Sermon Today: Caught in a Trap
Darcie Dunlop
Scripture Context: Psalm 84 and 1 Kings 8
Call to Presence (Meister Eckhart)
One: Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things.
All: Every single creature is full of God, and is a book about God.
One: Every creature is a word of God. If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature – even
a caterpillar – I would never have to prepare a sermon.
All: So full of God is every creature.
One: Earth cannot escape heaven, flee it by going up, or flee it by going down.
All: Heaven still invades the earth, energizes it, makes it sacred.
One: All hiding places reveal God.
All: If you want to escape God, S/he runs into your lap.
One: For, God is at home.
All: It is we who have gone out for a walk.
The music today was from the Brahm’s Requiem, “How Lovely is the Dwelling Place.” Special
thanks to Pei-Ying for playing this for us today.
Will you come to quiet again with me and breathe while I read the words again of this beautiful
piece of music.
“How lovely is Thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! For my soul, it longeth, yea fainteth, for the
courts of the Lord: my soul and body crieth out, yea for the living God. Blest are they that dwell
within Thy house: they praise Thy name evermore.”
When I asked Ruth to create this slide show for the Brahms, which is based on Psalm 84, I asked
her to start with pictures of the universe and move through planets, to the earth, then to
nature, then to the continents, then to nations, then to cities, to buildings, (mosques, temples,
churches) to groups (multicultural, light, dark, rich, poor, refugee) , then to individual people
(gay, straight, queer, different abilities, clean, dirty, old, young). The last picture would be one
of lots of love and inclusion. This is because my idea of the dwelling place of God is here,
everywhere. Like our call to presence. God is in all things. God is in God’s dwelling place in us.
But now, I want to paint a different picture for you. An ancient one…
Psalm 84 is correlated with 1 Kings 8, which talks about the Temple that Solomon built to be the
permanent home to the ark of the covenant. This ark, a gold-plated wooden chest, that held
the tablets of stone upon which God had chiseled the 10 commandments, had been in a
portable Tabernacle that traveled throughout the wilderness with the people of Israel and then
into Canaan. It was moved by some accounts at least 29 times, stolen by the Philistines, then
recovered. Finally, after 479 years, Solomon, the Son of David, built the Temple which then
became the dwelling place of the ark, the dwelling place of God.
Psalm 84 – New Oxford Annotated Bible
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts!
My soul longs, indeed, it faints for the courts of the Lord;
My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her
young,
at your altars, O Lord of Hosts, my Sovereign, and my God!
Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.
Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
As they go through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools,
They go from strength to strength;
The God of gods will be seen in Zion.
O Lord God of Hosts, hear my prayer;
Give ear, O God of Jacob!
Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed.
For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than live in the tents of the corrupt.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield; bestowing favor and honor.
No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly.
O Lord of Hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you.
Now that you have the back story…Imagine the excitement of a family on the long journey to go
to the Temple. Imagine you on that journey. Your pilgrimage to this temple you have only heard
about. Filled with love, you look at your family, together on a journey. After days or weeks, or
longer, you finally catch sight of it and you are filled with awe. Psalm 84 captures this
feeling…this feeling that is right here in the chest, and up into the throat that barely contains
the excitement of seeing the dwelling place of God. The idea that God, YHWH Sabaoth, The
Lord of Hosts, wishes to dwell among mortals is powerful.
In 1 Kings, Solomon talks about the satisfaction, the comfort of having a place to turn toward
when a neighbor wrongs you, when feeling defeated, when the environment seems to have
turned against you and there is famine (no food), drought (no water), disaster, or disease
(virus), God is here. God is among God’s people. How lovely is Thy Dwelling place, O Lord of
Hosts.
And Solomon understanding the bigness of God says in this same chapter of 1 Kings: “But will
God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How
much less this temple I have built!
God bursts out of the Temple, out of the church buildings and fills the cosmos, available to all,
in all and through it all. Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God.
Here is our history, our mythology, our religious stories that have helped us understand who or
what God is to us, and each of us have interpreted God based on our own story. The broader
the better. I have experienced many difficult things in this life and have needed a concept of
God large enough to hold the beauty and the heartache of this life and the life beyond, but, OH,
can I complicate things. My friend Lea gave me a sticker last week. It says, “Hold on. I need to
overthink this.”
So, let me make it easier. Let’s consider 1 John 4:7,8 … Beloved, let us love one another, for
love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does
not love does not know God, because God is love.”
How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place, O Love, who is God. When I am dwelling in love, I am dwelling
in God.
You know when I don’t feel like I am dwelling in Love? When I am angry. When I am scared.
