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I was recently reminded of a story that apparently first appeared in the London Observer some time ago: It seems there was “a family of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano. To them in their piano-world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was Someone who made the music – though invisible to them – above, yet close to them. They loved to think of the Great Player whom they could not see.
“Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how the music was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths which trembled and vibrated. They must revise all their old beliefs; none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the Unseen Player.
“Later, another explorer carried the explanation further. Hammers were now the secret, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The Unseen Player came to be thought of as a myth.
“But the pianist continued to play.”
That’s a true story. It may not be strictly fact. But it’s truth, if ever truth were told.
Many years ago, a debate about creation and evolution raged in this country. I’m sure most of you have seen Spencer Tracey in the Hollywood version of the Scopes “Monkey Trial” that threw Darwin’s theory of evolution into a court of law. And there are, to this day, a number of “creationists,” as they’re called, out there still waving the flag and sounding the charge whenever evolutionary theory is revised to meet the evidence of archeological finds. But for the most part, the great debate between evolutionary theory and creationism is considered a relic of the past. The majority of us who still believe in the “Unseen Player” are not flustered by the discovery of vibrating wires and hammers. We concluded long ago that there can still be a Creator even if the ancient imagery of molding human beings out of clay is removed from the history books and assigned to the realm of poetry.
But before the human race brushes the dust off its hands from this debate and moves on, I’d like to offer a word. I’m not entirely convinced that we’ve put the trauma of the Scopes Monkey Trial behind us. In fact, I fear that those of us who still hold fast to an ancient biblical faith while nonetheless clinging to a modern scientific world-view may have lost something precious along the way.
This morning’s Old Testament lesson is the second of the two creation stories in Genesis, the dry, barren wasteland story (as opposed to the watery chaos story of Genesis 1). This is the account in which God formed human beings out of the dust of the earth. The picture of God on whatever hands and knees God was supposed to have making a clay doll that would be the prototype of the human race is very old and ingrained in my mind. It goes all the way back to my Sunday School days in Ottumwa, Iowa. And in the light of decades of archeological evidence, and hours of magnificent film footage about the dawn of humanity, it leaves me a little anxious to offer disclaimers. Such as, “Of course, I really don’t believe that God got down on hands and knees to make people out of mud, you understand.” The problem is not in the disclaimer itself. Most of us would probably agree about that. The problem lies in the anxiousness, the eagerness to explain, frankly, the embarrassment. In his letter to the Romans, Paul refers to it as “being ashamed of the good news.”
There’s good news in this story. It is the news that, no matter how many vibrating wires and dancing hammers we may discover, there is indeed a Great Pianist at the keyboard. And in a world that so often seems entirely too cold and hard and alone, that’s good news indeed. It’s time we stopped being embarrassed about it.
All of which brings me around to this familiar story from the Gospel of John in which Thomas doubts what his fellow disciples say about seeing the risen Christ, until that is, he sees and touches him himself. Rereading it this time I was struck by the final words of our scripture selection: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
That final phrase, “. . . that through believing you may have life in his name” struck me as never before. “Having life” is a very familiar biblical construct. It’s on the lips of Jesus several times, perhaps most notably when he says that he “came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” And John uses this concept throughout his gospel. Starting with the opening words, “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people,” to Jesus’s words, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” and then these we heard this morning at the end of the gospel, John makes it clear that the point of Jesus’s ministry and the reason for writing his gospel in the first place is that people may “have life.” And you may be surprised to hear that after over fifty years of theological education and pastoral ministry I found myself asking: What in the world does that really mean? I’m alive; my heart beats and I’m breathing and walking around. Clearly there must be something deeper being suggested.
That deeper meaning has, I believe, everything to do with our story of creation and those dancing hammers and wires. John is telling us that God (whatever, whomever it is that we call “God”) is life – a special kind of life. And that life can dwell within us. John says that we can have that life by “believing.” And considering what is meant by “believing” takes us back to the story of doubting Thomas. He was one of those mice in the piano who scoffed at the notion of a great Unseen Player. He was not about to accept anything that he could not verify with his five senses. But somehow in a miraculous moment he was able to find an absolute connection between his faith and his senses. Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that? I believe you can. I said as much to someone once.
It happened when I went to a therapist for a while for a pain in my shoulder. The therapist and I regularly got into philosophical/theological discussions. One week, he was moving my arm around and asking me how I would respond to someone who says that the source of my faith is not, as I assert, an experience of being connected to something greater that lies at the Heart of Being, but simply the work of electrical signals between neurons in my brain originating from inner desires and hopes. I said that my response would be: “What’s the difference?”
And here’s my point: I have not climbed out of the piano and been able to behold the Unseen Player with my own eyes; nor have I touched the hand and side of the risen Lord. But I have found a kind of “believing” that lies deeper than “believing in” something (whether that is God, or Jesus, or miracles, or the Bible). It is a believing that wells up from one’s core, lives in one’s atoms and molecules, and simply sits there as an awareness. It is a special kind of life, an abundant life that finds wonder in every atom of Being, every second of participation in this great expanse of Reality. It is life experienced as divine.
This world is so lonely. It is so hurt and broken. It is adrift in a sea of indifference and callousness. You and I have some very good news to tell, and it is this: the universe is indeed filled with music, divine music that can lift your spirits, music that can mend broken hearts, the music of an Artist so wondrous and mighty that it can change the world.
Do not be deceived. The battle about creation and evolution is not over. It has merely gone underground. It has worked its way into the collective subconscious and taken up residence in our souls where it eats away at the underpinnings of our faith. The contest is not about whether God fashioned people out of clay. It is about whether those of us who pursue the truth will have hearts of clay. It is about the prospect of holding an ancient biblical faith and a modern scientific world view in more than apologetic tension. It is about freely, and boldly, and happily proclaiming to a bruised and confused world that there is an Artist, after all, at the keyboard, not “out there” somewhere, but pervading all the universe, dwelling in the neurons and sinews of our very being. And we know it because it lives within us and we have touched its hands and side, if you will; we hear its music in every breeze as if from a great piano. It’s about saying to those on the brink, “Don’t give up! There is life to be had – life in abundance!”
We’re pretty smart, we human beings. If you want proof of how smart we are, just open the newspaper any morning. You’ll find out that we can accelerate protons around a 17 mile long tube at near the speed of light and smash them into each other with the force of 7 trillion electron volts; we can analyze the mitochondrial DNA of a 40,000 year old finger and determine that it came from an individual who was part of an entirely unknown branch of the human family tree; we are on the verge of creating nanorobots, little molecular machines injected into cells to repair them; we’ve got people on the way to the moon – we’re pretty smart.
We are the smartest species that ever lived. In fact, we’re so smart that we’re capable of burning up the ozone and filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. We’re so smart that we are learning how to improve on the design of human beings by monkeying with their DNA and adding robotic parts. We’ll soon be able to put computer chips in people’s brains to make them even smarter.
And since we trust in our intelligence so thoroughly, we are naturally skeptical of anything that we don’t understand. If we don’t understand it, then, we naturally conclude, it’s hogwash – since, after all, we’re so smart.
But what is it to “understand” something? Literally, it is to “stand under” that thing. In other words, we place ourselves in a position relative to the thing that puts us in the same “sphere of being” with it. If we can “stand under” it, so we suppose, we can breathe the same air it breathes, wrap ourselves in its reality, and know its workings – kind of bottom side up.
In fact, we become so convinced of our ability to “under-stand” things and know them, that we become truly convinced of our knowledgeability. I speak from experience on this subject.
I have learned to at least attempt to keep to myself my own assurance about the things I know. But in truth, I could hardly count the number of times that I’ve heard a little inner voice saying something like, “well, I’m surprised that person doesn’t know that; I know that,” or, worse yet, “Maybe I should explain how this works.” And then I have to try to keep from getting red-faced when I discover that I didn’t really understand the thing at all – when I find out that the other person was right about it, and I was wrong. It’s humiliating, and not a little disconcerting.
Now, those of you who know me well know about this little character flaw of mine. But let me hasten to add that I’m not alone. Truth be told, each and every one of us gets through our days primarily by moving from one thing we “understand” to another. We understand how the things in our world work. At least we know that when we turn the key the car starts, when we flip the switch the light goes on, when we turn the knob water flows from the faucet. And we project this understanding onto the workings of the rest of the world. We “know” what the President and Congress should do about Iran and I.C.E. and whatever else is in the news. We “know” what’s wrong with schools in America, or that the problem with violence among young people is that they spend too much time on the Internet, or that the problem is the availability of guns, or a lack of parental supervision, and . . . on it goes.
You see we’re smart. We “understand” things.
All of this is by way of introduction to a confession I wish to make. Here it is: I really don’t like preaching on Easter Sunday. There. It’s out. (And, by the way, I suspect I’m not alone among the clergy).
