SERMONS
AND REFLECTIONS
Buried Alive
By The Rev. Dr. Steven Blackburn
October 25, 2004
Sigmund Freud has not been too kind to religion, organized or not. It has taken dozens of years and some rethinking by his successors to wear down the hostility that psychiatry and religious faith have had for each other. In fact, many Freudians still insist that the religious impulse is, on balance, a negative in the fight for mental health, though one of Freud's followers, Carl Jung, affirmed just the opposite.
Despite the discomfort, then, of even bringing up the name of Freud in the pulpit, there is an idea of his that I would like to mention, for two reasons. First is that this idea is something most of us have heard of and can understand and relate to, while secondly the concept itself is valid. What I am talking about is what Freud called the 'death wish.'
Now Freud did not mean that those with such a wish are in a hurry to die - or want someone ELSE to hurry up and die, either (!). It is a bit subtler than that. Rather, Freud recognized that human beings often yearn to escape from the burden of being alive. We wish we were free of life's stresses, uncertainties, and demands. We long, like a Buddhist striving for Nirvana, for quiet, peace, and tranquillity, if not actual oblivion.
To my mind, Freud was right on the button, at least for some of us. Remember the play "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off" - not that I actually saw it, but the title seems very death-wish-ful. Or how about the proverbial yuppie, whose entire focus is on E.R. - no, not the television show, but Early Retirement, when freedom comes from the noise, the decisions, the clocks, the obligations, the set-backs, the disappointments.
Yet not too many people are ready to pick up the phone to call their favorite mortuary with the request, "Take me away!" No matter how much we wish to 'be at rest,' we cannot completely shake our lust for life. Even when the pressures are the greatest, gnawing at our insides is the suspicion that we are important - that our life means something - to ourselves, to those around us, to God.
Although life often tells us that we cannot have our cake and eat it too, that you cannot have it both ways, we human beings are a resourceful bunch. We have found a compromise, a release, from being caught between the desire to be at rest and our passion to be fully alive.
You see, we simply bury ourselves in a shallow grave and say, "I'll just rest here and come out every now and then." So we pile on the soil and bury ourselves - in activities, in busy-ness, in recreation, in projects, and in God-knows what else: endless, but mindless, motion. I had a grandmother like that; she simply couldn't stand not being in the middle of an uproar (reminds me of my teenage son). And so she'd tear down all the wallpaper and start redecorating at the drop of a hat, whether the house needed it or not. She'd market every day, whether she needed to or not. She bought literally hundreds of pairs of shoes long before Imelda Marcos ever got the idea. When my grandmother died about 20 years ago, we found that the entire attic was filled with boxes of unused, unworn high heels, pumps, slippers, you name it, she had it, as long as it was a size 9 triple A. Fortunately, that's my wife's shoe size. Unfortunately, their tastes rarely matched.
There are other ways we can bury ourselves, of course. There is an interesting euphemism that comes to mind in this regard: "self-medication." Now I've been known to quaff the occasional cream sherry or apricot sour - for medicinal purposes, of course. Others use computer screens, or pills, or passing the time in front of endless re-runs, or soaps, or old movies. And I like old movies (especially the black-and-white ones), I've entered the occasional computer chat room, and there is a box of something at my bedside "just in case" I cannot stay asleep all night through.
The problem lies, of course, in knowing when we've crossed the line, and gone from "taking care of business" to burying ourselves alive, having used our own hands as the shovels. Because once we're in our self-made graves, it often takes someone like Jesus Christ to come along and shake us out of our self-hypnosis, to transform us, to get us to come out into the fresh air again and LIVE, just as when Jesus called into a tomb, "Lazarus, come forth!"
Turning now to scripture: In the First Book of the Kings, Elijah is on the run for having defeated the prophets of the false gods atop Mount Carmel. The powers-that-be considered him a dangerous agitator, and he is no longer welcome in society. And so Elijah escapes to the wilderness from the long arm of the law.
Up to this point Elijah has been worried primarily about one thing - his own skin. But that is not the focus that a child of God is called to. And so the Almighty questions Elijah, and gives him work to do, places to go, people to call. It's time for Elijah to get out of his self-made grave out there in the wilderness.
Only when the voice of God comes, does Elijah realize that it is his task NOT to worry so much about his OWN life, but instead how he is to bring the blessings of Life to others. He must raise others out of their difficulties, for in that lies the call of service. And so he will once again be part of the ongoing efforts to save God's people. Only in that is Elijah truly alive, all the more valuable than when he was brooding over his own misfortunes by himself.
Now make no mistake: Elijah's personal problems have not changed. He is still a public enemy of the crown. But he has changed the circumstances of others, bringing light and goodness where there had been only darkness, despair, and the grave.
Two thousand years ago, John the Baptist asked of Jesus, "Are you the One who is to come, or should we look for another?" Jesus said John should consider the evidence - how through Him the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor learn the Good News - in short, how people are coming alive.
People are still asking the same question John did. "Are you the One who is to come, or should we look for another?" They ask it of politicians, of religious leaders, of institutions. They ask it of medical science, of Madison Avenue, of drug dealers offering instant happiness. "Are you the One who is to come, or should we seek another?" People search, wanting to live more fully, no longer to be buried alive.
How would we answer them? Can we answer them? And what evidence do we show, as did Jesus, that we can rescue others, as did Elijah, from being buried alive? Well, I can assure you, that if we are in our own self-made graves, piling on the soil with our own hands serving as shovels, then we are in no position to offer anything to anyone. How could we promise salvation to others, when we cannot even save ourselves?
If we proclaim that faith can move mountains, perhaps we should begin by moving a bit of earth from atop our own selves, lest we become buried alive. Then, freed from the grave, we can do what we are called to do - to bring the blessing of Life to others. Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Steven Blackburn is Library Director at Hartford Seminary and Faculty Associate in Semitic Scriptures. He delivered this sermon at Hartford Seminary's Monday morning Chapel Service on October 25, 2004.
