The neighborhood, if you could call it that, was one of the most rundown and poverty-stricken in the city. For fifty years the housing had decayed, and, as the original residents left, absentee landlords jammed far too many people into the old dwellings. Diseases became epidemic, and fires not only destroyed decayed properties but also took the lives of the poor people who tried to live there. And so about forty years ago a group of Catholic Church activists created plans for a new urban village, a place that could give decent housing to families displaced by the demolition of what they all agreed was a slum. Enlisting an order of sisters, a nearby parish, and even a Catholic high school, this group built the new place, with amenities no one had ever put into subsidized housing before. They named their village of new expectations with a phrase from the Latin liturgy, “Sursum Corda.” “Sursum corda” means, “Lift up your hearts.” It suggests that what God is about to do at the Communion table will bring hope and joy and peace; so if you are depressed, lift up your hearts. If you feel guilty, you are forgiven, lift up your hearts. If you feel ashamed, be ashamed no more, lift up your hearts. “Sursum corda”. The name was given that new housing because they felt that those who would live there would find encouragement in a troubled city.
And, it would seem, they did everything right. They built it so that traffic could not run through constantly. They made the homes as comfortable as possible. They organized financing so that poor people could get loans to start home ownership. And more than that, the order of sisters moved in to do ministry, and legions of students from Georgetown University signed on to provide tutoring for the children. It seemed as though all the dreams of those who were to live there had come true, and there would no longer be any pointless waiting for things that never arrive. Now there was hope and help. Sursum corda, lift up your hearts. It had happened.
But things changed. Less than twenty years after Sursum Corda had been created, it became a seriously problem-filled place. Some of the properties had been misused. Others had been foreclosed. Worst of all, cocaine dealers had discovered its hidden courtyard and had made it a place to do a thriving business, concealed from the eyes of the police. Cocaine dealing then led to conflict over turf, and guns appeared. The battles become more and more intense. The nuns left, fearful for their own safety. And in 2004 a fourteen-year-old girl, Princess Hansen, was killed, execution-style, probably because she had witnessed a shooting a few days earlier. With that incident, all hope was drained out of Sursum Corda. All the bright possibilities were ruined. And peace was once again only a distant dream. Those who had created Sursum Corda as a place where people could lift up their hearts must surely have in despair bowed their heads and said, “There is no peace on earth, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men.”
Today in fact the talk is that Sursum Corda will be demolished and some other housing experiment put in its place. Something else to wait for? Something else to invest vain hopes in? How do you wait for something more when all your efforts have come to naught? What obstacles must be removed to get from this desolate place to somewhere better? Is it only a hollow mockery, “Lift up your hearts”?
The prophet known to Bible scholars as Trito-Isaiah confronted much the same kind of context. Only a few years earlier it had seemed that all was to be well again. The Persian king had released the captive peoples, and they were on the way home, expecting to rebuild Jerusalem, reconstruct the Temple, and create new prosperity. No stopping Judah this time! They were on the march, and theirs would be a great and fruitful nation. Let’s go, Judah, we are on the move!
But it stalled. It never quite came together. The new prosperity was taking a lot longer than anyone had expected. The peace for which they had longed was still far off, with other nations sniping at them. Judah would have to wait and wait again for all she had thought would come to her after her long exile. And so, again, how do you wait when your hopes have been built up and then dashed? How do you wait positively, wait actively, when it looks as though what you have dreamed about and what you have worked for are just not coming?
How, indeed, in our time, a time not unlike that of the people of Judah after their return? Our economy is suddenly unstable, our futures are not clear. We are fighting foreign wars and guarding against terrorism in the homeland. Nothing is as stable as once it seemed. The gains we made in these last several years have been eroded. As Gabriel says in the play, “Green Pastures”, “Everything’s not nailed down is comin’ up loose.” How do we wait for it to be put back together and secured again? How can we wait for joy to come?
The prophet tells Judah that there are some obstacles that must be removed. There are things in the way, and they must be dealt with if fulfillment is to come. “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way.” And then the prophet lays out for us two obstructions that must be removed. Two things must be dealt with. We must remove, first, false pride; and second, we must remove its mirror image, negativity.