It’s not that I don’t love the beauty of the hymns, and the Easter story, and the flowers in the sanctuary. The truth is, I don’t like the feeling of not being able to understand something. I don’t like feeling like an idiot. And the honest truth is: I don’t understand the resurrection. It’s not something I can get my mind around. I’ve never seen anyone rise from the dead, and the idea of someone doing it goes against every twenty-first century, modern scientific, rational bone in my body. When you’re alive, you’re alive; and when you’re dead you’re dead. Let’s admit it; most of us here this morning basically see life the same way. There’s living and breathing, and then there’s being dead, and not breathing. And in spite of what any of us may believe about the afterlife, none of us have ever seen anybody get around that one.
So here I stand before you, trying to preach to you about something I don’t even understand. It’s a feeling that makes me squirm a little.
The only comfort I can take in the task is to recognize that I’m not alone. In fact, I’m in pretty good company. The followers of Jesus couldn’t quite connect with the experience rationally either. Starting with the first one at the tomb, Mary Magdalene. She found the tomb empty and, being a rational, thinking person instantly “understood” what had happened. She ran to the disciples and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then, after the others came, looked for themselves, scratched their heads, and left, She found herself alone again outside the tomb. The risen Lord appears right before her eyes! And, being a rational, thinking person, she “understands” him to be the gardener. There’s no other explanation that makes sense. It had to be the gardener. It took the experiential equivalent of a sledge hammer to break through her rational-critical mental construct. Jesus had to speak to her, and call her by name. “Mary,” He said.
That’s when Easter finally happened. It was when the first person Jesus encountered was knocked off their rational-scientific, wise and knowing, “understanding” pins, and left weeping and celebrating, head-spinning, and reeling by something they could not in a million years comprehend. That’s when Easter first happened – when it happened to Mary in the garden.
You see, Easter isn’t a theological argument; it’s not a three point hypothesis. That’s why I have so darn much trouble preaching about it. Easter is an event – more than that, it’s an event that doesn’t make sense.
I have come to be a firm believer that the trouble I have preaching about Easter is not an accident. I’m supposed to have trouble preaching about it. I’m not supposed to make sense out of it. I’m not supposed to be able to put it neatly into a few profound theoretical assertions a three-point message. Easter is something that is supposed to upset you. Easter is something that is supposed to surprise you. Easter is something that is supposed to bewilder you. And if it doesn’t leave you bewildered, I think it hasn’t happened to you.
It’s such a funny game we all play on Easter Sunday. We all sit here together, singing the hymns of the season, proclaiming, “Christ is risen, indeed!” as though it were all so annually predictable and routine. We all listen to the Easter message, and struggle within about how we come to terms with this story about a man rising from the dead, when none of us has ever seen such a thing, and some little part of us even may find it a bit hard to swallow. And we all politely keep our inner struggles about it to ourselves by smiling and wishing each other a “happy Easter.” We each think there’s something wrong with us because we can’t quite get our minds around the resurrection. So we don’t let on about it.
Well, guess what! You’re supposed to be confused! You’re supposed to be a little baffled. You’re supposed to go away shaking your head and saying, “I don’t know.” That’s what Easter is about!
Easter confounds you. Easter unsettles you. Easter turns your rational mind inside out, and grabs you by the shirt collar and shakes you until you have to admit the thing that none of us ever, ever wants to admit: we don’t understand.
And when we reach that point, I imagine the Lord of heaven and earth sitting back and saying, “Precisely. You don’t understand. Now, there’s something we can work with.”
You see, Easter is not something we “understand” in the way we generally consider understanding. Easter is something we “stand-under” in the same way we stand under the rain. It’s not something to be grasped, or comprehended, or “worked out;” it’s something that simply happens to us. It’s being jerked outside of the manageable, predictable box we live in from day to day and being seized by the Spirit of Christ. And if it happens to us that way, if it happens to us the way it happened to Mary and to the disciples, it leaves us stunned, shaking our heads in disbelief. And then, mouth agape in awe and wonder, that’s when Easter happens.
My wish for you this season is that you will be confused. My hope for you this Easter morning is that you will leave here scratching your head and saying, “I don’t get it.” My prayer for you today is that, in the stillness of your bewilderment, you will hear a quiet voice speaking your name, and Easter will happen to you.
As I have mentioned, I have been watching Ken Burns documentaries recently. One of the things that has struck me is how horrible and ugly beyond words the acts perpetrated in war have been – men, women, and children often slaughtered indiscriminately. And even today we see bombs and missiles dropped on civilian targets in places across the globe. I have come to the conclusion that the term “inhuman” has no real meaning. There seems to be nothing that humans are incapable of.
Today, we celebrate the triumphal entry into Jerusalem of a man who was the very embodiment of non-violent resistance and the example for many who have followed him to oppose all forms of violence and war. I have been struggling with today’s sermon because I find myself deeply conflicted about all this. My inner conflict is perhaps epitomized in my responses to those stories in the documentaries and on the news about war. I honor and respect those who have given their lives in service to their country, I grasp the significance of what they have died for, and I also ache for their families and ask myself repeatedly if there might not have been another way. I know these issues are deeply emotional, and that people of good faith and good will find themselves on opposite sides of them. I have been struggling because I am not entirely sure of the virtue of my own emotional responses. I have been struggling because I find myself, at some level of my being, completely at odds with what I understand to be the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Those of you who know my background know that, before I entered the ministry, I was a police officer. A portion of my life has been dedicated to the absolute necessity of the use of force – even deadly force – in order to protect individuals or society from those bent on doing harm. I was, for a good portion of my life, an outspoken advocate for the death penalty. And I am outraged by the wild, bloodthirsty actions of those who drive cars into market places full of people or strap explosives to their bodies to kill as many men, women, and children as possible, all in the name of God! I know there’s a part of me that would just like to find what hole-in-the-wall they’re hiding in and drop a bomb on them myself.
Here’s the problem I have: how do I square all that with this Jesus who preached and practiced suffering, self-sacrificing, non-violence in the face of evil? How do I square all that with the images of those brave soldiers who have sacrificed everything? And how do I square it with the images that also haunt me of those who have followed in Jesus’ steps by taking up the awesome mantle of non-violent resistance?
I have to tell you that I am left with many questions, and much inner conflict. I have to tell you as well, however, that I am here not to preach to you the gospel of Mike Scott, but the gospel of Jesus Christ, however difficult that gospel may be to preach.
It is the gospel of a man who rode into the city of Jerusalem amid the cheers and waving of palm branches, and who knew more clearly than anyone around him, that he was riding to his death. It is the gospel of a man who refused to call upon either the powers of his miraculous ways, or the swords of his followers to save him from that death. It is the gospel of a man who refused to participate in evil, and who refused to adopt evil’s means, even if it meant going obediently to the cross. And it is the gospel of a man who told any of us who would follow him that our task is to take up our own crosses as well.
Admittedly, Jesus had his moments. He drove the money changers out of the temple and he spat invectives at the scribes and pharisees. He lost his cool on occasion; he was not a plastic, other-worldly sort of guru. But even though he may have been a man of passion, the record of his ministry, his teaching, his example is clear: he was a man of non-violence, and he called his followers to be the same.
Martin Luther King, Jr. picked up on that. He saw the tracks of Jesus on the road to Calvary, and he knew what they meant. He also saw the tracks of Mahatma Gandhi who preached the same sort of non-violence (one might object to including Gandhi in our survey of those who followed Christ, but even though Gandhi was not a Christian, he was very clearly a follower of Christ’s example).
What King and Gandhi both saw was that one cannot resist evil by adopting evil’s means. Once the means and methods of evil are taken up, no matter what the cause, the result is simply the furtherance of evil. When confronted with violence, if you take up that violence yourself you do not put it down; instead you end up keeping the violence alive by taking it within and giving it rebirth through your own actions. Gandhi and King, following the incredibly difficult path of the one who carried his cross to Calvary, finally concluded that resistance to evil meant non-participation in evil, including non-participation in violence.
There was another one who picked up that message. She got it from, of all places, Sunday School. Many of you have heard her story. Her name is Ruby Bridges. Nov. 14, 1960 was Ruby’s first day as a first-grader at William Frantz School in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. It was also the day public schools were integrated.
Robert Coles, a child psychiatrist has told her story. At the time, he was a young Air Force doctor trying to get to a conference in town, but was held up by the angry mob outside Ruby’s school. Coles had done research on the effects of stress on children, and, as he watched Ruby trying to make her way through the crowd, he couldn’t help wondering what the little girl was going through. He wound up staying for three years. In that time, he studied the effects of the hate and violence that swirled around Ruby and three other girls who were trying to attend all-white schools.
He tells the story of one particular day, when, on the way up the sidewalk into the school, surrounded by an angry mob screaming hateful words at her, she suddenly stopped, and started talking to herself. Coles at first thought this was a clear sign that the pressure had become too much for her. The little girl was breaking.
