We Have Had More Than Enough of Contempt
Psalm 123; I Thessalonians 5:1-11
Psalm 123
1 To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
2 As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.
3 Have mercy upon us, O Lord , have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt.
4 Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.
I Thessalonians 5:1-11
5Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. 2For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! 4But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; 5for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.
6 So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; 7for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. 8But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.
11 Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.
The Sermon
The young man stood awkwardly against the wall at a party with some of his girlfriend’s extended family. He was on a short week-end break from studying to become a Methodist minister, following in the giant footsteps of his well-respected father. Here at the party, where he knew no one except the young woman who was out on the back porch, everybody was talking, but no one was talking to him. Eventually, a stout, middle aged man, with a beer sloshing around in a plastic cup, stopped on his way past the young man and said, “You’re the boyfriend, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you do?” The young man told him: “Well, I’m in seminary, and eventually I hope to go into the ministry.”
And the older man sort of snorted and said, “Whatever.”
Have mercy upon us, O Lord , for we have had more than enough of contempt.
Worthwhile questions—intelligent, thought-provoking questions—have been asked by all kinds of believers, as well as non-believers. And most Christians and, I would guess, most believers of most other religions, have found that moments of questioning, wondering why, and even doubt have been periodic mile markers on their personal journey of faith. Those kinds of questions have value and meaning in the search for Truth.
But sometimes, we face outright contempt and scorn. Sometimes it's not a question at all--just a scornful, "Whatever."
The early church huddled in fear when they heard that kind of talk. A scornful word can turn into a hateful word, which can become a rant, which tends to attract a crowd, which can become a mob. You can see the horrifying results of that in black and white photographs of Klan rallies in Indiana in the 1950s, and shattered windows in Germany in 1938. For a local minority population, it can be a moment of life or death when the words of scorn and contempt start to fly from the mouths of others.
The Jews in the centuries before Christ had heard it from every direction. Their religion was a strange one to the people around them. The Jews had this weird notion that there’s only one God, and they refused to make an idol so everybody else could see exactly what this God was supposed to look like. My favorite psalm from around this time in history is Psalm 115:
“Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’
Our God is in the heavens, and does whatever He pleases.”
Since time immemorial, though, they’ve been asking, “Where is your God?”, sometimes in honest dialogue, but more often with the hateful smirk of contempt.
According to Matthew, even the bandits crucified next to Jesus mocked him. Even on their own cross, they could look at the man in their midst and ask with contempt, “Where is your God?”
These days, the language of scorn and derision is everywhere—where there might be dialogue, listening, people thoughtfully regarding questions from each other’s perspectives, sometimes we see only contempt: contempt for ideas, for beliefs, for other cultures, for each other.
And its forms of expression seem to get uglier and uglier. It’s sickening enough that the constant job of the secret service is to field personal threats against every president, no matter who it is. Now we’re told that the ones aimed at the current president-elect are more frequent than ever, and more abhorrent.
We can live in hope that as the yard signs and campaign stickers come down from another election cycle, the derision and scorn might quiet down a little, too. They need to. At least in the past 16 years, split among Democratic and Republican presidents and congresses - and I know: Thank God, we live in a free and democratic society where people can say what they want, which is an enormous gift - but we’ve had more than enough of cynicism, more than enough of the snarl, the contempt, the scorn.
We’ve had enough! We’ve had a belly full of it: the disdain, the despising, the cruel words, the impatience, the cynicism, the smirking and the arrogance and the ironically ignorant condescension. Have mercy upon us, O Lord , for we have had more than enough of contempt.
Paul had one piece of advice for the young church in Thessalonica, for when they were on the receiving end of such derision and contempt, as they often were, already, just a few years after the crucifixion.
His advice to the young church was: Remember who you are.
You are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.
For God has destined us for salvation through Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live with him.
What would happen if, in the midst of a world that throws contempt around like it’s the only acceptable form of communication, what if the people of God chose to counter that with something more productive?
“Ah,” said the doomed protest singer Phil Ochs, “Ah, but in such a time as this, the true protest is beauty.” (Back in the early 1970's when English majors ruled the world, people still began sentences with the word, “Ah.” I’m kind of glad to be able to dispense with that, but hang on to the sentiment.) "In such a time as this, the true protest is beauty.”
The word protest is important to us Protestants for obvious reasons. It conjures up the sense of a negative—you protest against something—but it’s actually a positive. The second part is “test,” as in “testify” or “testimony,” and the pro part means “forth”—Protestants speak forth, speak out. That’s positive, not negative. We speak forth, we speak out—and we are delivering a message of truth and beauty, of love and justice and kindness.
