Trusting God
“Surely God is my salvation, my deliverer; / I will trust, and will not be afraid, / for Yahweh, God, is my strength and my refuge; / God, Most High, has become my salvation, / my deliverance.” — Isaiah 12:2.
Evening Primrose is a musical with a book, a libretto, by James Goldman and songs by Stephen Sondheim. It was written for televison and was broadcast only once, November the 16th, 1966, 44 years ago this Tuesday, on ABC. A DVD of that broadcast has just been released, and no I have not seen it yet but I have ordered it. However, I do know the score and the story fairly well.
Let speak about it for a moment. Confined to the 50 minute time slot of sixties anthology television and based on a short story, the tale being told has a Twilight Zone twist. It explores the possibility that the mannequins in a department store are real people hiding from the real world. Not simply dummies for displaying clothes, these mannequins come alive at night and walk around and eat and talk and have parties in the store.
The tale follows a fellow named Charles, a poet who, fed up with the real world and its challenges, decides to retreat to this alternative reality of department store mannequins. He meets and is smitten with a beautiful young girl, Ella.
Now 19, she has lived in the store, lost in this separate existence, not because she chose it. She was separated from her mother at age six when she fell asleep in the women’s hat department and, so, abandoned— never contacted by her negligent family again.
There seems to be security in this strange life. After all, everything one needs is right there in the store. Still, Ella longs to leave this world, a place of night and shadows. She wants to return to the real world, breathe fresh air, feel a breeze, see the sun. But she is afraid.
Indeed, all those who exist in this department store world are unsure, worried and afraid about and afraid of the real world. After all, if someone did try to return to the outside world, it would risk revealing the very existence of the group in this sheltered nether land.
Ella seeks guidance from Charles. And Charles is tempted to return to the real world with her but he also realizes she has not seen the sun for thirteen years.
Perhaps that is the real reason Charles has fallen in love with Ella. She is innocent about that real world. He feels he knows the real world all too well and is horrified by it.
Ella, on the other hand, believes she can and she must leave the store for this real world with Charles. After all, he knows about it. He will protect her and be her guide. She wants to take the dare, take that chance, take the kind of step she has only dreamed about, return to a place she has nearly forgotten, that different world he knows so well.
Ella starts to sing: “Let me see the world with clouds, / Take me to the world. / Out where I can push through crowds, / Take me to the world. / A world that smiles / With streets instead of aisles / Where I can walk for miles with you.”
“Take me to the world that’s real / Show me how it’s done / Teach me how to laugh, to feel / Move me to the sun. / Just hold my hand whenever we arrive. / Take me to a world where I can be alive.”
Charles, not so sure about this, his words are, at first, spoken in response to her lyrics as she continues to sing, pleading with him that he needs to take her to the real world: “The world is better here,” he insists. “I know I’ve seen them both. / A poet doesn’t count for much out there.”
He then tries to tell her about the dangers, the reality: “We’d be cold and hungry in the winter— / A shabby room with cracked plaster— / You couldn’t get a job. / We’d end up hating each other. / We’d have fights. You’d cry. / I couldn’t bear it if you cried.”
Then he starts to sing in counterpoint to her song: “I have seen the world / And it’s mean and ugly / Here— we could laugh together. / Stay here with me. / I love you Ella. / We’d be happy here. / Stay here with me. / Stay here with me. / Stay here with me.” (Slight pause.)
The store opens the next morning. Two new handsome mannequins have appeared, bride and groom mannequins. Those watching the show know these figures. They look exactly like Ella and Charles, except dressed for a wedding, their faces frozen in place. A decision has been made. They stay in the world of mannequins. [1] (Slight pause.)
And these words are from the Scroll of the Prophet Isaiah: “Surely God is my salvation, my deliverer; / I will trust, I will not be afraid, / for Yahweh, God, is my strength and my refuge; / God, Most High, has become my salvation, / my deliverance.” (Slight pause.)
I believe these words are about having full trust in God. Hence, these words are about the real world in which we live and we are called to trust God in the context of that real world.
Indeed, the world is real and it is not always friendly. It is often dangerous, precarious, unsafe, frightening. I have been there. I know.
I grew up on the mean streets of Brooklyn. I served in Vietnam. I have seen more violence and more sadness and more hardship in my life than I ever wanted to see. And, yes, I often do want to feel more protected and be more protected than that for which the real world allows.
But perhaps because I do know the real world, I also know its challenges. Among all the things I know, I know I must not be challenged by the real world. I must, instead, challenge the real world, live in it, live through it. (Slight pause.)
If a world filled with threats, real threats, is to ever be challenged, if a world filled with menace is to ever be changed, I, myself, must not acquiesce to the dangerous, precarious, unsafe, frightening, unfriendly-ness of that world. But how is that to be done? (Slight pause.)
I must strive to affirm that God is real and is present and is with us. I must trust God. I must stand fast and affirm that God constantly teaches us about joy and love and peace and hope.
And I know these are real. These attributes of joy and love and peace and hope are much more real than the reality of any terrors found in the so called ‘real world.’ (Slight pause.)
In a couple of minutes you will be invited to offer a pledge to your work. Notice, I did not call it the work of the church. I called it your work.
In making a pledge, you are invited to the real world. It is a world which can intimidate. But unless we, unless you challenge that world, the menace, the danger, the terrors which are found there, the false reality of that world will win.
So, I suppose the question for us today is this: can we and will we challenge the world and challenge ourselves to trust God who is real and present to us and teaches us about joy and love and peace and hope. (Slight pause.) My friends, unless we challenge ourselves, hope is just another four letter word. Unless we trust in God each and every day we step out into the real world, then we might as well all just be mannequins— in a constant state of surrender— complacent, compliant. (Slight pause.)
The challenge of your work, our work, the work of this church is before us. It is vital work. It is work in the real world. It is the work of hope. It is the work of faith. It is the work of peace. It is the work of love. And, indeed, it is the work of trust. Amen.
United Church of Christ, Norwich, New York.
11/14/2010
ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Benediction. This, then, is an précis of what the pastor said before the blessing: “The late theologian Henri Nouwen said this: ‘Praying demands that you take to the road again and again, leaving your house and looking forward to a new land for yourself and others. This is why praying demands poverty— the readiness to live a life in which you have nothing to lose, so that you always begin afresh.’ [2] Perhaps the ‘poverty of spirit’ Jesus addresses in the Sermon on the Mount has to do with a readiness to live a life in which you have nothing to lose, so that you always begin afresh willingness— a readiness to challenge life.”
[1] Information on this broadcast from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evening_Primrose_(musical)
The video of this song on the Internet Movie Database:
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2556533017/
Information on this broadcast from the Internet Movie Database:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060384/
[2] Henri J. M. Nouwen, With Open Hands
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