But, later when she was questioned about what happened, and why she had stopped in the middle of the crowd that morning, Ruby said that she stopped because she realized she had forgotten to perform her daily ritual. And what was it that Ruby did every morning that was so important that she had to stop in the middle of a jeering mob when she remembered it? It was to say a prayer. She prayed that God would forgive these people for what they were doing. It was something she learned in Sunday School.
The reason Ruby’s story continues to be so powerful, even after all these years, and after all the telling, and retelling of it, is that it reflects a human potential so profound and so awe-inspiring that we instinctively see in it the very power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Few of us imagine that we ourselves could muster that kind of grace and courage, but we know what it is when we see it. We know that it is divine. And we know that it reflects the best of what we are called to be.
A number of years ago, 43 year old Ruby Bridges Hall was the guest speaker at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Convocation. At the conclusion of her address she said, “If each one of us takes an initiative and makes a commitment to live peacefully and respect others and just do what we know is right, the world would be a better place for our children and for us, and ultimately through these efforts we will live the dream of equality – the dream of Dr. King.”1
What does all this have to say to we who are haunted by the images of devastation in places like Ukraine and Iran? I don’t have a simplistic or judgmental answer. But I do have a feeling. I have an uncomfortable feeling that we are in danger of taking the wrong path, and losing sight of the footprints of Christ.
Clearly, we cannot stand by and ignore the hideous acts of murderous people or nations. We must resist such evil, and we must resist it courageously. As Dr. King said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really co-operating with it.”
But the question that is posed to us by Christ’s example is this: how do we resist and counter the evil of violence without becoming, ourselves, the agents and emissaries of that same evil?
I wish the answer were simple. I fear that, instead, it is a difficult and unsettling answer. At the very least, I suspect it involves doing all in our power to build world community before trying to achieve world domination. I suspect it has to do with not glorifying and reveling in war, and not turning our nation into such an efficient killing machine that it becomes easy to turn to military options before all others have been exhausted. Beyond that, I fear that it is the answer of a man who rode a donkey directly into the firestorm of hatred and made the world a different place by standing against that hatred, and by taking upon himself its fury.
The world may not be ready to follow him. I don’t even know if I’m entirely prepared to follow him. But on this day of all days, perhaps each one of us is compelled to consider what it means to follow those footsteps.
I was eyeballing all these verses in the readings you heard this morning and, as all of you who have gotten to know me might guess, I settled on the one sentence in the whole thing that I found most upsetting: “All things work together for good for those who love God.”
There’s a sizable piece of my brain that just jumps up and screams when I read that. It says, “Now, I know better than that!” Things don’t always work out for the good. And it doesn’t matter how much you love God, sometimes things seem to work out for the worst. You can’t tell me that among the family and friends of a lovely couple named Arlene and Edward Kozlowski who were killed in a tornado that ripped through their town in Indiana a couple of weeks ago, or among all those whose homes were destroyed, there were none who loved God. I love God, and some pretty crummy things have happened to me along the way. I don’t see everything working out for the good. I see a world of war and global hatred, and a whole lot of downright stupidity.
But, of course, Paul the apostle knew about all this stuff too. The times were coming unglued even back then when he was writing this letter to the church at Rome. Paul made a list of some of the horrible things that were breaking out in his world: “hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword.” He even quotes Psalm 44, verse 22, in words that are chillingly close to the bone in this age of global hatred and war, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
So, if Paul knows how unfair life can be, and how awful things can turn out, where does he get off saying something like, “all things work together for good?” I’ve been scratching my head about that for a while, and I think I’ve come up with something. I found it in these other verses that were read this morning from the Gospel according to Matthew. It’s a list of some of Jesus’s more pithy parables about the kingdom of heaven. He speaks of the kingdom as being like a mustard seed that grows into a tree, and like that little bit of yeast in the dough that causes the whole loaf to expand. The idea, apparently, is that the kingdom is a small thing that might be easily overlooked, but it grows into something amazing. The kingdom of heaven, it seems, evolves. It grows over time.
I like that. It fits with my own experience. I think I’ve done some evolving and growing myself. I wouldn’t say I’ve made it all the way to a big oak tree that the birds can nest in, but I feel less like a little nut than I used to. I’ve had some real set-backs and screw-ups in my life. I’ve made some whopping mistakes, and at times it’s seemed like for every step forward I’ve taken two or three steps back. But, if I just take the time to turn around and look over my shoulder, it’s surprising sometimes to see just how far I’ve come.
I think that may be the way the kingdom is. If, as Jesus prayed, the kingdom will come “on earth, as it is in heaven,” then I think our world must be evolving. Human culture must be growing, even if almost imperceptibly slowly. That tiny mustard seed must be sending down roots, and some little pointy green thing must be sticking up out of the ground, even if only a little. It may seem as though, just when we think we’ve made a little progress, some international conflict threatens to blow us back to the stone-age, but if we just turn around and look over our shoulders, we can see that humanity has come some distance. We no longer throw witches in the river to test their evil powers according to whether they drown or not. We no longer turn human beings into commodities to be sold at auction, and forced into slavery. Even in our church history we can see that evolution. I learned once about the story of a New England Congregationalist. His name was David Pond, and he was excommunicated from the Second Church of Christ in Wrentham, about fifty miles from here. That’s right – thrown out on his ear. It happened about two hundred and seventy five years ago. It all started when the church instituted a new policy about hymn singing. You see, prior to that, when the congregation sang a hymn, everyone sang whatever tune they wanted to. There wasn’t any printed music, and folks wouldn’t know how to read it if there were. So people just sang the words according whatever sort of tune they wanted to make up, and they did this caterwauling all together. I can hardly imagine how it sounded. So, the new innovation was that the church came up with four different hymn tunes that everyone learned. And when they sang a hymn on Sunday, they would choose one of the tunes, and ask everyone to sing it together. And everyone obliged, except David Pond. “We’ve never done it that way!” I can hear him saying. He insisted on singing his own tune. They pleaded with him; they reasoned with him; they threatened him. But in the end, he refused, so they threw him out of the church. They threw him out for singing out of tune! Can you imagine if they did that today?
Well, he went down the road and joined another church. That is, until folks back in his old church got wind of it. They wrote a stern letter to his new congregation letting them know that David Pond had been excommunicated, and that they had no business accepting him as a member. The brethren in that church replied with an embarrassed apology, and promptly dismissed poor David from their congregation as well. He went home and pouted. He pouted for thirteen years, before he finally relented, and came back to church ready to sing in tune with everyone else.
The Congregationalists may not be the ultimate refinement of Christ’s church for all time; we are not entirely the church we could be, but if we look back over our shoulder, we have come some distance.
But this evolving realm of heaven is bigger than just our kind of church, bigger than Christianity. All of creation is becoming the great tree – the leavened loaf. I wonder if that’s what it means that “all things work together for good.” You know that’s a very different statement than it first sounds like. It doesn’t say, “everything works out for the good.” Truth is, some things don’t turn out so good. The tornado that ripped through Indiana was not a blessing, David Pond being excommunicated for singing out of tune wasn’t what I would consider a good thing. But somehow, all the things that happen, the good and the not so good get thrown into the mixing bowl of history along with a little leavening, and over the long term, something good begins to emerge. “All things work together,” and the outcome, if not now, at least at some point, is “good.” In other words, the kingdom is evolving.
The other thing that Jesus said is that the kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field to be stumbled upon, or a pearl of great value that a merchant might discover by chance. Maybe the “treasure” is simply this: a growing awareness of the rising dough and the budding tree. Maybe the “pearl of great value” is the recognition that we, whose eyes have been opened to the power and work of the Lord in the world, are part of something much greater than ourselves – something wondrous and unfolding – something worth devoting ourselves to. Maybe that’s why it’s “those who love God” who seem to be the recipients of the good for which “all things work together.” Maybe those who love God are the ones most able to discern that gift – a gift not apparent to the ones who only focus on the set-backs and missteps – a gift disclosed to those who, with the eyes of faith, can grasp the long-term work of the kingdom coming “on earth as it is in heaven.”
William Willimon, the Methodist Bishop and former Dean of the chapel at Duke University, tells of the couple in his congregation who had “wanted a child, prayed for a child. Then, at mid-life, she became pregnant. Their joy was overflowing, along with the joy of the whole congregation who rejoiced with them at their good fortune.
“But then the test revealed that the child had Downs Syndrome, a not completely rare situation for those have children later in life.
“What should they do? Some warned against bringing the baby to term. These children can be quite demanding and dependent, some said.
“Yet they decided to bring the baby to term. The baby was born, a wonderful little girl with an unusually appealing smile.
“It was not easy at first. She had a minor digestive problem that eventually corrected itself, but it made for a fussy, difficult baby for the first few months. They could not help but worry from time to time about the future.