Someone spoke out for us recently, from what I considered to be a surprising source. In his column in a Palestinian newspaper, ‘Abd Al-Nasser Al-Najjar, a committed Muslim in culture and politics, who is no fan of the American invasion of Iraq, criticized the persecution of Christians in Arab countries.
After spending most of the article highlighting atrocities and injustices against Christians in the Arab world, he concluded,
“The most fundamental problem here may be related to culture. We continue to instill a horrific culture in our children, one that sees Christians as infidels... and as ‘the other.’ We...must raise an outcry and stand up to restore the Christians’ rights, of which they have been deprived.
“[Let us] remember that the tribes of Arabia were Christian. The best writers and poets were Christian, as were [many] warriors and philosophers... The first Palestinian university was established by Christians.
“Enough [examples]! It is not words that we need, but progressive attitudes, and the truth, so that it can be presented to tyrannical rulers, and so that clerics and old men will not be the only Christians left in the Holy Land and in the city of [Jesus'] birth.”
This Muslim has gone to the wall for our brothers and sisters. Though you and I are not facing anything like the dangers those Christians are, in his way, and in his words, 'Abd Al-Nasser Al-Najjar has gone to bat for us, too. And, dare I say, in doing so, he has taught us something about being children of light. He’s certainly reminded us Protestants what it means to speak out.
Another way to respond to a world that’s given us our fill of contempt was articulated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book about Christian community in the face of the Nazi takeover of the German church, called Life Together. He laid out several approaches to being faithful to God and faithful to each other and one of those principles he called, “the ministry of holding one’s tongue,” which I privately call the ministry of put-a-sock-in-it.
I have to tell myself this all the time: it may be possible to conceive that the world does not need to hear your words of judgment on every single thing that you hear.
Sometimes, you won’t agree with everything you just heard. Sure, it’s great to have differing opinions, and it’s a gift to be able to share them. We call that “the gift of community.” You know what else can be a gift? Put a sock in it.
The kingdom of Christ will probably survive your decision to occasionally, every once in a while, refrain from criticizing the people around you, even if you’re right.
That one countercultural act makes room for a chance for something rare and amazing to happen: it gives people a chance to listen. Who knows? We might even, conceivably, find an opportunity to learn something about each other....maybe even learn something from each other.
Probably in this and every church, the long-term members and the newcomers don’t understand each other as well as we think we do. We have more listening to do.
Probably in this community as in every community, the older people and the younger people do not have each other figured out as well as we think we do.
The same could probably be said for the people on the island and the people from that distant land called “over the bridge.” Maybe even people of different races, different churches, different political beliefs, different preferences for worship.
Maybe it’s time for the children of light to speak with a little more of what Paul called “sobriety” when we talk about one another—let our words be “sober” rather than knee-jerk scorn and contemptuousness.
Maybe we can exercise Bonhoeffer’s ministry of holding our tongues, and give ourselves the opportunity to listen to each other. Rodger Nishioka said he was at some large event in Africa where there were a lot of people from different places, and at a crowded event, he was walking past an African whom he had met before and said, “Hey, how ya doin’?” and kept walking—until he was surprised to hear that the guy was actually answering his question, telling him how he was doing. Rodger went back and the guy said, “I’ve noticed something when you Americans talk. When we talk to each other, one person speaks, and then listens while someone else speaks. When Americans have a conversation, you speak, and then you wait for your next turn to speak.”
I think that’s a fair observation.
Alice Mann said that if we listen to each other—even through the things we can’t relate to, and the things we disagree with—if the people in church really listen, they’ll hear that kernel, perhaps hidden, of what that person is doing here, and how it is that they are searching for God, which is what they have in common with you.
Maybe we can even speak up and speak out for each other, like that Palestinian journalist did for the Christians in his part of the world.
And when contempt comes our way, we can remember who we are, and who we are not—that we don’t need to do as everyone else does, because we are children of light and we live in the bright day of those who have already turned our lives over to something far greater than ourselves.
Maybe then we’ll know the mutual satisfaction of encouraging one another, and building each other up, and know the privilege and the honor of walking in the light.
Have mercy upon us, O Lord ; our soul has had more than its fill of scorn and contempt.
Keith Grogg
Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church
Carolina Beach , NC
November 16, 2008
top