LONGING FOR A FORTRESS
II Samuel 22:1-20,50-51

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
November 14, 2004 / Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost

It was disappointing to learn, when I got back from my trip, that the Bond issue to save the Cranston Street Armory had failed at the polls. My opinion on that issue has a personal bias: after all, I live in that neighborhood, and having the biggest building in the neighborhood standing forlorn and vacant does not bode well for us. And I also have a personal interest in having good places for archives.

Since the State owns the building, it will still have to be maintained anyway, with no purpose. And it is big enough, and odd enough, that if it ever was to be torn down it might be an albatross – like the old Jamestown bridge. One also wonders about the suburban captivity of the Rhode Island voter that is willing to pay much more to move State offices and jobs out of Providence to Cranston, but will not help to keep offices and jobs in the City by helping revive a marginal City neighborhood?

So what will become of the mammoth old place?

Long before the bond issue I used to imagine other uses for the Armory. I thought that if I were the pastor of one of these large fundamentalist mega-churches that have sprung up around the country, and the building were closer to an exit on I-295, that it would be a wonderful building for a congregation that could take the name "Mighty Fortress Church." The huge central portion of the Armory, once used for drills and maneuvers, could be converted into a many thousand seat worship center with light streaming down from the high skylights. On either end of the drill hall are two large – almost separate buildings, each of which is topped by a crown of three towers – nice and Trinitarian. One building could be converted to class rooms for all types of educational endeavors, while the other could be made to offices, counseling rooms, weekday ministries. And imagine the logo that the church could put on letterhead and into media advertisements? "Mighty Fortress Church," with towers, and parapets, and every possible form of defensive symbol; although I'd probably get rid of the cannons on the ground before opening up.

I guess there is a little whimsy to imaging being a conservative mega-church pastor, something I'm not, but something I think I can understand. Those of us in more socially active churches are trying to convey anything but a fortress. We have clear glass. We tout access for all. We want everyone to know its easy to get in here. And we proclaim a God who is also accessible. Any person, any place, anywhere, we announce, has direct access to God. Pray directly, no intercessors, intermediaries needed. Ours seems to be a unprotected God, an available God, a God who can be dragged into our settings, and our agendas, a God that can’t resist.

And yet I am taken by the idea of having a "Mighty Fortress God." Sometimes of late I wish I could just go to a place, and be quiet, and do my thing and expect to have a God who would take care of things for me. When your son is about to be stationed in Iraq; your cousin is working without health care – and you are worried about what she is saying about her health; when there is a shooting in the neighborhood where your best friend lives; isn't there a part of us that just wants to be protected? That just wants to be walled off? To have it all turned off?

I think that's what a lot of Americans have been telling us this month: they want moral values, that want strong military, they want stones that stand there and protect and do not go moving around from one position to another; no matter what Mohammed says about moving mountains.

And this is only the strong defense that we want from the things outside. It doesn't begin to fathom the strong defense we want from ourselves, and our own hidden desires, and our own stupidity, and those forces within us that even yet we do not fully understand nor control. When I was young, I was so afraid of how the raging late-adolescent emotions inside of me might interact with the world, that I dreamt about living in a large red brick tower, with walls no one could penetrate. When I was nineteen, twenty, I think I would have been attracted to a Mighty Fortress Church.

And its not like our religion doesn't afford us Mighty Fortress language. There is, of course, Luther. But one of the original verses in the old Irish tune we just sang – "Be Thou My Vision," – asks God to "Be my strong tower," an ever sure defense. And then there is King David, who can write so many songs like this one:

“The Lord is my rock,
my fortress,
and my deliverer,
my God, my rock,
in whom I take refuge.”

But then, of course, David was a warrior. You know the David and Goliath story, not to mention David's war tactics with Uriah the Hittite, the husband of Bathsheba, or against Absalom, his own son. I would pity a world if the only way we could respond to present realities was to repeat the policies of King David.

But I think we need to be at least compassionate enough to understand the language. In our rush to be politically correct we have often tried to purify our language of all words and images that imply a kind of militarism. I would halt that. In more primitive times, when options of survival were less, and people had to chose amongst various levels of evil, some people of great spiritual hope turned to this language and this skill set: the fortress, the army, the battle. In the liberal church we need to re-learn the great values in words like courage, loyalty, and defending and protecting the innocent. These are worthy causes, worthy concepts, and we need to find ways to stretch our language to include them. And it is true, we are in a conflict. At many levels battles are going on. Only a blind naiveté would fail to notice.

We may take a cue here from St. Paul. When I was in Sunday School I learned that St. Paul used language like the "armor of God," and talked about belts, breastplates, shoes, shields, helmets, and swords. When in the third grade I thought Paul wanted us to be aggressive for God, and I failed to pick up the irony of what he was saying. Of course he was urging that we be mighty for battle, but his tools were truth, righteousness, the good news of peace, faith, salvation, and the word of God. The good news of peace is, I suspect, a different form of might. So I encourage us in the incorporation and re-imaging of our protective ideas into our faith language. This is indeed a very dangerous world, and the church must be on the side of safe place, fortifications around the innocent, courage to protect.

But I must also insert here a certain word of reality. After all – much of the Biblical message is built upon the words "Fear not." Yet in saying "fear not," I am not proclaiming that it is all safe, that there is nothing to worry about. Because that is not the case. It is not all safe. This Church can not protect you from automobile accidents, ill health, or the attacks of Al Queda, nor even from the waves of sin that well up within each of us. True, to each of these challenges, and to each of their realities we have good advice, good advice to protect your health, good advice to avoid accidents, good advice for a nation seeking to end terrorism. In all these areas there are good advice, and we should be ready to listen. But there are no guarantees. I can not guarantee what will happen, nor can you guarantee what will happen, nor can a Washington think-tank guarantee what will happen. In this life we merely have to do the best we can.

But if we have to do the best we can, then it is imperative that we "fear not." It is not going to help us or make us happy, or even protect us if we spend all of our life focused on fear. If Mary had been too fearful she might never have had the baby, and if the other Mary had been too fearful, she may never have told anyone what she encountered at the garden tomb. Despite the realities around us we need to get on with living, and put the fears beside us.

But then if we are to put our fears beside us, and journey – almost stubbornly – into the future, then is there really no "Mighty Fortress?" Is our longing to forever go unmet?

Well no. I still believe there is a mighty fortress. But it is not an army, nor a castle, nor a particular defense policy. Even David never wrote a song saying that his palace in Jerusalem was his sure defense, nor that tramping around with his army buddies was his refuge from the Philistines. Nor did Martin Luther write a hymn that a Mighty Fortress is the castle of this or that German prince or potentate, even though he got to stay in lots of those stone piles along the Rhine.

What makes these spiritual people is that they finally know that our only Mighty Fortress, our only sure defense is in God and God alone. And in God you may die to the realities of this life. And in God you may spend generations in exile. And in God you may spend time in prison or go to a cross. But there is eternity. And there is truth. And there is endless love. And these things have about them the qualities that last, that endure.

Perhaps therefore, the fortress that we have to offer in this accessible church, with an easy to get to God, may mean more in your life pilgrimage. You will not need to build false towers, or buy breakable breastplates, or seek to shield yourself from that which can not kill, nor to lock up that which can not be stolen. Maybe we can find life in a style that can not be taken, a life that is life indeed, and then maybe all our childhood fantasies can be fulfilled with a true protection and a meaningful fear not – if we believe.

Amen.