Willimon says, “We visited them one day and marveled at the joyful, caring, and compassionate way they related to their little girl. They were obviously going to be wonderful parents. We noted our delight at their parenting.
“‘I’ve got to admit,’ she said, ‘it was a bit scary at first. There were days when I wondered if we had made the right decision. I loved Emily, but still, I wondered if we would be up to the demands for the future.
“‘One afternoon, I was drinking a cup of tea. Emily had been rather peevish all day, but was at last just sitting quietly in her crib. I was exhausted and feeling rather down. As I sat there, drinking tea, and looking toward her crib down the hall, the late afternoon winter sun suddenly shown through the window, falling right upon Emily sitting in the crib, all golden, and red, and wonderfully beautiful. I just sat there astounded by it. It was as if this light was a spotlight on her, a kind of embrace of her. She smiled back at me in the sunlight. It was as like a vision. It was like God saying to me, to Emily, to us all, “This is my child in whom I am well pleased.”’
“‘From that day on I have never doubted that she is indeed a great gift of God, a privilege for us to have received. She is our treasure.’”
That story touches our hearts for good reason. Perhaps all it takes are the eyes of faith to see the treasure hidden in a field. Perhaps all it takes is a heart of love to discern the Divine work of making the kingdom a reality in our midst.
Anyway, that’s how I keep my head up in the midst of a world that otherwise seems to be well on its way to hell in a handbasket. As my father once said, commenting on the book of Revelation, “When I read the great book of life, I got a chance to peek at the last chapter. God wins.”
Our gospel lesson today ends with just about my favorite utterance of Jesus: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” John offers many cryptic words from Jesus about why he came, and what he was all about. He says, “I came . . . to testify to the truth, I came . . . not to judge the world, but to save the world, I came . . . so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind, I have come as light into the world. . . .” In many ways they’re all saying the same thing, but of all these, this is my favorite; he came that we might have abundant life.
And just what is that? I’d like to spend the next fifteen minutes or so noodling on that question. First of all, let me suggest what I believe life abundant is not. If you watch much TV or spend much time on the Internet you might be led to believe that if you use Aspercream you can climb mountains at any age. Or if your friends all ask about why you seem so much happier and healthier and vital, it’s because you finally asked your doctor about Viagra. And if you are looking for exotic looks, daily usability and blistering performance then, obviously, you’ve got to get your hands on the new Audi R8. I feel pretty confident that’s not what Jesus meant by life abundant.
But it’s so easy to get confused. New toys, shinier cars, zippier smart phones, all seem to resonate with some sneaky little voice inside that keeps whispering to our inner ear that the cure for our malaise, the answer to our nagging questions, the vanquishing of our pain or emptiness lies in something just around the next corner. All we have to do is take out the credit card and pony up.
After a lifetime of piling up shiny new toys that become closet fillers, then get moved to the basement, before finally being taken to the dump, I remain unconvinced that they have made my life any more abundant.
With apologies to the “happenin’” ones among us, the clues to abundant life are not being tweeted or twittered or tooted or Facebooked. They’re ancient. I’ve stumbled upon some of them in, of all places, this tired old book we call the Bible.
One such key is found in the second chapter of the book of Acts where it’s reported that, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.”
If that sounds a little utopian to you, it’s little wonder. This description of the folks who made up the early church touches a very tender place in most of our souls. It speaks of deep, meaningful, and genuine community. What these very early Christians discovered was the same simple lesson of the loaves and fishes: that sharing multiplies. Sharing your resources with others, particularly with those in need, multiplies the power of those resources and multiplies your own sense of self. Sharing your home and food with friends multiplies the goodness and joy of living. Sharing your experience of the holy, your devotion and worship, multiplies the power of the Spirit that dwells in our hearts and in our relationships. We touch and handle that multiplying power when we come together here in this place that has been hallowed by the laughter and tears of generations of believers. But if we’re truly honest, we know that there is yet a leanness in our souls, a vulnerable place that yearns for something more. Once a week for an hour or two of prayers and polite conversation is beautiful, but it’s not enough, not nearly enough. Our spirits are roused by this description from the book of Acts because our culture, and therefore our hearts, have become so starved for true community. “Friending” people on Facebook has become such a pervasive cultural phenomenon precisely because it speaks to that hunger in our hearts. But it’s like giving a starving man a cardboard picture of steak and potatoes.
I can’t direct you to a website, I can’t send you to an organization, I can’t offer a five step program, but from the lessons of scripture and of my own experience, I can tell you this: If you want to find abundance in life, seek ways to deepen, enrich, and expand your relationships, work at making community – this community of faith – as real, as honest, as profoundly meaningful as it can be. That means, in part, finding ways to move beyond and beneath our casual conversations about the weather, and to risk sharing our deepest hopes and fears, joys and hurts. It means, in part, finding ways to work, shoulder to shoulder, on those things that make the world a little better place to live, and to celebrate and sing and cry together with passion and purpose.
But, in the end, it’s still not the whole story. It’s not possible to find abundant life with others without bringing some abundance of our own to the game. That’s where the 23rd Psalm comes in. There could hardly be a better prescription for what ails our hearts and minds than this ancient song of the Israelites. The very first line is a two-by-four upside the head for those of us who’ve spent a lifetime collecting toys to try to make life better somehow: “I shall not want.” The thing that stabs at our souls and hurts our hearts so much is precisely how much of the time we spend “wanting.” We want not just things, we want fulfillment, we want pleasure, we want meaning, we want comfort, we want productivity, we want security, we want companionship, we want, we want, we want . . . . Are there those among us who have even a glimpse of what a life without want would be? America is addicted to want. We have so much. Especially in comparison to the rest of the world, we have a tremendous amount of comfort, of security, of ease in living, of avenues for fulfillment. And yet we are not satisfied. And as for those who have more of these things than you and I? They only want more. There is no end to this wanting – at least no end that can be achieved trough acquisition of the things we think we want.
The cessation of want is not a material or social endeavor; it is a spiritual quest. As Gandhi said, the greatest battles are fought within. And the only way to live without want is to pull it out of us like a weed, root and all. That’s far more easily said than done, but it is a struggle worth taking on. Personal meditation and reflection can help. Focusing the mind on letting go of desires as you go through your daily activities can help. Shifting your perspective by looking outside of yourself and finding great value in what is already at hand can help – like taking time to revel in lying down in green pastures or being led beside the cool waters. Those are ways that our souls can be restored, that we can regain a degree of wholeness and peace.
A dear friend of Dadgie’s and mine named Jim was diagnosed with cancer. We received word that the diagnosis had been made some time ago, and it was incurable. We didn’t know how long he had to live so we flew to Chicago to see him, not knowing if we’d find him emaciated, on his death bed, plugged into monitors and IV’s. We found Jim at home, looking exactly as he always had. He was in the back yard tending his rock garden. It was a beautiful creation of stones in different colors and sizes arranged in a lovely pattern. He told us that he spent a good deal of time each day pulling weeds out from between the stones. As he pulled each weed, he imagined he was uprooting a bit of that which did not belong, like the cancer cells in his body. This spiritual exercise was very characteristic of Jim. It also turned out to be key in helping him to not only have a better quality of life, but to keep him alive, I’m convinced, for far longer than medical science predicted.
You may not have a rock garden, but you can find concrete images, patterns of reflection, spiritual disciplines that can help you to uproot that in your life that is eating away at you. And as you pull it up and recognize it, I suspect that you will find it has everything to do with your wanting.
And I suspect it will have a lot to do with your fears. The Psalmist says, “I fear no evil.” That’s another beauty. You and I are driven by our fears, even at times when we don’t realize it. Our fears are the flipside of our wants. We fear meaninglessness, we fear loneliness, we fear poverty or attack or illness, we fear death. Is it possible to live fearlessly? The quest to do so is much like the uprooting of our wants. it’s a spiritual journey. I believe that when we can truly feel ourselves connected to the heart and soul of the universe, when we can finally recognize the oneness of all that is, and of our participation in that oneness, we can indeed dissolve our fears in the joy of being.
These things don’t happen overnight. They require great effort, patience, practice and perseverance. They are truly worthy endeavors for anyone at any time of life, but especially for those of us in our fall and winter years. The achievement of the kind of wholeness that vanquishes fear and uproots want is the ultimate task and crowning achievement of life. It can serve as a beacon of hope to those who follow.
I can’t get inside Jesus’ head, but as far as I’m concerned, this is what he was talking about when he said his whole purpose in being was that we might have life and have it abundantly. I think he meant that we were to pay attention to all he shared through the course of his ministry, and that if we did, we would be led to find a spiritual center that would release us from fear and want, and that we could bring the wholeness and peace of that spiritual joy to others, sharing of ourselves, our resources, and our very being in true and deep community.
And that is life abundant.