These emotions tighten like a rope around my heart and I become small.
Just in case you missed Thursday Thoughts, let me share with you some of my experiences last
week. On Sunday, I was attending a group that had previously agreed to follow masking
requirements and be fully masked while together. Another person came in who did not know
about the mask requirement. Later in a text, she let me know how illogical we were all being,
how we were eliminating the opportunity for others to be there, and how mask rules usurp the
rights of others.
Monday, I went to the doctor, and in conversation she told me that she had tried to send
someone with symptoms of a heart attack to the Temecula Valley Hospital. They were turned
away because there was no room due to Covid patients. My friend Lea, who gave me the
sticker, went to the hospital on Wednesday with possible heart attack symptoms in San Diego,
but she can’t go in the hospital. She is in a tent in the parking lot.
Then on Monday night, I hear a recording of the Temecula City Council Meeting where the
Pastor of the 412 Church truly called out a council member saying he seemed kind of “dead
spiritually,” and calling other people in attendance, those wearing masks, or those who
believed in systemic racism both wicked and sinful. Now. Feel in your body. Tightness, tension.
Mind racing, eyes narrowed, stomach in knots. That expansive feeling in the heart, the love, joy,
excitement about seeing the temple, about dwelling in Love, in God…Gone. No longer lovely.
My emotions are a mixed bag of shock, anger, distrust, disgust, and a cornucopia of other very
painful emotions. I don’t blow up. I don’t often blow up. My anger looks different these days,
but it doesn’t mean I don’t have it, plus all the corresponding judgment swirling around inside.
I imagine that most, if not all of you identify with this. We are, after all, more alike than
different, this human tribe of ours.
I don’t really like it though. There really are ideas out there that I don’t like and it’s hard to
know what to do in the moment. The problem is we get triggered up. We get so enmeshed with
our own opinion’s and we want to defend them vigorously. We mistake our ideas, our beliefs,
and our opinions as being “us”. We get stuck in our “rightness”. If I don’t pause, I’m really going
to step in it. I’m going to start explaining why I am right and you are wrong, as if it’s going to
work this time. Like it ever has…
This is the trap. We become polarized almost immediately. And it’s not just you or me, and it’s
not just because we said it’s wrong. It is destined to fail.
Here I would like to quote an 8th century Buddhist Master from India named Shantideva. He
says:
“If these long-lived, ancient, aggressive patterns of mine that are the wellspring only of
unceasing woe, that lead to my own suffering as well as the suffering of others, if these
patterns still find their lodging safe within my heart, how can joy and peace in this world ever
be found?” As long as we justify our own hard-heartedness and our own self-righteousness, joy
and peace will always elude us. We point the fingers at the wrongdoers, but we ourselves are
mirror images; everyone is outraged at everyone else’s wrongness.
When we allow our judgment thoughts to cycle, we get Caught in a Trap. We get caught up on a
“side”. Others tell us how they think and there is a big pull to tell them why they are wrong.
Then they tell us why we are wrong. We know that we are polarized in our community, nation
and world. There is a “right” side and a “wrong” side, so it seems. We are on the right side, of
course. We are ready to fight.
Let me quote a little more from Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun, and author of Practicing Peace in
Times of War… “I try to practice what I preach; I’m not always that good at it but I really do try.
The other night, I was getting hard-hearted, closed-minded, and fundamentalist about
somebody else, and I remembered this expression that you can never hate somebody if you
stand in their shoes. I was angry at him because he was holding such a rigid view. In that instant
I was able to put myself in his shoes and I realized, “I’m just as riled up, and self-righteous and
closed-minded about this as he is. We’re in exactly the same place!” And I saw that the more I
held on to my view, the more polarized we would become, and the more we’d be just mirror
images of one another—two people with closed minds and hard hearts who both think they’re
right, screaming at each other…”
Now this is all what I call ‘first energy”. That first energy is survival. Comes right up from the
amygdala and involves the fight/flight/freeze systems of my body. What I know now, is I need
to wait that out. Those systems come on line first for survival. If I wait it out, pause, my
prefrontal cortex will come online. That is my higher executive brain functioning. This is where
my values live. My love, my compassion. Once this is engaged, I can begin to investigate a
situation and come up with a wise action that follows the path of Jesus. It just begins with a
pause, a “turn toward Jerusalem”, a turn toward Love. A prayer. God help me. May I be in love.
What is the loving path? Here is my interpretation. It does not mean giving up on what I value
and believe! Love does not mean letting someone yell at me. Love does not mean staying in
harmful relationships or situations. When I talk of love and compassion, I include myself in the
circle. Love is not exclusionary, even and especially of myself, it is not weak, and it is not small.
