1/9/22 “When You’re Between A Rock and A Hard Place” by Nancy E. Petty

Isaiah 43:1-7

The phrase, “between a rock and a hard place” is a relatively often used idiom. I found myself saying it just this past week in a conversation with a friend. The original concept is meant to describe a choice between two dangers, both of which would inevitably lead to harm. I most often have used it, and heard it used, to describe a situation in which someone has gotten themselves into “bind.” In my world that often means that I have scheduled myself to be in two important places at the same time. Being between a rock and a hard place is trying to choose which meeting I will attend and which one I will miss. (A rock and a hard place I find myself in as soon as this worship is over.) While that is a fairly vanilla example, I can promise you that there have been many other situations in my life when being between rock and a hard place has been anything but vanilla. But those stories are not for today’s sermon.

This idiom, “between a rock and a hard place” originates in Greek mythology. It is linked back to the phrase “between Scylla and Charybdis.” Scylla and Charybdis are two immortal and irresistible monsters who beset the narrow waters traversed by the hero Odysseus in his wanderings described in Homer’s Odyssey. Scylla was a supernatural female creature, with 12 feet and six heads having a triple row of sharklike teeth, while her loins were girdled by the heads of baying dogs. From her lair in a cave she devoured whatever ventured within reach, including six of Odysseus’s companions. In other writings, she was said to have been originally human in appearance but transformed out of jealousy through witchcraft into her fearful shape.

Charybdis, who lurked on the other side of the narrows, sat under a fig tree a bowshot away, it is told, drank down and belched forth the waters three times a day and was thought to be able to sink whole ships. Her character was most likely the personification of a whirlpool. Modern scholars generally agree that Charybdis was said to have been located off the coast of Sicily and opposite a rock on the mainland identified as Scylla. A whirlpool does exist there, caused by currents meeting, but it is dangerous only to small boats in extreme conditions.

Just like Homer in his poem, and many other stories of Greek and Roman mythology; these narratives characterize the moments of being “between a rock and a hard place” that we humans often find ourselves in. It is a place that the biblical writers also identify as they reflect on the human experience; and places where we still find ourselves in today.

I can still remember the first time I heard Mahan Siler preach on Isaiah 43. The assurance in his voice when he read those words, “But now says the Lord, the God who created you, who formed you; Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” The compassion in his voice speaking Isaiah’s words transported me to place I had never been nor experienced. You see, I was one of those who had sat in church my whole life worried that I wasn’t redeemable, that I wasn’t one of God’s beloved, that God had not called me by name because my homosexual soul was not redeemable. The voices in church and society that told me that I had so much to fear, that God didn’t love me, that redemption meant that I had to be someone other than who I knew God had created me to be were so loud and persistent that even had someone quoted Isaiah’s words to me before that day they would have fallen on ears unable to hear. But here in the safety and affirmation of this community, when Mahan spoke those words, I drank them in like a desert traveler who had just come upon an oasis. “Do not fear, I have called you by name, I have redeemed you, you are mine…you are precious and I love you.” Why do we not say those words every single time we gather in this place? We should! And not just for those of us who fear we are not loved by God because of our sexual or gender identity. But also for those of us who have been told by the church and society that we are not good enough, who have been shamed and guilted for our humanity, who have been told over and over, again and again, that we are not redeemable.

Like me, maybe at some time in your life, you have been stuck between a rock and a hard place believing that to be fully you and to be loved by God is not possible – that there is a Scylla and Charybdis lurking in the shadows ready to devour you. Maybe those times when you passed through the deep waters of despair and walked through the fires of hopelessness, you, too, believed that you were not redeemable, that God’s love was not wide enough or deep enough to include you.

Well my friends, when you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, Isaiah has some good news for you. Listen again to how theologian Eugene Peterson interprets Isaiah’s words:

When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you.

When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down.

When you’re between a rock and a hard place,

it won’t be a dead end –

Because I am God, your personal God,

The Holy of Israel, your Savior.

I paid a huge price for you:

all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in!

That’s how much you mean to me!

That’s how much I love you!

I’d sell off the whole world to get you back,

trade the creation just for you.

I will confess that there are a lot of theological complexities that I have to hold in tension when reading this text. Theologically and spiritually, I have had to rethink what I was taught in the early stages of my faith formation about a personal God – a God who calls me by name, who knows the number of hairs on my head, who has some set masterplan for my life, who has set into motion a course that cannot be altered for my individual life. That definition doesn’t and hasn’t work for me for some time. And yet, there is an intimacy that I have with the Divine, who I call God, which is real and personal. My journey with the Divine/God is personal in the ways that I try to understand and live my life according to my faith. God calls me by the name of beloved just like God calls all of creation beloved. God’s personal plan for me is the same as it is for you: to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and to love my neighbor as myself, to know myself as beloved, and to do all I can with what I have and the unique gifts I have been given to build God’s commonwealth here on this earth. So when I read Isaiah’s words about not fearing, and being redeemed, and being loved by God, and that when I am stuck between a rock and a hard place God will be with me, I hear those words specifically for me and for you. What makes them real to me is my willingness and openness to believe them and let them in. And that is a very vulnerable place that sometimes I am able to be in and other times, not so much. That vulnerable place reminds me of Toni Morrison’s words in Beloved: “Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder.”

All those years of not knowing if Isaiah’s words were meant for me was hard. And yet, there are times now that knowing they are meant for me seems harder. Do I dare live differently if I know that I don’t have to live in fear, that what I do or don’t do is always redeemable, that there is an intimacy to be had and felt with the Divine, that when I pass through the deep waters or walk through the fire (or find myself between a rock and a hard place) that it won’t be a dead end, that God is with me? Does all of that change how I live my life and my faith?

Marianne Williamson said it this way: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” What I mean is that back when I thought God could not possibly love the authentic me, I had an excuse for not stepping fully into my life. I was closeted and quiet about my private life because I allowed myself to believe I had something to hide. And while that was painful, it was, in some ways, safe. Now that I am clear that God not only accepts my homosexuality, but designed and celebrates it, I am obliged to live into that life differently. I no longer have anything to hide, but I also have nothing to blame if I’m not being 100% authentic. “Not knowing it was hard; knowing it [is sometimes] harder.”

A temptation when we are caught between a rock and a hard place is to feel and think that God is not with us, maybe even has abandoned us. But Isaiah comes along and reminds us that it is precisely in those times – when the water rises above our heads and the fire is burning our feet – that God is there, too. God will not let you go down, that what may look like a dead end is simply a turn in the road. It is no accident that Isaiah names the “between a rock and a hard place” times. There is no pretending on the prophet’s part that God’s people are somehow inoculated/vaccinated from trials and tribulations, from destructive powers and principalities, from suffering and pain. Such are a part of the human experience. The challenge of those of us who call ourselves people of faith is to stand between the rock and hard place and heed the prophet’s words: “Now says the Lord, the God who created you, the God who formed you: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you, I am redeeming you; I have called you by name – one beloved humanity, you are mine.”

What does it mean for our lives and world when we are able to live into those words? I think it means that there are no monsters big enough or strong enough to devour us. I think it means that when we live as God’s beloved – knowing that God’s love is wide enough and deep enough to gather every one of us in – we have everything we need to be who God created us to be and to be God’s justice-love in the world.

“Now says the Lord, the God who created you, the God who formed you: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you, I am redeeming you; I have called you by name – one beloved humanity, you are mine.”