This lectionary reading from the gospel of John you heard this morning left me scratching my head. What struck me about the story was the question this woman at the well posed to Jesus. Put it this way: If Jesus suddenly appeared one day and gave you the opportunity to ask anything you wanted, what would it be? Now, there’s a thought to set your mind going. You can ask anything at all, but you have only one question. How do you spend it? Do you ask about the meaning of life? Do you inquire into the reason for suffering? Do you want to know if he really is who people say that he is, or what he can tell you about the afterlife? Well, this Samaritan woman at the well had exactly that opportunity. When Jesus, the stranger, clearly knew every detail about her life and marital history, it was obvious to her that this man was a great prophet who could see into the heart of reality and know the truth. So what did she ask? “Sir,” she said, “I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Come again? This is your one big chance to ask a question of the greatest prophet of all time, and you want to know whether you should worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem? I want to say, “Lady, wake up and smell the coffee! What are you thinking?” Well, it was, I suppose, a different time – people had different concerns and issues. Still, what’s the big deal about where’s the right place to worship?
To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure her question is altogether different from what you and I might ask. It may seem so on the surface, but let’s give it a deeper look. Here’s one I think I might be inclined to put at the top of my list: “Tell me, Jesus, what’s this ‘living’ business all about? Why am I here? And is there any point in trying to make a difference in world that seems full of people intent on tearing everything apart?” That’s one any of us might like to put to him, right?
I think the Samaritan woman was asking something surprisingly similar. Her question was raised in the midst of a legalistic environment that had a clear hierarchy of races and classes, and a well-known set of religious practices that distinguished the good from the evil. She was a woman of Samaria – two strikes against her. Women were second class citizens, and Samaritans were considered by the Jews to be an “unclean” race. Religion in her time was all about performing the right rituals in order to please God and be considered righteous and worthy. So her question came from the depth of her soul. In essence it was this: Are you (meaning the Jews) right? Am I unworthy and unacceptable, because I’m a Samaritan, because I’m a woman, so I don’t worship in the right place? Is there any hope for me? That’s really our question to Jesus, isn’t it – at the root of it all? Is there any hope for me?
Jesus’s answer blasts apart her assumptions and the assumptions of her entire culture. When she asks where to worship he replies, “Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” They’re discussing worship here, but it’s not the worship of your grandmother dressing you up in your Sunday finest to go be a good little boy or girl in Sunday school. They’re talking about the heart-shattering and earth shaking question that cries out from the heart of worship – is there any hope for me?
Jesus reframes the whole issue. He says it’s not about doing the right thing in the right place, so you can be right, and therefore acceptable. It’s not about winning your hope like the prize in some contest, or lucking out to be part of the right gender or culture like fishing a toy out of a Crackerjacks box. He is saying that hope is not something that is conferred upon you by merit of your right actions, or thoughts, or place in life, or by singing the right hymns or saying the right prayers. Hope is something that wells up from within you when your heart is touched by the timeless and boundless Spirit of divine Grace. Listen to how he answers her. It’s not about worshiping in the right place, he says. It’s about the nature of worship itself: “. . . the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Why do we worship? Some of us are here because we’re looking for something, because we want to learn something, or experience something, or receive something that will help us get through our days. And there’s nothing wrong with reaching toward the hand of Eternal Grace for help and guidance. Some are here because it’s the right thing to do – because praising the Lord is what the Bible tells us to do, and it’s what our parents did, and what’s expected of us. That also is not a bad thing. We certainly have plenty of examples throughout our religious history to teach us the value of tradition. Some are here for reasons they hardly even comprehend. There’s simply a big question mark in their lives, and they hope that somehow an answer is waiting, maybe in a place like this. That’s also a good thing. The unknowns and uncertainties of life are where the real battles are fought, and the greatest victories are won.
But there are great hazards in our natural tendencies that can eat the very heart out of our worship and our fellowship and leave it lifeless and meaningless. You and I tend to cling to old answers to new questions and familiar patterns that lull us to sleep in our pews. The great rabbi, professor, theologian, and civil rights activist, Abraham Heschel writes: “It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.”1
Heschel might be paraphrasing the words of Jesus: “. . . the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship . . . in spirit and truth . . . God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” I would submit that we not here either for our sake, or for the Lord’s sake. We don’t need a worship service to improve our lives, we’ve got self-help books, therapy sessions, support groups, families and friends that give us plenty of resources for coping. And if God is God – the unknowable, unnameable, source of all Being – then that Lord of Life doesn’t need us to be here either. I suspect that the universe will continue to hold together without our hymns and prayers. No, we’re here because Spirit is drawn to Spirit. We’re here because truth seeks out truth. What you are, at the deepest level of existence, connects in these hymns and prayers and words of scripture with the Ground of all Being. You are more than a collection of body parts, bits of knowledge, memories, and relationships. In the core of your being there is Spirit – it is a Spirit formed in the mystery of divine creation and called good. It is a Spirit fashioned at creation in the image of God, and through ancient rituals and modern praises, that “Götterfunken” – that God-spark – within you comes home to the flame. And that inner spark of yours is a light amidst the dark world of half-truths, compromises, white lies and equivocations that surround you. At the deepest level of your being you are an embodiment of the truth that Jesus spoke about – the truth that sets free the captives. And in the words that spill down from this pulpit, words of scripture, words of challenge, words that anger, and words that inspire, and in the magic of our Sunday gathering, and in the earnestness of our prayers, the spoken prayers and the silences of our hearts, the divine truth that dwells within you embraces the eternal Truth of the ages. That’s what Jesus was saying: “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth . . . God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
William Willimon says that, “Worship is a countercultural activity in a hedonistic, auto-salvation-oriented, pragmatic, utilitarian society. It is scandalously ‘useless.’ Worship serves no more worthy purpose than the joy of being with the one who loves and is therefore loved. It ranks somewhere near the top of the list of other useless and purposeless activities such as singing songs, kissing, giving a gift without expecting anything in return, sitting quietly with a good friend, or doing nothing but watching a winter sunset. We can’t really blame those busy, serious folk who look at worship and wonder, ‘What’s in it for me?’ Their very question answers itself – for someone like them, alas, nothing.” Willimon goes on to ask the question that challenges us to set ourselves apart from the values and purposes that draw our world into chaos. He says, “What more revolutionary, subversive activity could one undertake in this ‘Me Generation’ than to be caught singing a doxology?”2
If Jesus surprised any one of us some morning on the street corner, maybe we wouldn’t need to ask him anything at all. Maybe with enough practice at being here and allowing the spark of our spirit to ignite in the presence of the flame of the Eternal Spirit, and letting divine Truth wash over us and connect with the truth of our own hearts, we might find ourselves no longer desperate for a word of hope. Maybe we could eventually find ourselves living beyond self-involved purposes, and worshiping for no explicable reason at all. Perhaps, if Jesus came to any of us and fixed our eyes with his, all that were necessary could be communicated in a smile.
Why worship? If you must, come seeking guidance. If it’s in your make-up, come out of tradition or habit or the expectations of others. If you are so driven, come looking for answers. But in the end, as you increasingly claim the spark and word that dwell within your bones, come in spirit and in truth, and find here nothing greater and nothing less than your soul’s sweet home.
1 Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1976, p. 3.
2 William Willimon, “Pulpit Resource”, Volume 28, no. 1, p. 41.
Thomas Friedman in an article in the Boston Globe mentioned a song from the Crystal Palace dinner theater in Aspen called “The Peanut Butter Affair.” The song related the story of “a C.E.O. who had gone to work one day, without properly washing his face, and still had a lump of peanut butter on his chin. But none of his employees dared to tell him. When he got home, though, his wife told him it was there and he was appalled. But he was even more appalled when he showed up for work over the next few days and eventually ‘every jerk from the chairman to the clerk had a lump of peanut butter on his chin.’”1 The story is wonderful and really good for a laugh, but if we consider it deeply enough we might find it striking a bit close to home. Our culture is so thoroughly saturated with games of “follow the leader” that we barely know we’re playing it. The latest styles are musts whether in width of ties or pants verses skirts. Everyone has to listen to the biggest hit songs, watch the hot new TV shows, and have the latest model car (well, nearly so – my Camry is 13 years old). And when the twitter world gets tweaked, everyone is all atwitter. It reminds me of the song from the musical, The Wiz. As people parade around the Emerald City all wearing green clothing they sing:
I want to be seen green
Wouldn’t be caught dead, red
’Cause if you are seen green
It means you got mean bread . . .
But then comes an announcement from the Great and Powerful Oz: “I thought it over and green is dead. ’Till I change my mind, the color is red.” And suddenly everyone is wearing red and singing:
I wouldn’t be seen green
Ooo! Oo! Oo! Ah! Ah!
I wouldn’t be caught dead
And if I’m caught at all
Then catch me in dead, red . . .2
And on it goes with everyone’s clothing changing color according to the whims of the Great and Powerful Oz. I think they had it about right; in the end, we all wind up with peanut butter on our chins.
