Texts: Romans 5: 20; Romans 8: 28, 31-39
Estrangement and Grace
A week ago, I began by referring to the peculiar qualities of this thing called preaching, which is where I wish to begin today as well. It’s peculiar because I thought I might say one thing to you this morning, but as the week progressed, it was something entirely different that I wished to offer. My intention was to continue with some further thoughts on the life of prayer, but the days suggested their own avenue. And in the middle of this week of roiling drama, I returned to an old sermon from Paul Tillich, in search of wisdom from a trusted guide. It’s a classic, entitled “You Are Accepted.” In it, Tillich labors to reclaim several old fashioned words from the dustbin of history. The words are sin, and then grace. As I sat with Tillich’s insights, I decided it would be valuable to share them with you as well, because I believe they have great explanatory power for the moment we’re in. I too wish to reclaim those words, sin, and grace, for the ways they lend clarity to some of the events happening around us at the moment.
But first a caveat. I introduce the word “sin” with some trepidation. It’s a word that’s been so badly abused that those of us in progressive theological circles tend to downplay it. It’s a concept that’s been used to hurt and shame individuals far too often, and anyway, it seems like a downer to talk about it. Even so, there’s something within the word that calls for reflection. There’s also something within the word that points toward its opposite, which is grace. And so if the front end of what I have to say feels a little heavy, hang on. If you’re new to this place and you’re wondering if you’ve stumbled into some retrograde environment, hang on! Grace arrives. Grace always arrives.
Tillich redefines sin for modernity as estrangement, alienation, or, more to the point, separation. Here’s what he says:
I should like to suggest another word to you…as a useful clue in the interpretation of the word “sin”, “separation.” Separation is an aspect of the experience of everyone. Perhaps the word “sin” has the same root as the word “asunder”. In any case, sin is separation. To be in the state of sin is to be in the state of separation. And separation is threefold: there is separation among individual lives, separation of men/women from themselves; and separation of all people from the Ground of Being (God).[1]
There are ways that we all feel the pain of separation. Most often, we feel it in our relationships with those we love the most, realizing all the ways we’re cut off from them. Sometimes we feel it in a kind of enmity toward ourselves, as we realize that we’re not the people we wish we were. But we discover separation in other ways too. I’d like to focus on one such form of extreme alienation this morning, for one of the most powerful, and glaring, instances of separation can be found in our nation’s current immigration practices. It’s there, though not only there, that we witness sin not as a private matter, but sin as a social and public strategy. And it’s devastating.
This past Tuesday several among us journeyed to Hartford for yet another public witness concerning a deportation. Salma Sikander was the latest individual who had been ordered to leave the country. She is a mother and a wife, a resident of the United States for the past eighteen years. She had been ordered to return to Bangladesh, or face arrest. A number of clergy and people of conscience gathered in front of the ICE offices on Tuesday afternoon, in hopes of reversing that decision.
We did as we commonly do. We held signs. We chanted. We marched. A few of us said some words. But at one point, the overwhelming truth of it all flooded me, and I felt simply overwhelmed by the horror of it all. It was, I believe, an awareness of the terrible power of sin that overcame me. As we stood chanting, “Keep Salma Home. Keep Salma Home,” Salma and her family suddenly passed by, on their way to check in with their tormentors. I suddenly found that I couldn’t use my voice anymore because I was in tears. I cried as I imagined the conversations that must have been occurring in their household. I cried as I imagined a man, both a father and husband, left alone without his partner to live out his life here in the States. I cried for a woman, a mother and spouse, forced to live in exile from the two people she loved the most. I shed tears for a son on the brink of being separated from his mother by a gulf of nearly 8000 miles. And frankly, I shed tears wondering how I would feel, if it were Rachael who was being forced to leave, if it was me being left to raise our kids alone, imagining how bereft, how vacant, how sad my own life would be, to say nothing of how scared I would be for her. Spend time imagining that scenario in your own life. What if the person most precious to you was taken away? How would you feel? What would you do? How would you get through?
That is, I believe, as potent a symbol of sin as a social strategy than anything I can imagine at the moment. Sin abounds, the Apostle Paul tells us. If sin is separation, then indeed, sin does abound.
