Like a Refugee

Psalm 31:5 (NRSV) Into your hand I commit my spirit.

We hear the words, and we are there. We are standing at the foot of the cross. We see him suffer. We watch him die. And we join the Centurion in awe and wonder, Mark 15:39 (NRSV) “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

There’s a hospice proverb, “We die the way we live.” The end of our lives reflects the course of our lives, so these “last words” invite us to consider how we are living now. John 14:6 (NRSV) “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. [Jesus said]. No one comes to the Father except through me.”And Jesus invites us to Matthew 25:34 (NRSV) ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Come and live like a refugee. Come, our lives are in God’s hand.

WLIVE LIKE A REFUGEE

Psalm 31:1-4 (NRSV) In you, O Lord, I seek refuge …. Be a rock of refuge for me, … for you are my refuge.

A refugee is by definition, someone who has found refuge; they are safe from a known threat.

“You are my refuge.” “You are my hiding place, my safe place.”

Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs lists “safety” as our second most basic need. The only need more basic is food and water. When these needs are not met, we feel anxious. We are afraid, and with good reason: We’re not safe.

What if we knew we are safe? What if we knew that no matter what, we could never be lost? What could we risk? What could we try?

Change is hard. Learning new ways, living a new way is hard. Imagining that the future can be more than the sum of our fears is hard. But we can do it. We must do it. The future of the world depends on it.

Grandiose? Hyperbole? What do you think Jesus came for? What mission do you think He accomplished when He shouted, “It is finished!”?

Jesus gave the world a future. He offers one; he offers all hope. And He invites us to live into that hope; to live as if God’s promised future of love, peace, and justice is already here, to live God’s way for God’s world; to live like a refugee, like someone who is safe from every power to hurt and destroy, like someone who has left the reign of terror behind and is safe in the reign of God.

What if you knew you were safe? What if you knew that no matter what, you could never be lost? What could you risk? What could you try?

Take that risk. Dare to try. Declare your independence from every reign of terror. You are safe in the reign of God. Live into that hope; live like a refugee.

WOUR LIVES ARE IN GOD’S HAND

ESPN’s Lee Corso might say at this point, “Not so fast my friend.” Bad things happen to good people. Bad things have happened to us, and they rocked our world. So how can we live like a refugee and be fully involved in the hard realities of life in this world?

We Presbyterians are a realistic bunch. We know life’s not fair, and we believe that God is good. We pray with the Psalmist: Psalm 31:15 (NRSV) My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors.

This is a prayer of lament – a prayer that is honest to God about what is going on in our lives, the struggles and the sorrow, yet we still believe in the faithfulness of God. The Psalmist is saying to God, “Do with me what you will. I’m yours. Come what may, I trust in you.”

This is radically different from the way we often respond to the bad things that happen to us.

Thursday and Friday, I attended the Pastoral Crisis Intervention workshop sponsored by the Disaster Coordination and Response Team of Berks County. The presenter was Richard Boland from Western Pyschiatric Institute and Clinic. Richard is part of the disaster response team that was mobilized on 9/11 at the Flight 93 crash site, at Quecreek when the 9 miners were trapped, and every other major disaster on the East Coast over the last 20 years.

He was in charge of the response to the USAir Flight 427 crash in Hopewell, PA. A minister showed up to “help.” He “comforted” the paramedics and police who responded to that horror by telling them, “it was God’s will.” He described the spiritual damage that did to those first responders. He was able to re-direct the man in a more constructive direction, but it added pain to an already painful situation.

It’s easy to look at a situation like that and see how wrong this kind of thinking is, until something happens to us, and in the dark of the night, when we’re alone with our thoughts, we wonder, we fear, “Is this God’s will? Is God punishing me?”

Do you hear the difference between, “This is God’s will,” and “My times are in your hands?” A God who wills the horrors of this world is not a god we can trust. That god sounds a lot more like Satan than Jesus.

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a “faithful God,” a God we can trust – when life doesn’t make sense, when our burden is hard to bear, when life isn’t fair – we can trust that God is good and will bring good even out of this.

We don’t know how. We don’t know why. We don’t know so many things, but we do know God through Jesus Christ, who trusted God even on the cross, and we can hold onto that when life gives us a cross to bear. We can hold onto that as we heed Jesus’ invitation Matthew 16:24 (NRSV) “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

We don’t have the answers, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing we can do. Little things do count. My workshop with all the government acronyms and professional pedigree can be boiled down to this: Be there. Be available. Be flexible. Do what needs to be done. Make coffee. Take out the trash. Do what needs to be done, and be there.

That works for pastoral care in a crisis. That works as we consider our response to what is going on in the world. Tuesday marks Earth Day, and we turn our attention to the impact global climate change is having around the world, particularly on some of the poorest, least developed nations on earth.

I realize global warming is a controversial topic and people of good will and significant scientific pedigree disagree, but isn’t that the case with most important questions? I don’t want to diminish the variety of opinions, but I don’t want us to be paralyzed by them either. If we take steps to be more energy efficient, to waste less and conserve more, that can only benefit the earth, and it will do us good as well. So rather than thinking about how we can “save the planet,” how about giving some thought to how we can save a few dollars? A few degrees warmer in the summer, a few degrees cooler in the winter, a different, more energy efficient light, can really add up.

We know this, but have we taken the action step of acting on what we know? Have we taken the risk of daring to try to make this small difference? Little things do count.

We don’t have the answers, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do. Little things do count. Life’s not fair. God is good. Our lives are in God’s hand, and God has good hands. The reign of terror is over. The reign of God is underway! Take a risk! Dare to try! Leave the results to God, and live like a refugee. Amen.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. 1989. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.