In the Gospel According to John, Jesus is trying to explain to Nicodemus what it means to be “born of the Spirit.” His explanation goes like this: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” That’s a difficult saying to comprehend. But I think he is saying something like: don’t go around with peanut butter on your chin. Being born of the Spirit means moving like the wind. It means that you may not know, and folks around you certainly will have a tough time guessing, where you will be headed next. And that’s because you will not be guided by what everyone else is wearing, or what is the latest cool app for your iPhone; you will be guided by that ineffable Spirit of Holiness that pervades all Being and blows in through the windows of your soul.
That’s what happened to Abram. He was old; he felt old; he thought old; he talked old (I know the feeling). But when that ineffable Spirit welled up inside him and said, “Abram, you’re about to give birth to something spectacular,” he was just loopy enough to believe it. So he grabbed his son and took off on a journey to God knows where. And if you’re loopy enough to wipe the peanut butter off your chin and live like the wind, you just may find yourself surprised by doing that which you know you don’t have the courage or the conviction or the character to make happen.
It also happened to Nicodemus. He was left scratching his head when Jesus said, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus couldn’t figure out how someone could be born when they are already old. He didn’t realize that it happens all the time. Dadgie used to say, “I’m getting old.” And I’d say, “No, dear; you’re not getting old. You’re already old.” Well, I guess I’m already old too, but I find myself born again about once or twice a week. Usually it happens when I get reminded by friends or family or the exigencies and crises of life that my usual patterns and tried and true perspectives don’t necessarily apply. I get re-educated to the need to find new answers, listen to different voices (including those from within), see things from another angle.
In the movie, Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating is an English teacher at a New England prep school for boys. This school is strict and utterly conventional. The boys wear uniforms and walk in orderly lines. They learn the classics in the same way boys had there for decades. Mr. Keating is trying to turn these boys into free thinkers. One day while teaching a class Mr. Keating jumps up on his desk and he looks around the room. He tells the boys that he’s standing up there to remind himself how important it is to see things from a different perspective. “You see,” he explains, “the world looks very different from up here.” And then he instructs them all to come up and stand on his desk, one at a time, and look at the room from that different perspective. The boys grudgingly make their way up to the front of the class; no one wants to be the first to get up on the desk. But they climb up anyway, one at a time, and then hop off the other side. Some of them look amused, some bored, some impatient and annoyed. But in some of their faces, there dawns a realization that stepping out of the rigid formation and unbending rules for a moment to see things from an entirely different perspective is not only liberating but enlightening.
A lot of the time, you and I would just as soon not have our perspectives changed or be surprised by anything, let alone by the Spirit of the Lord. No matter what your age, it’s easy to start feeling old. And then we become tired, a little shell shocked by the unwanted astonishments of everyday existence. And we begin to fear the surprise of death as much as the surprises of life. I’m reminded of the story told by Rabbi Skinner about the Jewish tradition of referring to the span of 120 years for anything desired to last a long time (as in: “may your good fortune last 120 years”). This is the length in the biblical story of Moses’s life. One man said, “I’d like to live 120 years and 3 months.” He was asked, “Why the 3 months?” He replied, “Because I don’t want to die suddenly.”
Most of us would not choose to live 120 years. It’s a very easy thing when we see that the days ahead are fewer than those behind us to just keep walking in formation and keep our heads down ’till it’s over. It is also as natural as can be to grow weary from the frustrations of our limitations, to become discouraged by our fruitless attempts to be bolder, more faithful, more understanding, or more temperate. On the other hand, the patterns of your life may be full of energy and bursting with new ideas. Believe it or not, that sort of pattern can also be a kind of trap, leaving you unable to hear a voice of counsel, or to find solid footing.
But succumbing to the law of inertia, of always doing what you’ve always done, is just as pitiful an existence as walking around with peanut butter on your chin. Every moment can hold out the bright promise of a different direction, of something surprising to you, of something new and wonderful. And every moment can afford the opportunity to offer something unexpected to yourself or those around you. Nicodemus doubted that a person could be born when they are already old because he never knew any of you!
Jesus said, “The wind blows where it chooses.” I can tell you about the wind blowing where it chooses; a few weeks ago I thought that wind was going to blow my house right off its foundation. The wind that Jesus spoke of sneaks up on you! It finds you when you’re feeling smug and self-satisfied, or in the mood for nothing but self-pity; it picks you up off your feet, and like Dorothy in the land of Oz, drops you right smack dab in the middle of a new way of looking at things. You may not even know where the tracks of Christ are, let alone where they’re going, but that wind will carry you in the right direction, sometimes even against your will, if you’ll let it.
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, that by the time you’re three your personality is already established, and once you reach mid-life, you’re not likely to change your patterns of behavior. Well I’ve got a piece of advice for any of us grown-ups out there who may have given up on ourselves. Let’s wipe the peanut butter off our chins, feel the leading of the wind in our souls, join the league of those who are born of the Spirit, and keep knocking on doors. To paraphrase Jesus, sooner or later one will open up.
1 Thomas Friedman, “They’ve All Put Peanut Butter On Their Chins”, Boston Globe, March 8, 2017.
2 “The Emerald City Sequence” from The Wiz, Quincy Jones and Charlie Smalls.
I’ll never forget one occasion when I went into a gift shop to buy a gift for someone (I don’t remember what or for whom). I do remember that I was admiring some gift I thought would be ideal. I decided to buy it and picked up one that was boxed, opening the box to make sure the gift was intact before purchasing it. At that, the owner of the store, an elderly gentleman, shouted at me from clear across the store, “That’s a no!” I turned and stared at him, wondering if he thought he were my father, or that I might be five years old. I simply put the box back and left the store, never to return.
I think something similar happened to Christian churches somewhere along the way. They got so caught up in purveying their lists of sins and saying to people, “That’s a no!” that a lot of folks just walked out and never looked back. So, churches like ours realized that the gospel is not about beating people over the head with all those “no-no’s”; we emphasize the positive side of the gospel, and celebrate diversity. In a “non-creedal” church like ours, “soul liberty” is cherished: each believer has the right and responsibility to work out his or her own faith without being told what to believe.
These principles are very dear to me, but when I read scriptural legends like those this morning of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden or Jesus being tempted by Satan, I realize they are there to make a point about faithfulness, and I am forced to ask myself, and all of you: Is there anything that we in this church say “No” to? I think these stories from Genesis and Matthew are instructive.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s attention was directed to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and were told, “That’s a no!” But this quaint little tale is about more than recognizing nakedness and putting on fig leaves. The temptation presented by the serpent was to be like gods and have a kind of ultimate, divine knowledge. It is a very common temptation. I succumb to it constantly. I catch myself believing that the way I see things, the “truth” that I know, is ultimate truth. Anyone who sees it differently is obviously ignorant, deluded, or simply ignoring the facts. It is this very temptation, and the degree to which people succumb to it that leads to ugly divisiveness, and in the extreme, to wars and crusades. It is perhaps the chief human failing throughout history: the tendency to assume ultimate authority – in essence, to try to be gods.
To that temptation this church says, “No!” Even as we find ourselves, like Adam and Eve, repeatedly succumbing to it, we nonetheless affirm that it is the spirit of soul liberty that causes us to value diversity, and in turn forces us into a posture of humility and rigorous self-questioning. We reject all forms of idolatry, and that includes placing our own minds on the throne of eternal truth.
If there were any regular human being on this planet who might be given right to a kind of divine authority, we could suppose it would have been Gandhi. But he was wise enough to know his own limitations. I love the story, whether apocryphal or not, of a troubled mother who had a daughter who was addicted to sweets. One day she approached Gandhi, explained the problem to him and asked whether he might talk to the young girl. “Bring your daughter to me in three weeks’ time and I will speak to her.” After three weeks, the mother brought her daughter to him. He took the young girl aside and spoke to her about the harmful effects of eating sweets excessively and urged her to abandon her bad habit. The mother thanked Gandhi for this advice and then asked him: “But why didn’t you speak to her three weeks ago?” Gandhi replied, “Because three weeks ago, I was still addicted to sweets.”1
The tale of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness is also instructive. His first temptation was to break his fast by making bread from a stone. This is the age old desire to get something for nothing, to win the lottery, to make it big. And in our world that usually means trampling on others to make one’s fortune – or, to paraphrase Jesus, trying to live only for one’s bread, and ignoring the truths embedded in the Gospel.
