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How Lovely is thy Dwelling Place

Rev. Penny Nixon - MCC San Francisco, San Franciso, CA USA

 

 

How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place

 

by Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon

 

I heard an interview with Bill Moyers this week on NPR. He has a new book coming out on Lyndon B. Johnson. He tells about the time during the Vietnam War when body bag after body bag was coming home and LBJ felt so much culpability and responsibility that he wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. In fact, he would pull the covers up over his head as if that would help him erase the images from his mind.

 

I imagine many of us felt like that this week as we saw the photos from Abu Ghraib and the photos of Nick Berg. For those of us who were alive during the time of the Vietnam war, we all probably have certain images in our mind from that time that have come to represent that era.

 

You know for those of us who believe this war should never have happened, the images we saw this week were a confirmation that violence begets violence. For those of us who believe that this war serves some greater good, there’s some strong disillusionment that has swept across this land that many people are experiencing right now and don’t know what to do with.

 

Tonight I want to take a few moments and have a conversation with you. Not the typical kind of sermon, but more of a conversation. One that doesn’t pretend to have any simplistic answers. And I have to say that it’s bad news before it’s good news. But sometimes you have to say the bad news before you can get to the good news. I have no partisan agenda tonight in any way but I want to discuss with us the role of spirituality and religion and our piece in it.

 

And I’m going to tell you, which I don’t usually, what I’m going to talk about, in case you need to space out during any part of it, you’ll know ahead of time when that part would be. You always want to give people opportunities for whatever they need.

 

So I’m going to talk tonight about torture for a minute. I’m going to talk about bodies. And then I’m going to find some hope to give and some personal action that we might be able to take.

 

I don’t usually talk about my process in preparing sermons, but on Friday I worked all day and read all about torture and bodies and by Friday evening, I was so depressed. I felt so immobilized and I thought, I've got 24 hours to come up with some hope before Sunday.

 

They’re difficult things to talk about and I’m actually glad tonight that there aren’t any children here. I love to have children in church but tonight I want to talk about some adult material. And we’re all adults in this room. And I wish I didn’t have to talk about them, there’s such a spirit of joy in this place and last week for those of you that were here, we just had a great time laughing and being joyful together and, but we’re at a different space tonight for a few moments.

 

The photographs we saw in the news and in the media this week are the things that actually happen in war fairly consistently; we just got a window into it for a moment. And against the backdrop of what I want to say about torture, I want to say that I believe that our soldiers, men and women, who serve as reservists, who serve in our military branches, for the most part, are dedicated, devoted individuals who at great sacrifice to their own lives go to serve our country. That’s the backdrop.

 

I want to talk about torture for a minute and what we’ve seen. I’m sure that there’s probably not a person in this room that hasn’t seen the photos from the torture chamber as it is called, Abu Ghraib. And you’ve probably read that that is the exact place where Saddam Hussein meted out his torture year after year after year in Iraq. It’s the exact same facility that then we took over, and the prisoners that were there are the ones in that very space that were abused.

 

Buildings hold energy; they really do. And it was amazing to me that it took place in the same place and what it said to me was this, it was just this stark reminder of what happens when an individual or a group of people or a religion or a country, any country, claims moral superiority over everyone else. I kept thinking of the proverb, “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

 

You can’t claim to have moral superiority again and again as if you were not tempted by the abuse of absolute power. You can’t claim moral superiority and not have it eventually fall down around you. And just wreak havoc where you claim it. Joe Klein in an article in Time Magazine said, “Faith without doubt leads to moral arrogance.” And that, that kind of faith without doubt, whether it’s the kind of faith that our administration at some times puts forth or whether it’s other countries and regimes that do that, it leads to moral arrogance. And moral arrogance only leads to destruction again and again.

 

The other thing that I want to open up about this whole thing around torture is that any time a person is forced to have sex against their will, it is a kind of torture and dehumanization. It should never take place; it is always wrong. It is always wrong. And those of you who know me, know that I don’t say “always” very often, but it is always wrong.

 

And did you notice that the horror and the humiliation had to do with homosexual acts? The deep homophobia and the deep misogyny that is revealed in our world as these pictures came out and what people really think about that, is deep and it is profound and it affects our daily lives again and again.

 

I don’t know how much reading that you’ve done on this, but they did experiments at Stanford a couple of decades ago and also at Yale. At Stanford, for two weeks, a psychology class was divided randomly into prisoners and guards. After about ten days, those who were the guards got so abusive with their absolute power over another human being that the university had to shut down the experiment. The same thing happened at Yale when they did experiments in administering shock to somebody on the opposite side of a wall, that you couldn’t see. There were actors and actresses, unbeknownst to the people administering the shocks, and they would keep upping the shocks to the screams of the person on the other side of the wall. And the researchers were absolutely amazed that human beings time after time after time would treat other human beings like this. In fact it said it was rare that they would find an individual with the moral fortitude that would stop and say, this isn’t right.

 

You see in war, we have a morally suspended universe.

 

So before we point the finger and say, "This is so wrong" (and it is), make sure that we remember that there is not a one of us in this room, however morally superior we think we might be, there is not a one of us who knows how we would react in a given situation when we are faced with violence and depravity and moral suspension day after day after day. When you have been trained to believe that another one is “other than” you and you are so distanced from their pain that you cannot even believe that they in the same way are human as you. None of us know how we would react.

