.  This is a letter written on papyrus about six hundred years before Jesus.  Part of the letter is lost to decay.  Imagine a small city in the plains of Palestine near the sea.  The town and its surrounding fields and pastureland are part of the Egyptian empire, and Pharaoh has appointed a man named Adon as his puppet-king there.  The name of the town is Saqqarah.  This letter was written in the Aramaic language.  As I read this, imagine King Adon standing on the wall of Saqqarah; and on the horizon he can see the smoke rising from the neighboring town, Aphek, where the Babylonian army has killed everybody and is burning everything.  They’re headed for Saqqarah next.[1]  King Adon writes:[2]

 

To the Lord of kings, Pharaoh,

From your servant Adon, King of Saqqarah:

May  God the lord of heaven and earth, and Baal-shemain the great god, make your throne

endure forever, like the days of heaven.

 

I write to inform you that Babylonian troops have come.  They have gotten as far as Aphek

and … have taken ….

 

You know, O Pharaoh, that I can not stand alone against the king of Babylon.  May it therefore

please you to send an army to rescue me.  Do not abandon me, for your servant is loyal to

you, and I have protected your property so that this region is your possession.  But the king of

Babylon is taking it and will set up a governor here ….

 

What a frightening story was rolled out when archaeologists discovered that scroll.  But I read this so you can get a feel for the reason why ancient cities built walls and posted guards day and night.  The guards watched for invaders—either great armies, or small bands of marauders.  When they saw the enemy they would call out the alarm, the people working in the fields would drive the livestock into the fortress, and every man would get his bow or his spear.  That’s the way people used to live their lives.  Many still do!

            In the three verses I read a moment ago from Psalm 55, the singer uses the image of a walled city with guards posted to watch for lurking evil.  But he uses the image with irony.  Listen to my translation of it:

 

Devour, O Lord.  Confuse their tongues,

   for I see violence and strife in the city.

Day and night [watchmen] go around upon its walls,

   but wickedness and mischief are inside it.

 

The irony is that the enemy is not “out there” at all:  the enemy is within the walls—as Pogo famously said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”[3] 

 

            When I read this, the first time it got my attention, I just had to stop and say “Wow.”  It’s an ancient prayer for help against enemies, but it’s as modern as yesterday.  We know this feeling, don’t we!  Writing a prophecy against the corruption of Jerusalem in the 700’s, the prophet Micah echoed this psalm:[4]

 

The faithful have disappeared from the land

….

The best of them is like a brier,

   the most upright of them a thorn hedge.

The day of your watchmen,

of your punishment, has come;                    

   Now their confusion is at hand.

 

Jesus himself quoted some of the rest of this Micah passage:[5]

 

Do you think that I have come to bring peace…?  No, I tell you,

but division!               . . . .

Father against son and son against father,

   mother against daughter and daughter against mother,

mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law

   and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.

 

But neither Jesus, nor Micah, nor the psalmist is talking about family disagreements.  When my grandmother Griggs died in 1964 there was a farm, furniture, china, and a chest full of family pictures that had to be dealt with by four daughters and three sons.  The pictures disappeared:  my cousin Mildred was always accused of making off with them to Tucson, but there’s no proof.  The furniture and china finally got divided up—I ended up with her china last year, vintage about 1890—a gift to my sister from cousin Alice Jane.  They finally had to sell the farm and divide the money—which is what they could have done a year before.  That kind of family argument is not what the singer is seeing in our Psalm:  he is seeing former friends who now want to kill him.  The enemy isn’t going to come over the mountain:  the enemy is within the walls.  And Jesus said the same thing about his own generation—and, we must add, Jesus said it about our generation, too.

            We live in a time when our technology and transportation abilities make it possible to feed the world.  But we don’t.  We live in a time when twenty cents can buy a medical kit that will keep a dehydrated child in Darfur, or Afghanistan, or the Ivory Coast from dying of dysentery; but nobody told us—globalization is for profit, not for blessing in our world.[6]

The time is coming soon when we will be forced either by shortages or by prices to seek personal transportation that uses much less petroleum products; but neither Americans nor Chinese nor the people of India are willing to give up our cars just yet.  I love my Chrysler LHS. 

            Day and night the watchmen go around upon the walls,

            But the problems are within.

 

            I love my country, and I know that you do too, because you’ve told me so.  We hold in great respect those who have served in the military and in government, especially in time of war, to defend America against the enemy coming over the ocean.  The Cold War was pretty strange, but we figured it out and America survived that, too.  So here we are in the twenty-first century with new enemies, and yes, those enemies have come from “over there” to kill and destroy.  We will defend our country where God has blessed us so bountifully.  But are all our enemies “over there”? 

            I don’t know whether you believe in a woman’s freedom of choice or in protecting unborn human life:  there are intelligent, conscientious Americans on both sides of this debate.  But last month a physician, because of his moral choice, was murdered in the narthex of his church while he was distributing worship bulletins.  Who is the enemy of liberty? 

            What is the relationship between the deregulation of the finance industry and Bernard Madoff?  How many children have to die of asthma while sitting in hospital emergency rooms, because their families can’t afford health insurance?  A thousand?  Five thousand?  One?  America has been talking about fixing healthcare since 1915:  it’s about time we got it done.  Those asthmatic children are within the city walls. 

            What is the greater threat to the America’s people:  those few radicalized Muslim youth in Chad who like Osama bin Laden (and so we have American troops there), or the safety of America’s bridges, water pipes, electric grids and food processing?  I think the greater crisis is within the city walls. 

 

            Now I’m not talking about politics:  I’m talking about morals.  In each of these situations there are several answers, and the political process is basically a loud conversation to decide which answer to choose.  But down beneath the politics, beneath the personal likes and dislikes, beneath the question of pension survival and Social Security survival—down there where we really live, there is a moral person who much choose; and you are that person. 

            Before I baptize a couple’s first child I sit down with them in their living room and talk with them about the words they are going to speak in the baptismal liturgy.  I say, “This is not just a ritual we do—we don’t just ‘get the baby done’—this is you standing before God and the church and making promises, vowing to rear your child in the faith.”  It’s a moral choice.

            Before I perform a church wedding, both People’s Church and I myself have a rule that the couple must participate in four pre-marriage conversations.  Those who don’t live nearby can work with another minister, but the sessions are required.  In those four sessions we plan the ceremony, and study what the Bible teaches about marriage, and I have the couple talk to each other about how they grew up and what they expect of the marriage, and we do some work with communication.  Why?  Because I believe that marriage is not just a sanction for physical and emotional satisfaction, it’s a moral commitment as well.[7] 

 

            You know me well enough to know that I’m not a fundamentalist, but I’m saying this morning that our lives, and the life of our country, are in need of attention.  I’m saying that the only people who can give attention to them are we ourselves.  And I’m saying with the psalm-singer that the gravest threat to our society is not the enemy who may come over the ocean:  it’s a spiritually, morally sterile community of people who claim the benefits but disregard the responsibilities and hold in contempt anybody who acts on the real inner issues.  America needs liberal Christians who are just as solidly Christian    as a fundamentalist Muslim is solidly a Muslim.  And I would say the same thing about being solidly Jewish if I were speaking in that context.  The time to be soft and comfortable is over—this present economic tsunami is a signal of that fact.  The singer sings:

Devour, O Lord.  Confuse their tongues,

   for I see violence and strife in the city.

Day and night [watchmen] go around upon its walls,

   but wickedness and mischief are inside it.

AMEN