Parker Palmer has an excellent take on this particular temptation. He writes, “Human nature . . . seems to regard perpetual scarcity as the law of life. Daily I am astonished at how readily I believe that something I need is in short supply. If I hoard possessions, it is because I believe that there are not enough to go around. . . . The irony, often tragic, is that by embracing the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear. If I hoard material goods, others will have too little and I will never have enough. . . . We create scarcity by fearfully accepting it as law, and by competing with others for resources as if we were stranded on the Sahara at the last oasis.2
Palmer has put his finger on a fundamental distortion of the human condition. And to this we say, “No!” This church stands for love and for justice. That stance means that we will not give up on the ideal of equality in opportunity and in resources. It means that we are committed to giving of our own resources for the sake of others, and sharing in our abundance in scorn of the fears of scarcity.
The second temptation was for Jesus to throw himself off the temple tower to demonstrate that he would not perish. This is a temptation to which many young people succumb. You see them on the highways, driving as if they were invincible. But they are not entirely alone. It’s easy to begin taking our living for granted, until we become so careless or calloused that we fail to recognize the mortality of not only ourselves but of other people and of institutions. It is a simple mental trick to imagine that somehow everything’s in the hands of the Almmighty, so I don’t need to take responsibility – or, as Jesus put it, to put God to the test.
To this abandonment of responsibility for ourselves and for a world of brothers and sisters this church says, “No!” We take up the responsibility for the advancement of the kingdom. We say that the hands to do the work of divinity in this world are our hands, and so we strive to do Christ’s work in the world: to bring food to the hungry, and to work, and witness for peace.
And Jesus’s final temptation was to worship Satan in order to gain temporal power over all the world. The lust for such power has ruled the hearts of men for millennia (and I do say “men” because we seem to have predominated in this one). And so often the avenue to gaining power is to, if not worshiping evil, at least give a wink and a nod to it. I love the scene in the TV series West Wing in which a campaign consultant is trying to convince the President in a meeting to abandon his principles on an issue in order to win votes. Toby, the Communications Director, looks at him and says, “I just figured out who you were.” The consultant jumps in, “He’s going to say Satan.” Toby replies, “No. You’re the guy that runs into 7-Eleven to get Satan a pack of cigarettes.”
To those who abandon fairness and compassion, or prostitute themselves to evil for the sake of gaining power over others, this church says, “No!” We will not run into the Seven Eleven to get Satan a pack of cigarettes. We will speak truth to power – or, in our case, at least the closest we feel capable of coming to truth. That phrase, “speak truth to power” was coined by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in a 1942 letter to the New York Monthly Meeting. Offering his anti-war sentiments, he wrote: “the primary function of a religious society is to ‘speak the truth to power.’ . . . Let us avoid the possibilities of spiritual suicide.”3 Born in 1912 and living in an era of unbelievable repression, Rustin spent his life speaking truth to power as an activist for civil rights, nonviolence, and gay rights. In 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Medal of Freedom. For us, that speech to power may involve writing letters to congressional representatives, signing petitions, taking part in marches and protests, or contributing to causes we believe in.
This is a church that stands for tolerance, openness, dialog, and freedom of conscience. But, as we begin this season of Lenten soul-searching, if we are going to be honest in our allegiance to the gospel, we must acknowledge that there are some things to which we say, “That’s a no!”
1 Found in: Ron Rolheiser, Internet column, “Our inability to cast out demons,” October 2, 2005, http://ronrolheiser.com/our-inability-to-cast-out-demons/#.WLb8oeQizcs
2 Parker Palmer, “There Is a Season,” in Paul Loeb, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times, Basic Books, 2014, p.157.
3 In I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, Michael G. Long, ed., City Lights Publishers, 2012, p. 2.
(Although Rustin attributes the quote to future ACLU president Patrick Malin, researches have found this was not Malin’s phrase.)
I’ll never forget one occasion when I went into a gift shop to buy a gift for someone (I don’t remember what or for whom). I do remember that I was admiring some gift I thought would be ideal. I decided to buy it and picked up one that was boxed, opening the box to make sure the gift was intact before purchasing it. At that, the owner of the store, an elderly gentleman, shouted at me from clear across the store, “That’s a no!” I turned and stared at him, wondering if he thought he were my father, or that I might be five years old. I simply put the box back and left the store, never to return.
I think something similar happened to Christian churches somewhere along the way. They got so caught up in purveying their lists of sins and saying to people, “That’s a no!” that a lot of folks just walked out and never looked back. So, churches like ours realized that the gospel is not about beating people over the head with all those “no-no’s”; we emphasize the positive side of the gospel, and celebrate diversity. In a “non-creedal” church like ours, “soul liberty” is cherished: each believer has the right and responsibility to work out his or her own faith without being told what to believe.
These principles are very dear to me, but when I read scriptural legends like those this morning of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden or Jesus being tempted by Satan, I realize they are there to make a point about faithfulness, and I am forced to ask myself, and all of you: Is there anything that we in this church say “No” to? I think these stories from Genesis and Matthew are instructive.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s attention was directed to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and were told, “That’s a no!” But this quaint little tale is about more than recognizing nakedness and putting on fig leaves. The temptation presented by the serpent was to be like gods and have a kind of ultimate, divine knowledge. It is a very common temptation. I succumb to it constantly. I catch myself believing that the way I see things, the “truth” that I know, is ultimate truth. Anyone who sees it differently is obviously ignorant, deluded, or simply ignoring the facts. It is this very temptation, and the degree to which people succumb to it that leads to ugly divisiveness, and in the extreme, to wars and crusades. It is perhaps the chief human failing throughout history: the tendency to assume ultimate authority – in essence, to try to be gods.
To that temptation this church says, “No!” Even as we find ourselves, like Adam and Eve, repeatedly succumbing to it, we nonetheless affirm that it is the spirit of soul liberty that causes us to value diversity, and in turn forces us into a posture of humility and rigorous self-questioning. We reject all forms of idolatry, and that includes placing our own minds on the throne of eternal truth.
If there were any regular human being on this planet who might be given right to a kind of divine authority, we could suppose it would have been Gandhi. But he was wise enough to know his own limitations. I love the story, whether apocryphal or not, of a troubled mother who had a daughter who was addicted to sweets. One day she approached Gandhi, explained the problem to him and asked whether he might talk to the young girl. “Bring your daughter to me in three weeks’ time and I will speak to her.” After three weeks, the mother brought her daughter to him. He took the young girl aside and spoke to her about the harmful effects of eating sweets excessively and urged her to abandon her bad habit. The mother thanked Gandhi for this advice and then asked him: “But why didn’t you speak to her three weeks ago?” Gandhi replied, “Because three weeks ago, I was still addicted to sweets.”
The tale of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness is also instructive. His first temptation was to break his fast by making bread from a stone. This is the age old desire to get something for nothing, to win the lottery, to make it big. And in our world that usually means trampling on others to make one’s fortune – or, to paraphrase Jesus, trying to live only for one’s bread, and ignoring the truths embedded in the Gospel.
Parker Palmer has an excellent take on this particular temptation. He writes, “Human nature . . . seems to regard perpetual scarcity as the law of life. Daily I am astonished at how readily I believe that something I need is in short supply. If I hoard possessions, it is because I believe that there are not enough to go around. . . . The irony, often tragic, is that by embracing the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear. If I hoard material goods, others will have too little and I will never have enough. . . . We create scarcity by fearfully accepting it as law, and by competing with others for resources as if we were stranded on the Sahara at the last oasis.
Palmer has put his finger on a fundamental distortion of the human condition. And to this we say, “No!” This church stands for love and for justice. That stance means that we will not give up on the ideal of equality in opportunity and in resources. It means that we are committed to giving of our own resources for the sake of others, and sharing in our abundance in scorn of the fears of scarcity.
The second temptation was for Jesus to throw himself off the temple tower to demonstrate that he would not perish. This is a temptation to which many young people succumb. You see them on the highways, driving as if they were invincible. But they are not entirely alone. It’s easy to begin taking our living for granted, until we become so careless or calloused that we fail to recognize the mortality of not only ourselves but of other people and of institutions. It is a simple mental trick to imagine that somehow everything’s in the hands of the Almmighty, so I don’t need to take responsibility – or, as Jesus put it, to put God to the test.
To this abandonment of responsibility for ourselves and for a world of brothers and sisters this church says, “No!” We take up the responsibility for the advancement of the kingdom. We say that the hands to do the work of divinity in this world are our hands, and so we strive to do Christ’s work in the world: to bring food to the hungry, and to work, and witness for peace.
And Jesus’s final temptation was to worship Satan in order to gain temporal power over all the world. The lust for such power has ruled the hearts of men for millennia (and I do say “men” because we seem to have predominated in this one). And so often the avenue to gaining power is to, if not worshiping evil, at least give a wink and a nod to it. I love the scene in the TV series West Wing in which a campaign consultant is trying to convince the President in a meeting to abandon his principles on an issue in order to win votes. Toby, the Communications Director, looks at him and says, “I just figured out who you were.” The consultant jumps in, “He’s going to say Satan.” Toby replies, “No. You’re the guy that runs into 7-Eleven to get Satan a pack of cigarettes.”