This path of love dictates how I am to follow the path of Jesus. I don’t pretend that it is the only
way to believe, and I have no power or say over others. My job is to be fair and respectful of
others and myself. That is my idea, influenced by my upbringing, guided by study, meditation,
and prayer, and discussed with others. I believe my ideas are well thought out and I believe
they deserve my respect and attention. Others may have different ideas, and as long as they
don’t harm me, or those who cannot protect themselves, I am respectful of different ideas.
Earlier I said, that when in fear, I mistake my ideas, beliefs, and opinions for being “me.” The
difference is crucial. I have ideas, beliefs, and opinions. I have also changed those over time as I
learned new information. I did not change. My beliefs did. Since the past is the best predictor of
the future, I imagine my beliefs will continue to evolve. If I overidentify with my beliefs, ideas
and opinions, I will feel threatened when they are threatened. That creates fear of annihilation.
If I have become my ideas, I can no longer be flexible, and then we will die fighting for beliefs. I
am not annihilated when my beliefs or ideas are challenged or turn out to be wrong. I do have a
choice, though. I can stand up for what I believe in a loving way, or I can change my opinion.
When challenged, I don’t want my energy to be used in defining what you are, and what I am
not. I want to find what I believe. I need to find a breathing space. I need to find ground. Hardly
anything is an emergency. Take the time you need to find out how to be truthful without being
harmful.
When I am guided by love and acting wisely, I am saying what I believe to be true. I am not
saying it “against” someone else, I am saying it “for” me. Staying in love means staying in my
own experience. I don’t accuse others of bad intent. “You are doing this because…you are
wicked and evil.” I don’t think I can know that. Actually, unless I ask, I cannot know other
people’s intentions, and if I accuse them, I will be caught in a trap. It is best to focus only on
actions.
Our power will always be in what we will and will not do, not in trying to control what others
will and will not do. We have very little power over that. Anxiety comes from trying to exert
power where we have none. It is not good for us to try to control another’s actions through
passive or aggressive means. Instead, we decide how to interact with others in an equal way.
We decide when and how we are in relationship with others. If we are being treated unfairly or
without respect, it is a loving act for yourself to leave the conversation.
When our boundaries are getting crossed, we can decide how to stand. Having hospitals that
are full of unvaccinated Covid patients crosses my boundary. We are blessed to have hospitals
nearby, insurance, and medical care. If I get sick or hurt, I have paid into a system that is
designed to be there for my care. If I do nothing, I will feel resentful.
What do I do? Pause. Turn toward who you really are. The way one would turn toward the
Temple of Jerusalem. To pray. To calm. To ask for help, grace, and mercy. Don’t lose sight of
your compassion or you are in danger. In danger of “hating your enemy”. When compassion
returns, proceed…
One. Check the facts. Always check the facts.
Two. Share what you believe in a skillful way, to those you are in relationship with.
Three. Listen to those you are speaking with and hear the response.
Four. Listen to understand.
Five. Don’t worry if you do not agree. Understanding is not the same thing as agreeing.
Six. Don’t argue points. Be grateful for the conversation. It’s OK to say that you have a different
idea, and you are still glad for the conversation.
The relationship always comes first. Don’t confuse someone for their opinion. Remember, if
you had enough information, you would know why they believe the way they do. Find the
similarities and work slowly through the difficulties. Change will come when we trust each
other, not because we have thrust information at each other.
Be kind. Be truthful, but be kind. Conflict is not easy for anyone, but it is necessary.
And last, have faith and trust in God, which is trusting in Love. We surrender to that. In all
things we cannot control, which is most everything, and trust in the bigness of God. That it is
working out, even if I don’t see the path. That is faith.
And so in closing, I refer back to the Call to Presence we shared earlier.
Remember to apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Even pastors who call you
wicked and evil.
Every single creature is full of God, and is a book about God. Even people who call you
illogical.
Every creature is a word of God, so full of God is every creature. Even those who fill the
hospitals because they are too afraid or medically unable to get vaccinated.
Earth cannot escape heaven, flee it by going up, or flee it by going down. Heaven still invades
the earth, energizes it, makes it sacred. We find God in all places, in all people, in all churches
because we see beyond ideas, beliefs, and opinions. We are more.
All hiding places reveal God. It takes dedication and perseverance to see God’s face wherever
you look.
If you want to escape God, she runs into your lap…and we experience that love when our
heart is open and the channel by which we receive love is large…
For, God is at home, in me, in you, and in “them”…and as soon as we rephrase that into an
“us”, we return to Love, we return home from our walk in the dark.
Amen