That’s the easy part. It’s easy to find instances of alienation and estrangement, because they’re everywhere – in our immigration policy but in the revelations of the #MeToo movement as well, in the rollback of environmental regulations to the renewed vigor of white supremacy movements and other shrewd tactics to assert class power. Do I need to mention sexual abuse by clergy, and the cover up of that abuse? Do I need to mention the culture of corruption and venality exposed in courtrooms this week? Sin abounds, and its effects cleave us asunder.
The harder question is whether and where there might be a countervailing power that draws together. Is there something within the world that binds us and holds us, one that has the capacity to overcome separation? Is there something within the world that pushes toward reunion, reconciliation, toward a non-alienated existence? Here we turn to that other old theological word, grace, a word that still has enormous power.
Here’s Tillich again:
Grace is the reunion of life with life…Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when despair destroys all joy and courage. We (then) experience the grace which is able to overcome the tragic separation of the sexes, of the generations, of the nations, of the races, and even the utter strangeness between man and nature. Sometimes grace appears in all these separations to reunite us with those to whom we belong. For life belongs to life. [2]
To return to the words of the Apostle Paul, sin abounds. But grace abounds even more. It’s not something we control. It’s not something we can own. It’s not something we can manipulate. But we can do our part to prepare for its coming. We can create the conditions for its flourishing. We can rehearse and practice for the eruptions of grace that really do occur in this world, despite the abundance of alienation, despite the abundance of estrangement and separation. Sin abounds, but grace abounds even more.
Grace is what we celebrate whenever we set the table with the bread and the cup, whenever we mark this sacrament called communion. It represents the power to gather us in from whatever lonely corners we may inhabit. The table is a representation of the grace, the reconciling power, that stirs within the world.
That’s no empty phrase. That’s no mere cliché. And the table is no empty symbol. It points toward something powerfully true and powerfully real, something that we’ve been experiencing around here quite a lot recently. Our sanctuary work is a live demonstration of what the table represents. There is a power that isolates and separates, a power that divides and splits – we’re all subject to it in one form or another. But in the symbol of the table, in the work of sanctuary, we invoke, we enact, and we participate in a different form of power. It is the power of grace. It is the power to bind and heal, to restore and overcome. Sin abounds, separation and heartbreak abound, but grace abounds much more. That’s why this table is set before us.
Malik and Zahida and Roniya have been in captivity with us for 161 days. That’s nearly six months. The Board of Immigration Appeals is just sitting on their case. Their lives have been upended by the power of separation, legal strategies used to estrange and alienate. Sin abounds, and it brings great pain. But grace abounds more. Because look what’s happening: even amidst the power that tears asunder, all sorts of new friendships and forms of togetherness are happening. Most nights of the week, Malik and Zahida gather with members and friends from our community for meals. We have community potlucks at least once a week, and sometimes more. We sit with one another and we visit and we tell stories, and, here’s the miracle of it all, we laugh harder and more freely than I have anywhere else in recent memory. There’s so much struggle, but my God, there’s so much joy too. And that is the great mystery of this adventure in sanctuary. Don’t ask me to explain it. Sin abounds, separation abounds, and make no mistake – it’s nothing short of evil. But there is a grace that sustains and strengthens. There is a grace that overcomes.
I believe that grace will be sufficient. I believe it will carry us through, and that it will carry Malik and Zahida and Roniya through. But not only for us here at FCCOL. Because something is stirring. Something is awakening all around us right now. Sin abounds in high and low places, but individuals, and communities like ours, are confronting the powers that tear asunder with something more potent by far: the power to bind, the power to heal, the power to restore. It’s like that scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where after a long winter, a bud appears on a tree, and then ice begins to thaw, and then stony hearts are restored to life because the great lion Aslan is on the move.
That is the power of grace, and it is on the move – among us, through us, and well beyond us as well. That grace has public significance. But it has personal significance as well. Whatever form of separation is bedeviling you, whatever form of alienation is plaguing you, that same grace is out there on the move, trying to find you. That’s why this table is set: because grace is out there, trying to find you.
[1]Tillich, Paul, “You Are Accepted” from the collection of sermons The Shaking of the Foundations(Wipf and Stock Publisher, 2016). A pdf of the sermon can be found online at:
http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/383693/9154847/1288214160857/You+Are+Accepted.pdf?tok
This quote taken from Paragraph 4.
[2]Ibid. Quote taken from paragraphs 12 and 13.