To those who abandon fairness and compassion, or prostitute themselves to evil for the sake of gaining power over others, this church says, “No!” We will not run into the Seven Eleven to get Satan a pack of cigarettes. We will speak truth to power – or, in our case, at least the closest we feel capable of coming to truth. That phrase, “speak truth to power” was coined by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in a 1942 letter to the New York Monthly Meeting. Offering his anti-war sentiments, he wrote: “the primary function of a religious society is to ‘speak the truth to power.’ . . . Let us avoid the possibilities of spiritual suicide.” Born in 1912 and living in an era of unbelievable repression, Rustin spent his life speaking truth to power as an activist for civil rights, nonviolence, and gay rights. In 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Medal of Freedom. For us, that speech to power may involve writing letters to congressional representatives, signing petitions, taking part in marches and protests, or contributing to causes we believe in.
This is a church that stands for tolerance, openness, dialog, and freedom of conscience. But, as we begin this season of Lenten soul-searching, if we are going to be honest in our allegiance to the gospel, we must acknowledge that there are some things to which we say, “That’s a no!”
Let me describe this scene for you, and see if it sounds familiar. You’re caught in a conversation you’d actually rather not be in, but you can’t find a graceful exit, so . . . there you are. The point of discussion is – let’s say – abortion, or gay rights, or birth control. And it is clearly a topic that your partner in conversation feels very strongly about. At some point this other person – let’s call her Martha – says, “Well, that’s not just my opinion, it’s God’s word. It says right there in Matthew twenty umptieth that those who disagree will be sent straight to H, E, double hockey sticks.” And before you can stop yourself, you say, “Well, that’s your interpretation.” Whereupon, Martha gets on her high horse and says, “Oh, I don’t interpret scripture. I just read the plain truth from the word of God. It’s not subject to interpretation, it’s right there in black and white in the Bible.” At this point you realize you’ve stumbled into a land where no growing thing can survive, so you beat a hasty retreat by either changing the subject, or looking at your watch and saying, “Oh, look at the time!” If you’ve never found yourself in such a predicament, consider yourself lucky. As for me? . . . Been there, done that.
But what about that claim – that scripture is not subject to interpretation, that it can and should be read literally, at face value, that its meanings are plainly obvious to all? What are we to say to people who hold such a position? Well, first of all, the best advice is: say nothing. Trust me, you’re not going to win.
But, beyond that, I think it is important for us know something about this process of biblical interpretation. Is there such a thing as “the plain literal meaning” of a passage of scripture? My years of experience in theological environments and church settings tell me, no; there’s rarely such a thing. There are groups of people who have come together in agreement on a certain interpretation, and therefore agree among themselves that theirs is the “plain, literal meaning,” but you will always find others who will dispute that interpretation. So who’s right, and how do we decide?
Unfortunately, for all too many people the decision is to be made by fiat: “I’m right, because I know God’s Word and so you have to be wrong.” The only problem with that approach is that it is idolatry. It puts one’s own self on a par with the Almighty, the inferred assumption being that one person is actually capable of knowing the mind of the Lord. That assumption means one of two things: your God is too small, or your head is too big.
At first blush, Peter seems to be saying much the same thing in this passage you heard this morning. Today is the Sunday that the transfiguration of Jesus is recalled by churches around the globe, and in this reading from 1 Peter, that transfiguration experience – witnessing Jesus drawn up into the air from the mountaintop – is offered by Peter as the proof positive for his theological argument about the second coming of Christ. He says, in essence, that since he was an eyewitness to this event, his perception of its meaning in the light of prophecy is unquestionable. I can relate to that. I had a very powerful and dramatic experience of calling into the ministry when I was a police officer over fifty years ago. I went off to seminary with the firm conviction that this dramatic experience is what gave my calling (and therefore my views) authenticity. I was quite the obnoxious know-it-all. I had to be knocked down a few pegs before I came to realize that my experience was only one of a thousand kinds, and my views were just as subject to error as anyone’s. So I’m sure you understand if I take the apostle’s argument here with a little grain of salt. At any rate, Peter follows all this with the amazing pronouncement, “. . . no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation . . . .”
One might think that Peter was taking the side of the biblical literalists. It sounds uncomfortably close to the kind of conversation I’d rather walk away from. But listen more closely: “no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” There is a tremendously subtle and terribly important nuance between saying that a prophetic utterance is inspired by God, and assuming that one person speaks for the mind of God. Peter is saying that when people speak a truly prophetic word (such as speaking truth to power as the old testament prophets did), it is the Lord Almighty who inspires them to do so. When Moses mustered the courage to stand before Pharaoh and demand that he let his people go, he was inspired by God. When Isaiah warned that corruption and idolatry would lead to the downfall of the kingdom, he was inspired by God. When Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march on Washington and proclaimed to the nation a vision of freedom and equality, he was inspired by God. When Nelson Mandela hammered out the agreement that established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and Archbishop Tutu shed tears of pain and words of forgiveness, they were inspired by God. We know these things because we look back on them and see divine fingerprints all over them.
But where is the Lord of Life at work now? That we will only discern with any sense of confidence as we look back on this time from the vantage point of tomorrow. And so the most we can hope to do is learn what we can about where that Lord has been, and keep our eyes open for hints and signs of the Spirit’s leading. And that, my friends, requires an open mind and heart – the kind of openness that only comes from humility. The one who believes he already has the mind of God figured out is far more likely to be blinded to the real work of the Spirit.
All of this is a long way around the barn of saying that not only must scripture be interpreted, processed, sifted, and reinterpreted, but we have a solemn responsibility to do so in the context of the living of our days. Our constant and humble prayer is that our interpretation will be guided and inspired by the Spirit and blessed by the prayers and reflections of tomorrow.
Finally, let me offer what I believe is the “nail in the coffin” of biblical literalism. To those who claim such a position, you only have to ask them if they believe the world is round and that space is vast. Because once you accept that the globe is a sphere set in orbit around the sun, you are already interpreting scripture. It’s true. In the Genesis creation story, we are told that “In the beginning the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.” The picture is of a watery chaos – everywhere you look, nothing but water. Then, we are told, God put a “firmament in the heavens to separate the waters that were above from the waters that were below.” Have you ever wondered what that meant? Well, let’s take a cue from the biblical literalists, and just read it at face value. The Hebrew word that is translated “firmament” is raqiah. I don’t know where the translators ever came up with the word “firmament” because raqiah is a Hebrew word that means simply “a hammered out bowl.” You got it. There’s water everywhere, and God put an upside down bowl in the sky to separate the waters above from the waters below. That’s what allowed the dry land to appear. Thus is completed the picture of ancient near eastern cosmology. The earth is like a pancake. Sitting on top of it is a kind of translucent bowl to protect us, and all around, below the earth and above the bowl, is water. You know that’s the case because your senses tell you so. You can see the blue water shining through the upside-down bowl above, and sometimes, God opens doors in that bowl (what the Bible calls the “vaults of heaven”) and lets some of the water fall down on us. I mean, water couldn’t fall down from the sky if it wasn’t up there to begin with. And if you poke a stick in the ground in some places, water bubbles up from there too, in springs. It all made perfect sense to those folks a few thousand years ago. And it’s all quite clearly their perception based on a literal reading of the scripture. The only problem with it is that it’s simply not the way the world is actually put together.
So, what are we to do with the creation story, dismiss it as irrelevant folk lore? No. This story in Genesis is theology, not history. It is telling us truth about creation, which is far more important than telling us facts about creation. It is telling us that Almighty Lord of this Universe is at the heart of all that is, and that it is all very, very good. To get there from the story about a raqiah separating the waters requires an interpretive process. The only way to read and accept the creation story as literal fact is to believe that the universe is filled with water instead of space and that the observations of astronomers and evidence from spacecraft are all a grand hoax.
So, as soon as you admit that the world is round and space is vast, you are interpreting scripture. What then are we to do as thinking people with rational, twenty-first century minds, and a modern, scientific world-view? What are we to do with this ancient book? The interpretive task we face is formidable. It’s no wonder that some folks would rather run away from it into a supposed biblical literalism. We face a very large problem, because once you begin to interpret scripture you are on quite a slippery slope indeed. It’s a fast bobsled run from “the world is round” to “all this stuff in here can mean whatever I want it to.”
Hence, Peter’s caution. It is somehow, in some way we don’t understand, the Holy Spirit that discloses eternal truth to us through scripture. So we have a responsibility to be careful – and prayerful. We approach scripture with humility and reverence, or we approach it as fools.
So, the next time you find yourself in a conversation and someone begins to tell you what “the Bible says about that” with the certainty of someone who can read the mind of the Almighty, you might try asking them if they think the world is round. Or, you might just thank them for their opinion and then glance at your watch. But then, go home and get out your Bible, and while you’re at it, pray.
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