 

What this brought to me this week, besides incredible sadness at the cruelty that goes on the world (and again these were just pictures that we saw. This stuff happens in prisons across our land and prisons all over the world. These things happen when violence begets violence; so this happens. And then we experienced the horrible decapitation of Nick Berg. Can you image what his family is going through?)

 

But this brought into sharp relief this week the centrality of bodies.

 

I know this is really hard stuff, so just stick with me for just a couple more minutes and then I’ll get to the good news, ok?

 

It’s really important that we unlayer this. If we can’t talk about it here, where can we talk about it? And I’m going to say things out loud tonight that will not be said in other spiritual communities and that’s one of the roles that we serve here—to say things out loud, to tell truths that are really hard to tell but the beauty is that this community can hold those truths and move to a different place.

 

But if in this place we do not have a body affirming spirituality, then we can forget about being a healing force in the world. The body must become a place of sacredness again for every one of us, and especially in this House of Prayer for all people. I believe that unless we change our view of bodies and the role that that view plays in the world, we will not veer off the course of destruction that our world is on.

 

From just two days in the San Francisco Chronicle, let me just say a litany of things that have to do with bodies:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And religion has not been very kind to bodies. I’m amazed that most churches don’t make you check ‘em at the door.

 

You know in traditional Christianity, the body is like an embarrassment. Somebody that grew up in fundamentalism told me that when they were growing up, they were ashamed to even say the word “body.”

 

In Matthew 25, a parable is told about that final day where the sheep and goats (it seems we always come down to sheep and goats somehow in these parables. I don’t know what that’s about) Cats and dogs—however you need to image it—are divided, and God says to those who are blessed by God, “When I was hungry you fed me and when I was naked, you clothed me and when I was sick, you took care of me and when I was in prison, you visited me. You are blessed by me.” And the sheep say, “God, when, when did we see you?” And God says, “Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me.” Because God is in those bodies. Hungry bodies because people are poor and they can’t afford to eat. Sick bodies because people have illnesses. Naked bodies. Bodies in prison. And in your body. This is where God is. And this great parable that is told I believe absolutely breaks down the hierarchy of bodies.

 

The heart of Christianity is the Incarnation. What’s the Incarnation? God became flesh, right, isn’t that the main thing? So it is amazing to me that we don’t exalt and celebrate flesh more and bodies more.

 

The Psalms say, “How lovely is your dwelling place O God.” Your body is the dwelling place of the Divine and every other body is as well. And if we really believe that, don’t you think the world would be a vastly different place than it is today?

 

I’m not making a hierarchy, I’m making an observation, I imagine that if the pictures that we saw, especially of the person standing there, if that were an American soldier, or an American, I imagine that in many churches across America today that image would be likened to the crucifixion, to the Christ. See how he suffered. I haven’t heard anybody say that about an Iraqi body.

 

Here's our hope. In this place, where we have tried to create a spirituality that transcends just one tradition, we’re trying to create a House of Prayer for All People, where whoever you are, whatever you believe when you walk in that door, you have a place here. We’re also trying at the very core of who we are, to acknowledge that whatever body walks through that door is sacred and belongs here, fully just as you are in this moment. We are seeking to create a world where every body matters and every one belongs and we have gone from shame, most of us any way, shame about our bodies and our desires, to celebration. We’re somewhere on the journey.

 

And tonight I invite you wherever you are about your own queer body, and if you’re in this room you’re queer tonight, (just for this hour and a half, you’ll be all right) but because you’re here, because you are with us, you are queer tonight. Wherever you are about your own queer body, I hope you take another step toward celebration because we’ve been shamed long enough. And we will be shamed no more. And we will not shame other people.

 

Tonight in community prayer time, we’re going to bless the men of “Flesh and Spirit.” They’re a queer, progressive, erotic, spiritual community. (Wrap you mind around that.) They are about intentionally creating community where bodies come together, where God, Goddess and Spirit is found in the erotic, where flesh is sacred, where love is expressed in all different ways beyond boundaries, where they are reclaiming their sexual power and their spiritual power as one in the world and bringing healing to the world. We need more of this in the world.

 

And we are an alternative community that helps reinforce these values that sexuality and spirituality come from the same place and that our bodies are sacred. And lastly, the personal piece is this: if you and I (and I’m talking to myself first), if you and I do not accept our own bodies however they are in this minute, we will not be able to accept other bodies. And it will be the measure by which we view other bodies. And I’m talking to everyone of us in this room because I do not believe that there’s a person in here who hasn’t struggled with some sense of body self or body image, either how you look or how you’re shaped or how sick or how well you are. But if we don’t accept completely our flesh and blood, then we will not accept these other bodies as sacred either.

 

You see if we can get to that place, then it will be no more that a young body is valued over an old body, or a white body over a body of color, or a well body over a sick body, or an educated body over an uneducated body, or an addicted body over a body that doesn’t have that illness, or imprisoned body over a free body. Only then can we give the hope that Spirit gives us to bring healing to the world.

 

You are the dwelling place of the Holy One.

 

Believe it and then live it.

 

Amen.