Watch how the prophet deals with these issues:
I
“Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way. For thus says the high and lofty one … I dwell … with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
The first obstruction to be removed before joy will come is false pride. False pride. There is a legitimate form of pride. It’s perfectly fine and necessary to have a healthy self-esteem. But there is also a false pride that puts up façades and tries to hide.
So many of us are into a competitive lifestyle. We have bought into the consumer mentality. We have laughed at how our children are swamped with so many goodies on Christmas Day that they themselves get lost in the huge piles of wrappings under the tree. We have quipped about how Christmas shopping involves giving things they do not need to people we do not like with money we do not have. We have bought into Black Friday sales and cyber-Monday sales and “the really big one” sales, all sorts of promotional incentives, most of it because we think we will not be thought good friends or loving parents or caring spouses if we do not shower them all with stuff, lots of stuff.
And the truth is, this need to consume and to buy is not about the other people. It’s about us. It’s about our own sense of inadequacy. It’s about our egos needing to be stroked. We have to hear her say, “Oh, you shouldn’t have done that, but thank you, thank you, thank you.” We need to hear those kids say, “Hey, this is almost as good as the one Johnny got last year.” I am not trying to be the grinch here, but I am saying that our standard issue American Christmas is about pride and status, and ultimately about anxiety. We suppose someone will think we are cheapskates, and so we spend. We suppose our family will not love us, and so we attempt to buy their love with stuff.
But peace does not come that way. Joy is not found in false pride. In fact, when pride is involved, hostility emerges. When we observe Christmas out of pride, feelings inevitably get hurt. I remember the year I decided to go the self-righteous route. I told my children, “Don’t get me anything for Christmas. I want nothing, need nothing. What I want you to do is to give to missions, in my name, the amount you would have spent on me.” Now notice my language – give to missions in my name. I want credit for it. I want to be the biggest and the best in the spirituality department. So, son and daughter of mine, help me boost my pride.
Well, they questioned me and they questioned their mother, and eventually they decided that they would do what the old man said he wanted. Humor him; after all, he’s slightly senile. And so into the coffers of our church went two checks, given to the cause of foreign missions, in the name of, to boost the pride of dear old dad. Fine. Well, came Christmas Day and I had nothing to unwrap. I watched everybody else ooh over the sweaters and aah over the socks. But I sat there and nursed my wounded pride, on the one hand feeling insufferably spiritual because I had given up my Christmas for missions, and on the other hand feeling left out because I did not really think they would take me seriously!
And it all had to do with pride, false pride; it was all about the need to be acknowledged, the deep, deep fear that I would not be held in high esteem.
And so in this Advent season, as we wait for the peace and joy of our God to come and fill us, the first obstacle we have to deal with is our own false pride. “For thus says the high and lofty one … I dwell with those who are contrite and humble in spirit.”
II
The first obstacle is pride, and the second is negativity. The second obstacle is the spirit of accusation and self-hatred. It is in many ways the mirror image of pride. Pride says, “You need to acknowledge me as somebody.” Negativity says, “I don’t like me very much. I’m really nobody.” Pride says, “Build me up by telling me I am something special.” And that’s an issue, because the Lord says He cherishes those who are contrite and humble in spirit. But the mirror image, the reflection of that, is negativity, self-accusation, self-loathing. And that is an obstacle that we have to deal with before our hearts can be lifted up and our peace can come.
Hear this word from the prophet to a people who had returned from years of being put down: “For I will not continually accuse, nor will I always be angry; for then the spirits would grow faint before me, even the souls that I have made.”
Listen again. God’s prophet has cried out, remember: “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way”. And now he identifies one of those obstructions: “ … for I will not continually accuse … [lest] the spirits would grow faint before me … ” It is not only the pride-driven lifestyles into which we have been seduced that keep us from having the peace God wants to give us, but it is also the negative self-images that live inside us and keep on accusing us. We will not have peace until first we get real with the stuff inside that tells us we are no good.
I am convinced that we will never know the full extent of the spiritual and emotional harm done by those who choose to transplant their own negativity into others. You tell a child often enough that he is stupid, unruly, and useless, and he will soon prove you right. He will become stupid, unruly, and useless. And who made him that way? You invest yourself in your work, your hobbies, your television programs, your sports activities, even your church, to the neglect of your child, and one day you will find her doing all sorts of bizarre things just to get your attention and to fill up the love deficit she feels. Our society is replete with poor little rich kids who had everything they could possibly want except the constructive attention of their parents. Either the parents were too self-absorbed to invest in the child, or they vented their own negativity and poured it into the next generation.
