Sermon for Easter Sunday 2009
Out of my distress I called on the LORD;
the LORD answered me and set me in a broad place. Psalm 118:5
There once was a man named Hobson who owned a livery stable. He had a few horses to rent out and in order to rotate the use of the animals, he would move them, each in turn, to a stall nearest the door of his establishment. He would then offer his customers a choice. They could take the animal in the stall nearest the door, or they could take no animal at all.
Thus, so the story goes, originated the term “a Hobson’s choice.” It is a choice, which in point of fact, is no choice at all. “Like it or lump it.” “Take it or leave it.” It is the appearance of multiple options when there is actually only one. As Henry Ford famously said of his Model T, you could choose to have it in any color you wanted, so long as it was black.
The hard economic times we are all facing reminds me of another story. In Bisbee, Arizona, in the early years of the 20th century, a dispute between copper mining companies and mineworkers developed. In 1917, the workers had organized in labor unions and approached the company management with a list of demands for better pay and conditions. The mining companies responded by giving their workers a choice. On the one hand, they could continue to accept the harsh and underpaid work at the rock-face of the copper mines or, on the other, they could accept unemployment and poverty. The workers said that this choice put them “between a rock and a hard place.”
I hate to be “between a rock and a hard place” don’t you? The worst part of hardship, economic or otherwise is to have no good choices. It is horrible to feel hemmed in by circumstances, to feel stuck in a dead end situation, to feel powerless, constrained and constricted. It is like the walls are closing in on you. You feel hopeless, as though there is nothing you can do, or as though anything you try to do is futile. Every option is a bad one. Every human feels this way sometime.
The Bible is a wonderful book, because it is so human. It looks our humanity square in the face, and tells it like it is. The poet writes, Out of my distress I called on the LORD; the LORD answered me and set me in a broad place. He understands that deliverance, salvation if you will, means being set in a broad place. He cries out of his distress – out from his confinement, out of where he is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He cries out because he has no good choices, no real options. Who is this person? What is this rock and this hard place?
This is the person who has to choose between two unbearable choices. He is surrounded by his enemies and faced with the choice of surrender or conquest. But he cries out not only for himself. He cries out for everyone who is hemmed in, surrounded and out of good options. He cries for the elderly man who has to choose between giving up a meal or giving up a prescription. He speaks for the single mother who has to choose between the humiliation of welfare and the indignity of $7.25 an hour. He cries out for all the lonely, for all the imprisoned, for all the homeless, all the addicted. He cries out for everyone who must endure injustice, who lives with violence or lives without hope. He speaks for them all, for us all, for all who cry out of their distress. Above all the poet cries out for the dead young rabbi closed in by the cold stone tomb. For the crucified Christ who cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” For the dead Messiah who can no longer cry out for himself.
And what is God’s response to this cry? How does God answer? What does the poet say? “the LORD answered me and set me in a broad place.” The imagery is beautiful. God takes him from the confinement of a place with no good options, from between the rock and the hard place and sets him in a wide-open space, in a broad place. God puts him in a place without narrow boundaries, a place with room to move about, a place where he is no longer tightly limited, where he has choices. This is the answer that God makes for human distress, God wants to make people free – free to choose among many possible options, all of them potentially good.
This is a big part of what Easter means. God shows us in Christ what is God’s intention for all people. Jesus described his own sending, a mission fulfilled in his resurrection: he uses these words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This is Christ’s mission: to bring good news to the poor… to let the oppressed go free. Jesus came to announce God’s intention to take people from between a rock and a hard place, and to set them in a broad place, a wide-open and free space.
One of the meanings of the word “transform” is to move across boundaries into a new form, a new mode of being. When the prisoner is set free his world is transformed. When the oppressed find justice, their world is transformed. When the exploited are treated with dignity and respect, their world is transformed. When the addicted are treated, it is transformation. When poor are lifted out of their poverty, when the hungry are fed, when the homeless are sheltered, when the sick made well and the broken are made whole, the world for them is transformed. They are set in a broad place and given a whole new world of options. That is the mission of Christ, and that is the power of resurrection.
Now my friends, you know very well that as much as God intends this to be so, as much as God intends the world to be transformed, it can only come about through the direct action of people doing good work, doing God’s work. God always works in and through human hearts and human hands. This work is placed in our hands. It is the human world that needs transformation and it is for humans to transform it. This is our business. It is our business to feed the hungry, the shelter the exposed, to comfort the grieving, to make whole the broken, to give people real options, to give them something better than a Hobson’s choice, to get them out from between the rock and the hard place.
We have taken some steps to do this, but there is much more that can be done, much more that we can do. Our purpose as God’s people is to worship God by transforming the world. This begins when we look around us. Observe and take note where the restraints are. Where are the prisoners and what makes their prisons? Where are the narrow places where the choices are no good? Where are the dark and dismal tombs of discouragement and despair? Who are lonely? Who are struggling? Who are stuck? That’s where it begins. Then what can we do about it? What help can we offer? What support can we give? What space can we create? These are the questions, and the answers can lead to the transformation of the world.
But are we not too small for this? Are we not too weak, too poor, too few? Only if we think that God is small, that love is too weak, that compassion is too poor, that one or two and Jesus are too few. In the tomb, Jesus was weak beyond weakness, he was poor beyond poverty, he was alone in the cold, dark, narrow place. It was from there that it all began. I imagine a slight small stirring of the spirit, blowing up into a storm, a rushing wind, lifting hearts and inspiring minds with the presence of Christ, the power of love, the possibility of hope. The few followers of Jesus knew he was living still, not dead, not entombed, not hemmed in and held down. With great joy they began to proclaim the news, and to care for one another, and to invite others in, and to heal and help and do good in Christ’s name. And from that small beginning, from those few, those poor, those little ones, the fire started.
We are not too small, not too weak, not too poor or too few. We can transform our little corner of the world, for the risen Christ is here as much as anyplace, the risen Christ is now as surely as at any time. Christ is risen! Let us sing!
