You called me by my name;
Today I come, commit myself,
responding to Your claim
.
In all the tensions of my life,
between my faith and doubt,
let Your great Spirit give me hope,
sustain me, lead me out."
--Fred Kaan, 1976
The first time I sang these words from the Presbyterian Hymnal, I was taken aback. It was a moment of truth-telling and liberation. At that point, I couldn't recall ever singing about "the tensions of my life" or the mysterious spaces "between my faith and doubt." Yet there, in a crowded sanctuary, we stood and lifted our voices passionately with the words of this hymn on our lips.
As we sang, we courageously admitted to God--and to each other--that we wrestle with dilemmas and doubts as we seek to love our neighbors, near and far. We're not perfect. We're human beings who face uncertainty and make mistakes as part of our learning and becoming new. And God knows how hard it can be for us to understand what can become possible if we dare to move beyond what has so often seemed to be automatic and unavoidable.
"Behold," says God, "I am doing a new thing. Can you not perceive it?"
Tonight I heard Rachel Maddow, historian and author and journalist, speak about the current violence between Hamas and Israel. Her words reminded me that even in this situation, humans could join God in doing a new thing:
"Nothing is inevitable here. The terrorist organization that is Hamas had a decision to make about how it was going to press what it sees as its case and they chose to set in motion what they set in motion last weekend. And those terrorist attacks--those widespread, sustained eyeball to eyeball human terrorist attacks--killing well over a thousand people, the elderly, babies, women, children, everybody. They had a choice about that--that was not an inevitable outcome of anything.
"Similarly, the world has a choice. Nothing is inevitable about the response to that. The world has a choice as to what our values are. Israel has a choice as to what its values are, in terms of how it responds, whether it takes account of international laws of war, and the human rights of people who may be caught in the crossfire, or targeted.
"Everybody has a choice as to how to behave and we are judged on our own actions. There is nothing inevitable about somebody else's actions that effectuate your own choice, when you have a choice. And that, to me, has to be the moral center that we keep coming back to."
All these very human efforts to discern as best we can what is true and to decide as ethically as we can how to respond give shape and scope to "what can be the range of next steps that are considered here." Amen, Rachel. And thank you.
Rachel Maddow's reflections were broadcast on October 17, 2023 starting at 4pm on MSNBC, as part of a dialogue with Nicolle Wallace.