I am struggling to find words to express what I know is inside me and is a part of my emotional history. I’m struggling to tell you that much of what I do is still, even at this time in my life, an effort to get past being told, over and over again, that I didn’t behave well, I didn’t get perfect grades, I didn’t keep my room clean, I was lazy about my piano practice, and, most hurtful of all, I was not really much of a Christian. On and on it went. One of my parents kept up a drumbeat of accusation that pounded on me continually, and if it had not been for the other parent providing encouragement and example, I do not know what damaging things I would have done. And I must tell you that I struggled as a husband and as a parent not to imitate that pattern, but all too often I did. I duplicated that spirit of accusation. Oh, may God see the contrition in my heart and grant me forgiveness and peace for all of that!
For, you see, His peace will not come until the obstruction of negativity is removed. We will have to wait for His peace until the obstacle of self-accusation is finally dealt with. And we will have to hear Him, at the deepest levels of our souls, assure us, “I will not continually accuse, nor will I always be angry; for then the spirits would grow faint before me …”
In this Advent season, wait for God’s peace. Wait actively and faithfully. It will come. It will come because ultimately our creator does not want to crush His creation. It will come because in the heart of our God, disappointed as He is in our foolishness and angry as He is because of our sin – in the heart of our God there is a desire to heal us and revive us. In the heart of our God, right now, today, a work of peace is being done.
III
This prophet proclaims a promise from the Lord: “Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord; and I will heal them.”
God wants to heal us. How will He do it? And when? We must remove the obstacles of our false pride and our self-accusation. But what then? How will our God fulfill His promise to heal us?
Wait for it. For at the end of this Advent season we will celebrate it. Wait for it. For the one thing that brings the hope of peace to a weary heart is that God has poured Himself into our human condition. In Jesus the Christ, wonder of wonders, He has come to dwell among us, to pitch His tent right here on our turf. What the prophet could never have known, what the ages longed for but could not see clearly, you and I not only know it, we experience it. In the child of Bethlehem there comes the Ancient of Days, the creator of all things, and He pours Himself into that small child. He lives and grows among us. He teaches us, He heals us, He shows us what a glory a human life can be. His love is transparent and clear, and if we receive His love, it will transform us.
And ultimately, brothers and sisters, this one through whom the promise of peace far and near is realized shows His love for us, laying down His very life. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He is the victim of our false pride, for we tell Him, “Lord, I thank you that I am not as others are” and so hurt His heart. For we are just as broken as all the rest are. And, moreover, He is the victim of our self-accusation, for we tell Him, “Lord, I am not worthy even to take the crumbs from your table.” But He calls us worthy, He calls us sons and the daughters of the king.
Oh, I tell you, He is no victim, drawn into our foolish pride or captured by our negativity. He is no victim; He is victor. The power of death could not hold Him, nor can the power of our brokenness stop Him from healing us. He will lift us up; He will revive us, though it costs Him dearly. And in His life and death and life anew we at last find the healing that we need. No more façades, for unto Him all hearts are open, and from Him no secrets are hid. And no more self-hatred, for He announces, “I have seen their ways, but I will heal them; I will lead them and repay them with comfort …. Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord … I will heal them.”
Sursum Corda, like all neighborhoods, is a place where anxiety reigns and fear rules. Sursum Corda, like Montgomery Village or Gaithersburg Old Town or King Farm or Germantown Commons, was designed with the best intentions in mind. But wherever you live, puffed up proud minds and deeply flawed souls cannot make a peace-filled community. The thing most needed is a life changed by Christ. The only answer is the Christ who comes to dwell in healed hearts, hearts made whole by contrition and love.
And so in this Advent season, while we wait, we do not wait passively, as if there were no hope; nor impassively, as if nothing is really going to happen. We wait actively, we wait faithfully, we wait victoriously, for we know that healed hearts are His home. “Let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing.” Sing “sursum corda”, sing “lift up your hearts.”
Come to this Table. Wait here for Him. Wait and wait yet more. If you feel guilty, you are forgiven, lift up your hearts. If you feel ashamed, be ashamed no more, lift up your hearts. Healed hearts are His home.
