Crossposted at Sacred Space: Reflections from the religious left
The following is something I wrote in 2004, after hearing that Bush claimed that God told him to attack Iraq. I was moved to repost it now because of what Cindy Sheehan is doing down in Crawford and the judgements some have made about her motives. And it ties in with the Biblical refrain, “Here I am…send me” that has become expecially meaningful to me over the past few years.
One thing I have noticed about the stories in the Bible about God talking to people and giving them a mission of some sort, is that they are usually reluctant at first. Moses is told that he will lead the people, and he tries to beg out of it–“You don’t want me. I’d be no good at that sort of thing. I’ve got this stutter, you know.”
Jonah, as my kids recently learned in the Veggie Tales movie, was told “Go to Ninevah.” Jonah says, “Gotcha!” and promptly sets sail–in the opposite direction.
Whether these stories literally happened, or are an allegorical expression of the faith experience of a people, what stands out to me is the fact that God is often seen commissioning people to do things they find difficult. Challenging. Scary. Seemingly impossible, or at least implausible.
God seems pretty unlikely to say, “Attack Iraq, kill thousands of people, get oil contracts for your rich friends.” I don’t think Bush needed any higher power to tell him to do that. But apparently he needs to invoke a higher power to justify it.
Who does God call, and for what purpose? And what does the call sound like…or feel like? Susan B. Anthony once said,
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
That quote reflects my thinking to some extent. Again, in the Bible, we really don’t see examples of God calling an individual for some person, where the person says, “Cool! That’s what I was planning to do anyway, but now I’ve got your Divine Stamp of Approval. That’s really going to come in handy!”
I have done a great deal of reflecting on how I can best discern what I whimsically call God’s Clues. What am I being called to do? How am I being called to help…to be of service? I am always tenative about such things, and would never be so bold as to announce that “God told me to do X”, but the call feels more authentic when I hesitate. Whatever it is doesn’t look like it’s going to be a lot of fun, or it feels really out of character for me, but I have this persistent, nagging feeling that it’s something I am meant to do. Starting my Religious Left site was one of those things.
“Me? Write publicly about religion? But that’s–bad manners or something, isn’t it? And the few times I’ve tried to broach the subject online, some people have said downright unfriendly things to me.”
Yet it was something that I really felt needed to be done, and, as a progressive of faith who had strong feelings about the way the right had been “stealing Jesus”, I realized that I was in the right place at the right time to do it.
One of scripture readings in church this past Sunday was the one in which Joseph (he of Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat fame) was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. Right before his brothers did the deed, this passage caught my attention:
And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” And he said to him, “Here I am.”
You can read the whole story here in Genesis 37 . By the time we get to Genesis 42 Joseph has risen to a place of power in Egypt, and is able to save those same brothers when the famine comes. But at the moment that he said “Here I am”, he had no way of knowing how things would work out for him. And the Bible has many such stories of people having the courage and the faith to say here I am at the critical moment.
A more modern “here I am” story is told in a sermon by Rev. Dr. Robert M. Bowman. The United Nations asked Bowman to hold a press conference to announce a resolution against space weapons that he had drafted. He hesitated, because this did not seem like a good point in his career to take that public stand. And yet…
When God looked down and said, “Now let’s see, what poor schmuck can I use to keep those idiots from committing mass suicide?”, there I was. Now I didn’t jump up and say, “Here I am, Lord. Send me!” No. I said, “Who, me??” For five months, I dodged and evaded, intent on going back to being the rich executive. But God doesn’t give up easily. And so in that fateful October of 1982, I put my old life behind me and started trying to build the new one.
God had his “Yes” — a timid, frightened, half-hearted, hoping this wasn’t really happening “Yes,” but a “Yes” nonetheless.
I don’t know Cindy Sheehan personally, but I know that she is doing something that needs to be done. One by one, we have seen stories about the wrongs this administration has committed related to the invasion and occupation of Iraq appear briefly in the news, but somehow fail to get “legs”. They are quickly displaced by some other story that seems more immediate, more sensational, more “public interest”. Cindy just may be the right person at the right place at the right time to reverse this trend. For once, maybe the media and the American people won’t immediately look away, but will be forced to really pay attention to what is going on, and even care enough to take action. And I, for one, am truly thankful that, in spite of the risks she is taking and the insults she must endure, Cindy Sheehan chose to say “Here I am” when circumstances called.
My Religious Left web site: promoting the politics of compassion since 2003
